well known for the transactional nature of his politics
Also known as “taking bribes.”
He bragged less than a week ago in Michigan that he is going to ban EVs just so he can pander to Michigan auto workers.
Practically everything he says is a lie
Which is ridiculous because most manufacturers are building multiple new factories for batteries and EVs. It’s a pretty shitty pander all things considered.
Ford recently announced their decision to use their facility built for the purpose of expanding their EV supply to instead manufacturer more ICE pick-up trucks.
And? It still means that the push for EVs wound up creating those factories, and therefore jobs at those factories.
I could be wrong, but isn’t a blatant quid pro quo basically the only way to wind up on the wrong side of the Citizens United decision? Didn’t the Supreme Court rule that, unless a candidate was engaged in open bribery, campaign contributions constitute free speech? I could be misremembering/misinterpretating, and he’ll never face any consequences for it anyway, but it would be very funny if there was a Supreme Court ruling that said, “As long as you’re not dumb enough to admit it’s a bribe it’s not illegal,” and he still fucked that up.
The Supreme Court ruling splits a very fine hair. If you give a government official money and say “make sure my housing development goes through”, that’s a bribe and it’s illegal. If you show them money and say “I’ll give you this if my housing development goes through”, that’s a gratuity and is perfectly fine.
Why, yes, this is a stupid as it sounds.
Wrong Supreme Court decision. They said Citizens United.
Didn’t the Supreme Court rule that, unless a candidate was engaged in open bribery, campaign contributions constitute free speech?
The core of the CU decision is that engaging in political speech is not a campaign contribution. Even if you spend money to engage in that speech. Even if you pay some 3rd party organization to engage in that speech on your behalf, unless that 3rd party organization is operating in collusion with the actual campaign.
Or to put it another way, if you run off a bunch of flyers supporting Kamala Harris and pass them out, that’s not a campaign contribution despite ink and paper (and your labor) not being free. If Staples agrees to print those flyers free of charge for you, Staples is not making a campaign contribution. Unless the campaign itself is involved with the process. Now, just scale that up to massive corps and political nonprofits.
People try to describe it as “deciding money is speech and corporations are people”, but both of those are long held by law - corporations have had 1A rights for a long, long time and likewise arguments that restricting things used to engage in protected expression is in fact restricting protected expression have held for a long, long time (for example you can’t just place a $10,000,000/week tax on printing presses to silence newspapers).
But in practice what happens is people/companies make donations directly to a candidate then all of their priorities get fulfilled by the candidate even though the people that voted for the candidate don’t support the issue.
Except when we’re talking about someone like musk donating millions to a candidate, he’s not donating directly to the candidate, he’s donating to some third party who’s advertising for the benefit of the candidate but isn’t technically coordinating with the actual campaign as an end run around campaign finance limits.
That’s the whole point of a PAC - hypothetically they exist to forward some issue but often that’s just code for a specific set of candidates for various offices.
For example, Americans Against Murdering Babies is probably going to support GOP candidates across the board, likely emphasizing abortion. Whereas Americans For Medical Privacy is likely doing exactly the reverse.
a) yes
b) maybe he’ll be held accountable for this within the course of the next 20 years
He’ll be posthumously sentenced at this point
Hope and pray that the courts see it your way!
“Yes, I’m a whore. I have been bought.” – Donald T.
Really? Whores have it hard enough, no need to associate them with Little T.
For sale: 1 (one) old man with dementia, loose bowels, poor grasp on simple concepts, malignant narcissism, and a massive following of slack-jawed troglodyte voters.
He then went on to say “they”, presumable the democrats, want to go all electric and that eight electric chargers cost $9 billion. https://x.com/Acyn/status/1819863379835830603
I mean, it’s one electric charger, Michael. How much could it cost? 1.125 billion?
Man, Toyota is gonna be pissed when they find out how much money they threw away on a charger they gave me with a $50k car.
Hard-line MAGAts wishing to publicly demonstrate their allegiance will have to start wearing flip-flops alongside their diapers and ear pillows.
Also, driving cyber trucks.
Which would actually kinda be hilarious, if I didn’t have to share the road with those morons.
I have seen a couple of them on the highway. They look so ridiculous you have to laugh.
It’s just like the ridiculous “future cars” we’d see in many old sci-fi movies from the 70’s and 80’s. Perhaps their visions of the future were not so wrong after all.
And about as well built, too.
(Those were typically golf carts with cardboard boxes slapped over them kit car fashion.)
Can they start wearing fake purple hearts, too?
That’s politics, this shouldn’t be a surprise. None of this is remotely illegal as suggested in the comments.
That’s politics, bitch
Having your position on issues for sale isn’t illegal when you’re not in office, but it’s certainly not normal politics. It’s fuckin’ the weird for a politician to openly admit they’re for sale.
So you mean to say that most politicians won’t change their positions based on their voting blocks demands?
I hate Musk but I can’t see how any of this isnt standard fare in all of politics by definition.
Changing policies based on what voters as a whole want is democracy. Changing based on what one voter with a lot of money demands is corruption.
Don is probably mad that Elon backed out of giving him large monthly donations.
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https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/donald-trump-elon-musk-tesla-endorsement/
No shit, he don’t care. He’s been quite clear about this from the beginning.
