Depends on your metrics of "dominant country" tbh. In terms of GDP the US is leading. In terms of purchasing power parity China is leading.
In terms of military prowess the US is superior, if you believe their advertised weapons capabilities. That being said, if we believed what countries said about their own weapons, then Russia has a number of world ending superweapons - clearly they're the leader here /s.
If you believe total number of naval vessels determines might, the Chinese Navy's numbers make them superior. If you believe damage control and logistics determine naval might, the USA has one of the most sophisticated support fleets in the world with world class damage control (combat survivability - but this is a meme).
If you believe technological development makes a nation superior, the USA maintains it's edge with trade allies South Korea and Taiwan.
If you believe total production is what makes a nation superior... China.
Look, you get what I'm saying. The dollar is still the primary reserve currency (for now) and the US still ensures safety in international waters while projecting power regularly.
> The dollar is still the primary reserve currency (for now)
It really worries me that the US president is heavily invested in crypto schemes, since he and his family would benefit with the crash of the dollar. It is the conflict of interest to end all conflicts of interest
America has very little manufacturing capacity, has lost its edge in batteries and power generation, and is soon to be behind on computing. They're politically fractured, losing all their allies, and no longer have a sustainable military advantage. If they decide to flex their aging muscles against China, they will be outproduced, and can't win in a single decisive blow unless they want to initiate a surprise full nuclear war. They're done. Corruption ate the golden goose, and the people cheered.
You really have to ask the question "does all industrial production aid itself to war?" when making this determination.
Additionally, most people don't consider the Mexico factor. Presently some of the most talented machinists in the world live in Mexico manufacturing parts for American automotive (and other industries).
But, really, this comparison can only be proven in conflict - something both the USA and the CCP want to desperately avoid right now due to his economically coupled they are.
Just in time logistics has been a disaster for the American war machine.
Yes, productive capacity can be repurposed to support military goals - with organizations and technicians already in place.
Mexico has about 1/17th of the manufacturing capacity of the US - adds around 5.8%. America has a labor shortage in manufacturing, which is unlikely to be filled with foreign workers given the current crackdown on brown people. They're also annihilating their intellectual capacity by again cracking down on brown people, and defunding universities.
China is already leading the world in manufacturing and expanding rapidly, their universities are world class, and they have almost caught up in technology. Given their investments in education and strong culture of academic achievement, it's unreasonable to think they won't overtake the US in every domain in the next 3-5 years.
The Malacca straits are to easily blockaded. China needs food imports and energy imports no matter how much alternative energy they build.
No, you can't truck or train it in over land.
They are still facing a massive demographic bomb. They're becoming increasingly authoritarian, which will begin to restrict their production efficiency. They may have a financial bomb as well.
Don't make the mistake that you think that India and Russia are going to be close allies of China.
Russia has extensive territories that China considers theirs historically. Likewise, India and China dispute many territorial issues.
The Malacca straits will certainly be important, but the US will have to reach past China and Chinese allies to the south to blockade it, and will be sitting ducks for drone and missile attacks (see the black sea fleet for a demonstration). China has heavily invested in submarines to avoid exactly this situation.
Authoritarianism in China has a significantly different flavor to US authoritarianism. The US is serving the goals of their dominant elite industries - finance and tech. China has an engineering culture amongst the elite, and is inclined to solve problems with productivity and megaprojects rather than handing money to purely extractive industries.
For an example of the difference between their flavors of authoritarianism and the outcomes they bring, compare their health care systems - the USA has one of the most expensive in the world at ~$14,500 per capita, and poor outcomes due to privatized corruption, while China's 14th 5-year plan has brought universal health care for approx ~$650 per person. China's average life expectancy is higher than the US's.
The US is, objectively, extremely corrupt, and is transitioning to authoritarianism to protect that corruption. China's authoritarianism achieves measurable goals, and has broad (though not universal) public support.
The USA will get curb stomped in a war. They just don't have anything but a massive military buildup from decades of pork barrelling unnecessary military contracts. Their population is sick and stupid. They have alienated their allies. They will lose.
> The US is, objectively, extremely corrupt, and is transitioning to authoritarianism to protect that corruption.
You have no idea what extreme corruption looks like if you think the US is it. (I will admit that it is becoming more corrupt, and that the corruption is tied to the authoritarianism.)
The US is no 2 in manufacturing output and way ahead of no 3.
>America . . . has lost its edge in . . . power generation
Energy costs are much lower in the US than in Europe or China. China is the world's largest importer of petroleum and of natural gas. In contrast, the US is self-sufficient in petroleum and natural gas.
China's petroleum comes by ship from the Persian Gulf and from Russia's European ports (since there is no easy way for Russia to get its oil to its Asian ports). Beijing's worry that something might happen to interrupt its long supply lines of petroleum and natural gas is why it has made a large risky bet on solar electricity. The US, which has more land with high solar potential than China, can sit back and wait to see how China's bet on solar will turn out before it makes big bets on solar.
It might be that the cost of electricity specifically is lower in China than the US. If so, that is because Beijing has prioritized building a lot of electricity-generating capacity. It engages in many such infrastructure project to keep its young men employed -- something Washington does not need to do because the US economy provides enough jobs without without Washington's spending on infrastructure projects (so Washington tends to spending on infrastructure only when the project clearly makes economic sense).
Beijing imposes tight restrictions on its citizens' ability to invest outside China, so Chinese individual investors, pension funds, etc, put most of their money into deposits into Chinese banks and into Chinese real estate. Most of the funding for infrastructure projects comes from these bank deposits and from borrowing. Governmental debt (including debt owed by state and provincial governments) is a higher percentage of GDP in China than in the US.
The dollar is going down and down, even if it is a reserve currency it's not used like that anymore right now. Change your POV the situation is horrible
Give it a few years. The US ceding its dominance by trying to re-follow its 1970s/80s playbook (now with less Volcker!) in a 2024+ world will go down as one of the biggest geopolitical own-goals of all time.
Unfortunately its "peers" are not much better. The PROC is still authoritarian and wants to invade Taiwan and some EU countries are still fighting more EU integration so that the EU could become a "real" player.
>some EU countries are still fighting more EU integration
At least this I understand. Foreign powers, especially you-know-which-one have a strong interest in preventing EU from becoming too strong, and unfortunately this is easy to do because:
* it plays on primal human tribal instincts (they want to assimilate us, they will force or enable more immigration, etc)
* the way EU works, you only need to convince some of the countries
If trump were willing to call for extended high interest rates, we’d be in a far better spot. Trump trying to bring them down rapidly is perk of mt stupid especially during rampant speculation in GenAI.
Comparing gov’t officials to civilians is a stupid comparison.
Biden abolishing police is hyperbole.
CZ enabled a lot of dark shit. He is somehow simultaneously so powerful as to help millions of Chinese, but powerless to do anything about a few thousand of criminals and pedophiles?
It isn't just hyperbole it is completely divorced from reality. Biden said "fund the police" at a state of the union address. Federal law enforcement didn't see cuts. Funding for state police (the bulk of police around the country) increased, with very few localities actually shifting funds from police to other things.
Changpeng Zhao broke the law and got caught. Everyone agrees on that. What you present above is revisionist history about "political persecution," which is the favorite justification of the current administration for pardoning convicted felons, even in the total absence of any evidence supporting a conclusion of political persecution. See also George Santos, J6 rioters, etc.
I don't think it's really necessary to pretend that this pardon was deserved. The pardon happened because (a) Trump wants the support of crypto billionaires and (b) Trump received a large bribe. It's really not complicated.
Painting Trump as sympathetic to ethnic discrimination is really ridiculous. No one believes that, even people who cynically use that justification to support his lawlessness.
You sound biased. If you believe this narrative, I got a few questions for you…
- How was Binance any different than any other crypto exchange?
- Should Coinbase and every other crypto platform be charged for the same crimes?
Is there a place for a logical counter-point in there not having been charges against people responsible for the 2008 financial crisis? It seems like a selective enforcement of rules or consequences in both situations to me.
Your argument is a non sequitur. You are saying in essence: "Someone, somewhere, under totally different circumstances was not prosecuted. Therefore, this particular prosecution is selective prosecution, and therefore inappropriate." By that logic, we should just stop prosecuting crimes altogether, on the logic that we are unable to prosecute all crimes consistently.
There wasn't an argument per se, but an attempt to point out a possibly, similarly politically-influenced miscarriage of justice.
It may be a non sequitur to suggest that the pardon of one convicted financial criminal is similar to the lack of convictions in another likely financial crime context, but it seemed germane and parallel to me.
They should be charged too. Every conviction for financial crimes is an incredibly hard fought victory, because this country runs on fraud. Your argument is why we should treasure CZs conviction and seek many many many more like it.
This was part of my point and a nuance I appreciate as well, and that the pardon resonates for me with the apparent lack of charges for those responsible for the financial crisis.
Yes, exactly, and yet I don't think there has been much in the way of charges brought against those responsible for fraudulently rating the securities.
Some form of fraud for misrepresenting the risk that the mortgages that were bundled together, seems like the obvious answer. But I'm not a forensic accountant or someone with the nuanced legal understanding to define a charge here. Do you think there was no crime in the actions taken by either the banks or the rating agencies? No failure of fiduciary responsibility?
The law says he should have prevented those bad apples from moving dirty money around, and he did not follow the law.
Do you have a rebuttal for coffeezillas assertion that 2 billion dollars of Abu Dhabi money was invested in Binance using the Trump family coin in order to buy a pardon?
The president is clearly pro crypto and doesn't think this dude did anything wrong, but he also wasn't gonna give a pardon away for free. It's a disgusting abuse of office he should be impeached over. Selling pardons, what a shit show.
I would think any serious actor would know better than to store funds where they could be seized at a moments notice, so while I'm sure every exchange is guilty, Binances crime was getting caught.
Kinda like getting a speeding ticket, the fact that other people were also speeding isn't a defense.
With these characters, from Trump on down, discourse is not the point.
He is flexing his power by showing he can make an obviously fatuous point and get away with it. Because there are no consequences, for someone like him.
The pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations that it's clear there should be constitutional changes in the pardon power, either congressional review, or strip it altogether.
The way this is going, the President won’t need using any pardon powers, because the judges will all ask the President what the judgement should be in advance.
Your forget to insert the part where the President asks the convicted defendant if they want to finance their pardon with Klarna or Affirm in the Presidential Library's checkout page
Yeah we already have judgments that the executive branch has gone well beyond it's allowed limits and the majority of SCOTUS stance has been:
"Yeah well let the legal process play out ... in the meantime our guy gets to do whatever he wants, and you're still fired / kicked out of the country / funding cut / an so on".
If it is at all inconvenient for the most powerful folks in the country, they get any limits on their actions protected by SCOTUS ... at the cost of the people.
This is by the way literally word for word official statements of the ruzzian officials. The conviction rates in ruzzian courts are above 99% every year and the official explanation is that the prosecutors and police are so amazing and great, that only real criminals make it to the court. :)
in principle, this is true, if the case does not have a reliable basis, then it will not go to court. If we take this into account, then the magic numbers of 99% will disappear.
These are not only criminal cases, but also administrative and civil law relations.
in principle, there was no need to discuss this at all, usually those who do not understand the legal system and who have never been to court, cry about 99%.
Which congress do you want doing that review? The past several congresses have been unqualified to do any sort of constitutional reviewing in my opinion.
The U.S. is running an outdated installation of democracy. The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point. Except the populace is already badly split into warring camps.
> The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point.
Do you mean the French Revolution? If you actually read the history on that (even basic stuff beyond the "Reign of Terror") I don't think any person would want to experience that for their country. It had tons of indiscriminate violence and took a decade of chaos before they sorted out into a real government, which then resulted in Napolean's coup
(I've read that the French are talking about a Sixth, given that they've gone through several prime ministers in the past few weeks/months and seem unable to maintain a government long enough to pass anything.)
It's more likely a reference to France currently being the Fifth Republic.[1] The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth happened in 1958 without much violence.
Interestingly, the Fifth has then been running for 67 years so far, which makes the Third Republic still the longest running republic of France! I guess in around three years they'll be having a grand party.
Compared to some other places around the world, looks pretty stable :) Take Peru as an example, they've had 5 different presidents in the last 5 years, shortest one being president for 5 days, and since Ollanta Humala (2011-2016), not a single president has completed their full term.
> The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth happened in 1958 without much violence.
Quoting from the article:
Things came to a head in 1958 as France struggled to decolonize. There was strong opposition within France to Algerian independence and part of the army openly rebelled. Important generals threatened a coup unless de Gaulle was returned to power. They sent paratroopers to capture Corsica in case anyone missed their point.
The article even fails to mention Operation Resurrection. Hopefully we don't need coups every time we want a new constituent assembly.
You never want the French Revolution... except when your country is ruled by an absolute monarch and you are essentially his slave forever. The American Revolution had the advantage of having the king an entire ocean away and no other neighbor kings panicking and declaring war on you immediately.
we actually had the help of the french king as well, in a sort of "enemy mine" scenario that has resulted in towns near me with french names pronounced in american accents. We've got North Vur-sales (Versailles) and Shar-luh-roy (Charleroi) and I can't help but think that Lafayette would've gone right back home if he know we were gonna do this to his language.
Prussians, too. A lot of Europe seemed to not really feel one way or another about the plucky little colony but had very strongly defined feelings about damaging Great Britain.
I suspect the OP meant their semi-presidential/dual-executive system w/ parliament (although at this point, storming the Bastille is starting to look pretty good...).
it's misleading without context. luckily nothing humans ever do is without context and the french revolution has referred to the revolution of 1789 since...well, since 1789.
I don't mean it's misleading in that people are wondering "which revolution?". Everybody knows the French Revolution means the one involving The Terror and the death of Louis XVI.
I mean that it implies France didn't have several other revolutions.
Tech corps and ex-PayPal guys would be putting billions into making a new constitution and it would be far, far worse than what we have now. And while the French love using violence and destruction to defend their countrymen and their rights, Americans would gladly be lemmings off a cliff so long as someone told them it pissed someone else off.
For better or worse, the US constitution does not have provisions or a process for dissolving itself and developing a new constitution.
The closest thing we have is the amendment process. In theory we could use that to rewrite the entirety of the constitution[0], but good luck getting the required votes in place on any possible replacement. The bar is pretty high: amendments need to be proposed by either a vote of 2/3 of Congress, or by a constitutional convention convened by 2/3 of the state legislatures, and then ratified by 3/4 of all state legislatures.
We couldn't get that sort of agreement to pass something as theoretically uncontroversial as the Equal Rights Amendment. It's laughable to think we could pass a "new constitution" that way.
I expect the only way we could end up with a new constitution is through a bloody civil war, or some sort of coup. Hopefully no one wants something like that, though. I certainly don't.
[0] Technically the entirety of the constitution can't be amended; Article V, Section 5 prohibits an amendment from changing each state's equal representation in the Senate. Though I suppose a "rewrite amendment" might get around that by preserving the Senate as-is as a ceremonial body without any power. That would certainly violate the spirit of that wording in Article V, so I imagine it would be challenged in court.
We don’t need a full rewrite. Despite the divisions in this country, there are a couple things that most people agree on:
- Corporate money should be out of politics
- Gerrymandering should be stopped
If we had amendments for these two things, it could change A LOT. Congress might actually be able to function. Corporate corruption could be prosecuted. We might be possible to put meaningful limits on corporate power.
Of course, the devil’s in the details. How do you write amendments for these two things in a way that actually accomplishes the goals? But though it would be difficult, I don’t think it would be impossible.
Can we throw some form of ranked choice voting in there as well? As someone unhappy with either major party, I want the ability to vote what I actually want with a backup vote indicating what I absolutely don't want under any circumstances.
It's worth noting that Article V, Section 5 doesn't prohibit itself from being amended away. So you just need the constitutional convention to refer two new amendments: the first one stripping the restriction itself, and the second one to do what the restriction prohibited being done.
So theoretically if any one of the party in american system gets 2/3rd people of the same party and they all agree to one person and try to amend the constitution itself to add whatever they want, can't they theoretically create a purest form of dictatorship (one which lasts forever instead of just 5 years)
I mean given how much is already happening in America, I am just curious from a legal standpoint if there could be done something like that (forgetting the insane backlash but still), what could the president of america do to completely sieze the constitution ?
Unfortunately, eliminating the Senate (or more precisely, each state's equal representation in the Senate) is the one and only thing that the constitution forbids an amendment from doing (see Article V, Section 5):
> Provided that no Amendment [...] no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
(Awkward ellipsizing, but the elided text is another thing that's not allowed, which expired in 1808, and is otherwise thankfully no longer relevant.)
Better voting systems can be implemented, but since the states run federal elections, each state would have to pass legislation requiring a different voting system. Of course I expect all 50 would not agree on which alternative system is the best, which may or may not matter. And I doubt red states would want to change, as voting systems that better reflect the will of the electorate tend to disadvantage the GOP.
Eliminating gerrymandering is difficult, because it's hard to objectively define what is and isn't a gerrymandered map. There have been some attempts to do so, and I would say they've even been somewhat successful, but people can reasonably disagree with the methodology and thresholds used.
The Citizens United SCOTUS ruling and precedent absolutely needs to be reversed; agreed. Corporations are not people and should not get first amendment protections. Or any kind of protections outside any that are defined in regular law.
Another thing we need to do away with is the Electoral College. Presidents should be elected based on the national popular vote, not by per-state winner-take-all proxies, with vote apportionment that wildly advantages some states over others. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would effectively do away with the EC if states "owning" at least 270 electoral votes were to all sign it, but that's unlikely to ever happen. (Then again, it's more likely that the Compact would achieve that threshold than the passing of a constitutional amendment to abolish the EC.)
We should amend it [0] so that any state may subdivide within its own borders without the consent of the Senate, provided that no subdivision is smaller (less-populous) than the smallest current state.
In other words, small states don't have to give up their disproportionate representation in the Senate... but they cannot use that power to monopolize being small either. Any state above a certain size (>2x the smallest) may decide that its constituents are best-served by fission.
This adheres to Article V, Section 5, since no state is being deprived of "equal suffrage": Each state has 2 senators, just like always.
Correct, although I can't them every actually going N=67. There are diminishing returns, budgetary costs, difficulty drawing lines, and plenty of residents might simply be against it.
However, that still ought to be California's decision to make, as opposed to minority Wyoming-gang's to veto. Even if a big state doesn't actually do it, having the latent option is itself a subtle influence on interstate politics.
This is all regurgitated speech from a voter in a urban area. 99% chance you live in one of the major metro regions and vote mostly like your neighbors.
For the other half the country, we really don't want to Federal laws to be decided by people in other states that don't share the same values. This is why state rights exist and will not be removed (at least in our lifetime).
Looking from a EU perspective, majority votes based on population is quite bad and would result in the european union to not be a union since the low population countries would leave. Germany and France would gain even more power than they have now, so giving smaller countries a small boost in relative power is part of what encourage them to be there.
> Do you reject majority votes in general or do you merely propose explicit minority protections for non-urban communities?
Does your system of voting include anyone who just comes in or is restricted to only citizens with verified ID ? If the latter, then majority voting is completely fine.
And as long as they are verified citizens, I personally don't mind if they don't share the same values. No stuffing of the ballot box with non-citizens.
Sure. I was asking about you personally, in your particular situation. Whether you don't agree with majority votes overall, or whether your are fine with them but want a minority protection for this specific case.
This is all speech from a voter in a rural area, happy they get to tell the rest of the country how to behave despite being a minority of the vote.
Allow me to be "aggressive" as well:
For the other 60% of the country, we don't want Federal laws held up by people in arbitrarily drawn political districts and don't share our values regarding human rights and dignity. This is why, while states do retain broad rights to administer their internal affairs, spending and education, federal laws should be altered with a majority, excepting certain fundamental laws like the Constitution.
> For the other half the country, we really don't want to Federal laws to be decided by people in other states that don't share the same values.
Funny people can look at Arabs or Indians and identify “these people have a diametrically opposed culture and cannot peacefully coexist with me”, but can’t extended that to people that look like them and are also diametrically opposed.
It’s delusional to try and maintain a country that’s developed such opposed cultures. You can try to force peace for a while, but it always bubbles back up.
>It’s delusional to try and maintain a country that’s developed such opposed cultures.
Have the subcultures of the US diverged over time or does it just seem that way because it is easier to publish non-moderate opinions because of the internet?
The Internet and cable probably helped spur this movement of bubbles, where economically and socially insecure people can be told their problems aren't caused by the wealthy or the corrupt, but by non-Christians and immigrants.
I think a lot of people, particularly on the right, cannot define what they actually want this country to look like in 20-30 years or how it needs to get there.
From fiction, we have Clancy's sudden loss of the majority of federal elected officials which allowed for a fresh start. However, that's subject to having governors submitting senators while having elections for congress. Starting from a clean slate would be the only fix. As it is now, it's who is willing to kowtow to the biggest backers to get them over the line and stay in office. On top of the gerrymandering that all but ensures the party in control stays in control, I see no change to the status quo in my life time without an uprising.
The Senate is not subject to garrymandering and if we fixed the issues with the House (literally via any mechanism) the Senate would immediately go back to being the vehicle used to prevent the will of the people (see the Senate under Mitch McConnell any time the House was under Democrat control)
Until the Dem party fixes their brand and wins back some of the Senate seats they used to control in the 90s and early 2000s there will be no positive progress.
The Senate is in a permanent state of gerrymandering.
There were only 13 states when the Constitution was ratified. It was never envisioned to be as disproportionate as it is today, with California's two Senators representing 40 million people vs. Wyoming's 0.6 million.
In 1776, the population of Virgin was about 500K, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts were about 270K, and Delaware and Georgia were about 50K each.
The founders knew exactly what they were agreeing to when they gave each State two Senators. It’s supposed to be a separate check on the Federal power to force a wide swathe of consensus.
California currently has of 60x the population of Wyoming, which means that Wyoming voters have over 60x the voting power in the Senate as California voters.
Whether the founders intended that or not it's a shitty, unfair, and undemocratic system that doesn't act as a check, it just enables permanent minority rule.
