The presidential libraries, the foundations, the speaking fees, the books, the revolving door between companies and regulators - was it any different in essence?
If someone is going to sell out the commons - isn't it better if they sell them out for a high price not a pittance.
A murderer is not the same as a person that committed genocide.
A very silly argument you tried to pull there.
Also Trump is already a convicted criminal.
One difference is that the few on the right that I know (I’m sure a biased sampling) think that what Trump did is wrong but those on the left seem to have forgotten all about Obama’s deals or worse they think that its kosher.
Did Netflix in any way ask Obama to bail out the banks? How many other businesses were those banks giving loans to?
I don't know where this narrative comes from. He wasn't forced to do any such thing. He voluntarily put his family peanut seed business into a blind trust when elected, with his personal lawyer as trustee. He subsequently only gave up the business once he took control again after his presidency, because it was in massive debt.
In the general case it’s near impossible to find a third party who can run your family farm as well as you can, a task made more difficult if that person also has to be a lawyer.
Nothing has happened to change anyone's mind. They were very clear about their priorities, and those who voted for it accepted that. And would again.
Then there’s a few local farmers who basically sold their land to housing and gone are 150 year old heritage sites. Replaced with a Ryan Homes banner for townhomes starting in the low $400k’s.
It’s back to the point where only generational wealth will survive and the American dream of working hard to achieve it is gone unless you scam people with AI slop or fake accounting. The back and forth over what’s “true”. As if truth itself has no solid underlying footing in reasoning and science.
No. It all doesn’t make sense because ReasonGPT is down…
I don't think this is true. Trump's approval rating among independents has dropped 20%+. There's a reason he lost the 2020 election, but voters had 4 years to forget those reasons and look back with rose-colored glasses. Now they remember.
> They were very clear about their priorities, and those who voted for it accepted that.
I don't think this is true either. (I did not vote for Trump, to be clear.) Project 2025 were very clear about their priorities, but before the election Trump tried to pretend that he had no knowledge of or involvement with Project 2025. After the election, he changed his tune.
So many people forget that Joe Biden did, in fact, defeat Donald Trump.
If "We the People" means anything anymore, the blatant, pervasive criminality, incompetence, and corruption of this ghoulish administration will be judged harshly in the midterm elections.
But it would take significant change in the US to regain the international trust that the country formerly enjoyed among allies.
It is hard to see the latter happening.
There is a wall in place that causes people to believe things others don’t, and vice versa.
To those seeing awful corruption here, Hunter Bidens $500k Ukrainian gas job was legitimate. They were not outraged by the emails describing a 10% cut for ‘the big guy’. Joe Biden joining business conference calls was fine.
It seems like the end of the world, but it’s no worse than we’ve seen, historically. It’s always been there.
Doubtless Hunter Biden's job was a naked nepo quasi-bribery thing, and he said and did all sorts of ridiculous things. Dude is indefensible.
But on one hand you have a president joining a conference call and not discussing business, and on the other hand you have a president literally demanding tribute, gold bars, a ballroom, firing all available oversight, blackmailing all of the universities to toe his ideological line, installing crypto and antivax scammers, and looting like it's going out of style, and meanwhile all of his kids are becoming millionaires trading openly off the name and the power.
"Barron’s first major business move came in 2024, when he co-founded World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture launched with his father and older brothers. He is even credited inside the family with explaining basic crypto concepts to his father. After Trump won the presidency, the company exploded in value. Forbes estimates it added more than $1.5 billion to Trump family wealth—about 10% of which belongs to Barron." (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/net-wort...)
1) Romania: On September 28, 2015, Vice President Biden welcomed Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to the White House. Within five weeks of this meeting, a Romanian businessman involved with a high-profile corruption prosecution in Romania, Gabriel Popoviciu, began depositing a Biden associate’s bank account, which ultimately made their way into Biden family accounts. Popoviciu made sixteen of the seventeen payments, totaling over $3 million, to the Biden associate account while Joe Biden was Vice President. Biden family accounts ultimately received approximately $1.038 million. The total amount from Romania to the Biden family and their associates is over $3 million.
