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Comment by scoofy

5 days ago

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I'm anything but a fan of Trump, but I think these typical slurs don't really make any sense. Were Trump corrupt and pliable then he wouldn't be doing half the things he's doing. There's tremendous money and influence in opposition to things he's doing that he could easily cash in on if he wanted. By contrast there's basically no 'Let's go invade Iran' lobby outside of Israel, and even 'Israel' misstates that since it's mostly that nut and yahoo they have for a leader.

The one nuance I'd add is that greed and corruption are distinct. Like most politicians Trump is certainly excessively greedy. But I think corruption is when an external power gets somebody to act in a way that they would not otherwise, in exchange for sort of personal benefit. And I think what we have on display here is very much the 'real' Trump. If anything, the half-wit would-be assassins seem to have given him a savior complex, thinking that he's God's chosen or whatever.

So for instance Rubio is 100% corrupt. That only political position he has is regurgitating whoever else's position happens to be politically expedient at the moment. And I got very similar vibes from Kamala with things like claiming she'd do nothing different than Biden did, taking on the obviously poisonous role of 'border czar' under Biden, and so on.

  • Trump made $1.5B off TrumpCoin. Literally a vehicle for bribery, and we know he made over a billion dollars.

    The hell are you talking about. There's "corruption" which is pointing fingers, and then there is "we literally have the receipts of countries paying him off (Qatar), and we have the vehicle he created to do exactly that off the record (TrumpCoin)."

    So don't pretend it's like "oh, everyone is corrupt." It's ridiculous. Trump is literally verifiably corrupt.

    • Wiki has a decent page on what happened to his meme coin. [1] Suffice to say, he definitely didn't make billions off it, or a single billion off of it.

      And the entire premise doesn't even make any sense. Say you want a vessel for bribery and as that vessel you choose a completely open and highly visible public ledger that anybody and everybody can track the flow of money through, as opposed to the basically infinite ways to discretely and anonymously transfer wealth in modern times? And then what exactly do you think Qatar wants to bribe him for? Arms shipments that were already skyrocketing under previous administrations?

      And then Trump is also directly working against the interests of countries like Qatar by invading Iran, which has somewhat predictably resulted in them getting blasted by Iran which is resulting in them wasting one can only imagine how much in interceptor missiles which tend to run in the millions per pop, which they are now rebuying from the US lol.

      There is a lot one can reasonably critique about Trump, but I don't understand how you don't see that being level-headed in your critique is way more reasonable than just spewing off weak and hyperbolic talking points. It makes things partisan because the only people that will agree with you are those who are also partisan, and you end up convincing nobody and effectively just perpetuate the exact system of divide-and-conquer that ensures we keep getting Trumps and Bidens.

      [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$Trump

  • > I think these typical slurs don't really make any sense.

    Corrupt, pliable and stupid are not slurs.

    > There's tremendous money and influence in opposition to things he's doing that he could easily cash in on if he wanted

    Is there a Big Solar or Big Wind or Green lobby that's comparable to Big Oil? Is there a huge lobby group for national healthcare? Is there tremendous funding for anti- Big Tech and Data Center movements?

    > there's basically no 'Let's go invade Iran' lobby outside of Israel, and even 'Israel' misstates that since it's mostly that nut and yahoo they have for a leader

    AIPAC

    > corruption is when an external power gets somebody to act in a way that they would not otherwise, in exchange for sort of personal benefit.

    See Putin's Russia, the Qataris, Saudis and Emiratis funding the Trump family in exchange for a number of actions such as goading him to war against Iran, desisting from sending American supplies to Ukraine or getting the go-ahead to start a nuclear programme.