It was semi intentional. It wasn't as extreme but the Senate was still a compromise for smaller states to have leverage in government and get them to sign on.
Meanwhile, the house is about 10 times smaller than what the founders envisioned. Maybe that's overkill but we probably should at least expand the house quite a bit. And Probably expand the supreme court as well.
I would argue then that the Senate is extremely overpowered. The disproportionate body should be a brake on the power of the government, not be the literally stronger half of Congress.
The fact that the most democratic part of the US government, the house of reps, is now the weakest part of the US legislature is ridiculous.
If we're dreaming up fixes, I'd say
1) Senate actions should require a strict majority. If anything should require super-majorities, it should be the House of Representatives.
2) The Senate should not be in control of appointments to the exclusion of House of Reps. No idea what the ideal system is there but the disproportionate body should not be more powerful than the proportionate body.
3) The Senate should be able to at most block an action for one term of Congress. That means that every Senate action can be overridden by an election. Which means the disproportionate body is effectively calling a referendum on legislation, instead of being a hard-stop.
the problem is that since 1911 the house has also been a compromise for smaller states to have leverage because it's capped at 435 total members regardless of population. we've gone from a system of dynamic tension between popular rule and representation for smaller populaces to a system where both houses are on the side of the "underrepresented" to an extent where they're actually vastly overrepresented. Combine that with the electoral college (which again allows a ruling elite to overrule the populace and advantages smaller states) and the fact that the elitist president and elitist senate pick the supreme court and you can see where the so-called "underrepresented" populations are actually the ones in charge of every branch of government.
This is, of course, exactly what the founding fathers intended. They disliked kings but they feared rule by common people and always intended there to be a privileged class of citizenry that does the actual ruling because people like you and me are just too ignorant to be trusted with that. That's why they excluded the vast majority of people from voting at all and those that were allowed to vote had their power diluted by various mechanistic means like capping the senate, flooring the house (and later capping it as well), using the electoral college to make sure that those precious few who vote at all don't vote incorrectly and having the least representative members of the executive and legislative branch select the judicial branch so that they're not swayed by "politics" (read: what the governed actually want).
And that's how we have a system that claims to be a democracy but where what people want is actually completely disconnected from what happens, and where "The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all" (https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/).
doubly so because the house has been floored since inception and capped since 1911, the president gets elected by the electoral college (which favors smaller states) and the president and senate pick the supreme court so there is no proportional representation anywhere and there hasn't been for over a hundred years
If states are so independent and equal that they demand exact same legislative power as fifty times bigger states, then maybe that equality should be full? Like for example equal federal monetary transhes to every equal state? And equal taxes collected from each state? No?
I doubt the founders considered the possibility that political realignment would result in nearly all low population states being on one side of the spectrum.
The very top and very bottom are a 55% to 45% split in either direction. It's not a heavy skew, a single party flip in the quintile from the majority to the minority would make it 50/50 even. Those quintiles cancel each other out when voting on party/caucus lines. It's actually the 2nd and 4th quintiles that have the biggest skews. Democrats take the 2nd quintile while Republicans take the 3rd and 4th.
I definitely appreciate your measurements, but I think your analysis is off.
The top & bottom quintiles don't cancel out, but rather support the same trend, which is that Republicans have more voting power per capita.
That said, I am surprised that the top & bottom quintiles are nearly balanced. I'll have to look up which bottom quintile states have Democratic senators.
I agree, the data does indeed show that Republicans have more voting power per capita, as they have advantages in the bottom 3 quintiles. However, I don't think the correlation of population to party (at the state level) is as extreme as some try to portray it. There are high population Republican states as well as low population Democratic ones. Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, and New Hampshire are Democratic states in the bottom quintile.
The top has 11 Democratic votes and 9 Republican votes. The bottom has 9 Democratic votes and 11 Republican votes. If they all vote on party lines it's a tie. So it's really the middle population states that give Republicans their current edge.
It's a frequent criticism that smaller states have outsized representation relative to their population. The US is not alone in this, the EU also has the same characteristic. Germany, the most populous, has over 150 times the population of Malta, the least populous, but only 16 times the amount of representation in parliament (96 MEP vs 6 MEP). By comparison, the largest state, California, has 37 times the population of the smallest, Wyoming, but 18 times the representation in Congress and the electoral college (54 vs 3). Granted, it's not an apples to apples comparison as the votes are divided between houses and the relative power of the EU vs the US federal government but it's a comparison nonetheless.
It's a compromise when trying to form a union of political entities that differ so greatly in size. The smaller entities obviously give up some sovereignty to their larger counterparts. The larger ones seem to have to have to reciprocate in a meaningful way to keep a voluntary union.
The existence of the Virginia Plan (the Large State Plan) and the New Jersey Plan (the Small State Plan) indicates that balancing the differing interests of high- and low- population states was a prominent concern of the founders. I think they would expect states to often align by population size since that very thing occurring at the convention led to the compromise written into the Constitution.
I have a hard time conceiving of matters that states would separate themselves on by population size other then proportional representation in Congress back then.
I suppose, however, that the majority of low-population states were also frontier states, seems like a fairly compelling distinction.
>I suppose, however, that the majority of low-population states were also frontier states, seems like a fairly compelling distinction.
Not so much, unless you consider Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont to be "frontier" states in 1787. Actual frontier states like Georgia were in favor of the Virginia Plan as they figured their population would grow soon enough and they could take advantage of their eventual large population (with slaves being counted as 3/5 of a person) in a "Virginia Plan" world.
The Connecticut Compromise[0][3] ended up in the Constitution as a reconciliation of the Virginia Plan[1][4] and the New Jersey Plan[2][5], with the larger states supporting the Virginia Plan and smaller states supported the New Jersey Plan.
The above is incredibly abridged and ignores much context. As such, I strongly recommend you read Article I, Sections 2 and 3 of the US Constitution[7] (the result of the Connecticut Compromise) as well as the original Virginia and New Jersey plans, or at least the wikipedia pages I linked for a much better discourse on the topic.
[3] The current system. Which differs from the original only in direct election of Senators, rather than them being appointed by state legislatures[6].
[4] Proposed a bicameral legislature with both houses apportioned by population.
[5] Proposed a unicameral legislature with one vote per state.
No, I like the way the Senate runs in theory. Equal representation for the states regardless of size. Only if it's alongside the house with proportionate representation.
That seems like a good theory that would keep itself in check.
In execution it's an absolute shit show, I'll give you. But I do believe the theory is sound. With the house and the Senate we get the best of both worlds.
Why is the theory sound? It’s an arbitrary number of regions delineated by arbitrary lines given a disproportionate amount of power that run completely counter to the goal of a democracy.
Because tyranny of the majority is still a thing. Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes. So the house is there as a large power and senate can check it.
Of course, in practice the house is way under represented so its almost like we have a senate and a mini-senate. That's where things fall apart.
> Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes.
I don't see why that would be the case. To win an election you don't need to win states at all; you need to win lots of voters, and those voters could come from anywhere.
You could lose every single voter in both CA and TX and still win the election, given different political demographics across states.
As an aside, I also think abolishing the Electoral College and going strictly by the national popular vote would increase voter turnout for presidential elections. I live in a solidly blue state, and if I didn't care about down-ballot races, I probably wouldn't bother to vote in presidential elections, since my vote doesn't really matter here. Only votes in swing states matter under the current system.
> Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes.
No, it wouldn’t. It would switch to appealing to the most voters, who may or may not happen to live in California and Texas, but that is irrelevant to a democracy.
Yes. I hope I don't need to explain the many times that the majority sentiment was in fact not the correct one. A pure democracy under the basis the US was founded under would end up much more conservative than what we have today.
> It would switch to appealing to the most voters.
So it'd switch to appealing to urban cities and ignore the rural areas. Iirc the top 10 cities today make up some 40+% of voters. Why bother going to Omaha when you can focus instead of LA and NYC?
You are taking a very narrow one sided view. We live in a Republic of states, not a Federal Democracy. I know you would like this to happen, but it won't here for good reasons.
There is no “good” reason. It just so happens to be the way the power dynamics of the past have played out, and there has not yet been sufficient motivation for the population to go to war.
Minority forces of change also happen for the good as well. There aren't too many landmark cases where the majority suddenly voted to give more representation, more power to workers, nor simply cede powers previously enjoyed by government.
Arbitrary or not, States are sovereign things. They set their own laws.
Having 1 chamber that allows equal representation
And
Having 1 chamber that allows proportionate
Is a good system in theory. Otherwise, States (which are again separate entities) with high populations just steamroll those that have low populations.
The system now allows states with high populations to be appropriately represented in the house, which sends bills to the Senate.
I feel like it's a good system, in theory. You get your population representation and checks and balances for rural areas as well.
You keep saying "in theory". If the practice -- as you seem to admit -- doesn't actually work, then what's the point defending the theory? It doesn't work in practice, so it's a bad idea.
> Arbitrary or not, States are sovereign things.
In practice that's not really true. The federal government has many, many levers it can use to get states to fall in line.
In theory, but in practice, most states are highly dependent on a few very populous and productive ones, for economic and military protection.
Not to mention that the Feds control the purchasing power of the currency and international trade, so the states aren’t sovereign to do anything of consequence.
Hence in practice, this whole theory of states being sovereign goes out the window.
States are sovereign entities with their own laws. They can even, in theory, secede from the union.
The Senate is a good system, it's just that most states are Republican.
Some of the larger states might consider splitting themselves into separate states to better represent their populations. Though that may not be constitutionally possible.
If we ever add additional states to the Union (Puerto Rico, D.C., etc.), they'll want to enjoy having an equal say with every other state in the Union. It's a compelling feature of our system.
The House, as a proportional system, actually needs to be re-normalized. There are not enough representatives to have an actually proportional vote.
Is it a good system? I'm not sure I understand why? The system as it's designed seems to want to incentivize having many low population states as a way to spread and gain power, and as such the current 100 power holders are incentivized to to protect their power by preventing the dilution of their power that would come with more states.
Additionally, because the population of the country is not evenly distributed across all the states, senators from some states have disproportionate power and control this is frequently mentioned and brought up several times in this post alone. Not sure what aspects make it a good system, some type of beleaguered point about preventing tyranny of the majority? At what cost? tyranny of the minority, political stagnation?
> Is it a good system? I'm not sure I understand why?
States have sovereignty and rights.
The point is that all states have equal representation.
> Not sure what aspects make it a good system, some type of beleaguered point about preventing tyranny of the majority? At what cost? tyranny of the minority, political stagnation?
Because states are political test tubes and need autonomy.
> Additionally, because the population of the country is not evenly distributed across all the states, senators from some states have disproportionate power and control
In my lifetime, the Senate has been majority Democratic party controlled [1].
If you go back to the second Bush term, it's been 60% Democrat.
The current party makeup is only temporary. Things are constantly in flux.
Most states are Republican only because of first past the post system. If states internally did democratic majority elections, then most of them would turn progressive very fast. Including Texas, which is already democratic, but is suppressed by a blatant corruption via gerrymandering.
The Senate is a terrible system. There's no logical reason why citizens in one state should have orders of magnitude more say in the federal government than citizens in another.
The founders aren't infallible gods, and they really fucked up here.
Unlike in many other countries, where provinces or regions are merely administrative divisions created to decentralize or streamline administration, the US emerged when states voluntarily came together and decided to create a country. The states were willing to outsource part of their autonomy to a federal level, on condition that guardrails were put in place to limit the power of that federal level. Those guardrails were: bicameralism, equal representation of states in the Senate, and the electoral college. The House is the voice of the people, the Senate is the voice of the states.
The practical consequence of this system is that it effectively prevents a majority of voters from large urban centers from imposing their will onto rural populations, at least at the federal level. It was designed that way.
I've seen comments here claiming that countries like Canada or France deliver better outcomes than the US. They are stronger welfare states, yes, but they also have become overly paternalistic nanny states, with heavy-handed regulations, and high taxes stifling individual initiative.
The practical consequence of this system is that it effectively allows a minority of voters from rural areas to impose their will onto large urban centers
The fact that we have minority rule in the Senate, House, and Supreme Court is exactly why we don't have any checks and balances any more and Trump gets to act like an emperor.
Again, you're saying "minority rule". But Trump (Republican) won the popular vote. So which party is the minority?
Do you have another way of determining which party is the majority/minority besides votes for the President?
It seems clear that the majority in the 2024 election preferred Republican governance, and so they gained control over President/House/Senate.
Is this a joke? You think Democrat Senators got 24 million more votes? Where are you getting these nonsense numbers?
Update
Here are some rough numbers I found quickly (because your numbers are obvious nonsense):
President
R - 77.3m - 49.8%
D - 75.0m - 48.3%
Others - 2.9m - 1.9%
Senate
D - 55.9m - 49.1%
R - 54.4m - 47.7%
Others - 3.7m - 3.2%
House
R - 74.4m - 49.8%
D - 70.6m - 47.2%
Others - 4.6m - 3.1%
Looks like the system is working to me. The Senate vote not withstanding of course because of some smaller states, but it's not some extreme miscarriage of justice as you imply. The majority party won and is currently enacting policies that voters wanted. I'm sorry that your beliefs aren't as popular as you thought.
Sorry, I copy and pasted wrong, the Democratic senators represent 24M more people, and had about 2.8M more votes, yet have 6 fewer seats counting the independents that caucus with the Dems.
So fewer voters and constituents for a pretty significant majority in senators.
Do you have a better way of determining which party is the "majority" in Congress? That is what we are discussing here. Whether the current makeup of Congress accurately represents the votes of the people or not.
Obviously I understand that not every person voted in the election (many are not even eligible). It is simply not relevant to this conversation, and is an often trotted out diversion meant to diminish the mandate given by the actual voters.
In this case it’s much simpler: the question was minority rule and you can see that power in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches is held by Republican politicians representing less than a majority—Trump is arguably the best claim they have on plurality since he is come very close to winning the popular vote since so many Democrats stayed home—and enacting policies which are very unpopular, in most cases policies which are unpopular even among registered Republicans.
They were logical at the time they were implemented. Most of those reasons have been invalid since the Civil War, and should have been fixed during Reconstruction, except the winners didn't have the foresight or political will to do what needed to be done.
Gerrymandering is particular powerful because Congress has refused to reapportion representatives for over a century. They just decided to stop following that part of the Constitution back in 1929. We still have the same number of representatives as we did when we were less than a third our current population. Each representative now covers 20 times more people than when the Constitution was ratified.
Yes and: our first-past-the-post form of elections begets gerrymandering.
My future perfect world:
proportional representation for assemblies (eg US House),
some arbitrarily low number of reps per citizens (200k - 400k?),
no upper assembly (eg US Senate),
approval voting for executive positions (eg Mayor, Sheriff, President),
only public financing of campaigns,
limit campaign season to maybe 6 weeks.
Friendly amendments to my wishlist cheerfully accepted.
There's so many reasonable, impactful reforms which could be done. And my wishlist is based on my (imperfect) understanding of best available (political) science. And I'm all ears about SCOTUS reforms. And I doubt any reforms will stick, so long as our gini coefficient is so out of whack (wealth vs democracy, the timeless struggle).
Approval ratings for Congress, barring a post-9/11 spike, have been under 30% for most of my life. By this standard I'd say we're in the middle of the end.
> If we can't figure out how to get a Congress that most people believe in then I worry that is the beginning of the end for this government.
We know, from comparative study of existing representative democracies, how to do that better (have an electoral system for the legislative branch that provides results that are substnantially more proportional than under the current system); what we don’t have is a practical way to get from where we are to where we need to be given the construction of the electoral systems in the states and nationally and the politicians and interests that has entrenched and the Constitutional amendment process.
I feel like we'd have a better idea of what congress is qualified to do if they ever actually tried to do something but they seem to have broadened their role from "prevent executive overreach and govern" to "prevent govern". Congress is where you send something if you want to be sure it doesn't happen.
That being said, there's always the option of just getting rid of the president's ability to overrule the people on criminal matters. We could probably go after state governors as well, that's just as rife with abuse.
> Which congress do you want doing that review? The past several congresses have been unqualified to do any sort of constitutional reviewing in my opinion
States can reject dumb amendments. Congress proposes amendments, the states ratify them [1].
Trump has his executive orders explained to him right before he signs them.
Yesterday he was asked about this pardon and barely knew what was going on:
“I believe we’re talking about the same person, because I do pardon a lot of people. I don’t know. He was recommended by a lot of people,” Trump said.[0]
The Biden autopen-shadow-government conspiracies are hilarious, though. Every accusation is a confession with MAGAs.
I remain amazed at how, again and again, no matter how specific and unique an abuse by the Trump administration is, it is always, invariably, Really Joe Biden's Fault. Like, the frame has been adopted by the MAGA base, but also the cranky left. The media does it too. Here on HN bothsidesism is a shibboleth that denotes "I'm a Serious Commenter and not a Partisan Hack".
But it leads to ridiculous whoppers like this, and ends up in practice excusing what amounts to the most corrupt regime in this country in over a century, if not ever.
No, this is just bad, on its own, absent any discussion about what someone else did. There was no equivalent pardon of a perpetrator of an impactful crime in a previous administration I can think of. I'm genuinely curious what you think you're citing?
>But it leads to ridiculous whoppers like this, and ends up in practice excusing what amounts to the most corrupt regime in this country in over a century, if not ever.
Amen. Preach it, brother!
>No, this is just bad, on its own, absent any discussion about what someone else did. There was no equivalent pardon of a perpetrator of an impactful crime in a previous administration I can think of. I'm genuinely curious what you think you're citing?
I don't know what the poster was referring to, but I AM mad at Biden for pardoning his family. It's a molehill of an issue compared to the current administration though.
I would be very mad at Biden pardoning his family if the next president was going to be Bush. With all of Trump's calls for retribution, and actions in that direction since the election, it is hard to blame Biden for trying to shield his son from unjust exercises of the law, while Trump was publicly touting him as one of his biggest enemies.
> Here on HN bothsidesism is a shibboleth that denotes "I'm a Serious Commenter and not a Partisan Hack".
HN users don't necessarily do that because they want to. They might do it as a pre-emptive defense mechanism against the brigades of de-facto censors that roam the site.
Moderation via populism is an anti-feature on its face, but Hacker News has the worst possible version of that sort of feature by making downvoted/flagged comments completely hidden unless you are logged in and showdead.
It's a pretty horrendous system if you're interested in good faith and honest debate.
I have showdead enabled, and in my experience, the only dead comments are ones which violate the site guidelines or are otherwise Bad Posts regardless of the political affiliation of the poster. Stuff like this:
I also have showdead enabled and in any remotely controversial thread, among the uncontroversial Bad Posts you will find a reasonable number of posts that are well argued and have effort put into them, but get downvoted anyway.
There are a number of reasonable posts in this very thread that are either already dead or on their way out - and I don't even agree with some of their positions.
The fact that this arguable, but clearly reasoned and expressed comment is now deep gray kinda puts an exclamation point on the argument, I'd say.
(Honestly I think the moderation paradigm at HN has some bad externalities too, but really this isn't a solvable problem in the general case and nowhere does it well. The showdead mechanism at least makes the censorship visible to those who know where to look.)
It does. And it's completely understandable why, from a game theory point of view.
The censors want Hacker News to keep its reputation as a place where you can have debates in good faith, while allowing their censorship powers to shape the conversation.
Pointing this behavior out upsets the calculus by warning their potential marks. So of course they want to strategically hide it.
When Obama really increased the number of pardons, a lot of contemporary opinion writers said stuff along the lines of "this is a dangerous precedent and we're lucky that the pardons are fairly popular and sane." Now we're seeing unpopular, not sane pardons.
When democratic norms erode like pardons becoming more acceptable, it's like laying tinder and kindling for a fire. You still need a fire; a bad actor who is willing to light the material on fire. That bad actor is Trump. But the warnings from abusing these limitations from previous administrations was exactly for this moment. Nobody is saying Trump isn't the bad one, he is. But the conditions were laid for him. Now we need to survive him.
When we look back at Roman Senators and Emperors, it's often hard as modern people to point to one, single bad figure because we don't have a lot of contemporary thought or reading from the time. But when we look back we can see the seeds of "decline" in eras rather than single figures.
I don't buy it. A president that will literally direct his AG in public to prosecute his political enemies is simply not bound by norms, period. To pretend that he'd never have pardoned Zhao but for Obama's "increased number of pardons" is, to be blunt, ridiculous on its face.
And in context, you're doing exactly what I mocked above, tut tutting about civil behavior and norms and The Discourse while the system burns down around you.
But don't worry! You can always take solace in the fact that it was Really Barack Hussein Obama's Fault.
> And in context, you're doing exactly what I mocked above, tut tutting about civil behavior and norms and The Discourse while the system burns down around you.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do then. I agree Trump is bad. Am I supposed to just say that 3 times and click my heels and then he'll go away?
These are observations designed around trying to make sure, once Trump is gone, that we don't get another Trump. I can't change the current President and this constant purity testing about hating Trump changes nothing.
The reason Trump will have to blatantly violate the Constitution if he tries to run again is because the country was so spooked after FDR's third term that it limited Presidential terms. One could have made the same argument then, the only reason FDR ran a 3rd term is because he's FDR and a different person wouldn't do that. But that amendment is why there's a bright line around a 3rd term now.
Why are you reading equivocation there? You're being way too defensive. Just because Trump is the worst doesn't mean other things aren't also bad, just less bad. Are you implying that I'm not supposed to talk about anything other than how Trump is bad? Again what's the point of this purity testing?
If I caveat my statements a million ways to convince you that I'm not equivocating then will Trump stop being President?
You're pretending that Trump's pardon is not a singular act but the result of some kind of imagined erosion of norms for which you blamed Obama specifically. That's textbook equivocation. A vote for Romney wouldn't have fixed this.
You're also simply incorrect, which is why I'm spending the bytes to try to correct you.
Refocus you're attention. The problem is not with the pardon power. You said:
> That bad actor is Trump. But the warnings from abusing these limitations
But that's the thing, the pardon power is not supposed to be limited. How would you limit it? Who would actually tell the President "No" and on what authority? The obvious choices are Congress and the Courts but they already checks to balance the the President. That's why they can't check it -- the pardon power is the President's check on them (along with the veto power).