2) China- CEFC: On March 1, 2017—less than two months after Vice President Joe Biden left public office—State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company, wired $3 million to a Biden associate’s account. This is the same bank account used in the above “Romania” section. After the Chinese company wired the Biden associate account the $3 million, the Biden family received approximately $1,065,692 over a three-month period in different bank accounts. Additionally, the CEFC Chairman gives Hunter Biden a diamond worth $80,000. Lastly, CEFC creates a joint venture with the Bidens in the summer of 2017. The timeline lays out the “WhatsApp” messages and subsequent wires from the Chinese to the Bidens of $100,000 and $5 million. The total amount from China, specifically with CEFC and their related entities, to the Biden family and their associates is over $8 million.
3) Kazakhstan: On April 22, 2014, Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani oligarch used his Singaporean entity, Novatus Holdings, to wire one of Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca entities $142,300. The very next day—April 23, 2014—the Rosemont Seneca entity transferred the exact same amount of money to a car dealership for a car for Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden and Devon Archer would represent Burisma in Kazakhstan in May/June of 2014 as the company attempted to broker a three-way deal among Burisma, the Kazakhstan government, and a Chinese state-owned energy company.
4) Ukraine: Devon Archer joined the Burisma board of directors in spring of 2014 and was joined by Hunter Biden shortly thereafter. Hunter Biden joined the company as counsel, but after a meeting with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky in Lake Como, Italy, was elevated to the board of directors in the spring of 2014. Both Biden and Archer were each paid $1 million per year ( note: I am quoting a source here. I’ve always seen this number at 500k, not 1M ) for their positions on the board of directors. In December 2015, after a Burisma board of directors meeting, Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden “called D.C.” in the wake of mounting pressures the company was facing. Zlochevsky was later charged with bribing Ukrainian officials with $6 million in an attempt to delay or drop the investigation into his company. The total amount from Ukraine to the Biden family and their associates is $6.5 million.
Are people that ignore these ‘feckless traitors’? Why or why not?
Two wrongs don't make a right, and one person's crimes do not excuse another's. Arrest them all.
We need fundamental changes in our political system, and we're not going to be able to achieve anything if you keep pretending like these whataboutisms are worth anyone's time. Wake up.
I just couldn’t pick that up from what you’d written. I thought you were calling one side traitors and not the other.
Obama was a bit dirty with things like Solyandra, but this was not huge.
Trump 1 was not as openly money grubbing, but I would guess more corrupt than Obama. Nothing specific comes to mind, though.
Biden was worse than Trump 1. The Ukrainian gas job, the business introductions, Hunters anonymous art sales, etc were next level stuff.
Trump 2 seems pretty much off the leash. He seems unrestrained on many fronts.
Looking back at history, we had scandals like the Teapot dome scandal, then things got better again. So maybe it’s cyclical.
I don’t disbelieve what you say about Trump and his family. I am certain they are cashing in on his time in office, at a tremendous pace. ( It has to be worth it, given the damage being done to the Trump corporate brand. )
To compare these things to what is happening now is disingenuous. I believe you know that, but you choose loyalty to MAGA over any principles or ethics.
Hunter was paid $500k per year by a gas company. He has no expertise in the domain, and does not even speak the language. To pretend this is not corruption is amazing.
I believe you know this, but are not mentally acknowledging it because that would lead to uncomfortable internal reckonings.
Nothing about the right wing obsession with Hunter makes me uncomfortable. He has never held public office and was investigated for multiple years (along with his family) by Congress.
The icing on the cake is Bidens conviction on tax evasion and gun charges ( against a Democrat! The irony is too rich ). Of course Joe Biden issued a pardon, so Hunter did not go to prison.
(1) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-guilty-verdict-tax...
Yet you see crimes only on one side. The crimes of the Biden family are invisible to you. How does your brain do it?
The gun charges were the result of a fishing expedition; rarely is anyone ever charged with those things stand-alone[0].
But that's okay, keep ignoring my questions and applying the highest scrutiny to a former drug addict and private citizen who has never held public office. Trump might give you a medal for your service in deflecting to Hunter Biden slop anytime Trump's unprecedented corruption is brought up.
