Defense stocks drop after Trump says Pentagon spending could be halved

Please keep fucking with the defense contractors, surely they won't take any drastic measures against you

I had the “wait, a good thing?” reaction too.
But thinking about potential underlying motivations, it makes complete sense that the compromised traitor holding the reins would want to weaken the military at the same time as destroying the government.
Or maybe it isn’t to help other dictators, and he just wants the opportunity to weed out more people who are loyal to the constitution.
- This may signal he is getting pushback from the military which is a very good thing. If he is serious about Canada and Greenland he will need a strong military. It makes no sense to start cutting the budget now.
  Refusing unlawful orders is always cool and moral.

In case y'all forgot Trump's last term, his general pattern is to constantly announce insane plans and only follow through on a fraction of them. Cutting the pentagon's budget in half is one of the distractions. Some General will dandy himself up in his class A and jingle some blueprints for a useless wunderwaffe and the defense budget will go up.

It doesn't need to be halved. They just need to figure out where a large portion of the money goes, since they can't seem to account for it.

If he actually halves Pentagon Spending, that would be..... the first good deed he's ever done.
- I can see him doing away with seasonal clock shifts by accident at some point.

I just don't even know how I'd react if he successfully cut the defense budget in half. Would i have to join MAGA at that point?
Because... yeah, I hate everything he's done or let others do so far. His Cabinet is/ will be a nightmare. I assume this defense cut would come with more egregious tax cuts for the billionaire class.
But cutting that much from our stupid war budget ... man that's such a nice thing to get...

If he guts the MIC I will be extremely pleasantly surprised.
- Or MIC will just arrange for another president that won't cut their funding. Either is a net positive.

Yooo sick

Good time to buy then. He already pledged to increase funding to Israel. Just need to research what company supplies the most weapons for them and invest there.

HAHAHAHAHHAHA
This fuckin timeline, man…

If this happens, the US MIC will shit all over the MAGAts. How many fucked up MAGAts work in the defense industry? Exactly, fuck them and they can join the "Parasite Class."

Realistically speaking... Is anything gonna happen?
Fuckers are just gonna invest as always, capitalism knows no morals.

I don't like it when I agree with the general notion of something Trump says or does. Makes me feel dirty.
- He'll direct the savings to creating a new internal police force.
- Wait until you see how i gets halved. Im willing to bet they axe the VA, any scholastic programs, ROTC et al as most policies are about destroying America.
- Thats the magic of trump though, when he's vague about things he can sometimes spin them as something agreeable. My guess is he'll keep the regime change bullshit and nix stuff like burn pit procedures, ukraine support, and veterans benefits
- Broken clocks. If its any consolation he could be, variously-
  Floating random shit. Common Trump talk.
  Actually wanting to weaken the U.S. militarily, to the benefit of his leash holders.
  Fishing for bribes.
  
  3 is my guess. Look at tiktok

Well, couldn't the M1 Abrams be replaced with cheaper Tesla cybertrucks?
- "Sir, half of our swastitanks have burned to the ground."
  "Who attacked them?"
  "Attacked?"
  
  It just rained sir.

Infinitely many monkeys on infinitely many typewriters with infinitely much time.
- We are the monkeys. Look at what we’ve done.

They're going to 25 him if he goes close to do it.
- More than this, the idea that the US will reduce defense spending at the same time as others are increasing it is laughable. The whole "NATO has to start pulling it's weight" thing will result in US military power diminishing vs the rest of the world and will result in more US military spending in the long term, not less.
  
  it's almost as if an enemy agent is in the big chair
- Oh no, that would be a tragedy.../s

If he actually tried to follow through, there would actually probably be a military coup.
In America.

Based???!

Would be a good thing if it would actually happen but we all know it won't. Happy to be proven wrong however
- The military is a jobs program. It’s paying for a ton of education and scientific research too. The first thing to go is going to be the scholarships not the guns.
- Would it be a good thing? A lot of our power comes from military spending
  
  Considering how we've used that power in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam? Yes, its a good thing.
  
  The US shouldn't have the power that it does, so yes. It would be a good thing.
  