Hamilton said:
"Without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel."
That's what it's for. After all the process, if justice is not done, and there's no way to undo it, then justice will not survive and there will be no confidence in the system. But with great power comes great responsibility, so you need someone very responsible in that position or else it doesn't work.
So then how do we fix it if not by adding laws and rules? We don't elect people like Trump, who think they are above the law. That's it. I know it seems kind of glib but it's not a high bar to just avoid malignant narcissists.
The reason Trump is abusing the pardon power is because he does not consider what he's doing an abuse. He sees that he has the "right" to do it under the Constitution, and to him, anything he has the right to do, he can do. And you know what, despite him being abusive he does have the right. But that's the thing, we gave him that right, and we can take it away and give it to someone else who won't abuse it.
That is the actual check on the pardon power, but that's on us. It's on us because Trump abused the pardon power in his first term by dangling pardons in front of Paul Manafort when he was being investigated by the DOJ, so none of this should be a surprise to anyone. Obama's "abuses" and Bidens "abuses" are on everyone's lips here, but not a single word for Trump's 1st term abuses (mine is the first mention of the Manafort pardon in over 1000 comments). So if you really want the root cause of his power abuse beyond his psychopathology, it's that -- because not only did we not care he did that, we actually reelected him as he promised to abuse his power during the campaign, so why wouldn't he actually do it?
> So then how do we fix it if not by adding laws and rules? We don't elect people like Trump, who think they are above the law. That's it. I know it seems kind of glib but it's not a high bar to just avoid malignant narcissists.
Right but he is the President. I didn't vote for him. I donated and canvassed for the Harris campaign. But Trump won. So what are we getting by making 1000 internet comments of which 800 are about how bad Trump is?
This whole exchange reminded me why I don't participate in politics on HN. It's all just venting. I'll stick to doing things like canvasing and not reading the anxieties of HN commenters.
Yeah, and that he specifically is President should tell you something -- maybe the fight isn't at the pardon power.
> So what are we getting by making 1000 internet comments of which 800 are about how bad Trump is?
We might come to understand the root of the problem is the psychology of a specific individual and the cult that surrounds him, rather than what Obama did a decade ago. It's not that Obama's use of the pardon power caused a slippery slope of executive overreach that has resulted in today's corrupt pardons. We are not dealing with "overreach" here, what's happening today is categorically different.
> This whole exchange reminded me why I don't participate in politics on HN. It's all just venting.
I dunno, hopefully in this exchange you've learned that the pardon power is not supposed to be limited under the Constitution and why, so now you can stop making arguments that we should limit the pardon power. When you take that off the table, viable solutions become easier to spot. Limiting the pardon power is not viable because there is no Constitutional mechanism to do so. Under the Constitution, any limits put in place can just be ignored by the next POTUS who decides he wants to ignore them.
I never said we should limit the pardon power. I just said Obama increased the number of pardons and contemporary commenters criticized that, fearing a regression of norms.
I made no policy prescriptions whatsoever.
> When you take that off the table, viable solutions become easier to spot.
> When Obama really increased the number of pardons, a lot of contemporary opinion writers said stuff along the lines of "this is a dangerous precedent and we're lucky that the pardons are fairly popular and sane." ... the warnings from abusing these limitations from previous administrations was exactly for this moment. Nobody is saying Trump isn't the bad one, he is. But the conditions were laid for him.
I take this to mean that Obama had abused his power past his authority, and you used the word "limitations" here to mean that there are some sort of institutional or structural limits which he was exceeding, thus paving the way for the current abuses.
The implication is that if Obama had stayed within the bounds (which bounds?) then the condition would not have been laid for Trump to do what he's doing.
My point is the conditions were there whether or not Obama did what he did, because the power never had limits, never was intended to have limits, because the limiting factor was not electing a bad guy. If any conditions were laid, they were by the Founders in how they structured the Constitution and the pardon power. They just didn't think that with elections, the electoral college, impeachment, and the insurrection clause we would be dumb enough to actually elect an insurrectionist.
> So do you have a viable solution here?
Nope! I mean, as far as the Trump administration goes they are going to burn themselves out, the only question is how much damage they are going to do on the way down and what the blast radius is. The important question now is what to do with America after that happens and I don't know what that looks like. Maybe balkanization, I dunno depends how bad it gets. If some key Republicans come to their senses this can be solved relatively quickly and painlessly, then we can talk about revising the Constitution. Otherwise who knows.
> the established politicians do not like him and did everything they could to stop him from running
Again, this is a excuse-making whopper. The republican aisle in the senate refused to convict him twice, which would have prevented him from running. I won't argue "do not like him" in the abstract, but in practice established politicians in his party are 100% behind the guy.
Usually a pardon is for a conviction with some level of ambiguity or prosecutorial misconduct. Hunter himself admits to the privilege of being pardoned.
The power to pardon needs to be removed all together. All it does is show that the President overrides the department of justice. How anyone ever thought this should be a thing, I have no idea.
I think a congressional pardon power to allow national leniency on previously accepted sentences that are now viewed as unjust might be worth holding onto. It being such a casual presidential power has made it ripe for corruption for a long time but I would weigh that with civil rights era pardons for sham trials - I think we do still need a national sanity check relief valve for local injustices.
And the dysfunction of congress probably works in our favor here since pardons should be exceptional - not routine. A routine pardon is just a demonstration of the justice department failing at a systemic level.
> I think a congressional pardon power to allow national leniency on previously accepted sentences that are now viewed as unjust might be worth holding onto.
That sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. For the branch of government in charge of making and changing laws.
It sounds more fit for the branch of government in charge of enforcing the laws. Specifically, with laws that are made by the branches responsible for making/changing them, which would be ridiculous on their face.
If the branch responsible for making and changing laws was also responsible for the reversion of enforcing those laws - effectively what a pardon is - then there's absolutely no check on gratuitous law being passed.
> If the branch responsible for making and changing laws was also responsible for the reversion of enforcing those laws - effectively what a pardon is - then there's absolutely no check on gratuitous law being passed.
I mean, it is a normal thing for a legislature to remove and amend old laws. That's not "a check," but it's a normal part of what it means to be a legislature. You're not just appending new laws, you're maintaining the entire set of laws.
And as for checks, judicial review is the obvious one.
I heard the intention was that sometimes it's against the public good to prosecute some people even though they have comitted crimes. Good examples of it being used as intended was pardoning the perpetrators of the whiskey rebellion, the confederate army, vietnam draft dodgers and more controversially, Nixon. I guess it's also intended in cases where obvious miscarriages of justice have been committed. It made sense in 1785 or whenever but along with lots of the rest of the constitution it's long obsolete and has been twisted, stretched and mangled into a hideous caricature of itself over the centuries.
How hard can it be to specify that pardons can be given by a committee of 25 randomly selected individuals with an Ivy league education when at least 2/3 is in favor with no existing financial ties and no information regarding the identity of whoever's fate is at stake?
Right, not hard at all, but apparently whoever wrote the Constitution was a fucking moron.
I think you're onto something, for a kind of second-chance review function, but instead of "with an Ivy League education", perhaps you most want people knowledgeable about both judicial process and society.
"Ivy League education" isn't a totally bad predictor, but it's going to be very biased towards people with privileged socioeconomic backgrounds, who therefore may have blind spots of aspects of society that apply to the situation. (No matter how many books they've read, classes they've taken, years of volunteering with the less-advantaged they've done, and hours of NPR they've listened to.)
> The power to pardon needs to be removed all together. All it does is show that the President overrides the department of justice.
The Department of Justice is subordinate to the President as part of the executive branch with or without the pardon power; if you want something other than "the President overrides the Department of Justice" as a matter of Constitutional law rather than an intermittently-observed convention of restraint (which Trump absolutely has not observed outside of the pardon power), you need a fundamental reformation of the Constitutional structure of government, far beyond the elimination of the pardon power.
While it’s true that the Department of Justice sits within the executive branch, the assertion that it is simply “subordinate” to the President - functioning as his personal legal arm - is an oversimplification that misses both the design and evolution of constitutional governance.
The President does not have unlimited authority over the DOJ. The DOJ’s powers are exercised pursuant to laws enacted by Congress, and its officials - especially the Attorney General and U.S. Attorneys - swear oaths to uphold the Constitution, not to serve as personal agents of the President’s will.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that while the President may remove executive officers, he cannot lawfully direct them to commit acts that are unconstitutional, obstruct justice, or violate statutory mandates.
The constitutional structure also relies on normative independence - a separation within the executive branch that maintains rule of law. This is not a “convention of restraint” but an operational necessity derived from the Take Care Clause (“he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”). That clause doesn’t mean “whatever the President says is law”; it means the President must ensure that the law itself is enforced faithfully, even when doing so constrains his own interests.
Finally, while the pardon power is broad, it’s not the linchpin of executive authority over the DOJ. Removing or limiting that power wouldn’t change the fact that the DOJ’s prosecutorial discretion must still be exercised consistent with law, ethics, and constitutional constraints - not simply the President’s personal preferences. Our system is not designed for a monarch with “absolute control” over prosecutions. It’s designed for a chief executive bound by law and accountable through oversight, impeachment, and ultimately, the electorate.
> While it’s true that the Department of Justice sits within the executive branch, the assertion that it is simply “subordinate” to the President - functioning as his personal legal arm - is an oversimplification that misses both the design and evolution of constitutional governance.
The idea of the republic as opposed to a monarchy is that no part of the government is anyone's personal...well, anything...but that doesn't really negate the degree of control the President exercises, both in theory and in practice barring highly variable personal restraint, over the DoJ.
> The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that while the President may remove executive officers, he cannot lawfully direct them to commit acts that are unconstitutional, obstruct justice, or violate statutory mandates.
That doesn't mean the President doesn't override the DoJ, it means the President doesn't override the law.
> The constitutional structure also relies on normative independence - a separation within the executive branch that maintains rule of law.
Yes, that it relies on this but does not actually provide any mechanism by which it can effectively be assured is the fundamental design issue I am referring to being necessary to address if one wants "the President overrides the DoJ" not to be a simple fact independently of whether or not the pardon power exists and is vested in the President's discretion.
> Finally, while the pardon power is broad, it’s not the linchpin of executive authority over the DOJ.
I literally said that the pardon power is irrelevant to that, which is the exact opposite of describing it as the lynchpin.
> Removing or limiting that power wouldn’t change the fact that the DOJ’s prosecutorial discretion must still be exercised consistent with law, ethics, and constitutional constraints - not simply the President’s personal preferences.
To the extent that is true, that is only a negative constraint on prosecution applied by the courts, it can never compel a prosecution that the executive has declined. (Congress, of course, could punish the President for preventing prosecutions, via the impeachment power, but that’s hardly a substitute for real independence from the President of all or part of the prosecutorial power if that is what is desired. Or, for that matter, much of a remedy at all if more than 1/3 of the Senate is on board with the President's conduct.
A fragmented executive power, like most states have, does solve problems stemming from the unitary executive, but also increases the difficulty of ascribing responsibility for bad outcomes whose source isn't exclsuviely in one bailiwick, complicating effective democratic accountability.
You could probably make a good case that doing this for just the AG is still a good thing.
(Of course, federally, that becomes both a major Constitutional change and raises the question of how they would be elected? The same Electoral College that elects the President? A separate electoral college? Direct election unlike the President? Of course, the first problem is one with any means of making the DoJ independent of Presidential control.)
Despite abuses of it, there are still too many reasons to need it, like when President Franklin Pierce pardoned an abolitionist for harboring fugitive slaves, or when George Washington pardoned Revolutionary War vets involved in the Whiskey Rebellion.
Better yet, there are a ton of cases since the 1980s prosecutors exploiting technicalities and mandatory minimum sentencing laws to get nonviolent drug offenders imprisoned for 10+ years on simple possession (not to to sell drugs, not PWID, just possession).
The word "nothing" is completely inappropriate in describing Watergate and Iran-Contra, among the worst political scandals in American history, both involving gross abuse of executive power.
I certainly don't see how the pardon of Changpeng Zhao is worse than the pardon of President Richard Nixon or Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Crimes committed in office by the highest officials in the US government are a whole different level than crimes committed by some corporate CEO.
Ford at least had the misguided excuse of wanting to put the scandal behind and focus on the future.
Trump's pardons include hundreds of literal insurrectionists, promises to pardon in exchange for not testifying against him (witness tampering), and other blatant corruption. He fired the head of the OPA and installed a political hack to speedrun awful pardon choices and made a mockery of the process in a far more corrupt and damaging manner than anyone before him, and it's not even close.
> Ford at least had the misguided excuse of wanting to put the scandal behind and focus on the future.
I'm more concerned with the effects of the pardons on the country and on democracy than I am with judging the rectitude of the pardoner. Allowing the President to escape the law set a terrible precedent with obvious repercussions into the present.
I'm not trying to defend Trump. My point is that the stage was set for Trump. Abuses of executive power, of which I've given two egregious examples—Watergate and Iran-Contra—have been swept under the rug for far too long. To always "put the scandal behind and focus on the future" is to encourage future misbehavior. I would note that in stark contrast, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has just gone to prison.
I'm more concerned about the effects of this constant "both sides" legitimization of fascism and the constant shift of the Overton window than I am about the effect of pardons.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Where is "both sides" coming from when Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, and Trump are all Republicans? And where in the world do you get "legitimization" from my comments, other than how Presidential pardons have practically legitimized crimes in office?
The response to every new overreach by Trump is "this is just more of what's been going on" when it absolutely is not, it's dramatically different. Today's Republicans are a very different beast from Gerald Ford's. It's absolutely "both sides"ing the issue.
> The response to every new overreach by Trump is "this is just more of what's been going on"
This is a strange take on my comments. To be absolutely clear: I object in the strongest possible terms to the crimes of the Nixon and Reagan administrations and to the subsequent pardons of Nixon and Reagan administration officials. I have no desire to legitimize those pardons, and indeed I think the pardon power should have been eliminated or at least strictly limited a long time ago. Moreover, I objected to your attempt to minimize those past scandals, which you described as "nothing".
Thus, my comments are in no way a defense or legimitimization of Trump. They become a defense of Trump only in your own mind when you insist on discounting the past, which I do not. And when I suggested that previous pardons set the stage for Trump, I meant that shielding the executive branch from the legal consequences of their crimes only emboldens someone like Trump to act without any fear of legal consequences for his own crimes in office. The terrible precedents set in the past have come back to haunt us in the present. Again, that's not "legitimization" in any sense.
Trump is the kind of actor who will explore the entire space of pardons; the history of this does not matter. He does not know the path-dependency of what will be tolerated.
I'm afraid that you've missed the point. The crimes were Watergate and Iran-Contra. The pardons, which came later, indeed from different Presidents in subsequent administrations, allowed previous administrations to escape legal consequences of their crimes.
Granting pardons is not by itself a crime. Should pardons be eliminated or strictly limited? Sure. But pardons are not really the main issue with the Trump administration. Rather, the main issue is general lawlessness and abuse of power. When I mentioned setting the stage, I didn't mean setting the stage for granting pardons specifically but rather setting the stage for abusing executive power generally.
If you asked Donald Trump about the “beautiful” Watergate office complex, what would he say? If you asked him which commentator on Fox News might be most familiar with Iran-Contra, would he know? His reaction to being given power is to test it. Gerald Ford is not goading him into this.
> pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations that it's clear there should be constitutional changes in the pardon power, either congressional review, or strip it altogether
Strip it. I also started on the line of Congressional review (or pardons only activating on the consent of the Senate). But I concluded the entire power is out of place.
If the courts overreach, address it through legislation. Congress can annul sentences through law, no special pardon power needed. If a law is unfair or being applied unfairly, moreover, it should be fixed comprehensively.
There isn’t a place for one-man pardons in a republic. Even the imperium-obsessed Romans didn’t give their dictators, much less consuls, automatic pardon power. Caesar had to get special legislation to overrule the law.
Biden abused pardon power. So has Trump. Both parties have good reason for passing an amendment through the Congress. This is probably in my top 3 Constitutional amendment we need in our time. (Multi-member Congressional seats, popular election of the President and changing “the executive Power shall be vested in a President” to “the President shall execute the laws of the United States.”)
Wasn't that because there was a high chance of trump going after biden's son when he was in power, making up whatever charges he needed just as a power play?
He only pardoned his son after Trump was elected, because Trump made it clear that he was going radicalize the DOJ to do extremely punitive things to his enemies. And that's exactly what has happened.
Up until the election he seemed very willing to let Hunter face the music.
honestly? I think between this and hunter biden you could probably drum up some bipartisan support as long as you don't let either side find out that they accidentally agree with the other. I'm of a mind that the power of the pardon is one of many (many, many, many) ways that the so-called "egalitarian" founding fathers made sure to preserve the power of the aristocracy over that of the people. After all, a conviction has to come from a jury, and that means that a pardon is by definition the powerful elite overruling the people.
The cheerleaders for the current authoritarian coup that swarm around here are all too happy to conflate the Hunter Biden pardon and what's currently going on. As if we can't currently open a god-damned news website and read about the Comey, James and Bolton prosecutions and deduce that, yeah, Biden pretty much had no choice even though it was a shitty thing to do.
This is because these dipshits are eagerly carrying water for a vindictive dictator. They are not operating in good faith but due to the alignment of the owners of this site with those self-same fascists you are meant to act as if they're not trolls.
I was of two minds about that pardon. On the one hand it seemed like an abuse of pardon power. On the other hand, it was also reasonable at the time to expect abuse of presidential power to prosecute political enemies. So on balance I was OK with it. I think the compromise I'd like to see is to curtail both powers.
Because he was prosecuted for doing drugs and owning a gun? There's literal video of Joe Rogan smoking pot and he talks about his concealed weapons permit. It would be a slam dump case, some how i don't think he's getting prosecuted because its selective law open to abuse. Seems perfectly good use of pardon.
The Hunter Biden issue was not about smoking marijuana... that would have been the very least of his multitude of legal problems. Biden's own DoJ was prosecuting the cases - which is important context to consider here.
> Since 2018, Weiss had been investigating Hunter Biden as U.S. attorney. In 2023, Republicans asked Garland to appoint a special counsel, some specifically demanding Weiss, a Republican appointed to his role by President Donald Trump. Garland ultimately appointed Weiss, giving him additional authority. However, congressional Republicans then expressed criticism, some stating Weiss was untrustworthy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_C._Weiss
6 years of investigation and all they could find was that Hunter did drugs and owned a gun. I am sure if we drug tested congress, we could prosecute a bunch of congressmen for the same crime. Maybe thats why supreme court is looking at the constitutionality of the law and its all been ruled unconstitutional in one of the courts districts but hey lets prosecute Hunter Biden for it.
That was not all of Hunter's legal problems - he had serious tax evasion charges[1], along with other Biden family members (all of which were pardoned, unprecedentedly by President Biden).
Trying to minimize Hunter's significant legal problems to "he did [many hard, highly regulated] drugs and [illegally] owned a gun [which was thrown into a dumpster]" is disingenuous and factually incorrect.
Hunter's (and other Biden family member's) legal issues were so plainly severe, with a near-guarantee of prison time, President Biden was forced to issue an unprecedented, unconditional pardon for "offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024." A decade-long period during-which any crimes Hunter committed were erased and forgiven.
Nobody is above the law? This was Biden's own DoJ.
Six years of investigation and all they could find is that he put false information on a government form and paid his taxes late. Six years. Mueller investigation was only two years and how many charges did he find? Jack Smith investigation was one year before he has charged people with dozens of charges. This prosecutor had six years and couldn't dig up anything. Either hunter biden is the smart person in world that was so smart that he left no evidence of crimes or it was partisan witch hunt.
Also if the gun charges were so serious, why aren't we prosecuting Joe Rogan, its literally a slam dunk case. He smokes pot(a schedule 1 drug) on his podcasts and brags about his concealed weapons permit. You don't even need to find witnesses, just show the jury of him smoking pot and a copy of his federal form. Or we could just cross reference the ATF background database with states' Medical Marijuana Registries. Could prosecute tens of millions of people including Joe Rogan.
It protected one individual - there have been a rash of politically motivated moves by the justice department that have targeted plenty of others. I can understand the pardon but the fact that so many other people were left out to dry just reinforces our multi-tiered justice system.
That's why it was not just one individual -- he also pardoned Fauci, members of Congress who served on the J6 investigations, and Gen. Milley for the same reason.
It's clear that he was correct that Trump was going to target his political enemies, but it sounds like he can't win here -- if he pardons everyone including Comey, people would say he's abusing the power by pardoning everyone. If he only pardons a few then he's accused of leaving others "high and dry."
Yeah, that's a very fair point. The persecution of Fauci and anyone associated with bringing the charges against Trump would've also been very predictable targets for pardons.
Just as a judge should not be ruling on a case where the defendant is throwing suitcases full of money at him, a judge should also not be ruling on a case where the defendant is his own son. Both are inappropriate uses of a power intended for the application of mercy and the correction of faults in the justice system. Both are the sorts of things that should lead to recusal.
Biden's use is far more forgivable, as it's a given that his son was being prosecuted politically to punish Biden (though certainly he was guilty) and would likely have been prosecuted more under Trump, like Comey is being prosecuted today. And certainly "saving your children" is a far more forgivable sin than naked bribery, but being better than Trump is a low bar, but it's still not okay to excuse criminals from punishment because they have an important family member.
How is pardoning people like Fauci, or even Hunter, that Trump was clearly going to target as part of an "enemies" list, more "self-serving" than literally pardoning anyone that makes you/give you millions of dollars?
(Changpenh Zhao - made him billions; Trevor Milton - donated $1.8 million; Walczak - his mom donated millions)
You don't have to prove it to me that Trump is a lot more self-serving than Biden. This should be obvious to anyone with half a brain.
That said, this shouldn't be a competition of who is "more self-serving". Just because your neighbour murdered two people, doesn't mean that you get to murder one.
It would be weird if he didn't? He pardoned his entire family, as Trump made it clear he was aiming to harass Biden's entire family for revenge. And the way he's been acting this presidency has only confirmed that's not beneath him.