0: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/us/politics/hunter-biden-...
You overlooked an important aspect, one that a fair view would reveal.
Hunter Biden was central to all the business deals with foreign interests. He introduced people to Joe Biden, he brought Joe onto phone calls with them, he received and distributed millions of dollars. Hunter Biden had intimate knowledge of all these visibly corrupt dealings with President Joe Biden.
And he faced 17 years in prison. A drug addict with a history of indiscretions, yet central in all these shady dealings.
Of course he never saw jail for the crimes he was convicted of. Joe Biden pardoned his business partner. His weak link business partner.
Did that thought ever cross your mind? You throw fits about things you can’t prove about Trump, but find ways to justify and diminish anything bad about ‘your side’. Your brain is playing tricks on you.
All of what I have written is provably true. Yet you will find ways to ignore, justify, diminish.
It’s not uncommon, many people do it. For either side.
> throw fits about things you can’t prove about Trump,
What things aren't proven? He's running a meme coin while in office, he started a mobile service provider while in office, he's pardoned crypto fraudsters, accepted a $400M jet as a "gift" from Qatar, dropped a case against Eric Adams in a quid-pro-quo attempt, and said he'd put the President of Indonesia in contact with his son for business questions. I'm sure there is much more that I'm missing but I'll ask again: how does that compare to the "Biden crime family" who's apparently sooo corrupt that they let the investigations and cases against Hunter play out under Joe's DOJ? Meanwhile Trump is literally assigning insurance lawyers to go after people because no serious prosecutor will take the case; that's a revenge tour and everyone saw it coming.
Again, the corruption is unprecedented. Whatever the Biden criminal masterminds were doing is tame in comparison to this.
EDIT: don't forget the Whitehouse dinner for investors of the meme coin either.
About the Trump allegations ( again, which look like corruption to me ): is there any more firm evidence of corruption than there was against Biden? It looks to me like both sides are accepting money, diamond rings, jets (!), luxury automobiles, etc. for similar consideration. ( Namely, access to the Executive branch of the US government ).
So why is the corruption on one side totally obvious and evil, and on the other side doubtful and excusable?
I see corruption on both sides. Why can’t you?
But, I always say, once is a aberration. Twice is democracy speaking.
Of course, many many people are opposed but, in the end, you have to own it. And by that I mean, not complaining that it's not your fault, but by doing anything you can to oppose it.
Good luck.
Those of us who live in countries that banned gerrymander decades ago, made discriminating against voters a crime, and use something other that first past the post have a quibble about you calling the USA a beacon of democracy. One citizen, one vote, one value has never been a priority there.
Having a high percentage of participating voters invariably drags the outcome towards the centre. It's almost certain if the USA had of bothered to get their democratic institutions in order sometime in the past 2.5 centuries Trump would not have won. But as the citizens of the USA demand they have the freedom to not participate in their democracy, it's unlikely it will be fixed any time soon.
Look at Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. In his previous job as CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, he became deeply involved with stablecoin cryptocurrency Tether. Supposedly Cantor Fitzgerald holds close to a hundred billion dollars of funds for Tether, but this has never been verified by an audit — the only confirmation is from Lutnick himself.
In his White House job, he has worked hard to make it easier for companies like Tether to operate in the US with no oversight. And why wouldn’t he? As the sole guarantor of Tether’s credibility, he’s probably making billions from them.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/03/watchdog-report-cuf...
Cuffari is STILL the IG at DHS. He was not fired -- sheesh:
Which IG did anyone say it was okay to fire? The article you posted to support this idea wasn’t even fired! He’s still in the job.
It seems that you are primarily interested in polarizing this discussion. I’ll leave you to that. I’m out.
US exceptionalism and supposed moral superiority are now laid bare for everyone and all of history to see.
The only thing may led to their hesitation is trump and allies are so incompetent that they can’t even pretend the economy is ok, for which I think we are not there yet.
And what few laws there are, like the emoluments clause, seem to be entirely unenforceable because it’s not clear anyone has standing to bring a suit and the president presumably isn’t going to enforce the law on himself.