  We spend more on our military than the next 9 countries combined not including our dark operations that we can't account for in our budget already.
  We could cut our military in half and still be the best funded military in the world.
  That problem isn't other nations, it's the US and the military industrial complex
  
  And it's due you lose some

nooooo!! my lockheed shares!!!

Whelp, he's toast. The last Prez to threaten that got domed while visiting Texas.
- Spot on. Johnson got the message and the 12 years were spent in SE Asia. In this case, the AI sector, especially Palantir Technologies, will be just as pissed off.
- Bush threatened that. Then 9/11 happened.
  
  Literally was listening to NPR on the way to work that day and Rumsfield was on talking about making cuts to the military.
- Here's hoping 🤞
- Came in to say the exact same thing.

I'm guessing this is all just a ploy to make Lockheed, Northrup, and Raytheon kiss the ring.
Next week, all the classified work will be contracted to them for a steal of only thrice the price, but only once they've publicly kissed his ass enough.
- Lockheed, Northrup and Raytheon would learn Farsi in a blink if it gave them a better bottom line

Who's to bet a load of shares get bought up, then suddenly this announcement is rescinded?
- Playing the market based on the insanity dripping out of this guy daily, not a bad plan. If only there was some actual rhyme and reason to what he does.
  
  The market manipulation is the rhyme and reason.
  
  I was already going hard on AI stock, then day of inauguration when he sent the clear message of where tech companies stand in running this country I dumped ALL investment money into AI stock. If I have to live in this hellscape I better at least get to retire in it.
- Since the entire thing is contingent on China and Russia agreeing to half their defence budget too, the only thing to bet on is when it will be rescinded.
- Everybody was panic buying ! Those stocks were fast as lightning!
  
  In fact the buying was a little bit frightening.
- Work it baby, work it. Insider trading on steroids, or rather Adderall.
- I bought lockheed martin call options after the way the steel markets rebounded
  Edit: just checked volume on LMT. 2.4M today vs an average of 1.35M. Yeeeeeeah. Lot more buyers than usual today
  
  Yay for incredibly immoral investments. It's disgusting how stock trading has been gamified and divorced from what it actually is, owning and supporting a company.

Putler told Trump to disarm the US lol.

Wow, they tanked checks notes 1.6% and 3.6%. Woooow
- They probably shorted them first

Been saying it, dude is a gene stealers cultist trying to weaken the country.
- Not in this case, surprisingly
  
  The cutting the defense budget in half or an alien asset. Cause this timeline well off the rails.

He wants to annex Canada with half the war machine funding?
He is literally a fucking moron.
- No, he wants to annex Canada, Greenland, Gaza, and Panama.
  
  Probably Ukraine too. Let's just take over the planet and spread our ~~terror~~ democracy all over the world /s
  
  And then she'll be surprised when they fight back.
- Seems like the strategy is for us Canadians to feel so sorry enough with the state of affairs over there, that we'd join the states out of sympathy. Nice try.
  
  Even Canada isn't that sorry.
- Invasion of Canada doesn't need much military. It's just a fact.
  
  Lemme guess, it would only be a 3 day special military operation? 🙄
  
  An occupation will. And the US has an extremely bad track record with occupations. That's just a fact.
  You go on counting troops and getting boners when warplanes fly over sports arenas, while Canadians are figuring out how many strategic targets in the US are within drone range. This wouldn't be an overseas war where you just need to tell someone in uniform some bullshit "thank you for your service" remark and that would be your only exposure to it. It would be a guerilla war on the North American continent, and your dear leader is gutting the FBI's counter intelligence capabilities.
  
  Crippling Canada’s military would be relatively easy. Holding the country would be absolutely impossible. It’s enormous geographically and occupation requires around 20 to 25 soldiers per thousand residents.
  We would have to dedicate a cool million soldiers for the 40 million residents of Canada. The US had only 450k-ish army members in 2023, so that would be difficult.
  
  You guys are so enamoured with Nazis you forget Vietnam.
  Previous losers willing to kill millions for a win.
  