The decision is a lot more respectable than "this guy gave me a bribe." They are worlds apart. And some may be theoretically willing to roll the dice on that for their family, but it reads naive.
It's not binary. I can not respect both decisions. Just because I don't respect Trump does not mean I must respect Biden's decision or vice versa. Current POTUS is absolutely vile. The previous guy was put in a position and a decision was made that I did not agree with, but over all, no he wasn't using the federal money to directly line his pocket as compensation for being investigated for things he actually did.
So if you were the outgoing president, and the incoming president said out loud in front of the nation he was going to abuse his power to jail your family members out of spite, you would just let that happen on principle?
Again, the threats were not levied just at family members, but only family members received the pardon. So let's not get all sanctimonious on this issue. If he was doing this as anything other than self preservation of his family we could talk, but actions speak louder than words and he chose family over principles.
> only family members received the pardon.... If he was doing this as anything other than self preservation of his family we could talk
Seems like you should do some more research about this before forming such strong opinions, because you are not correct -- Biden preemptively pardoned more than just his family. He pardoned Fauci and Miley after Trump accused them of treason; as well as some members of the J6 committee like Liz Cheney (Trump retweeted a post that claimed Cheney was guilty of treason and should face a military tribunal).
I still think you should answer my question though, because it establishes a baseline for acceptability. I believe that you personally would pardon your own family against such threats because I believe most decent people would. So if you're willing to pardon your own family, then there's a conversation to be had about why you would need to, and whether that protection should be extended, for the good of the nation, to other people not related to you.
The problem we see right now with the pardon power was predicted by the founders:
"The President of the United States has the unrestrained power of granting pardons for treason; he may pardon crimes which were advised by himself. It may happen, at some future day that he will establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic... If he has the power of granting pardons before indictment, or conviction, may he not stop inquiry and prevent detection?" - George Mason
And boy was he right! We are at that future day! So they saw this coming yet decided to include it anyway. Why?
Hamilton argued:
"In seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments when a well-timed offer of pardon to insurgents... may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth."
"Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed."
and
"Without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel."
They recognized the system might need a release valve, or would make mistakes, and they included the pardon power to correct them. They made it broad and "unfettered" as Hamilton put it because they expected the person who would exercise the power would be "prudent".
And in doing so they ensured that the pardon power reflects the soul of this nation. We get the government we vote for, and the pardon power is used in a way that we the voters tolerate.
The problem isn't the pardon power is broad, it's that we as an electorate are so willing to elect someone who is comfortable abusing those broad powers and other authority for his personal gain.
I will close by just noting that both of the abuses of the pardon power we are talking about were precipitated by Trump. Biden wouldn't have pardoned any of the people you're mad about if Trump hadn't first promised to abuse his power to persecute them. Biden had the good judgement and foresight to take Trump seriously, because he turned out to be 100% right.
I think the point is, Biden said he pardoned his son to prevent political persecution of him by Trump. Biden's fears have been borne out - the Trump administrationg is persecuting Trump's enemies. Does that change your opinion of Biden's pardon?
It wasn't only family members. Biden granted clemency or pardons to over 4200 people. Notably for the same blanket pardon from 2014 to 2025 for family members, includes Dr. Anthony Fauci, and General Mark Milley.
And all of the members of Congress on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack for anything having to do with their role on that committee.
Schiff was on that committee. He said the pardon was unnecessary and unwise.
At that Biden was the only president who had used DOJ to persecute his predecessor. So basically he started this shit, and when it turned out the other guy won the election, he pardoned his obviously guilty son, and other obviously guilty party members.
You say persecute yet those without an agenda say investigate. It was not persecution to look into the events of January 6. Conflating the investigation as persecution is not a very honest take on the events.
I'm talking about the NY real estate bs. It was bs, everybody does it, including the prosecutor Letitia James, there were no victims, it was a selective enforcement of a law, the statute of limitations had expired and the prosecutor ran on the promise that she will find something to get Trump.
Biden did not order his DOJ to prosecute anyone. Unlike Trump with Pam Bondi, Biden did not personally direct Merrick Garland, who promised to run the DOJ independently and did -- to the point Garland even prosecuted the President's own son.
The Trump prosecutions were not only warranted, they were insisted by Republicans; the Republican Senators explicitly declined to convict Trump in his second impeachment because they anticipated he would be prosecuted in a court of law for January 6. From Republican Leader Mitch McConnell when he explained his rationale during the 2nd impeachment trial:
“Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty,” added McConnell. “Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”
“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one,” he said.
By labeling him as "practically and morally responsible" and then refusing to vote to impeach, explicitly citing our criminal justice system as the appropriate venue for recourse, Mitch McConnell essentially demanded that Biden's DOJ prosecute him for J6.
In refusing to convict Trump on J6, McConnell set the precedent that it is improper to impeach a President if he commits crimes between the Election and the Inauguration as Trump did. According to McConnell, accountability lies in the Courts. If it's true that the incoming administration also cannot prosecute those crimes, then POTUS is essentially immune from any and all accountability under the Constitution, which cannot be the case; POTUS would be able to commit or attempt to commit any crimes he wants between Nov and January 20 at the end of his term, up to and including high crimes like insurrection against the government.
Republicans shirked their Article I duty by refusing to impeach a man they publicly blamed for provoking events which led to the deaths of multiple people. Specifically it was Republican Senators who punted it to the Biden DOJ, which made them Constitutionally bound to prosecute.
I'm talking about the NY real estate bs. It was bs, everybody does it, including the prosecutor Letitia James, there were no victims, it was a selective enforcement of a law, the statute of limitations had expired and the prosecutor ran on the promise that she will find something to get Trump.
That case was tried and adjudicated before a court of law, and Trump was convicted on the merits. Trump had the opportunity to argue that the prosecution was selective, vindictive, or otherwise unjust, and his arguments failed.
Obviously he's upset by this outcome, but even if you agree with him, his response has been to burn down the rule of law and the entire concept of justice. Even if you feel he was wronged by James, weaponizing the DOJ against James is not justified by "She started it".
I'm talking about the NY real estate bs. It was bs, everybody does it, including the prosecutor Letitia James, there were no victims, it was a selective enforcement of a law, the statute of limitations had expired and the prosecutor ran on the promise that she will find something to get Trump.
I'm glad he pardoned CZ. The previous administration + SEC are responsible for this mess by not passing reasonable laws. Coinbase fared much better fighting them all the way.
Equivalence may be a strong word, but pardoning your kids is classical Borgia shit straight out of the worst times of Italian Renaissance, and most people would condemn it if it was done by leader of some Central American Ruritania.
Of course, once it is done by a president representing the party you (generic you) feel affiliated with, the double standards inevitably kick in.
> Of course, once it is done by a president representing the party you (generic you) feel affiliated with, the double standards inevitably kick in.
Less that, more we're all aware of what Trump campaigned on and what he promised to do to Biden's entire family. And we're disheartened that there's cultists (not you) trying to convince us that we should let our families suffer if dear leader demands it.
I don't know these people, I don't have a strong feeling if any of them go to jail for something they did, because I'm not in a personality cult. But I care a lot more if people are going to jail just because a more corrupt person got the keys to everything. Turns out, those fears were valid, and I'm increasingly alarmed that there's still so much vitriol towards Biden pardoning a checks notes gun charge, than there is for the blatantly corrupt shit we see every day.
If your family is threatened by the incoming president, your only reasonable course of action is to move them all abroad to some safe country.
A paper you signed is insufficient protection from truly Erdoganesque leaders who are about to gain an imperial presidency. It is just bad politics from all perspectives: inefficient in its original purpose and controversial at the same time.
Looking at how this administration is now using the DoJ to hunt even people like Comey and Bolton whose crime was being a non-Trump-aligned Republican…
It’s probably good that Biden took away this particular show trial option from them.
It’s worth clarifying that the investigation into Bolton started in 2022 during Biden’s term. Hard(er) to say whether the ultimately issued indictment was politically motivated, but we need to keep an eye towards accuracy on these topics.
I was against the Biden pardons at the time but in hindsight with the current administration pushing poorly done prosecutions for political purposes I have changed my mind on them. Trump will say his pardons are similar but looking at the facts I don't find them comparable (I'm still livid that he pardoned Blagojevich, who was literally caught on tape talking about selling a US Senate seat).
No. Almost everybody hated it out of context, but in context many understood that one man was about to obtain unprecedented power over all three branches of government and use it to vindictively pursue personal vendettas. These people were correct, this then happened.
Personally, I’m reminded of how every dysfunctional country’s deposed regimes flee or are killed. We sheltered Americans find it easy to forget that peaceful transfer of power is an accomplishment of lawful society, and as rule of law weakens we have only more chaotic, ignominious, and probably eventually violent transitions to look forward to.
Reaction to the Biden pardon is a pretty huge thing to be completely unaware of. You should reevaluate whether you’re in a media bubble.
He didn't just pardon his family members and issue questionable preemptive pardons, he also issued the most pardons of any president ever, and not by a small margin, but by a factor of 20 compared to Trump up to now, in a single term, including pardons for violent criminals and yes, white-collar fraudsters as well. They didn't get much publicity because most of them were committed at the tail end of his term while the media were focused on the election and on the transition of power, because of double standards, and because the actors were low-profile. It really shouldn't be controversial to point out that the abuse of presidential power didn't start nor end with Trump. He most certainly wouldn't have gotten re-elected if that were the case.
Maybe my source was outdated, at least it should be accurate when comparing first terms. Quite the editorial spin on this Wikipedia article, it proves my point about double standards. I'd share some articles listing some murderers and embezzlers pardoned by Biden, but I don't like linking to politically biased sources regardless of their substance since it usually ends up with people nitpicking about the source. It's very easy to find evidence that these weren't 4,000 pardons for innocent marijuana users on Google anyway.
Do you have a complete list because thats literally what trump is doing. In no way shape or form is any past president comparable to the depravity and recklessness of trump its not even close. If you say its close you are so misinformed or ignorant or willfully evil. Seriously crypto scams, open bribery from kushner and the saudis, the Qatar jet, the gold card visas for the cartel family... the list of insane actions goes on and on and its so depressing to see anyone fall for it or not be seething in rage because this country will not make it if this family and the people driving project 2025 are not brought to justice
Along with various other people to try to protect them from malicious political prosecution. Much like how Comey, Bolton, and a variety of current and former government officials are now being prosecuted on questionable charges.
Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current administration abusing the Justice Department to go after them. Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others.
And from what we've seen, he was right to do so. Although, they've been angling to declare his pardons void so they can go after whoever they wish.
By considering the facts of the matter, sure it's as you said. But if you ignore every detail then it does look like everyone is exactly as bad as each other and it's impossible to say anything is good or bad.
> Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current administration abusing the Justice Department to go after them. Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others.
Are pre-emptive pardons a common thing for American presidents to do?
> Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current administration abusing the Justice Department to go after them
Ha ha. They (democrats overall) need to look inwards for that.
> Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others.
Fauci screwed up our country so bad, it aint even funny. The fact that he needed a PRE-EMPTIVE (i.e. he wasn't even accused of anything at the time) pardon says it all. And the fact that Biden gave it to him, says everything there is to say about Biden.
> And from what we've seen, he was right to do so.
Not even close.
> Although, they've been angling to declare his pardons void so they can go after whoever they wish.
They should.
- Look at what Biden did to the southern border. And look at it now.
- Look at almost any "democrat" run major city. Any. Then look at the crime rates and cost of living.
- And the recent farce that was this "No Kings" crap...
Trump isn't perfect. Far from it. He's got major flaws, both in character and execution. However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country". As a whole.
> However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country".
His foreign policy means even the EU is now looking inward more because we simply don't trust you guys anymore. Thanks, we were depending on you guys too much anyway! It will take a while before we're weened off of you for sure, but your global influence will shrink tremendously thanks to your current president's untrustwortiness.
In dutch we have a saying which is roughly translated as "Trust comes on foot, and leaves by horse"
Electricity prices are up everywhere. We're still way lower than many many places. There's many parts of the US (take a wild guess where all the data centers are going...) where electric rates are <$.10/kwh.
Now compare that to...
Yes, solar and wind projects are being canceled, and yes, there may be an element of ideology involved, but the reality also is that the math aint working.
If the math worked, Europe's energy prices wouldn't be where they are now, given the commitment they've made to renewables. I'd much rather see a national focus on nuclear, which is as clean as any other form of energy, and to a degree that is happening now.
The math is clear - solar + batteries is the cheapest source of electricity. China isn't generating 80% of all new electricity with solar because they want to be green above all else.
> Europe's energy prices wouldn't be where they are now, given the commitment they've made to renewables
Again a tired old lie. Europe is a big place, just like the US. Some countries have high prices and some countries don't.
I agree it has to put the people first, just like China is doing. And if you want to get on the climate change soapbox, it's too late. The US produces more global warming emissions per capita than any other country, and China's not going to catch up.
The US has been a top, if not the top, producer and exporter of oil for some time. Trump's not particularly involved in that above and beyond using it as a campaign slogan.
The problem is that the rest of the world is very actively moving on, led by China. A great many oil importing countries reduced their imports last year. China deploys more solar in 6 months than the US has deployed ever and is distributing this technology to the rest of the world far cheaper than they can bring it here. The US had a program to get 1000 new auto chargers installed. China installed 100,000. People are simply unaware of the sheer scale of the Chinese juggernaut. They think that since we're ahead now (questionable) and we're going 95 MPH, we'll always be ahead. They don't realize that China is going 250 and we're getting passed.
Trump would do well for the country to plan ahead JUST A LITTLE BIT.
But as Bolton said, it's unclear if Trump knows the difference between his personal interest and the national interest, or if he's even aware there is a national interest.
Easy: what passes for diplomacy has been so awful that nobody wants to buy weapons from us anymore, nor do they value our treaty commitments. Oh the irony of proposing to meet in Budapest.
>Trump isn't perfect. Far from it. He's got major flaws, both in character and execution. However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country". As a whole.
They're usually not that bad for his billionaire grifter buddies, I'll give you that.
I would say normalizing armed law enforcement wearing masks and refusing to provide any ID is utterly bad for the COUNTRY.
Or maybe it's only bad for the people who get assaulted or shot by them and have no way of recourse. Let's hope that's not you, eh?
Personally directing the Attorney General to prosecute his political enemies and then firing prosecutors until he finds one who will agree to do it. Basically what Nixon was to be impeached for now happening on a weekly basis.
He posted on Truth Social explicitly directing Pam Bondi to prosecute Bolton, James, and Comey. Then the DOJ charged them with crimes.
In the James case, Kristin Bird and Elizabeth Yusi (prosecutors in EDVA) were both fired for refusing to bring charges, only to be replaced by Trump's personal attorney Lindsey Halligan (who is not even a prosecutor).
In the Comey case, again they fired Erik Siebert, also from EDVA, because he wouldn't prosecute. They put Trump's personal attorney on instead and she immediately gave the prosecution a greenlight against a tight statute of limitations deadline.
Just watch: today there was a report that prosecutors in Maryland are hesitant to bring charges against Adam Schiff. My guess is whoever is gumming up the works there will be fired and replaced by another Halligan.
This is why it is pointless to reply to people like you.
You badger and badger and badger. You want examples, you want evidence. You want, you want, and you want. Never do you provide evidence. Never do you provide examples. And if you do provide something you claim to be an example, it's usually some vague declaration that really isn't true. But if someone pushes back, it's on them to "prove you wrong".
And the minute someone points out the actual facts of a situation in a way you are incapable of denying or shouting down, you run to your echo chambers to look for the talking points.
Why?
Why carry water for this administration? Their policies are going to be bad for you as well.
You may not notice it yet, but he has ruined the reputation of your country. People consider it insane to travel there now for vacations. We are actively avoiding American garbage. We are migrating away from American clouds.
He is focussed on short term bullshit while what matters on the world stage is soft power. America was considered trustworthy, the defacto leader of the world.
Now you're just a bully, an impotent one at that. You are no longer taken seriously.
You will notice the effects eventually, possibly after Trump is already rotting in his grave.
Trump is definitely the most egregious by a very wide margin, but the pardon power has been abused by every President in my lifetime. It's a truly insane feature of our constitution that needs to be changed.
Well, no, you can clearly be more banana republic than that:
* Using the justice system to corruptly punish the opposition and prevent them from competing in elections,
* Using the security/military/law enforcement establishment to simply kill the opposition,
* Using the regulatory bureaucracy, and/or the security/military/law enforcement establish, to coerce media into friendly, or at least out of critical, coverage,
* Using the regulatory bureaucracy, and/or the security/military/law enforcement establish to reward people providing personal material benefit to the leader, or to punish those not doing so,
* Using the pardon power to assure that crimes committed in the course of doing any of the preceding items are unprosecutable
Pardoning family members, by itself (provided that the standards applied are different than those that would be applied to non-family members), is certainly corrupt as a form of nepotism, but hardly the outer limit of banana republic behavior.
> IMO a country's leader pardoning his own family members is about as banana republic as it gets.
That is until you see what's currently happening, the President personally directing the DOJ to arrest his political enemies, of which Biden and his family are considered to be primary antagonists (remember they labelled them the "Biden crime family" and chanted "lock them up"). That is the most banana republic as it gets, so how is preemptively defending against that behavior out of bounds?
But it suffices to say Biden did not direct any prosecutions at all.
> kept saying he is a Nazi so people would try to shoot him.
These are very different things, you'll need to make a better argument to conflate them. The actions Trump took to direct his DOJ to prosecute is political enemies is a direct action that violates the presumed and intended independence of the DOJ.
You equate those direct actions with something neither Biden nor any Congressional Democrat I know of actually did. Biden never called Trump a Nazi, and never tried to get him killed. In fact Biden increased protection on Trump after there was an attempt on his life.
Do you have any quote I'm unaware of? I do recall that the current Vice President JD Vance has called Trump a Nazi, so apparently that's not really such a concern.
Trump has been accurately labelled a "fascist" by elected Democrats. I don't think that's any different from Trump calling Democrats "communists". He's also called them "fascists" as well.
The prosecution of Hunter for being a user of controlled substances while in possession or acquiring a weapon was pretty clear cut IMO and been used against many more than Hunter as an easy way to put away drug users for a long time. He likely was pardoned in part because Hunter had the resources to actually get that law overturned, signaled intent to do so, and the establishment can't compromise their precious drug laws being found unconstitutional.
Trump is miles ahead of other administrations in abusing it but as far back as my political awareness reaches (the Clinton admin) there have been clear awful examples like Marc Rich[1]. I certainly have a political lean but there are some really indefensible pardons on each side.
Are you equating Trump's pardons and commutations to Bidens? For review, Biden's were largely for non-violent drug offenders and preemptive pardons for people like Anthony Fauci and federal employees prosecuting Jan 6 defendants and the like.
Save for his pardon of his son Hunter (who's own prosecution was littered with politics), Biden's were largely pedestrian.
Yes actually. As far as I'm aware even the President can't pardon crimes someone may commit in the future. Can you point out the ones where he did that?
The Hunter Biden pardon was necessary because it was clear that despite his admission of guilt, he was not going to receive a fair punishment. The Republican party leadership was very open in expressing their intentions for him, and had _already_ circumvented the judicial system to give him cruel and unusual punishment.
Would be nice if Trump only pardoned people who the incoming administration explicitly said they would target, after years of constant harassment and misinformation.
I think I would support those pardons even though I think Trump and his family and his cronies are acting the way really bad people act.
Taking the above scenario as license to sell pardons for person gain is such a stretch it looks like bad faith to me.
IDK, I think Carter's pardon of draft dodgers was a pretty good use of the pardon power.
The problem seems to be that we have unjust laws and punishments. We should have some way to apply mercy in that case. For example, I (hope to) see a future where people jailed for MJ related crimes get a mass pardon.
Chelsea Manning. Prosecuting her and other whistleblowers instead of the officials they blew the whistle on was a mockery of justice. Though that wasn't the stated reason for the commutation, it was long overdue.
I mean there are lots of people arrested on effectively political charges, and it's good to be able to reflect on it years later and get them out of jail. I'm not convinced Changpeng Zhao's charges would have ever been brought against him if the Biden admin didn't go so hard against crypto, I'm happy to see him pardoned. Hopefully next Trump can get whistle blowers like John Kiriachou
Why not? A large portion of the punishment is just going through the court system. For a significant amount of time all you can do is stress about your next court date, you can't get work and burn through your savings. In his case he has already paid tens of millions in his money and the company paid billions. He spent four months in jail, and has spent years out of work.
By the time a pardon comes the persons life is usually already in deep distress, and whatever they were working on is likely already over. I don't see why it's such a tragedy to let some people get pardoned who maybe don't deserve it.
That might be true, but CZ is a good candidate for a pardon. Did you know before Gensler went after him at the SEC he asked CZ for a job and was rejected?
I agree it is a good pardon, the past administration + SEC were not laying a foundation of up to date commodity/currency/securities laws, they were enforcing by prosecution. This is not a way to run a country.
No, government is the greatest threat to liberty. If the guy in charge of prosecuting feels the need to not just not prosecute, but actively protect someone from the state, then we really really don’t want (who? his unelected subordinates?) prosecuting people. It’s supposed to be an “err on the side of” failing to prosecute criminals. The whole point is yes… sometimes we want criminals to get away with crime, because it’s better than the alternatives.
What is the alternative? One of them is the public vote for a leader, the state destroys that leader (or his allies, etc) and then what? Do we think the public just says “Oh, well, I guess we didn’t pick the right guy?”
There should be a limit on the number of pardons a president can do during their tenure so that they have to at least think a bit before using it. It is a very powerful tool that actually allows a last resort. But this kind of egregious abuse of it's power means it needs to be kept in check.
Right, the ability to pardon is a diplomatic tool. Sad that it's being used as a get your buddies out of jail free
card or a way to collect donations.
I think at this point whatever policy differences between us are probably secondary to just putting people in power, literally anyone, who aren't so
corrupt it would be called too heavy handed in fiction.
The Indian constitution too gives the President the power to pardon someone convicted. However, the Supreme Court has since clarified that this power is not absolute, and the court can subject it to a judicial review. ( https://compass.rauias.com/current-affairs/pardoning-powers-... ).
