That’s the secret to Conservative power in America.
Step 1: Make everything illegal
Step 2: Accept bribes to overlook crimes of allies
Step 3: Punish the shit out of your opponents.
Congrats! America is now Russia, with better food and shittier fascists.
No, it’s not legal, but at this point there are no federal officials left who are willing to enforce the law when Republicans break it.
Two centuries ago, a somewhat obscure Scotsman named Tytler made this profound observation: ‘A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.’
Also if you have sex with a minor is illegal but if you are the President then it’s OK.
He’s been doing multiple crimes a day for most of his life. The thing about a “law” is that unless it’s enforced it doesn’t mean shit
It’s still illegal; it’s just that nobody will enforce the law against the orange bastard. The motherfucker was literally convicted of 34 felonies and hasn’t paid any fines or faced a minute of jail time, FFS.
He had a whole goddamn sentencing hearing where they sentenced him to nothing. Explicitly.
Was it illegal for Bernie Sanders to campaign on free medical and college?
Rather than tilt and rave let’s approach this from another angle: Trump promised funds from DOGE and balanced budgets on multiple occasions and you’re never going to see any of it. He is a liar.
Was it illegal for Bernie Sanders to campaign on free medical and college?
No because that would have been done through normal policy change and actually a thing an elected official should try and do. What Trump is doing (even if it is a lie) is bribery. It’s not even remotely the same, and it speaks volumes of your character that you would even try and equate them.
Trump’s and Bernie’s plans would both require congress because the president literally has no access to funds without it.
I worry about people spreading these lies because it is in fact a great policy stance.
Your suposition is that the power of the purse still applies here. Trump has operated the executive as a collective slush fund, many times using horrible arguments that fail in court and then proceeding anyways. Also he’s allocated money from military coup projects like Venezuala to funds not under congressional control illegally.
Bernies plan is to first expand Medicare to all ages. Going off Trump’s logic this would be done by directing CMS by executive order to adjust the rates, the treasury department to allocate the necessary trust fund expenditures, the IRS to apply the necessary taxes, and the justice department to aggressively target every single possible violation in the private health insurance industry. Bernie’s actual plan is to use the bully pulpit as intended to pressure congress to act in accordance with those changes ahead of time, completely different. That’s because Trump moves to erode government into the pockets of the rich and Bernie seeks to build it stronger to benefit everyone. Executive overreach expansion has only been applied to benefit the rich effectively where everywhere else it had failed.
The DHS and especially ICE also lost funding and shut down a lot of offices for over a month until the GOP passed a reconciliation bill.
Even if overreach is occuring he is not going to pull 1.5 Trillion Dollars out of his ass.
If it’s a great policy stance, they should do it now when they know they have control of both legislatures. Why wait?
So you think promising money he’ll never give out is a “great policy stance”? Huh???
giving out money is a great policy
voting for Trump or believing anything he says is idiocy
What a moronic take. Like genuinely.
The guy is a huge troll, I have tagged them thusly and he has continued to live up to that moniker
my tag just says “moron”
they’re not smart enough go earn the troll tag ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I do agree, when I tagged the person it wasn’t so clear to me, but they seem very consistent.
rofl imagine being the fucking clown pretending free medicsl and college would be a bad thing.
Again: Fucking. Clown.
Americans refuse to apply the law to trump for some reason
Edit: Y’all acting like he’s been POTUS his whole life. Dude is a career conman-rapist-fraudster
Conservatism is entirely about the laws applying differently to different people. The king is special. The nobles are a little less special. The peasants are trash. The slaves are worse. That’s the conservative world. Hierarchy. So of course they don’t want to apply rules to their chief.
They are worse than children.
I’m unwilling to post the rules for thee quotes anymore because it doesn’t seem to get through to people.
How do you expect that to happen when the fascists own and operate all three branches of government and are hands on with DoJ?
Americans have no choice in the matter, if we’re talking about legal channels.
For real. Like yeah, lemme just waltz my ass on over there and issue a citizens arrest. That will go over splendidly.