  Didn't they and Britain burn down the white house in the war of 1812? They seemed pretty fierce in WWII. As an American, I suggest we not fuck around, lest we find out. I'm much happier with Canada as ally, thank you very much. From wikipedia:
  By the end of the war Canada had the world's fourth largest air force,[6] and third largest navy.[7] The Canadian Merchant Navy completed over 25,000 voyages across the Atlantic,[8] 130,000 Allied pilots were trained in Canada in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. On D-Day, 6 June 1944 the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division landed on "Juno" beach in Normandy, in conjunction with allied forces
  
  Found Putin's fedi account. 3 days to Ottawa, eh? Will work just like the last one, eh?
  
  We would probably surrender and then work diplomatically to regain independence or some other-outcome that would be better than blowing our neighbours up.

Yes please cut defense spending in half.
- Twice.
  
  So... a quarter of the original left?

Muskrat being involved in this at all is an actual violation of his SGE title. Not that laws are real anymore, but, big ones would be broken.

Are you kidding .... who the hell believes anything this idiot says any more. If any one does, then you are just as dumb or dumber than this orange cheeseball.
He is the master of deception, lies and misdirection .... he'll say one thing, everyone panics and runs around scared or angry and while they panic, he goes behind everyone to pull off some cheesy lame ass scam that would have been easy to stop otherwise but he gets away with it because everyone is preoccupied.
The stocks will jump up and down at his every whim and because he is the one directing the show, he'll profit by betting on when the fall occurs and when the rise returns. He'll skim off everyone's wealth over and over again until we're all bled dry.

Wow something I actually agree with (even if I know the money won’t be going back to the taxpayer)

"I am going to take over the world"
"And they will pay for it"
-Some idiot apparently

There was a post just a day or so ago that was basically saying it was time to buy Raytheon:D

My mind came up with a terrible what-if today:
What if Musky is becomes the first trillionaire in the next year or two and then deploys a Tesla-bot army?
- In the next few years the currency that Musk has trillions of won't be worth the paper it's printed on.
- For his own sake, he should hope that his bot army performs better than his swastikars.
- A Tesla bot army would make the Russian military look good
- Full autopilot* killbots
- I'm thinking it's more for bunker bots that he provides for all the other rich fucks, they all know the world is dead and the biggest issue the rich fucks have is loyal security when it's bunker down time so it's going to be some AI gun turret shit
- well, tesla already was given a $400 million contract for armored teslas, so...
- Oh man, a showdown at the border: Tesla-Bot vs Mecha-Gosling!
  
  Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Sure, piss off the industrial war machine. WCGW?
- you think hes not gonna just send nukes and sharpie 51 over it on the map?

holy shit the stopped clock is on the correct time. too bad it wont actually happen
- Well, even if defense spending were slashed, the current oligarchy is gutting health, education, environment, and occupational programs, so those "savings" won't be reallocated to anything actually beneficial to society. We'll be lucky if that money even stays in the country. We're basically witnessing an estate sale for a deceased America.

If Trump fucks with the rich folks - those who have their hands in the pocket of our tax dollars - we'll be talking about President Vance next week.

Tariffs, military spending, deportations, fossil fuels - did he fire his economics person?

Could it be a power move to pressure the military and try to have it approve fascism ?
::: spoiler also: defense in USA 3% of GDP

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
The United States of America (USA), (...) is a country (...)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
2024 GDP $29.168 trillion
2023 defense ~$0.8 trillion (**2.74% of GDP**)
...so, above the 2% NATO target.
:::
- just last month lord diaper reiterated again that nato members should be spending five percent gdp on defense (up from the treaty's two percent). he's been whining about this one for like a decade now.
  now he wants to spend less than even that two percent.
  i think someone in the admin shorted some defense stocks, and this asinine statement is just to make a quick buck.
  
  ... or is this money thing just a distraction ? ... if they are going for fascism and totalitarianism ... if they get it, they won't care about money, once they have uncontested power. I say they are close to this point except for maybe the military who may oppose them.

i agree.
our defense budget is larger than the next 9 defense department equivalents in the world combined.

This is a perfect opportunity to clean house of all the leaders he know aren't loyal to him.