Parent poster was considering ways on how to limit abuse of a certain political power, and I thought they may be interested on how other countries handle it. (Not though that I am not sure our indian approach is necessarily right - the Supreme Court of India is considering the Presidential powers of pardon only as a remedy to some judicial injustice / miscarriage. But sometimes there can be a political reason too, to pardon somebody. For example, someone cited the Lincoln example of pardoning the confederates. Legally, that may not be sound (ignoring crimes committed by them) but politically such things may be necessary to heal a society and create politically stability. And in such cases, the judiciary is not the right institution to make a judgement call on whether a political pardon was right or not.)
Sweet child. It was never a full democracy, I'd qualify it as a developing democracy, depending on how much damage this administration does, and when does USA enact the urgent reforms needed to transform into a full-fledged democracy.
Right now it's an oligarchy, capitalism as a political system. Money is a crucial component of campaigns, bribery is rampant, impunity becomes progressively less subtle. It had good PR after WW2 though, but reality hasn't matched the propaganda.
I say it from another eroding democracy, it seems like true democracies are incompatible with populous countries.
How would that help? They'll reserve the pardons only for corruption and leave the regular folks, eg with fake convictions , without justice. You're not checking any power without addressing the cause
There is, and the Constitution says the limit is impeachment and removal from office by Congress. That won't happen unless we fix how we talk about the ones responsible, to wit:
The Republican Party pardoned these criminals.
The Republican Party is snatching Americans off the streets.
The Republican Party is using the military to murder people on boats.
The Republican Party is demolishing down the White House. The Republican Party is deporting people over free speech.
The Republican Party has imposed the biggest tax increase in living memory with tariffs/import-taxes.
The Republican Party is going pay itself your tax dollars in "lawsuit settlements".
There were 4 years of his first term and now 10 months of... all this. Today there is zero possibility of an oversight or mistake, any legislator who won't impeach and convict is choosing to support these things.
Nothing will improve while those legislators believe the blame will sail past them and stick solely to Trump.
I don’t think the majority of voting Americans have problems with any of those acts though. Think Joe you pass in Walmart cares about what happens to the White House ballroom?
They were fed "waste fraud and abuse" in the beginning of the year. and suddenly it happens in broad daylight and people shrug?
At this point it's just brainwashing. Some people's principals are clearly less about their own conviction and treating all this like a sports team. Whoever team "wins", even if the stadium burns down around them.
Another (more charitable?) explanation is they just never make the connection:
> It’s easy to find authoritarians endorsing inconsistent ideas. Just present slogans
and appeals to homey values, and then present slogans and bromides that invoke
opposite values. The yea-saying authoritarian follower is likely to agree with all of
them. Thus I asked both students and their parents to respond to, “When it comes to
love, men and women with opposite points of view are attracted to each other.” Soon
afterwards, in the same booklet, I pitched “Birds of a feather flock together when it
comes to love.” High [Right-Wing Authoritarian scorers] typically agreed with both statements, even though they responded to the two items within a minute of each other.
The ironic part is, we became the wall. Many immigrants stayed in Mexico because they couldn't cross to USA. Trump invited our wimpy president to a secret meeting, afterwards Mexico silently made the change of attitude from country of passage to destination.
Yeah: If someone donates money to the government for any purpose, that becomes government funds, and the Constitution says Congress and only Congress has the authority to decide where those go. Not the President.
So either Trump is doing this officially as a President, but with funding that is illegal/unconstitutional...
... Or the funding is legal, but Trump is doing it as a private citizen, which is a federal crime. [0]
The Supreme Court will jiggle the constitution and some forgotten legal precedent from the magna carta will fall out and 5-4 this is actually not a problem at all if you think about it.
Doesn't matter if a trillion dollars was shat by God himself out of a plane into the Treasury. They failed to get historic district planning permission, they failed to save historic materials and objects, and lied about the plan. The now revealed plan is an gaudy, boorish, tasteless, and tacky abomination because that is the essence Trump.
> Think Joe you pass in Walmart cares about what happens to the White House ballroom?
Joe in Walmart thinks what Facebook memes and Fox News tell him to think. The same subversive forces that support the administration's lawlessness control the media diet of a plurality of Americans.
If you want Americans to care about wants going on, you have to inform them about it first.
The ballroom is scheduled be ready in January 2029 assuming no delays. But by that time Trump will be at the end of his term. So is he doing this for future presidents (would be very much unlike him) or is he planning to stick around after Jan 2029?
It is one thing for Bannon to say it. It is another thing for a prominent sitting senator to say it [1]. (That would be senator Lindsey Graham.) I wish John McCain was still around... he would have had the courage to stand up and talk sense into these people.
> I wish John McCain was still around... he would have had the courage to stand up and talk sense into these people.
At one point I would have agreed, but then in 2017, McCain made his "We will regret what we are about to do" speech before the R's removed the filibuster requirement for the Gorsuch confirmation. And as an Arizona voter, I switched my registration from Independent to Democrat.
> “I fear that someday we will regret what we are about to do. In fact, I am confident we will,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “It is imperative we have a functioning Senate where the rights of the minority are protected regardless of which party is in power at the time.”
>
> Nonetheless, McCain voted with McConnell on the rules change, saying he felt he had no choice.
technically, he is currently scheduled to be president for the entirety of 2028 because the election is in November 2028 and the presidential term ends on January 20, 2029.
The bro grifters are going to bro grift because it gets them views and merch sales. Trump won't live that long: age, appearance, bad health habits, and obesity... and talk about not getting into heaven and display of extra NGAF by pardoning real pieces of work in a fury like he's already on his way out of office. By July 2026, Dear Orange Leader will most likely be pushing up daisies. Poor health and impaired decision-making skills are what are signaled.
I'd say Joe Biden showed us a nice illustration of how there's limits to what doctors can do, even if you're the world's most powerful man and there's billions at stake keeping you alive and functional.
The fact they have to host large dignitary parties on tents on the lawn is a huge security issue in these days of fiber optic drones.
People are complaining because Trump is doing it. Nobody would care - hell, the media would probably excitedly talking about the plans - if it were anyone else.
> Nobody would care - hell, the media would probably excitedly talking about the plans - if it were anyone else.
Bull! People would complain for any President who:
1. Lied to everyone promising it "wouldn't interfere with the current building." [0]
2. Broke federal laws which have always governed changes to these public properties and landmarks.
3. Unconstitutionally spent funds Congress did not approve-of, which applies regardless of whether those funds came in as taxes or as donations.
Feel free to detail what other President did the same actions and nobody cared. Trump's bad reputation comes from his bad actions like these, not the other way around.
Let's give the benefit of the doubt to the person who blatantly lies, and repeatedly has shown contempt for the law. We gotta be fair even if he and their cohorts aren't, right?
> You think they're too dumb to understand the difference between "tearing down" and "renovating"?
Are you? You think the East Wing is being "renovated"?
Renovation is renewal, repair, restoring function and safety.
What's happening instead? Knocking the safe and functional East Wing flat (walls, roof, both floors, 30+ internal rooms) and replacing it with a completely new structure with new foundations and a different purpose... and with a new footprint larger than the entire White House of 2024!
Nowhere even remotely close to the same thing. Might as well brag that you "repaired" your sedan by selling it and buying a new truck.
You keep using that word, but it doesn't mean what you want it to.
Renovation is as your interlocutor says, a restoration. Remodeling is what is happening there, tearing apart something and putting something new in its place. It's a more drastic and expensive work.
Fine, remodeling. The specific word is not finally the point. Incessant semantic pedantry doesn't change the fact that Trump is not destroying the White House.
Most people understand that any sort of "remodeling" or "renovation" often requires some demolition first.
And I get your point, but that is a crucial distinction when you're talking about historical buildings. If said ballroom was simply an extension, no one would complain about the placement.
I think that's the wrong way to view the problem. Think about it this way: before Nixon resigned his approval rating was still 23%.
You can get a quarter of the country to say yes or not care for any given question no matter how obviously dangerous or stupid. But having a 25% approval rating would be very, very bad.
- Bill Clinton: 459
- George W. Bush: 200
- Barack Obama: 1,927
- Donald Trump (first term): 237
- Joe Biden: 4,245
- Donald Trump (second term): 1,600
Yes? Our boy in the big top hat pardoned the entire Confederacy—he's Pardons—Georg. Nobody would be dumb enough to use number of pardons to argue Lincoln was corrupt or abusing power.
4000 of Biden's pardons were mass pardons. 1500 of Trump's second term pardons are also a mass pardon of Jan 6, a decision I completely agree
with. I would have pardoned them too because people were losing their minds over it to the point of not being able
to be productive anymore. Honestly I feel the same way about the stupid laptop thing, you all clearly can't be normal about it so I'm ending it.
And we're ok with murdering dozens of people that might maybe have some kind of drugs on them? In peacetime? Without evidence? Outside of our own territory/water?
We're lucky Venezuela hasn't attacked us back yet.
And even if they were smuggling drugs, what if there were children on board? Do they deserve to die because of the crimes of their parents? What if they kidnapped someone and forced them to pilot the boat? Does that person deserve to die?
Imagine the US instead pulling the ship over and shooting every person, regardless of age or guilt, in the head—and then leaving. This is no different.
"Today's defensive action we have taken demonstrates the first step to discourage these unmarked foreign terrorist attacks against our civilians. It is our duty to protect our people, which we will continue to do against the rising numbers of offensive boats assaulting us."
I imagine sooner or later, they will stop our black ops boats from shooting people.
Dictators, like Maduro (and wannabe dictators), are notoriously coward. They won't risk their life against an enemy that will certainly bomb them from afar, but they would happily risk their whole country if that kept them safe.
Hell, even Trump wouldn't be that bold if he didn't know Venezuela has no will, or means, of putting him at risk.
Your doubt in US intelligence and military capability shows. Venezuela attacking US assets would result in swift, almost instantaneous elimination of the threat.
The speed boats hauling ass in international waters are known smugglers on known routes using customized craft only drug smugglers use.
Policy of vaporizing these boats with weapons is both a) fairly effortless target practice for our military and b) puts major financial strain on that drug cartel operation.
Yes, I doubt. The US intelligence has invented intelligence plenty of times in the past, and I absolutely do not trust that particular shadow branch of ICE.
Even if what they say is true, destroying boats with people on them without proof is wild.
The intel is correct, as fentanyl is currently considered an extreme top priority threat to eliminate by the government (due to this being on ongoing operation, information given will be limited.) If this were some false flag or CIA op they'd just stage the boats getting blown up rather than destroy random innocent boaters. There's enough chain of command between the missile and the brass that this action would be executed correctly and with precision.
If one leaves all integrity and morals the president of the richest country in the world can really amass a ton of wealth. I actually suspect that the shares the “US” government s getting from intel and other companies actually goes to trump somehow. Everything is up for sale with this administration. Just sad, the high moral ground the country occupied is just wiped out and it’s now just like any other corrupt Asian country
> and it’s now just like any other corrupt Asian country
Seems like we are getting the worst aspects of countries like China (anti-democratic 1 party rule, state directed oligarchy, targeting of ethnic minority groups) with none of the best aspects of China: strong investment in education, research, and modern infrastructure like high speed trains and zero carbon electricity production.
Maybe mimicking authoritarianism isn't the answer to our problems.
It's bizarre to me, an Australian, how the pardon power is used in the US. Our federal, state and territory executive governments all have a pardon power, inherited from English law, that is, formally, unlimited (like the US federally and indeed it's less restrictive than many US states for state crimes).
It is a power used very sparingly, even though legally it is unlimited - the state of New South Wales is, as far as I know, the only one which publishes details about uses of the pardon power; in an average year there are 0 successful pardon/commutation applicants, and it's an exceptionally merciful year if they grant 2 or more. Other states and the federal government may or may not be a bit more generous, but we're talking very small numbers. Most pardons are for reasons of unsafe convictions where for whatever reason no remaining avenues of appeal are available (rare, these days, because each state has introduced laws to enable post-conviction reviews).
Historically, particularly in the 19th century convict era, the pardon power was much more important, and was indeed abused for political reasons on a number of occasions, but it seems that for the most part it quietly exists in the background and only gets significant public attention once every blue moon for a high-profile murder case or similar.
What explains the difference? Is it the requirement for sign-off by the King's viceroys that prevents abuse? Collective Cabinet governance that is accountable to Parliament? Maybe our political culture means politicians' friends tend to end up in prison less often and thus there's less opportunity for the abuse of pardons specifically? It's not particularly clear to me - if anyone's got some good comparative studies send me links!
As an Australian? Dude, your country is the most authoritarian of the current English speaking "western" countries.
The parliamentary countries like Australia just have made it so that they forever encroach in civil liberties and hide it all in bureocracy and pretend things work as intended and that democracy is working but when it was covid time they utterly crashed dissent. Same with most cases of effective opposition to power. The first in line to try and control the internet, speech and more from its citizens who don't even notice it that much because it's so ingrained in the culture of self censorship.
Having said that, yes, the pardon powers are ridiculous and they're being used more and more in ridiculous ways like this one from trump or the "pardon for everything just in case, for future and past" from Biden.
Most corrupt president in living memory (ever?) pardons convicted corrupt businessman, while directly profiting from said corrupt businessman's industry
Years ago people would have thought you were talking about the DRC, Haiti or Uzbekistan. Today's it's the USA.
I find comment such as yours rather pathetic, for reasons I can't quite put into words. It's like you want to make excuses for Trump but you're not really willing to actually commit to it.
Political corruption was not invented by Trump. We know. But that's really not the point at all.
I don't understand this. Should only Trump be blamed? I think that's stupid. All presidents before him were just as corrupt as him, only Trump doesn't care how people think of him, so he's not very sublte, like the other presidents. In that way I think Trump is actually revealing the corruption.
> All presidents before him were just as corrupt as him
Is that so? Please list the ways in which former presidents have violated the Emolument clause, profited directly from their office (i.e., issuing their own cryptocoin), and increased their family's net worth by billions while in office.
Either put up the facts, or stop with the "whataboutism" nonsense.
It's honestly a shame that comments from people like you will be silently forgotten, when your unending ceaseless discharge of excuses to sweep the rug for the current status quo should be something that you should never be allowed to forget. I guess you have a point though, a flame left unextinguished will only grow and that was the result here. Not too many outcomes remain when you only add more fuel, but there is always another way to solve that problem :)
> Zhao, in November 2023, pleaded guilty in Seattle federal court and agreed to step down as Binance CEO as part of a $4.3 billion settlement by the company with the Department of Justice.
Did he already pay the $4.3 billion? That's a lot of money, even for the federal government.
I understand that the commutation of George Santos means he does not have to pay the court ordered restitution to the people he defrauded.
Puts an even grosser spin on this incineration of the rule of law.
Penalties within plea deals likely have different rules but given a pardon is a higher rung of absolution I am horrified to wonder if he could clawback any personal financial penalties he has paid or even seek compensation.
“Today you pardoned the founder of Binance,” Collins began. “Can you explain why you chose to pardon him, and did it have anything to do with his involvement in your family's —
“Which one, who was that?” Trump asked.
“The founder of Binance,” Collins continued. “He has involvement in your own family’s crypto business.”
“The recent one? I believe we’re talking about the same person, because I do pardon a lot of people,” Trump said. “I don’t know. He was recommended by a lot of people. A lot of people say that — Are you talking about the crypto person? A lot of people say he wasn’t guilty of anything, he served four months in jail, and they say that he wasn’t guilty of anything.”
As Collins attempted to clarify, Trump jumped in, saying, “Well, you don’t know much about crypto — you know nothing about nothing, you fake news!”
Trump then continued answering the question.
“He was somebody, as I was told — I don’t believe I have ever met him — but I’ve been told he had a lot of support. And they said what he did is not even a crime. That he was persecuted by the Biden administration. And so I gave him a pardon at the request of some very good people.”
I agree this isn't a very satisfying answer, but realistically how else do you expect Presidential pardons to go? Trump has pardoned over 1000 people and Joe Biden has pardoned over 4000. Do we expect them to know the intricate details of every single case?
And I mean, wasn't the last Administration effectively Autopen? Yes, the President receives recommendations and tries to make the best judgement on those.
This particular market is too illiquid to mean anything.
Right now, there is only about $500 in liquidity if you wanted to buy in at the 20% ask with a market order. After that the next sell limit order it as 96%.
If your definition of “making money” is turning bitcoins into USD at bitcoins low point, and then paying that back to them in 2 years, alright.
You can have whatever opinion you want about the bankruptcy process, but FTX was most certainly insolvent, due to fraud, and at that point whatever happened after the recovery to make people as whole as possible (which for many was not even close) really shouldn’t get credited to SBF.
Call me crazy, but if my bank tells me that my deposits are in safe assets like treasuries, but then the CEO takes the money to Vegas and puts it all on red, even if the CEO wins that bet, I'm very ok with that CEO going to jail.
Of course, if the bank is upfront that they take customer deposits to Vegas, then its fine.
Or if they took my deposit and commingled it with company funds and bought some illiquid luxury real estate in the Bahamas for their staff to live in totalling $240m. If they’re upfront about that, probably nobody deposits with them.
Not necessarily. I think the intention was to drive up the value of FTX assets by investing in companies and coins that increased said value of the FTX platform. The value of held FTT was dependent on the value of FTX.
Will it work? If I had to bet then I'd say probably not. For any other president this would not even merit any thought beyond "lol" and that alone is worrying.
No chance SBF ever goes out (until he's done with his sentence).
Two huge factors against him:
* Most people don't even know who CZ is, so this is meh-tier. People know SBF and find him repulsive, literally. Whoever puts SBF out of jail will face a massive PR backslash, he's not important enough to be worth that.
* SBF stole from the rich, the only real crime in the US.
Very few times you see someone who is equally hated by: the law, the public and the rich. He's screwed, lol.
SBF/FTX was also a massive donor (using customer money) to Republicans. They routed that money through Ryan Salame, I guess to avoid appearing to be as unprincipled as they actually were.
The common theme to the donations ("payoff" or "bribe" might be more accurate), whether to D or R was to weaken any push for crypto regulations.
I'll bet he's kicking himself now... he made the wrong bet associating himself with Democrats, who let justice take its course despite the donations, when these days Trump will just take a payoff and issue a pardon.
He's already out. Livestreaming his stock trades on X everyday. Probably has less interest in being an officer. He can still short pharma companies freely now.
Regarding your first point - how about George Santos? I suspect Santos was more well known than any of the crypto-scammers, was clearly guilty, was derided by both ends if the political spectrum - yet Trump commuted him.
Commute != pardon. Santos is still convicted and guilty of all of those charges. He just doesn't have to serve the rest of the sentence. I'm not sure if those were felony charges, but if they were and he's in a state that doesn't allow felons to vote...
A pardon makes it all go away. None of the baggage of convictions follow. Finding a job or a place to live is something they can do, as well as voting again.
SBF was/is left (and I suppose mostly signaled rich in that camp), Ulbricht libertarian, but they were caught and therefore had to serve time in jail regardless. That is how our system works. SBF specialized in large scale grifting (like Madoff), Ulbricht in providing an anonymous platform for trafficking. They're competitors of Trump, but given their experience, intelligence, and disadvantage (jail time) if bend loyal they're an asset.
It isn't about any of these people though. Trump is about only one thing: himself (a trade he shares with someone like KJU of North Korea). Specifically, as a narcissist, Trump is all about his image: business and might makes right, no matter the rules. Trump therefore hates the left, truth, honesty, ethics, empowering the weak and minorities, et cetera. Most importantly, he is signaling here: 'if you do business with me, we do the criminal path, and you get caught then I have the power to pardon your sentence.'
Whether Trump is currently a criminal or not, he was and is a convicted felon.
The above is also why I very much suspect Ghislaine Maxwell has dirt on Trump.
That already officially happened a few months ago. In addition to stopping all cryptocurrency fraud investigations, the administration stopped prosecuting white collar crimes under the FCPA:
If you have access to people in positions of government influence, it's a good time to accept bribes from foreigners, especially via cryptocurrency. But if that is you then you probably already know that.
It's clear you're not that familiar with the law if you got a fundamental aspect about it incorrect, so why is this bad on its face? Ending enforcement of laws is not de facto bad.
In this case, FCPA hinders American companies from competing in foreign locales where greasing the local wheels is a requirement for getting things done. Like it or not, this is the world we live in but an argument could be made that dropping enforcement is pragmatic.
Do you similarly disagree with the decision by the executive to end enforcement of weed laws? The DEA could be raiding state dispensaries daily but isn't.
Congress should rescind that law also. It also doesn't mean anything when it's not enforced, and rescinding it has broad popular support.
But as you probably know, practically speaking it's not feasible to enforce every law on the books at all times, so the balance of laws enforced tells you about the priorities of a government. This one sees white collar crime as a feature, not a bug.
> This one sees white collar crime as a feature, not a bug.
What issues do you see with not prosecuting Americans for following local customs? The places where the bribery happens can already jail the US citizens committing the bribery. The US doesn't prosecute Americans for smoking weed in Amsterdam even if it's illegal in the US.
Maximum sentence allotted for small fries and lenience for the bigger conman who share a piece of their own pie to clean the slate. Fair game in Crookville.
> "Since Trump’s election, Binance has also been a key supporter of his family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture, a business that has driven a huge leap in the president’s personal wealth."
So long as most of these states have party primaries, particularly closed party primaries, it doesn't really matter because anyone insufficiently pro-Trump is getting primaried hard.
They still have to face competition in the general though. If Republican voters are disgusted enough, they might vote for a Democrat, but they are more likely to stay home and just not vote. Which could be enough for them to lose their seats.
I was aware of the allegations that Marc Rich's ex wife gave money to Clinton ($450k to the library) is what led Clinton to pardon, but I never really dug into it.
Per wikipedia, Clinton's defense was that it was actually a favor to Israel, given Rich helping to finance their intel services. Maybe everybody else knew this, I didn't.
I'm impressed. Leavitt managed to Blame the Biden administration, effectively asserting that Zhao's crimes were a result of the Biden administration's "war on crypto." Never mind that Zhao was engaged in criminal activity for which he was prosecuted, tried, and found guilty.
