“By partnering with vetted United States companies subject to the direction and oversight of the Federal Government, we will enhance our ability to counter [transnational criminal organizations’] threats and combat transnational cybercrime, fraud, and other predatory schemes against American citizens,” the memo said.
Trump says he loves dogs. He’s a huge fan of them. Am I morally required to hate dogs now? Is it supporting the Trump administration if I also love dogs?
Do you think Trump is writing every order that crosses his desk? Of the hundreds of things he signs a month, many are things that are just the output of the normal workings of government.
For instance, here’s one from last year increasing funding for medical marijuana research: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/23/2025-23846/increasing-medical-marijuana-and-cannabidiol-research
Here was one giving pay increases to all federal government employees: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/23/2025-23844/adjustments-of-certain-rates-of-pay
Am I required to be against both of those as well? How is paying government employees (not contractors, people in direct employ of the government) putting money into his cronies pockets?
Just because he’s a terrible president doing terrible things doesn’t mean I need to deny reality in order to vilify him. He’s bad. He’s doing evil things. No question at all. But if you’re so far in the weeds that you’re taking positions like, “Trump ate a taco, so all Mexican food is actually disgusting,” then you’re living in as big a fantasy land as any MAGA nutjob.
First of all, Trump hates dogs. He calls people “dogs” as an insult.
And, no…you are not obligated to hate dogs, just because he says he likes them. But, if you’re paying attention to what Trump actually says about dogs, you’d know that he’s lying when he says he likes them.
That’s what you’re missing here.
No one is saying it’s bad to go after scammers abroad. What I’m saying is, that’s not what’s going to happen here. Everything Trump does is a favor to a donor. All that’s going to happen here, is that one of Trump’s friends is going to get paid taxpayer money for these “contracts”…whether or not they had a cybersecurity company already, or they just started one last week in order to cash in on this week’s giveaway.
It’s literally what he’s been doing with every single one of these little “projects”. His donors get “vetted” by him…regardless of whether or not they qualify for the job…and make ten times what they donated to his campaign in return for that donation.
It’s all a scam.
Executive order 2025-23844 raises the wages for all federal employees by 3.8 percent: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/23/2025-23844/adjustments-of-certain-rates-of-pay
Is this a scam to line the pockets of Trump cronies, or is it a Trump policy you agree with? If the former, why was it okay when every president before Trump did it. If the latter, then we agree that there are in fact good policies out of this administration, and we therefore have to engage with them on a case by case basis.
And in the case of this method of going after cyber criminals, I’ve seen versions of this policy in both the House and Senate every few years for the past 20yrs or so. It always has bipartisan support but gets held up in committee, usually over legal concerns. It’s a good policy that everyone agrees with. It may get shot down as illegal, but it’s a good policy.
And sure, notionally it could be used to funnel money to Trump cronies, but that will be in how the payment structure gets laid out. Most versions of this in previous iterations allowed the company to keep some percentage of recovered assets, with the government paying little to nothing for administration and overhead. Worked like truly old school privateering.
Now, we will have to wait and see how the actual payment structures end up being laid out, but under that system (which seems likely based off historical attempts at this sort of legislation), would you agree that it would be exceptionally difficult for this to be some secret way of funnelling money to Trump cronies, and therefore admit it is just good policy?
I’ll freely offer up that, if it turns out to just be huge, billion dollar vehicles awarded to limited bid contract companies that were recently stood up, that it was a bad thing. If that’s the way it goes, I’ll freely eat crow.
But if it goes the way I think it likely will, and that it’s a bounty system and it gets awarded to companies with a history of cyber security expertise, will you eat crow and admit that it was a good thing after all?