All the idiots who say this shit think they would be the one to kill Hitler if they were born in Nazi Germany. There’s a reason it took a foreign military invading to push him to do it himself.
I’ve even heard dipshits say “Well America had a Civil War in the past” as if that war was declared by the people and not their governments and fought by their militaries.
there’s a major error in that the president, according to legal experts, can’t be arrested by anyone but congress and the house, which makes no sense. he should simply be president from a prison at this point.
That reason was decided by the Supreme Court
No. It’s just moronic to argue that this is or should be illegal. For fuck’s sake, people in this thread are arguing it should be illegal for politicians for run for office promising to establish new government programs or give people money. They’re letting their campist impulses cloud their judgment.
it’s very different to say ‘‘I’ll extend medicade to all’’ vs ‘‘if I win this election I’ll cut you a literal check’’ there are different meanings here.
That’s not what he’s promising though. He’s promising to have a stimulus check passed through Congress. He’s not promising to personally write checks out of his own bank account.
This isn’t that complicated. The federal government has provided direct cash benefits across a myriad of times and circumstances. (Temporary assistance to needy families, farm subsidies, stimulus checks in several administrations, social security payments, etc.) These are all perfectly legal. And it’s perfectly legal to run for office promising to enact or expand such programs.
Plenty of what Trump does is illegal. This isn’t one of those time. It’s perfectly legal to run for office or campaign for your party saying, “I think people need money. If our side wins, we’ll give everyone a check.” Whether it’s good policy or not is another question. But the legality of it isn’t even debatable.
Turns out the president is above the law, and can only be impeached, given the rare condition that the opposition party has a supermajority in Congress, of course!
Presidential immunity only extends to official acts see here. That said, its so poorly defined as to be irrelevant at the moment.
Still, I suspect distributing checks from the federal government that was not appropriated by congress would very much fail to qualify.
When there are no consequences, everything is an official act.
They won’t even let you stand outside a polling place and hand out water bottles to people waiting in line.
If you’re a Dem. Saw Maga groups outside our local voting polls last election. They were cooking and handing out water.
Oh no lol that only applies to Democrats.
It’s very different. One is “I will give YOU money if you vote for me” and the other is “I will give EVERYONE money if I win”. The main difference is that one is not discriminating against who people voted for. The first is buying votes, the second is a campaign similar to “I will retroactively lower taxes for this year if I win”, which I don’t think anyone would see as problematic but it’s exactly the same outcome as the one you’re finding problem with, i.e. give people money.
It’s a stupid campaign because anyone with half a brain understand that he’s not going to do it and that that money would have to come from someplace else, but it’s still a campaign promise similar to any other promise politicians make to ask you to vote for them.
This is what tips me over the edge, all in on maga now. I’m surely gonna collect the 5k from the dude famous for stiffing contractors and bankrupting casinos
Technically, the equivalent would be you standing outside a polling place with a sign saying “I will give every adult in the area $500 if Candidate X wins”.
Ostensibly, you could just be lying (just like Trump) - and that would probably be covered under your 1st Amendment rights.
It’s stupid, but there is enough of a disconnect between action and reward that it might skirt past.
No, that’s not how that works.
18 U.S.C. § 597 - U.S. Code - Unannotated Title 18. Crimes and Criminal Procedure § 597.
Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate; and
Whoever solicits, accepts, or receives any such expenditure in consideration of his vote or the withholding of his vote—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
What if someone says, “5000 will be on the table if I’m really happy. Candidate x winning will make me really happy”?
That seems pretty straightforward. So the law is correct, it’s just useless because the system founded on these laws is broken.
I didn’t realize Ayn Rand’s ghost had a lemmy account.
This isn’t broken at all. Unless you think every form of government social spending should be illegal, then you shouldn’t try to make it a felony for politicians to run for office promising to establish government programs or give people money through acts of Congress. You’re advocating for full on libertarianism.