Changpeng Zhao pled guilty for violating the Bank Secrecy Act and not complying with anti-money laundering requirements.
That also happened to a lot of big banks over and over again.
Three days ago one of the biggest was found guilty for helping Sudan’s government commit genocide by providing banking services that violated American sanctions [0]. Sounds worst.
Binance is a casino for millennial and gen Z and like casinos is used by criminal to launder money.
Should Changpeng Zhao be pardoned? I don't know, I don't care he is a small fish.
Perhaps folks think that is not a "valid point" here because it is off topic, seeking to distract from the topic of whether this particular guilty person should be punished.
Saying "so and so did it too and nothing happened" may be correct, but doesn't address the topic. If you're saying that, how does it apply to the topic (the Binance founder)?
Are you saying that you're ok with the other people getting away with it, and thus you're ok with this guy also getting away with it via this purchased pardon?
Or are you saying those other people should have been punished, and thus this pardon was wrong to sell?
It’s of course on topic to talk about the bigger picture of whether people in general are charged with these specific types of crimes or should be.
I hate the whole fallacy callout stuff in general. God didn’t create them, half barely work, none work in every situation, and they’re just abused to death by people to shut down conversation in a shallow way.
Controlling the narrative is often the point of using rhetorical fallacies.
Like the intolerance of intolerance there is discretion over what are acceptable intolerances. With whataboutism there is discretion over what are acceptable appeals to hypocrisy.
Whatsboutism is merely saying your appeal to hypocrisy is invalid. Which would hold more weight with me if the side saying it never made appeals to hypocrisy of their own. Otherwise they’re being hypocritical about making appeals to hypocrisy.
On the substance, I hate what Trump has done. I would not take the position that what Trump did is ok because of what Biden did.
An "appeal to hypocrisy" is always invalid because that term is essentially synonymous with whataboutism and 'tu quoque' fallacies
The underlying failure of all of them, and why they are fallacies, is because the guilt of one side of an issue has nothing to do with the hypocrisy of the other. Thus, trying to pivot from the former to the latter is a distraction, rather than a genuine attempt to discuss the topic (which is the former).
> Which would hold more weight with me if the side saying it never made appeals to hypocrisy of their own.
"The side"? Dude, I'm a person, not a side, and you barely know anything about me, much less what I've done and do. The accusations of whataboutism weren't made by nebulous, ethereal concepts, they were made by people.
You can't pick and choose different behaviors of different people and lump them together as if they are the same person, then claim that the differing behaviors indicate some sort of hypocrisy or other conflict. What you're describing is diversity of thought among different people.
Even if you could, it's not even a good discussion, because then others could respond that your meta-criticism is itself hypocritical in the same way that you're responding to criticism by claiming that it is hypocritical. So you keep adding layers until the actual topic (the original criticism) is long forgotten. In fact, that is why whataboutism is used: its users don't want to focus on the original criticism.
Sounds like what I said, a form of narrative control. A charge I made of both appeals to hypocrisy and appeals to whataboutism.
My personal preference would be logical and factual discussions only but I accept that’s not the world we live in.
The deleterious effect of the additional layers is ameliorated by the nesting of information on HN, you don’t have to keep digging if you don’t want to.
> Sounds like what I said, a form of narrative control.
Yes, whataboutism is both a rhetological fallacy and a form of "narrative control".
> A charge I made of both appeals to hypocrisy and appeals to whataboutism.
"Appeal to whataboutism" isn't a thing. It's just called "whataboutism", and since whataboutism and "appeal to hypocrisy" (seems synonymous with whataboutism) are both fallacies, pointing them out is just called "pointing out fallacies". Fallacies don't need any 'appeals' or arguments made against them, because they are already fallacious, that's why we call them fallacies.
And yes, pointing out fallacious arguments could be called "narrative control", too ;) So could be saying anything! After all, anyone saying anything is trying to "control the narrative" to include that thing. What a silly, needlessly conspiratorial neologism for a uselessly vague concept!
The discretion of the validity of pointing out hypocrisy is the core of the issue. I would 100% agree with you if all discussions are purely logical, but they’re not, so I don’t.
The introduction of whataboutism into the lexicon was to counter Russian appeals to hypocrisy. This was linked to Trump in an effort to discredit both. Those of us who have long memories do remember a time when pointing out the hypocrisy of the West was considered a valid thing to do. See the work of Noam Chomsky as an example.
A Tu Quoque fallacy, or as you put it, "pointing out hypocrisy", is a fallacy. Some people do not like logical discussions, so they use that fallacy anyways. That is totally ok, I'm not the boss of them.
But, it will likely be pointed out that their fallacious arguments are fallacious, and at that point, they can choose to make valid arguments, or to continue their string of failures by unconvincingly making more fallacious ones.
> The introduction of whataboutism into the lexicon was to counter Russian appeals to hypocrisy
Cool! "Appeal to hypocrisy", or Tu Quoque, is a fallacy and any arguments invoking it are accordingly fallacious. Coining another synonym ("whataboutism") doesn't change things. Those making fallacious arguments can try to make valid arguments (if there are any) for their case next time.
> Those of us who have long memories do remember a time when pointing out the hypocrisy of the West was considered a valid thing to do
I've got a long memory, too, and the Tu Quoque fallacy was never a valid defense, no matter what you called it. That's what makes it a fallacy.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but Zhao was convicted of crimes which were a direct result of his operating a crypto exchange, and not any other criminal activity. It may be possible to operate a legally-compliant crypto exchange, but I am not sure that any current exchange is fully compliant with US law. If we agree on these facts, and think that the 'war on drugs' is what has resulted in 'drug possession' and 'drug trafficking' convictions, then it seems reasonable to say that Zhao was convicted as the result of a 'war on crypto'.
I am actually not sure that either the 'war on drugs' or a 'war on crypto' is a bad idea, but they do seem analogous.
He made a lot of money from the other criminal activity. That's what money laundering is: just because you're not directly trafficking children, for example, doesn't mean you have clean hands when you make significant profits from the people who are.
What you're describing is (in my view) the best casus belli for both the 'war on drugs' and a 'war on crypto', but a moral case does not make a criminal case (on its own).
I don't even necessarily think a 'war on crypto' is needed. The problem is that crypto seems to function as a get out of jail free card for very straightforward financial crimes: you just do the financial crime, but apply a thin veneer of 'but with crypto' and the legal system is utterly bamboozled.
Crypto's problem is that when the law is updated to deal with these stunts, it's suddenly just a crappy version of the existing financial system.
I completely agree that crypto is being used as an end-run (if you'll pardon the expression) around the existing financial oligopoly, whose regulatory burden is paid for by the monopoly rents extracted by the government-endorsed players. The problem is that criminal laws aren't being maximally applied against banks, so instances like this do give the appearance of 'unfairness'.
Except, correct me if this is wrong, but he wasn't even convicted of money laundering, let alone the underlying crimes you suggest he was launder the proceeds of. It was simply for failing to register / setup an appropriate AML system. Whether any ML occurred, by whom, and in relation to what... are outstanding questions. If he had done all that and all they got him on was a 4-month technicality, that tends to suggest he was probably innocent (or the investigation was inept).
I'm not sure you understand the point. It isn't that CZ himself was specifically putting forth the effort to launder money. It isn't that he was specifically doing things to try and make it easier. The point is that he had a legal duty to actively attempt to prevent money laundering. Binance was legally required to do this to operate in the US, and did not. The court case produced messages from the Chief Compliance Officer pointing out a myriad of ways in which they were not complying with various laws of this nature and they were ignored.
The BSA is not a technicality and trying to reframe it as one is wild. It is to make sure that people that have a financial incentive to turn a blind eye to money laundering don't turn a blind eye to it. You don't need to be directly involved in the money laundering to be incentivized to let it happen.
The guy was punished with a 4-month jail sentence. It's reasonable to assume his crime was of the sort that would result in a 3-6 month sentence... generally misdemeanors.
It's certainly in a different category than speeding or jaywalking, but it's a lot closer to that than to the 150 years that Bernie Madoff got.
The CEOs of Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, etc. have not been indicted for anything. Those exchanges have had some compliance issues but they were minor compared to Binance, FTX, BitMEX, etc.
CZ was pardoned for a single charge of failure to have an effective compliance program. No fraud, no victims, no criminal history. No money laundering.
CZ is the first and only known first-time offender in U.S. history to receive a prison sentence for this single, non-fraud-related charge. The judge found no evidence that he knew of any illicit transactions and that it was reasonable for him to believe there were no illicit funds on the platform.
Trump is a very twisted person, and this makes the US look bad, but the underlying crime was "compliance."
Sorry, this is not true. All financial institutions are required to have AML controls, which cost a lot of money.
These controls are mostly performative, but Binance wildly flouted them. This pardon means that basically no crypto company needs to worry about AML now, which is bad for the world.
The reason that nobody gets convicted for this is because they have somewhat adequate controls, whereas Binance basically welcomed money launderers with open hands.
The point being, no money laundering was pointed out to the court, although I sure this happened to some scale. Binance works with the police, before and after the conviction, it's not a laundromat like some Russian cryptocurrency exchanges.
But you are right the AML controls were weak, and CZ was convicted for this. KYC requirements arrived to Binance very late. But they were not convicted of fraud (like Sam Bankman-Fried from FTX). No users lost money. A lot of commenters get this wrong.
The US banks get slapped for similar compliance breaches all the time e.g.:
Yeah, it does seem unfair. However, it's important to note that you must have these controls, and Binance didn't. The effectiveness of these controls is not the point (sadly).
This is a super, super low bar. One can meet the BSA requirements by sending every transaction to the regulators, but Binance didn't even do that.
> Trump is a very twisted person, and this makes the US look bad, but the underlying crime was "compliance."
Yes.
If a CEO of any major US or EU bank would overnight decide to terminate its mere 'compliance' program, they would absolutely get convinced.
Big banks spend more than $1 billion each a year on compliance, i.e. abiding by the law. CEOs of banks that don't, get convinced, period.
It's like saying hospitals have been hiring people without credentials as doctors, or airlines hiring people with no credentials as pilots etc etc, and they were convinced for this 'compliance' issue, even though the case did not (try to) determine victims, criminal history or fraud. Yes, that's absolutely normal.
Financial institutions must put in place measures to prevent money laundering, if they don't, they get convinced, even without having to determine whether money laundering took place. Just like a hospital gets convinced if it knowingly as a policy hires people as doctors without credentials, even without having to determine if there were victims. This is completely normal.
I wish you would link to text rather than video. This channel owner may be very well informed, but I don't want to subject myself to the performative yelping of some guy sitting in front of a smoke machine with mood lighting. Except where original footage is concerned, video is about the worst medium for communicating complex facts the sensory stimulation is a distraction from the content. This presenter might be a genius, but I don't want to spend the time trying to untangle the substance from his hyped-up 'coffeezilla' delivery.
I had Claude reformat youtube's transcript of the video.
---
# Trump's Pardon of CZ: A Timeline of Alleged Corruption
*Author's Note:* This situation represents what appears to be straight-up corruption that everyone should oppose, regardless of political affiliation. This isn't about politics—it's about the facts.
## Background: The Original Charges
*November 21, 2023*
Binance and Changpeng Zhao (CZ) both plead guilty in a historic $4 billion plea deal. They admitted to lacking proper anti-money laundering controls and willfully looking the other way. The charges specifically involved allowing terrorists, cyber criminals, and child abusers to use their platform.
*April 30, 2024*
CZ is officially sentenced to four months in prison.
## The Trump Connection Begins
Shortly after sentencing, Donald Trump wins the presidency and announces the launch of *World Liberty Financial*—his major crypto project. This will become crucial to understanding the alleged corruption.
## The Suspicious Timeline
### March 12, 2025: The MGX Investment
A company called MGX invests $2 billion into Binance, specifically in cryptocurrency (the exact type wasn't announced initially).
### March 13, 2025: The Wall Street Journal Report
The Wall Street Journal reports that Binance has been reaching out to Trump allies since the previous year to strike a business deal with the family as part of a plan to return to the US. Possibilities included:
- The Trumps taking a stake in Binance
- A deal through World Liberty Financial
### March 25, 2025: USD1 Stablecoin Launch
World Liberty Financial announces a stablecoin called USD1.
*Why stablecoins matter:* They're incredibly profitable because they farm yield from treasury bills while people use them. The major players are USDT and USDC. However, it's extremely difficult to launch a new stablecoin—people don't trust or use new ones easily.
### May 1, 2025: The Key Revelation
The $2 billion MGX investment into Binance was conducted entirely in *USD1* (Trump's stablecoin).
*Why this matters:*
- There was no reason to use USD1 instead of other currencies
- They could have used BNB (Binance's own coin), which would make more sense
- The only reason to use USD1 is to benefit World Liberty Financial
- Stablecoins are backed by treasuries, so holding $2 billion in USD1 generates *$60-80 million per year* in risk-free revenue for World Liberty Financial (from 3-4% treasury yields)
### A Few Days Later
CZ announces he has applied for a Trump pardon. *Timing: right after announcing the deal was done in USD1.*
### June 2025
World Liberty Financial announces a partnership with PancakeSwap (associated with Binance) and a $1 million reward trading campaign to increase USD1 usage.
## The AI Chips Connection
### September 15, 2025: New York Times Investigation
The New York Times reveals suspicious timing around the MGX investment:
1. MGX deposited $2 billion into World Liberty Financial
2. Two weeks later, the White House agreed to allow the UAE access to hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips
3. Many chips would go to G42, controlled by the same sheikh connected to MGX
*Official response:* The deal was "totally unrelated to any government business." But MGX clearly benefited from one side of this arrangement.
## The Polymarket Betting
### October 11, 2025
A whale linked to suspicious insider trading activity on Hyperliquid was connected to a Polymarket account called "big winner 01." This account started betting that Trump would pardon CZ by the end of 2025—a seemingly wild bet with only a couple months left in the year.
## The Pardon
### October 23, 2025
Trump pardons convicted Binance founder CZ.
*White House response:* Press Secretary Caroline Levitt claimed Trump "exercised his constitutional authority" and that CZ was "prosecuted by the Biden administration and their war on cryptocurrency."
*The reality:* The charges had nothing to do with politics. They were about anti-money laundering violations and allowing money to flow to criminals. Binance's own chief compliance officer had internal chats noting they should probably not allow money to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Crimea.
The Wall Street Journal reported the pardon will likely pave the way for Binance to return to the US.
## The Bottom Line
The problem isn't just loosening crypto enforcement—it's making the president's family such obvious beneficiaries:
- Nearly all of USD1's success came from this inorganic $2 billion investment
- The market cap spike for USD1 directly corresponds to the Binance deal
- It's a clear pay-to-play scheme happening in plain sight
*The author's conclusion:* This appears to be blatant corruption where deals were made to profit from the pardon, regardless of one's political views.
I wonder if civil forfeiture will work against Trump once he's out of office. Trump's net worth before becoming President was under US$1 billion. Now it's over 6 billion. A civil claim for the difference based on the Emoluments Acts.
"The Foreign Emoluments Clause bars the president and other federal officials from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State” without the consent of Congress. It reflects the framers’ desire to prevent federal officials from succumbing to foreign influence.
The Domestic Emoluments Clause provides for the president to receive a fixed salary and bars him from receiving “any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.” It was designed to insulate the president against undo pressure from Congress or any individual state."
Rule of law? Anymore? No president has ever been punished in any meaningful capacity in our entire history. Washington used loopholes to avoid setting his slaves free[1] for christ sake.
What about Nixon’s impeachment and resignation? What about Trump being a convicted felon 5 ways to Sunday (yes they overturned this since he won again, but I doubt it would have gone this direction if he’d lost.)
1. There is no downside to impeachment. It has the same impact as a strongly worded letter.
2. Nixon decided to resign and not the alternative for doing something so insane: A restoration of damages.
3. Like I said, they were overturned. I mean even the NYT was trying to figure out the result: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/nyregion/trump-trial-hush...
The reality is the system will bend itself to avoid the problem, because it's been designed to avoid that problem.
No, this is pretty squarely outside the scope, and only specific amounts received from in-scope parties (i.e. governments) would be subject. And there's a standing issue. Basically the emoluments clause doesn't have real teeth for most purposes, even where it applies.
It should apply there, though the first Trump admin argued a very narrow interpretation that mostly exempts the president in the first term, at the end of which the case was declared moot (leaving us in suspense about what SCOTUS would have said). Great commentary on emoluments and needed reforms in light of this here: https://www.execfunctions.org/p/trump-20-and-the-foreign-emo...
Trump is a corrupt idiot and a terrible president, but the White House controversy is dumb too. I'm sure the addition will be ugly like everything Trump builds, but that building is not exactly a historic artifact that mustn't be mutated. It's been gutted more than once.
Bit like suggesting the controversy over bombing boats in the Caribbean is dumb because the U.S. has bombed ships before. The way it's happening is completely unprecedented and absurd.
Of course murder is worse. I didn't suggest otherwise. I was responding to the claim that "the White House controversy is dumb" because the building has been modified before. Flagrantly violating the law while blowing a half a billion dollars in transparent bribes on a vanity project while the government is shutdown is beyond outrageous. It's not "dumb" that it's a controversy. It would, in any other administration, be a slam-dunk impeachable offense.
Agreed. They saw how successful the silly rose garden thing was at diverting attention away from serious issues (Epstein files) and will happily keep pulling that lever until it stops working.
My main issue is how Trump said one thing and did another:
> “It won’t interfere with the current building,” Trump said on July 31. “It’ll be near it, but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.” - NBC
It seems probable he ignored any number of laws about how he did it, too.
I suspect Trump will leave office in a box, not on his feet. Such a civil claim would then have to be against his estate, which probably complicates things.
It would be against whomever is in possession of the stolen wealth, which will not likely be his estate. And yes, this should be a priority of any platform for rebuilding our country. Justice needs to be served. And by the time we're finally rid of these America-last fuckers, people still supporting the Trumps are going to be as rare as people still supporting the Iraq War.
I'd love to believe you--yet folks support the cult of personality and forget the policies. It's not hard to find people that'll say Nixon should've stayed in office, and Reagan might as well have his own religion.
Yes, and everybody who enriches themselves using their political positions. These jobs are as public servants. They're supposed to be working for the people. That's why the emoluments clause is there.
Interestingly I have never seen someone with a Pelosi hat, shirt, or mural painted on the side of their RV.
I don't think there would be much outcry from either side if Pelosi, along with others who did the same things, were to be blocked by new legislation or prosecuted for breaking existing law.
Although the Domestic Emoluments Clause currently applies specifically to the President, so we would likely need new legislation to generally prevent things like congressional insider trading.
It really does seem like folks on the right assume that people who vote Democrat have a lot more love for Democrats than we actually do. The whole Bill Clinton in the Epstein files thing is another example—like yeah man let him hang.
There's very little loyalty, there's some truth to the party being a bunch of minorities nervously huddled around the DNC for warmth.
It's also a rhetorical trick. The moment you admit "Yes, Bill Clinton should go to jail if he's on the list," they will start to pester you, "You admitted Clinton should also go to jail, so why are you only protesting Trump? You hypocrite!"
I think it's best not to engage. These people aren't here for logical arguments, and they won't be persuaded by logic.
Every time someone digs into this, it turns out Pelosi’s large wealth is much more tied to buying SF real estate long before the tech boom sent the real estate prices soaring. It doesn’t take insider trading for someone to have gotten rich in the SF real estate market. Plenty of people became millionaires just by owning a condo they bought in the 1970’s. It is no surprise that someone whose career has been real estate investing in SF since the 1960’s made some money…
There's a potential implication that the president wasn't the one making the decisions and they were political favors doled out by unnamed and unaccountable staff. If the president felt strongly about that perception he could've signed them himself. But he seemingly didn't.
The controversy with Biden is that the autopen was allegedly used without the President's knowledge or directive. Nobody has a problem with POTUS's signature getting on a piece of paper without his hand actually holding the pen; that's not the point here.
"Allegedly" is the key word here. Alleged by people who allege a whole lot of untrue things and don't seem to have any evidence for this particular thing.
There's a conspiracy theory that Biden wasn't competent enough to sign stuff, at least for some period at the end of his term, with the implication being that none of those presidential acts are valid. Anybody who believes this is mired in an impenetrable misinformation bubble and should be dismissed out of hand.
Ah yes. Pardoning folks who were imprisoned for possession of marijuana is exactly the same--worse even, because "autopen"--as pardoning folks who were imprisoned for insurrection / political violence in support of the guy doing the pardoning. Very smart take.
18 were charged with seditious conspiracy. Over 500 were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers. And many more were still awaiting trial, including Daniel Ball, who was accused of throwing explosives at police officers, were also pardoned by Trump. Many of these pardoned individuals have gone on to commit further felonies, including Daniel Ball, who was just arrested for plotting to murder Hakeem Jeffries.
But again, you seem to be missing the point: a president pardoning people who support him is very different than pardoning ordinary people who were imprisoned for crimes that are no longer crimes.
Biden issued several blanket pardons for any crimes that people may have committed for a period of a decade. That doesn't strike me as particularly discerning.
Pedophile felon destroys takes a wrecking ball to half of the White House without saving historical materials or objects, furiously pardons all sorts of crooks and fraudsters, and talks about not getting into heaven. Sounds like an admission of 6-8 months left to live.
I'm not sure it will be a problem for Changpeng Zhao but let's say I was convicted of a felony in the US, served time in prison and then was pardoned by the president. What would my employment prospects be in comparison to someone who didn't receive a pardon?
Likely bad because the conviction will still show up in background checks. (A pardon doesn't entail expungement.) As you said, this won't be an issue for CZ because he's not going to be looking for the kinds of positions where HR screens the resumes
in this particular case maybe. but i don't think he's pardoning only crypto people. as long as criminals can offer sth useful to him, they will get above the law.
> ...it’s a tool for him and his cronies to make dodgy money?
It's a vehicle to sell "access". The greed is only half of it.
The worst part is that they're selling access to foreign interests who pay them off. These people can't exactly show up with bags of gold to bribe King Sh*t Gibbon (yet), crypto is the next best thing.
