Have you heard about the president who received money from China and other foreign countries? No, not the current president. The former one.
House Republicans recently launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, premised on the claim that he is hiding, in the words of Speaker Mike Johnson, “millions of dollars in payments from America’s foreign adversaries.” As yet, they have produced no evidence to back up the idea that Biden profited. (The payments they have flagged involve the business interests of his son Hunter Biden, who is facing two separate federal indictments at the moment, and his brother James.)
Meanwhile, House Democrats on Thursday released a report detailing how former President Donald Trump received, and then tried to hide, millions in payments from America’s foreign adversaries. Unlike in the impeachment inquiry, which is premised on a suspicion that Republicans hope will turn up evidence, the receipts are here.
…
The saga of the foreign payments is a good case study in how Trump has taught Americans to tolerate brazen corruption—so long as it’s his. To do this, Trump relies on two tactics. First, he does much of it out in the open, recognizing that voters tend to assume that only hidden deeds are nefarious. Second, he finds ways to slow-walk the release of the most damaging information, so that by the time the full picture is clear, the public has become almost inoculated—as though it had been out in the open all along.
Going out on a limb here… we don’t tolerate it. There isn’t much stopping them though, esp with a stacked SCOTUS and GQP.
Naaah we tolerate it. Remember when Reagan sold arms to the country that held American hostages during his predecessor’s term. You know the country he illegally colluded with to beat the incumbent president. Selling them weapons to circumvent a US embargo. To fund international terrorism like the contras in South America. And then when he and his VP were caught red handed. They passed it off to a patsy. Ollie North! The criminal president at his term limit retiring comfortably as Republican Messiah. The criminal VP going on to be president. Who then pardoned the former president and Ollie North of their crimes. And America collectively yawned. So much so that cartoons do a better job covering it than most history books people are exposed to.
Sorry. I’m still not tolerating corrupt governing. If you do, that’s okay.
Nowhere did I ever say I tolerated it. I’m just asking who this We is you think you’re talking about. Because America clearly tolerates it.
America was already tolerating a ton of corruption, though, just much less brazen.
Basically, bribing a politicians is completely legal as long as you don’t tell the world what you’re bribing them to do.
Blackmailing them with threats of supporting their opponents if they don’t say or do what you want is completely fine too, apparently.
The trick is to not be too blatant about it, brag about it, deny it and then brag about it some more like the Mango Mussolini does.
Yeah. Every single time there’s an op-ed accusing Trump of inventing something, inevitably it’s just something he exploited and dialed up to 11. The only people more confident of Trump’s abilities than his supporters are his detractors.
Yeah. He’s an especially malignant tumor, not the underlying cancer.
“It’S not bribEry It’S LObbyiNG!!“
You mean he taught the “liberal media” and the cons this. Normal people hate this brazen corruption and want to see it severely punished.
Liberal media… Like the website this article is hosted on? Or CNN covering it regularly? Reuters?
How would you define liberal media?
It’s in quotation marks, it’s most likely tongue in cheek.
I was about to say Whoosh… but I don’t get the first sentence then. Liberal media as in Fox News since even that’s liberal to MAGA now? Cons being conservatives yeah?
I think so lol
deleted by creator
Didn’t. They /didn’t/.
Its too late now.
Trump, nearly single handedly, normalized so much absolute insanity that we are now more on par with what we were taught to call Banana Republics for their economic systems that do not function well for the vast majority of people, unstable politics and unstable political and social institutions and norms, oh and domestic terrorism.
That shit takes /decades/ to recover from, on average, if you look at the works of academic political scientists (which are very different from politicians espousing ideologies or rhetoric or talking points).
This is not going to just all be nicely fixed in another Presidential term or two, us millenials will be dealing with this until we reach retirement age.
If we reach retirement age.
Climate Change aint slowing down amd thats gonna make everything even more dire.
we are now more on par with what we were taught to call Banana Republics for their economic systems that do not function well for the vast majority of people, unstable politics and unstable political and social institutions and norms, oh and domestic terrorism.
Now that’s some irony! We call them “Banana Republics” because of how they were dominated and exploited by American fruit companies, with support from the US government, up to and including building private armies and calling in the CIA to do coup d’etats. The only thing new here is that the Republicans are normalizing doing the corruption to ourselves instead of just to others.
deleted by creator
You are more technically correct, but in common parlance for those who do not seek out to become more informed about history and politics beyond high school, the vast majority of I guess ‘laypeople’ just think that terms like banana republic and third world country just mean a poor country with unstable government, despite those terms not really actually meaning that.
The reasons why this happens are hilariously also basically the Republicans fault:
Anti Intellectualism is a big thing for most of them culturally, and Republican policies demonstrably have seriously worsened the quality of a K-12 education all across the country, and kept many families poor and unable to access higher education.
… and it is nearly always Republican talking heads and political figures which spent decades being the most prolific users of those terms incorrectly, while televised and in print or later online journalism, contributing largely to normalizing the incorrect usage of these and other similar terms.
deleted by creator
Because he “won” an election, and holding him to account means holding others with elected power to account (even when it doesn’t benefit other people in their party in other elections).
Partly because the idea of himself having to face any real consequences for his actions is, at this point in his life, actually literally inconceivable at many levels to him, having spent essentially his entire life conning people and breaking all kinds of laws all the time and never really suffering any serious drawback from this due to his enormous wealth and social privilege.
Also, partly due to him seriously believing that he has so much influence and so many fanatical supporters that he can rely on being easily able to whip them up into a frenzy to, you know, just do a coup for him and install him as dictator.
On a societal level, why isnt he hanging for treason yet?
He stacked many government positions that would be likely to be important in the actual legal mechanics of a treason conviction with his own corrupt cronies, and also has so many ardent supporters of himself personally that many of these supporters were elected to other powerful positions of government, and again he generally has so many violent and stupid supporters that an extremely credible threat of mass domestic terrorist violence exists should anything bad happen to dear leader.
We are talking about a person whose legal team recently argued, in court, that Trump, having been president, is actually legally able to order a special forces team to assassinate his domestic political rivals, and this is ok because there is a check and balance in the American political system of a president doing this, of being able to be tried and convicted by congress.
You know, congress, which is also comprised of many of his political rivals, who he is allowed to order assassinations of.
There’s plenty sane people can do. They just don’t because it’s too hard to show up to the polls once or twice a year, apparently. Or too hard to vote pragmatically instead of idealistically.
imagine getting it this backwards. The reason they tolerate trump’s corruption is because most of congress is nearly as bad and any sort of digging would create a weapon that could be used against them.
This is not true. I’m not denying widespread corruption and in Congress (much of it even legal) , but Trump’s corruption was more widespread and more brazenly public than any US politician in living memory.
Every single he went golfing at a golf course he owns and forced the secret service to rent out dozens of rooms at the attached hotel he owns, it was an act of corruption. He did it so many times that people just forget it. It slipped into the background of his other schemes. But it was nonetheless corruption every single time. He openly used the office to enrich himself. Not with deals, not by subtly having favourable classes added to legislation. He did it directly and openly.
there have been numerous rulings by SCOTUS going back before the 80s each making it harder to prosecute politicians for corruption, with citizens united being one of the largest barriers between corporations and state removed.
Realistically trump isn’t some anomoly - He’s just a donor class person entering in the building from the back door the politicians leave from. The fact that door exists between politicians and donors is the problem here. Trump just did it much more blatantly but its still the same problem that Manchin or whoever have where they favor their own companies with legislative carvouts or cushy appointments.