What we’ve learned in the last twelve years is our democracy was built on the good will of the people we elected, and when we stopped demanding the good will with our votes it was no longer guaranteed.
IF the Supreme Court rules only Congress can impose the current tariffs, Trump will have a much harder time taking over.
If the Supreme Court is also complicit, all three branches under control of a single president.
The Supreme Court is never “complicit”, they call balls and strikes. Most complaints about the court are actually really complaints about our laws or constitution. For instance, I am as pro choice as anyone, but the Supreme Court definitely made the right call overturning Roe as the constitution clearly does not have a right to privacy, does not give the federal government the right to regulate abortion, and clearly delegates that power to the state. I do not like that (I’d support a right to privacy amendment wholeheartedly) but it is correct.
Congress in this case is also functioning more or less as intended. The whole point of democracy is that the government should reflect the will of the voters. If the voters overwhelmingly chose Trump, to the point where they’ll vote for whatever person he endorses in Congressional primaries, this is the will of the people. I don’t understand it still, but this is the electorate getting what they wanted. (That may change very much in a year.)
We knew this already. Washington set the precedent of only serving two terms and it lasted all the way until FDR. Then after he got 4 terms they amended the constitution to prevent it.
I sincerely hope similar things happen after this administration, but, I am not optimistic. The Biden administration didn’t make any move in that direction (and he violated plenty of norms too) but perhaps the new level will scare them into action. Fingers crossed.
I think a lot of people are now done with that, and are looking to burn down some things, figuratively speaking.
The US federal government had such laws -- they were implemented around 1910.
We rolled them back in the 60-80s in the interest of executive efficiency.
So it wouldn't be creating a novel check and balance, but rather returning to a previous configuration where the executive's powers are more devolved into strong independent balancing bodies via Congress.
(And no, the Supreme Court hasn't removed this possibility, because Congress hasn't passed intentional and unambiguous laws like this in 100+ years)
Bernie Madoff and Donald Trump also ran closely-held family businesses. It makes it easier to hide the skeletons.
The nice family business façade helped Madoff hide his crime for decades.
All decisions and plays have some financial motives behind them. There's a reason POTUS admires Russia, and their style of governance - if he could, and had the time, the US would be a mirror of just that.
Keep the people occupied with a non-stop firehose of grievance bullshit, and be laser focused on enriching yourself and your allies.
EDIT: Gotta love the downvotes. The sheer level of shamelessness exhibited by the this admin, and people somehow still run to their defense.
Cognitive dissonance I guess?
This is so disingenuous. You think they'll stop developing local alternatives if you sell them your high end chips? That won't even stop Google, much less a command economy like China.
There's a reason Huang's quote is in context of PRC talent.
PRC generates plurality of global AI talent and is projected to generate disproportionate more short/medium term. Nvidia want to delay future where 50%+ of global AI talent working on Huawei/Ascend ecosystem or fragment PRC talent pool so net 50%+ of global AI talent works on CUDA moat for as long as possible (which is strategicially significant depending if you're near/medium term AGI believer). The reality is huge % of foreseeable US AI talent is going to be from PRC anyway, but without fragmenting domestic PRC talent, PRC will be net talent winner. The second order effects of that is PRC will have single direction valve to siphon knowledge (knowledge diffusion + espionage) from SV but the vice versa will be more controlled, a PRC AI blackbox, and faster PRC proliferates domestic AI the less ability for west/NVIDIA to brain drain PRC talent developed from different system. And with hardware gap closing in 5/10/15 years, and energy gap firmly in PRC favour (i.e. US likely not able to close energy gap faster than PRC can close compute gap), and you basically have trendline where PRC will sprint from a few years behind to years ahead once compute constraint lifts from their talent advantage.
May not be the best for Americans, but why on earth do they think they deserve the best outcome anyway.
Subtitle: David Sacks, the Trump administration’s A.I. and crypto czar, has helped formulate policies that aid his Silicon Valley friends and many of his own tech investments.
There were definitely conflicts of interest that should have been resolved but it's no where near what we're seeing this year (sigh, "so far").
truegoric•2mo ago