Moronic opinions are still moronic and should be called out as such. Making America more crypto friendly by pardoning fraudsters is an objectively stupid take.
This makes me hate cryptocurrency more and make me support candidates that want feel the same, that we should be prosecuting cryptocurrency fraud. How is that making it more friendly?
I think he made public mention of "donating to the wrong guy" to get one side to like him more. IIRC, he donated similar or more to the "other" side, but just didn't make a big deal of it publicly.
He was convicted for allowing US citizens to sign up and place trades that could theoretically be matched by people from sanctioned countries. Technically an incredibly bad service for American people who must be protected from such liberties.
I’m sure it’s pure coincidence that the Trump family made millions from Binance, CZ, and donations from Trevor Milton and Paul Walczak right before those pardons.
I am having trouble understanding the rational for these pardons. The best I can come up with is that they've decided that there is literally nothing that would cause them to lose the support of Republican voters, and the actions are being instigated by right wing trolls.
CZ was not convicted of fraud or even money laundering. There's a reason the sentence was only 4 months. His charge was the first ever prosecution of a platform/bank poorly implementing KYC and not doing enough surveillance of its users to comply with the letter of AML regulations. The case relied on the theoretical possibility of US citizen users placing trades that are matched by people from sanctioned countries - it did not even find cases of such trades. Big banks routinely pay fines for this, and never face imprisonment.
Regardless of what you think of the circumstances of the pardon, the prosecution was not related to fraud and was an unusual case by a DOJ that was recently embarrassed by FTX and was arguably symbolic in intent.
"President Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of the crypto exchange Binance, following months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company."
I feel there is some perversion happened - the American culture in particular has been strong on a hero cutting through and going across the laws and rules toward his goals (and the recent years super-hero craze is an epitome of it). And i feel that in some perverse way Trump got tuned into such a hero storyline and naturally abusing it to no end for his own gain.
I agree with you. The system is ridiculous, it gives the voter two options, and that's all. People point out that monopolies are bad, but a duopoly is very far from being a solution for it. Americans (and many other countries in the world) need better representation.
Conservatives around the world seem to be comparing notes because over here the now former president pardoned quite a few high-profile cases and at least one before the sentence was given, which was bizarre, as you can't do that and the president, holding a PhD in law, should have known this.
In any case it appears that not only funds are safu, but Zhao is safu as well.
It's incredible that American corruption can happen out in the open like this. And this isn't a uniquely Trump phenomena. Political pardons are an amazing thing, and they have been used by presidents for a long time now with extremely little scrutiny and no possibility for repercussions. The executive being able to overrule the judiciary is an absolutely jaw-dropping American institution. So much for checks and balances.
The rise of more grass-roots news sources (podcasts, memes, social media) also leads to tons of conspiracy theories, and mistrust that builds this idea of corruption being ubiquitous, just not out in the open. And yes, that happens, but this atmosphere magnifies it 10x.
So when someone like Trump does it out in the open, people are more likely to excuse it because "everybody is already doing it, at least this is out in the open".
> The executive being able to overrule the judiciary is an absolutely jaw-dropping American institution.
No, its not, pardon and the closely linked power of clemency are common powers in representative democracies, often situated with the chief of state or the head of government (in the US, and other Presidential systems, the President is both), or sometimes the cabinet instead of the head of government in a parliamentary or semi-parliamentary system (in some cases, one or the other is assigned by law to a subordinate bureaucracy rather than being HoS/cabinet discretion, as is the case with pardon but not clemency in Canada.) It is generally more used in the US than other Western states, in part because the US has a much harsher criminal justice system with much longer sentences and much weaker provisions for relief other than executive pardon than other systems, but the power itself is common. [0]
The way it is used under Trump is wildly abnormal (for the US or the other representative democracies), though.
The president just prior to Trump pardoned his own son for crimes, and pre-emptively pardoned various other family members and political allies for any possible crimes before they could be prosecuted. Again, this is not new, this is ongoing open-air corruption, and Trump's escalation is the result of everyone being OK with it before now.
I mean the pardon was the check and balance on the judiciary. However it's been turned into a tool for personal gain than a saving grace for mistakes of the federal crimes convictions. Both parties have pushed for this monarchic power to be expanded over time. I think it has a place but much like a lot of the federal government it needs a complete overhaul. The checks and balances system works alright but when a unitary party controls every branch there is no one to check that power.
That was incredibly corrupt and many Democrats in fact "dropped [their] jaws." And it's not the only instance of political corruption like this, either (Bill Clinton notoriously did something similar). Neither of these cases retroactively justify Trump pardoning anyone who sends him a few million dollars.
If the goal of the pardon was to handle a corrupt Judicial branch, then a better answer would have been for the Executive branch to nominate someone for a pardon to the Legislative and require a 2/3 majority of the Legislative to approve.
But something like that would fly in the face of the "Unitary Executive" insanity and would (I suspect) require a constitutional amendment, which is no longer remotely feasible.
A first comment said "without saying why". The second comment just says that this is blatantly not true, and that the rationale presented has been since confirmed as a very accurate prediction.
Sorry, is this person comparing the rights and immunities of a head of a sovereign nation to those of a CEO of a company? I don't think France, as a sovereign country, is completely bound by US law whereas binance, when it is operating in US jurisdiction is. I'm not totally familiar with US finance law but I'm pretty sure a more fair comparison would be to other banks where KYC requirements and anti money laundering rules can be strict. From what I read about the prosecution, Binance ignored many warning signs from their own executives about the possibility and the lack of controls within their platform to comply with the law.
It's not much of an argument... he wasn't being held responsible for the actions of a few binance users, we was being held responsible for his own failure to implement compliance processes required by law.
The laws exist to restrict funding for countries under sanction, drug operations, terrorist organizations, etc.
We can argue about whether these laws are a good idea (either in general or in specific details), but you need to change the law, not just now follow it.
This is a terrible precedent... unless you're a con man, that is. (Balaji Srinivasan isn't stupid. I would guess he understands how real what he's arguing here is.)
The prosecution was not political lol, he went out of his way to support money laundering on the Binance platform. The reason he complied with the prosecution and pled guilty rather than try to fight it out in court was that they were able to produce a ton of evidence that he deliberately ignored regulators and regulations designed to prevent money laundering in order to make money off sanctioned groups and criminal organizations using the exchange as a way to circumvent KYC/AML laws. Please don't take what Balaji says about companies he invested in at face value.
The justifications for why the pardon is okay are ridiculously flimsy and I assumed that it was because they weren't really trying, but bewilderingly it does actually appear to have convinced some credulous people on Hacker News, so I suppose enough consent was manufactured that people think going out of your way to let money launderers use your platform is not a big deal? Maybe it's because people don't understand that typically the reason people launder money is because they committed major crimes to get that money and have no way to actually use it without getting caught.
For example if your crypto is the proceeds of ransomware, you're going to have a hard time cashing out without using something like Monero (which effectively has no offramps) without going through an exchange that knows perfectly well that you're trying to touch tainted goods. Exchanges like Binance that just don't bother to check who their customers are when they withdraw cash for such assets are just as critical to the ransomware plague as any security bug or social engineering issue. It's one of the reasons that pre-crypto, even though ransomware was technically feasible, it was never able to grow into a large-scale operation--no offramps. But hey maybe the official stance of CZ supporters is now that ransomware is good, actually, and if you don't like it it's because you have partisan bias (???)
Those prosecutors were deeply embarrassed by missing FTX at the time, so they then had the SEC and IRS harass and threaten innocent US citizens in Japan and the US as they fished for charges merely because they happened to once work for or hung out with CZ or employees at Binance.
CZ is the first and only known first-time offender in U.S. history to receive a prison sentence for this single, non-fraud-related charge of improper platform AML KYC implementation. Big banks routinely pay a fine for this, and never face imprisonment. The judge found no evidence that he knew of any illicit transactions and that it was reasonable for him to believe there were no illicit funds on the platform. Credit where it's due, they somehow pulled off a 4 month sentence for this unprecedented charge. And now it's all for naught.
No. He had the same financial incentives to not want to have to worry about the BSA and dealing with AML etc. as CZ.
This is not a company vs. company sort of issue, this is a "I want to avoid regulations that would cost me money as a fundamental aspect of my industry " issue.
If Coinbase thought they could legally not worry about all of this, do you think they would want to deal with it?
The sheer quantity of money used in cryptocurrency for money laundering and activity where traditional payment processors will not accept payments (largely illegal, e.g. drugs, counterfeit goods) also means that the keeping the ecosystem healthy involves having ways for this money to flow.
No. The entire crypto ecosystem requires a steady infusion of capital and an absence of regulations to prosper, since their primary use case outside of speculation is for handling money by people who can't get past normal KYC/AML checks. If those people no longer have anywhere to on/off ramp into the crypto ecosystem, most of its "legitimate" (in the sense of actually getting real value out of it rather than just speculating) use goes away.
I don't think you know what you're talking about. Surely everyone on the Coinbase platform is vetted seeing as they're a publicly traded company. Presumably the vast majority of Binance users are not in fact money launderers.
"People who don't want KYC/AML checks" are not necessarily money launderers, and there are still plenty of people who just want to speculate. But money launderers are the people who need to send vast amounts of money through the crypto ecosystem and represented a very significant fraction of the assets managed by Binance (not that this actually affects whether what they were doing was illegal or not, BTW). Maybe you should read the indictment to find out what was actually going on, instead of making claims based on what seems reasonable to you!
(Frankly, the idea that being convicted for making the conscious decision to go out of your way to circumvent KYC/AML laws is somehow the result of partisan bias is ridiculous in itself, so none of this [or how Balaji claims to feel about the matter] is even really relevant).
Unpopular opinion: America needs/ed this. They nerve truly believed that a Ceaușescu, Hitler, Stalin, Mao were possible in the US. Maybe one or two generations will suffer, but this is a required lesson, for the future maturity of the nation, long term. Assuming they come out in one piece at the other end, of course.
Accelerationism is to a simulacrum as the thing being accelerated (society) is to the simulation thereof (our idea of society).
Accererationism is what accelerationism does. It disrupts the status quo, for good/bad/otherwise, and largely independently of our personal stance on the goodness, badness, and/or desirability of said disruption.
The current volatility in the market is one aspect of accelerationism, and it seems to be working, in that the markets are still open for trading; many are making out like bandits. Perhaps that volatility as a market opportunity is the point.
Whether or not banditry is occurring is left as an exercise to the reader.
You believe the US on the path to killing tens of millions of its own citizens for the sake of some ideology like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler because a non-violent white collar criminal was given a shortened sentence? Interesting.
Do you not believe the GOP eliminating SNAP, medicare, and social security will lead to the deaths of millions of Americans?
Do you not believe that Trump, who threatened extrajudicial killings of drug smugglers today [1], isn't going to abuse that power to murder any citizen he doesn't like?
Do you not believe Trump is a fascist, white supremacist, rapist, 34 time convicted felon, rapist, and pedophile?
>Do you not believe the GOP eliminating SNAP, medicare, and social security will lead to the deaths of millions of Americans?
I would suggest not equating libertarian policies with systemic genocide. How about we calm down?
>Do you not believe that Trump, who threatened extrajudicial killings of drug smugglers today [1], isn't going to abuse that power to murder any citizen he doesn't like?
I don't see any evidence of that yet
>Do you not believe Trump is a fascist, white supremacist, rapist, 34 time convicted felon, rapist, and pedophile?
I think he's a 34 time convicted felon, but I haven't confirmed the number.
Unpopular opinion: the case against him/binance was always that as a non us citizen, outside the us, he failed to obey US law and in a paperwork and licensing sense not a violent or otherwise serious manner.
I don’t like trump. But “CZ” basically paid a ransom to let Binance come in from the cold. Why shouldn’t he pay another to get a clean slate and maybe go back to being CEO?
Serious question - it seems that many of this Administrations activities are illegal in some way or the other. I know that government officials are shielded from a lot of actions so they can not be prosecuted.
What actions that have been taken could actually be prosecuted? For example, I would have to assume that the ballroom demolition and build-out is illegal, there were $0 appropriated from Congress for this, and it doesn't seem like direct donations would be legal either. They are donations to the government and Congress has to appropriate that money too.
NOTHING is going to happen while the Republicans control congress, period. What could be done when the next administration comes in? Not just about the ballroom, but the various other things like this pardon. What of these actions are prosecutable?
> it seems that many of this Administrations activities are illegal
Many are. This one is not. The President has sweeping pardon powers.
The solution is to strike the final phrase in Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution: “and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” [1].
There isn’t a place for one-man pardons in a republic. If the courts overreach, address it through legislation. (Even the imperium-obsessed Romans didn’t give their dictators, much less consuls, automatic pardon power. Caesar had to get special legislation to overrule the law.)
With Presidents of both parties having so recently abused pardons, we may be in a place where a wave could pass a Constitutional amendment at the federal level, allowing it to be punted to the states.
It seems like whatever party gets into power, suddenly doesn't want to change the system they inherited. I remember Trudeau talking about eliminating first past the post in Canadian elections. But once he got into power he forgot about it.
We need a way to vote for popular ideas via referendum at the federal level. That might get it through.
> seems like whatever party gets into power, suddenly doesn't want to change the system
“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution” [1].
No President. No courts. Partisanship may work to our advantage in a divided government. What you would need, however, to reach two thirds is some members of the President’s party signing on. That could happen if the President is taking a dump in the polls, and the opposition looks likely (but isn’t yet assured) to gain the Presidency next term.
> We need a way to vote for popular ideas via referendum at the federal level
We need a plebiscite institution. But that can be done at state level for Constitutonal amendment approval. What we don’t want is direct democracy proposing amendments. California is a modern example of why republics are more stable than pure democracies, for anyone who forgot about Athens.
>California is a modern example of why republics are more stable than pure democracies
California is one state among 50. People using it as an example of some sort of government being bad are objectively in bad faith.
Please inform me how my state's citizen referendums are bad? We are about to have a vote on voter ID laws, which I do not approve of, but what's important is that the people who care are able to have their will made manifest, and it will actually go up for a vote.
Meanwhile nordic countries have vastly more direct democracies and don't have the problems you insist.
If you cannot make your argument without california, you do not have an argument, because california's shitty government predates democrat control, because it was always built as this crazy world where rich and connected people had control. California's government is built wrong, not because of democracy, but against it.
> inform me how my state's citizen referendums are bad?
Straw man. Nobody claimed this.
> nordic countries have vastly more direct democracies and don't have the problems you insist
What are you referring to? “Finland has traditionally relied on the representative form of government, with very limited experience of the deployment of the referendum in national decision-making” [1]. And while Sweden and Norway have referenda, neither has binding referenda on demand or even a requirement for referendum to amend the constitution [2].
> if you cannot make your argument without california, you do not have an argument
California features the largest and most powerful direct-democratic institution, its referenda, in America. It’s going to come up when we discuss direct democracy.
That said, I have no idea how you reach my comment and conclude that California is not only the only argument I make against direct democracy, but even essential to it.
> california's shitty government predates democrat control
Are you mixing up direct democracy and rule by Democrats, the party?
> What we don’t want is direct democracy proposing amendments.
I think the opposite. That is exactly what we need. A lot of the problem we have come from the fact that the constitution speaks almost entirely in terms of what various government bodies do and provides no way for the people to directly override government actions they disagree with. This has led us to our current situation which is based on politicians exploiting loopholes (e.g., gerrymandering, stacking various judicial/administrative posts, manipulating voting laws, etc.) in order to preserve their position against potential electoral response.
In some cases these problems have been overcome or mitigated at the state level. . . via ballot measures. In California, for instance.
> California is a modern example of why republics are more stable than pure democracies, for anyone who forgot about Athens.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but from where I'm standing California looks a lot more sane and stable than the US as a whole.
> What we don’t want is direct democracy proposing amendments. California is a modern example of why republics are more stable than pure democracies, for anyone who forgot about Athens.
speak for yourself. the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as evidenced by the current political climate in the US.
> the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as evidenced by the current political climate in the US
We're not a direct democracy. You can't find proof of a pudding in a taco bowl.
Direct democracies fail in self-reinforcing factionalism. "When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government...enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens." This has consistently happened across history, even in small direct democracies, it's one of the essential takeaways from the Athenian experiment [1].
Every amendment to the constitution restructured the government. We are certainly in an era of high divisiveness and a Congress that had abdicated all of its powers to the other branches so that they’re never caught actually holding a position, but the US government system has restructuring built into it
> In history generally the only way governments are ever restructured is through civil war (or invasion)
This is total crap. Tale of Two Cities is set against the backdrop of Britain’s reforms, in contrast to the French Revolution. America has peacefully seen through Teddy Roosevelt’s trust busting, FDR’s New Deal and the Civil Rights Era, each peaceful restructurings of how our government works.
Revolutions transfer and consolidate power. Reforms broaden them. Those who miss this lesson of history and fall for glorified fictions of peasants’ revolts earn a consistent fate across millennia of human history.
Uhm, the Republicans will change their mind quickly when the next Democrat president takes control with the expanded powers they inherited from the Trump administration (even the Supreme court doesn't like to contradict itself so quickly). I'm pretty sure...if America survives at all, we will have a constitutional convention really soon that push through changes because the current status quo has become an unstable mess.
I trust the gang of six’s use of the shadow docket is cleverly designed to make sure only a republican president meets their unitary executive theories.
Do you think they will let the Democrats take control given the risk to them if they take control?
I see Gerrymandering after the supreme court annuls the voting rights acts. And then more shennanigans for a third term.
That's why I premised this with "If America survives at all". There is definitely a possibility that the whole country just falls apart. A constitutional convention is more of a best case scenario.
Gerrymandering is only relevant for congressional house elections, it can't protect the senate and doesn't influence the presidency. Usually one party will take control of all three branches in a huge swing in power, the house is the just the first to flip usually because it is re-elected every 2 years.
> constitutional convention is more of a best case scenario
Constitutional Convention is the abort button. It means giving a group of people basically limitless power to amend our Constitution, which in practice, means to do anything to the law. If we called one today, with most states in Republican hands [1], we’d be essentially handing complete control of our government—over and above the Constitution—to the GOP.
> Constitutional Convention is the abort button. It means giving a group of people basically limitless power to amend our Constitution
No, it doesn’t.
It gives a group of people basically limitless power to propose Amendments to the Constitution.
Any Amendments so proposed still require 3/4 of states to ratify them, either by votes of their legislature or by ratification conventions called in the states (at the option of Congress when calling the Convention at the request of states.)
Unless by "group of people" you mean not just the people in the national convention, but the people in the state legislatures or conventions, as well. But, at that point, you might as well say that by including an amendment process, the Constitution itself “gives a group of people basically limitless power to amend our Constitution”.
> It gives a group of people basically limitless power to propose Amendments to the Constitution
Sorry, I actually missed this. Thank you for clarifying. (I mixed it up with the New York State process, where the Convention's proposals go straight to popular ratification.)
Between sweeping abuse of executive orders, declaring emergency powers, and the pardon system (there's a reason it used to be called the "royal pardon"), my only hope is that this will finally open the public's eyes to the MASSIVE overreach that a US president has. It needs to be heavily curtailed.
The pardon system in particular really pisses me off. The argument that one rando at the top of the pyramid somehow magically knows better than the entire judicial system is such a load of horsecrap. For any injustice that the pardon system might be able to correct, it can and does just as easily introduce more injustices.
> "Many are. This one is not. The President has sweeping pardon powers."
I understand it's debatably possible to prosecute the public corruption that motivated a pardon, even though the pardon act itself is unreviewable. I.e., the DoJ attempted a criminal bribery investigation of Bill Clinton's pardon of the donor Marc Rich,
> "Some lawyers have said that proving such a case could be exceedingly difficult because bribery cases usually required the cooperation of one of the parties. Moreover, contributions to political parties or to Mr. Clinton's library foundation are legal, and the president's pardon authority is unreviewable."
I assume similar logic might apply to World Liberty Financial and Trump's CZ pardon.
His two previous impeachments don't seem to have slowed him down, so it seems unlikely that a third would be any different. Not to mention his felony conviction.
The actual legal remedy is impeachment + conviction by the senate. That hasn't happened yet and seems unlikely unless he actually loses the support of his own party.
> For example, I would have to assume that the ballroom demolition and build-out is illegal, there were $0 appropriated from Congress for this, and it doesn't seem like direct donations would be legal either.
Maybe it's funded by the $230M he's demanding from the Department of Justice?
What about the acts of piracy (in the classic, seafaring way) and coldblooded murder of foreign citizens, carried out by US soldiers, claimed to be "drug dealers" (like that was a capital offence anyway)?
I’m curious if any of the involved personell will ever be tried for that.
The Senate runs a trial for the "high crimes" with the supreme court justice presiding. They can sentence a sitting president IIRC (or just remove him from office in which the DOJ can then prosecute normally).
Some problems: Trump has already argued that if what he does falls under official acts, it's essentially absolute immunity. Trump also tried to argue that everything he did while during his presidency, was official acts. The supreme court agreed that if something is and official act, it is protected by absolute immunity.
So my guess is that whatever Trump is doing now, he'll later argue was done as a president.
Second, should be convicted of anything, the best shot is if it's a state law violation. I'm going to bet everything I own that Trump will either pardon himself, all his cronies, and/or when the time comes, step down and have Vance pardon him. So with that all federal crimes become pardoned.
The supreme court has been very frank about this: The only, and I do mean the only mechanism is a successful impeachment. And even if Trump by some miracle is successfully impeached, we have no way of knowing how that will play out. The current supreme court majority are seemingly true believers of the unitary executive theory, so I'm guessing that with time - we'll just see Trump get more and more unchecked power. And since it's going to be done via the shadow docket, it'll likely be valid for Trump only.
I think for all intents and purposes - and I don't mean to sound defeatist when I'm saying this - people should just accept the fact that Trump will be untouchable for the rest of his life.
Assuming a normal election where the pendulum swings back and a normal transfer of power (no certain things), the outgoing President could pardon everyone from his chiefs of staff and cabinet officers to low-level federal law enforcement on the way out, and then the Democrats would wring their hands and say there's nothing they can do, bar some large scale political realignment where Republicans lost control of numerous state legislatures and governorships by a large margin, as well as in Congress.