I think you are confusing paying someone a direct bribe for their vote, with infrastructure spending. When you say it isn’t broken at all, are you saying that an imperfect dystopia based on power and money is the utopian goal that we all seek? I say a lot is working, but a lot is broken. When you say ‘not broken at all’ then I cannot believe you have a good understanding of the societal wherewithal.
You need to work on your reading comprehension.
Well…there is no way I can defend against an argument like that.
It would be pointless. Your reading skills are not developed enough to merit a proper reply.
“I will give you money if you vote for me”
Is different from
“I will give everyone money if I win”
The first is paying someone to vote and is outlawed by the law you cited. The second has a disconnect between the money and the vote. Everyone gets the money, even those that voted for the other guy. Thus it might be legal.
Sounds to me like this has to be tried in court (unless it has not already) for a legal president to be made, and thus decided if it is legal or not. IANAL
Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate;
“I will give everyone money if I win” is offering money to people for voting. Voting for the candidate is implied, yes, but offering to pay everyone is still offering money to people for voting.
In the description of the law, how is that meaningfully different from promising tax policy changes?
It’s not telling people to vote, not vote, or to vote for anyone in particular, and is just a notification of something they’ll do if elected.
The implication is that you should vote for them, but you didn’t make the offer conditional.Bribery is easier if you’re using other people’s money because rather than paying people to do what you want you can make a blanket promise to everyone and let them work through the implications.
Oh I’m REALLY playing devil’s advocate on this one
Promising everyone, no exceptions, 5k if you win, is kind of a campaign promise rather than a bribe.
I’m going to shower for 2 hours to get the stench off me now
I should look forward to Trump getting charged with that, then?
But more seriously, there would be countless lawyers happy to argue that a general statement such as “$500 to every adult in the county if John Smith wins” does not technically break that particular law because it’s not explicitly targeted at any one individual recipient, nor is it contingent on them participating in an election whatsoever.
Just as I’m also sure there would be more than one sympathetic Trump-appointed judge to side with the defendant too.
US laws mean nothing if they aren’t actively being followed.
People in this thread forget that the Supreme Court already gave Trump immunity from prosecution.
Though this becomes wishy with politicians/parties. You offering to pay for people’s healthcare costs if they vote for your favourite candidate would probably be illegal, but a candidate promising to institute universal healthcare is just a campaign promise, so this law leaves a very legitimate open question of when something a candidate says stops being a campaign promise and starts being a legally problematic bribe, because ultimately all campaign promises boil down to “vote for me and I will do something good for you/something you like”.
You could very much argue that a candidate promising UBI is effectively not very different from what Trump promised.
If no one prosecuted you for it, it might as well be.
Step 1: Have money.
Step 2: Rape children (and adults).
Step 3: Put an “R” next to your name.
Congrats, you are now immune from consequences.
The law only matters to us poor folks. It isn’t applied to the rich.
There is a difference between “I will pay you to vote for me” and “I will pay you if I win.” The first is certainly illegal, the second should be. In some ways, the second statement reminds me of the phrase, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Sure, no direct order was given, but the priest still died.
I don’t expect to see any response to this statement from law enforcement, just like there wasn’t when Musk actually paid people to vote for the conservative judge.
the funny thing about the priest quote is that the king DIDN’T want him killed and him being killing was a nightmare for the King and everyone knew he had him killed.
Also funny that their king wasn’t above the law… kinda sorta, but still actually had to answer for it to someone.
he was totally above the law, it was just a huge black eye and it made the annoyance of the priest turn into the actual Pope being mad at him and he had to publicly repent, but it appears no one blamed him for the murder but did blame him for expressing the wish to be rid of the priest. although the knights who killed him didn’t seem to intent to kill him, but tried to arrest him and he resisted to the point they killed him which isn’t better, but it’s different than an out right order to execute a known public figure. this was Henry II btw
This turbulent priest
That’s a funny typo
(I’ll note that even states refused to pursue Musk. It appears that you can claim to do something illegal for a few hours on the internet, reap the media rewards, and then edit the post. Political activists, do take note.)