The best opportunity for a major restructuring of the legal environment would bea Constitutional Convention, but because Republicans have pursued this as a strategic goal for a while, Democrats invested all their relevant energies in being against it rather than developing any kind of strategy of their own, guaranteeing that they would get rolled if one actually took place because they went in with wholly defensive mindset and no plan to win. The fundamental flaw of the modern Democratic party is that it sees itself as a vehicle for competent management of the status quo, not a force for implementation of its voters' political aspirations. Thus is pays lip service of what its supporters want but operates to dampen and delay those same supporters whenever it gets into office in the name of continuity and responsibility. It operates on a combination of political rent seeking and fundamental conflict aversion.
This is why I find myself increasingly impatient with self-styled moderates. Wanting to talk things out and compromise is good, but it only works when there is mutuality between counterparties. When the political opposition is indifferent to questions of truthfulness or corruption, moderation degrades into appeasement; moderates will sell out their own supporters in the name of peace and quiet, while giving away the strategic initiative over and over. The previous Trump administration engineered a mob overrunning Congress in an attempt to stay in power, and only failed because the Vice President declined to aid the scheme; a mistake the current one surely doesn't intend to repeat. The incoming administration spent a great deal of energy prosecuting every footsoldier they could find who set foot inside the Capitol, but shied away from going after the people who actually organized it. The results speak for themselves.
This is not "good guys versus bad guys", the democratic party are not going to wash all this badness away. They have been guilty of basically the same things, even if at a lesser scale. Biden tried to appropriate billions outside of congress for student loan forgiveness. Political pardons have been a factor since the beginning of the US experiment. Pelosi has been using her position for self-enrichment in the open for decades now.
We need them all gone. Anyone who makes "politician" a career is precisely the wrong type of person to be an elected official. It should never be about personal gain. Wipe them all out, implement campaign finance reform, set term limits, prioritize election security & availability...
Unfortunately, sometimes our judges, juries, and officers are also biased or incorrect; pardons are useful when the delivery of justice was mistaken or excessive.
> pardons are useful when the delivery of justice was mistaken or excessive
If you look at a slew of the recent pardons, the beneficiaries had already pleaded guilty. In those cases, the pardons should be ineligible. I think the most a President could do - should be - give defendants the ability to appeal the case to a new judge or jury. It's wrong and should be corrected! Added it to my todo list
Unfortunately, very often the best thing to do is just let them have their way and walk away with a lot less of a punishment than would be the case should you dare to fight them.
Financially and personally, it's what they do to pressure you into submission. It happens from criminal cases all the way down to fucking family court. It's absurd and it's broken.
I truly believe that almost every single attorney should have to lose sleep at night over how their actions impact others.
Pardons only enable presidents to direct their goons to operate outside of the rule of law without repercussions.Having one individual with strong incentives to enable their team stay in power as much as possible retain the power is shocking.
Judges and juries are at least superficially removed from that sort of corrupt incentive system.
> Pardons only enable presidents to direct their goons to operate outside of the rule of law without repercussions.
It is clear that they don't only do that, as that has not been their principal (or even a common) use for most of the history of the pardon power.
It is equally clear, however, that they do allow that; the check on that, like on most discretionary Presidential powers, is the Congressional power of impeachment; obviously, that is not a meaningful constraint when the Congress and the President are aligned on abuses, but the entire point of having separately elected bodies is to make it less likely that things that the public would see as abuses are supported by both political branches simultaneously. (Obviously, the fact that one whole house of Congress and 1/3 of the other are elected at the same time as the President, and that the weighting of the electoral college for the President are a blend of the apportionment to the House and Senate makes those elections less independent than one might want, even before considering the way the electoral structure contributors to partisan duopoly, though.)
> I'm not sure why Presidents were given the ability to pardon.
Because of the impossibility of law written in advance perfectly covering all cases and to provide a mechanism for correction of overpunishment that cannot be effectively anticipated in crafting general law. (That's more the reason why the traditional power of chief executives seen in state governments and the British government they were all more or less modeled on was retained when a federal executive was created; the US Constitution was very much not create ex nihilo in a historical vaccuum.)
> Besides corruption, bias, or self-interest, nothing else can come out of it.
Every viewpoint is "bias" relative to every other viewpoint, so that piece is a nullity, but it is certain;y not the case that corruption and self-interest are the only impacts or motivations for applying the pardon power.
Which isn't to say that there aren't arguments for putting more guardrails around the application of the power by the executive (or perhaps just radically changing the nature of the federal executive, to improve the application of its powers generally and not just the pardon power).
It's a consequence of the executive's power to... well, execute the law. They can simply decide to not focus prosecution on certain crimes. If they can do that, why not let them also pardon people?
If you're already rich and can stomach writing a flattering letter to Dear Leader you're leaving money on the table by not committing massive fraud right now.
I feel like democrats should make it clear that if there's still a fair election and they regain power, they'll go after both the corrupt people in this admin and entities buying favors. The current state can't be too good for the society, at least there should be a clear possible downside for being a part of it.
CZ was not involved in fraud, the case only found him guilty of not doing enough to surveil his customers to sufficiently block US citizens from using a crypto exchange that other people from sanctioned countries could use.
I have no proof of this, but I would bet that there will be some quid-pro-quo involved between Trump and the pardonee. Trump does not usually give things away, he leverages his power to get more power/money.
Fraud has been an essential component of Trump's business his whole life, he clearly doesn't see it as a crime. And the crypto guys have spent a lot of money getting into his good graces. He knows a good grift when he sees it.
I don't think the direct approach to Trump or his inner circle would be ideal, considering how crowded the field of professional grifters and griefers surrounding him is. You'd really have to stand out to get noticed.
But they've recently lost a key connection to the broader MAGA youth movement. A quick-witted young person with good public-speaking skills and a psychopath's morals could step into that role without much difficulty, perhaps acting as a bundler for GOP political contributions that could then be skimmed. The retirement plan sure sucks, though. And you wouldn't want to be too overt about it, or you'd risk ending up like Steve Bannon.
It may also be possible to get in with the Girardist movement associated with Peter Thiel and J. D. Vance. A few weeks' intensive study would likely allow you to sling eschatological BS with the best of them. You'd get paid on the lecture circuit, again following the trail blazed by Charlie Kirk, spreading the good news about mimetic theory and the bad news about Greta Thunberg.
Then there's the covert approach. Karl Rove has long since quit the field, Lee Atwater is dead, and Roger Stone isn't getting any younger. There's always money on the table if you're willing to do what the other guy won't. Trouble is, there are plenty of people willing to do anything for Trump, now that the rewards have become so transparently obvious. The same question keeps coming up... in a field full of seasoned crooks, what can new talent do to get noticed by the right people and overlooked by the rest?
Dude, that's a lot of work. I don't think any of us can become the next Charlie Kirk just to ride a quick drift.
It's gotta be more low-effort and high-confidence. I'm thinking more like: incorporate a company with a mission of "Providing AI without woke bias." The product would be simply GPT-OSS behind a system prompt of "You are a Fox News host" and a simple guardrail, wraped in a generic web and mobile UI. It'd be a couple of days of vibe coding and setting up AWS backend. Now, how do you legally funnel a few million into your pockets from that?
And going head-to-head with Elon Musk and Grok isn't a lot of work? You need an angle, something he either hasn't thought of or isn't (yet) brave enough to embrace publicly. Me, I got nothing.
What if some criminal blatantly says "I'll give you $1bn if you pardon me" and Trump does it? Is that enough for something to happen? Because it seems like that's the only place we can go from here...
That would be technically illegal rather than merely repugnant. It would not however be illegal if the criminal dropped a hint in the news that he would donate to, say, a ballroom that was to be named after the president.
And even if it were outright illegal, the Supreme Court has now ruled that the president is personally immune from criminal prosecution as long as they claim that their illegal activity was carried out in the course of their presidential duties, and not a personal crime committed on the side. Which leaves congressional impeachment and conviction as the sole recourse against presidential misbehavior. Which becomes a problem when the majority in Congress doesn't care that the president is doing illegal things. We haven't had a constitutional crisis like this since the FDR administration.
It's not enough. The only thing that might make a difference will get this comment removed. And we may have even passed the point for that to have an impact.
>What if some criminal blatantly says "I'll give you $1bn if you pardon me" and Trump does it? Is that enough for something to happen? Because it seems like that's the only place we can go from here...
According to SCOTUS[0], as long as it's a "gratuity," it's not a bribe and not illegal. No. Seriously.
It's high time the Republicans embrace their new leadership with a re-branding of their outfit's name and henceforth call themselves The Banana Republicans
I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader? He even does this bizarre maffia like deals out in the open for his own interest, that's how confident he is no one will say anything
The message is clear from his circus administration, you can do anything as long as you bribe them
Americans cannot accept they have a corrupt government lead by a corrupt politician who is now corrupting the justice system. They prefer to continue propagating the myth of a "healthy democracy" and "open market".
I personally do not know any Americans that are as you described. 1/3 of Americans are as you describe, 1/3 are definitely not at all as you described, and another 1/3 is too apathetic to care about anything.
The recent "No Kings" protests were the largest in US history.
Exactly. Very few Americans are out there actively "promoting the myth" right now that aren't ideologically aligned with the current Republican administration. That's a distinct (if significant) minority.
Also, while I believe more Americans should be protesting, people in other countries (like myself, at one point) may have an inaccurate idea about what heavy US protest "ought to" look like in the media they see.
We'd love to be protesting at the iconic White House and federal Capitol building, creating horizon-to-horizon crowds for the rest of the world to marvel at... But for me (and ~40% of the population) that's a 3500-3700 km trip. How often would you expect someone in Portugal to travel the distance to Moscow for a day of protest? (Worse, assume no good trains.)
Instead, we gather at local state locations, which will typically not get shown (or recognized) internationally, except when folded into a sentence about how "millions protested across the nation."
This is measured via election participation, so a confounding factor is the recent uptick in voter suppression tactics; these tactics are employed most visibly in states with large minority populations (e.g. states in the Deep South).
These tactics include: consolidating polling places in urban areas; restricting the ability to submit an absentee ballot or otherwise vote by mail; restricting early voting; voter ID laws; and "poll watchers" who intimidate those at polling places, sometimes illegally.
Moreover, those forced to vote in-person at polling places are not given time off from employment to do so. This overwhelmingly disenfranchises the working class, who just so happen to overwhelmingly vote for progressive policies that favor the working class over the middle/upper classes.
I know of way too many people that "aren't political" or just don't want to think about it. That's not the same as "having their own problems", that's juvenile behavior.
IMHO those words are based on an immature understanding of human beings and their limitations.
We not only have physical, financial, and temporal limits; even more powerfully, we have emotional limits. When we're scared or traumatized, we often can't act except to keep things immediately safe as much as they can; we are in survival mode. That's also how bad leaders get good people to do evil things - terrorize them, push them into survival mode, and direct their fear at the leader's targets.
What we can do is recognize those mechanisms and limitations in ourselves, using empathy (a universal human trait), our frontal cortex, and compassion - always the first step to taking of our emotions and being effective - and recognize it in others. Calling them names only traumatizes them more. Empathy and compassion gets them to a better place where they can act. It's not easy - that's why the word 'courage' exists; that's why it's sometimes called, 'grace under pressure'.
Effective leaders know this. What we're missing - what so many people are missing - is good, effective leaders. AFAICT, the leaders we'd expect to rise to this occasion also are traumatized - and they have an obligation to do better if they want to be leaders.
It not only works, it is basic leadership skills that I and others use every day. You're unwittingly advocating your enemy's morals, saying only force works.
However, consequences are important too, depening on the situation.
You can’t out reasonable an unreasonable person, when then unreasonable person refuses to respect your (or others) boundaries.
Most of the time, in a civil society, other members of society (police, etc.) enforce the consequences silently that allow what you are describing to work.
If they won’t/don’t, what you are describing is a guaranteed path to failure with specific personalities. The evidence is all around you.
There is a reason why self-defense includes the option for violence nearly everywhere, why every society has some equivalent to armed police, why nations always have militaries, etc.
Advocating a failed approach in a given circumstance isn’t good leadership (even when it’s ‘being the good one’), it’s the worst leadership approach possible.
Nope; that's the old knee-jerk insult that people use when you don't embrace aggression. Appeasement or non-appeasement has nothing to do with it, but that's the word they say to use in the flow-chart.
Many people - maybe you - are driven to conflict as an ideology, as if there is no other effective or higher power. That justifies the bad people; that's what they want you to embrace; you're helping them without realizing it.
For fascists, there is no place they won’t go, or bridge they won’t cross, because they’re fundamentally driven by fear and insecurity. Fear and insecurity they themselves create through their actions. It’s an insatiable hunger.
It’s why inevitably, tanks are the only thing that works.
Or are you under the impression the opposite approach is winning?
Surrendering just speeds up the consumption, because the only thing they actually respect is fear of consequences. Which is why they work so hard to avoid them. Because they know, deep down, they are inevitable - and will be terrible.
Unless they kill or control anyone who can actually apply them first, anyway.
Or maybe people don’t want to discuss politics with you because they know you’ll label them juvenile, racist, vile POS and saying they aren’t political is the easiest way out of getting into a heated argument with you at the BBQ party. Most sane people know that arguing with you will not change anything (neither your opinion, nor the sad facts that we are all ruled by criminals no matter who we vote for).
I’m following politics and I have my opinions about things but you can be sure I won’t be discussing them with coworkers and friends.
Worrying about politics is the luxury of chattering classes.
Try living on or very near the poverty line, and then try and spend time worrying about politics. You are worrying about much more real (to you) problems.
When shit gets bad enough to motivate people on the poverty line, you're in deep shite.
Lots of poor people are politically active. Treating politics as some sort of vanity hobby for the reasonably well off is equivalent to saying that the working class doesn't have any meaningful political opinions. Maybe you meant they don't have time for obsessing over politics as an end in itself, but in my experience the majority of working class people have an interest in and opinions about politics, even if they're alienated rather than enthusiastic about political participation.
I should be more clear. My point is the sneering at the ~30% who are not politically engaged.
A boat load of meaningful change comes from working class agitation, but most of the political noise comes from the chattering classes, who have the luxury of creating cliques online, making and then banning phrases.
Of course the working classes have valid opinions. The issue is, unlike thier richer friends, they are living the discrimination that both left and right claim to endure. This leaves little time for mass organisation.
I've got a (probably former at this point) buddy who makes less than $15K/year. He seems to have lots of time to listen to right wing propaganda podcasts and likes telling "jokes" about how minorities are problematic. He was never really interested in politics when we were growing up and I suspect never voted before 2024. Poor people have interests and opinions too.
They may also have been drawn into the all-too-tempting position of not opposing raw corrupt authoritarianism because the opposition party (the Democratic Party) and pre-Trump America both have deep flaws that are largely ignored.
There are many things anyone can do. You are not giving enough credit to the people shutting them down one by one. You won't hear them say they can't do anything.
Regarding CZ and Binance and the Trumps, they have kind of a symbiotic relationship.
After Binance and CZ pleaded guilty to money laundering in November 2023, for which they paid over $4 billions in fines, WLFI (which is a clone of AAVE belonging to the Trump family) launched a stablecoin called USD1. Magically on March 2025, $2 billion flowed into Binance through MGX, a state backed Abu Dhabi fund, later revealed to have been paid in USD1 (two months before it was unveiled and without at the time no effective audits), effectively propping WLFI’s coin (backed, unbacked, nobody knows, I assume backed). CZ applied for a presidential pardon inmediately after in May 2025.
WLFI now gets to earn about $60–80 million per year in yield from the USD1…
…As long as Binance doesn’t redeem those $2 billion.
I still don’t know what MGX got out of this deal, but I am pretty sure they didn’t walk empty handed.
For anyone unaware, financial fraud investigation YouTuber Coffeezilla just released a good video laying this all out a few hours ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
So you're saying that if people do accept it then nothing can be done, so better not to accept it and continue to live in a fairy tale controlled by criminals? I don't get it.
No. To make changes you have to participate or vote. But, if you dont like what we have now you are stuck with it until elections come up. No amount of complaining on the internet is going to change that. So, you just keep doing what you are doing because now is not the time we can make changes.
If you take that stance you have concluded that it is futile or the only way to make change is through violence. If that is your conclusion we have already lost. When violence starts there is no telling how it shakes out or how many die. That is why rational people will avoid it as long as possible.
This is obviously false based on widespread protests and constant criticism. If you can’t find Americans who oppose Trump’s regime it’s because you don’t want to.
The choice was between two corrupt options (same as its been for a long time). There is a lot of evidence coming out that the Biden administration was corrupting the justice system, FBI, and foreign relations for the benefit of the DNC and his family.
Honestly, the billionaire is less corrupt-able than the DNC nexus (we all know Biden wasn't running the show, and neither would Harris).
Not a fan of the other guy but keeping a decrepit old man from the press because you know he can‘t do the job, all while - surprise surprise - the exact same guy who is older than my grandpa when he died gets diagnosed with a long time form of stage 4 bone cancer that can‘t possibly have gone unnoticed while he was having access to presidential healthcare is kind of a big deal.
What does that have to do with “corrupting the justice system, FBI, and foreign relations for the benefit of the DNC and his family”?
If anything it would be a counter argument. Always strikes me as odd that Biden is somehow both a senile decrepit old man and a criminal mastermind depending on which is most useful at any given moment.
> senile decrepit old man and a criminal mastermind
both can be true at the same time. Biden was not always a senile incapable man. The corruption of the justice system seems to come from the fact that he's son has been operating in the shadows of the white house for a long time and it seems that very few people noticed it. But, of course, I know that Biden and his family are school kids when compared to a full fledged mafia boss like the current president.
> Always strikes me as odd that Biden is somehow both a senile decrepit old man and a criminal mastermind depending on which is most useful at any given moment.
Biden is not a criminal mastermind, and he never was. He changed into a decrepit old man, surrounded by a cabal of people that did not shy away to use the tools of the president's office for their personal gain. We know now that a lot of the president's autopen signatures did not originate from Joe Biden. This group of people also had a general interest in hiding the president's condition.
Because it isn't about actions, it is about sides. Tribalism.
It is the loss of complexity. Many cannot understand that by choosing the lesser of two evils does not mean you support evil. It means your choices are limited. We have turned the political issues into good and evil, rather than disagreements in how to achieve our mostly shared goals. We can no longer see the other side as friends and family, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyone countering this can just proclaim "both sides" and in some sense they will be right, they have evidence and people do abuse that framework. But at the same time that destroys the bridge between us. The abuse of calling both sides evil along with the accusation that all use cases are instances of abuse. It binarizes the environment, creating a simple world where there are only two choices. Which is easy to do when everything is so complex, as we're so tired and don't want to think.
It's also why this administration's strategy is so effective: overload the opposition. After all, Brandolini's Law states: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it." They've weaponized it. It's an effective strategy, and hard to defend against. I'm sure someone will offer a solution, "it's so simple, you just..." and we perpetuate the game.
It's not half. I think close to 32% were fully supportive (voted for him) and around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in practicality they basically said they were fine with whoever won.
I don't know which is worse, that 32% were in support of the corrupt leader or that 68% in total are either supported him or didn't care enough to support anyone else
> around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in practicality they basically said they were fine with whoever won.
Or, they were not fine with whoever won.
We've got two abismal parties to choose from. Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not a great one.
I'd like to believe at least some of those 36% would vote for a decent candidate/party. But once you lose faith in the system, and realize that it doesn't represent you, you might just stop participating in it.
> We've got two abismal parties to choose from. Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not a great one.
No, we have one destructive/harmful party (R) and one status quo party (D). They are not the same level of bad and that's immediately obvious from this last year.
The problem with that is the status quo wasn't that good.
To compare the two parties with a house on fire, absolutely the sadistic pyromaniac arsonist burning down the neighborhood one house at a time is a bad guy and needs to be stopped. But when person trying to rally everyone to go after him is the abusive slumlord, it doesn't always resonate as effectively as it might.
A healthy society wouldn't tolerate either one. I wonder if the Democrats seeming inability to stop right-wing abuses has been partially motivated by the knowledge that successfully stomping out that sort of corruption would curtail their own abuses, too.
> I wonder if the Democrats seeming inability to stop right-wing abuses has been partially motivated by the knowledge that successfully stomping out that sort of corruption would curtail their own abuses, too.
Absolutely. And we know this because when they were last in power they did nothing to counter corruption or limit executive power. Instead they were partaking in it.
Trump is exploiting a system his predecessors created.
if you're on a train to pittburgh, it stops in poughkepsie and you don't get off, you decided to go to pittsburgh by doing nothing. your reasons may be your own, but your ass is in pittsburgh.
If you are on a train going off a cliff and you can turn the train around to go off a different cliff, but decide it isn't worth the effort just to go off a different cliff, you still end up going off a cliff. Nice.
I refuse to vote for a party that was complicit with the threats against me and my friends. The other party is pretty ass too, despite being closer to what I want politically.
> refuse to vote for a party that was complicit with the threats against me and my friends. The other party is pretty ass too, despite being closer to what I want politically
Sure. There are a lot of other people like you. Political operatives work hard to find folks like you, because groups who won’t vote are groups you can transfer resources from. (Same, oddly enough, for folks who will vote for you regardless of what you do. You can take advantage of that loyalty to buy votes on the margin.)
It’s dumb. And it directly undermines the causes you and others like and around you support, because again, your devoted non-participation creates political capital on the other side of any issue you would have voted on. But it’s common and a real part of any electoral—possibly political—system, and no elected who wins and keeps office can afford to ignore the free resources predictable non-voters offer up.
I don't really care if it hurts the causes I want, I am not voting for the people who send my friends death threats. Either way, neither party really supports what I want so voting for one would hurt the causes I want anyway.
> I am not voting for the people who send my friends death threats
Uh, then don't. I guarantee you have more people and issues on your ballots than the person who allegedly sent your friends death threats.
> neither party really supports what I want so voting for one would hurt the causes I want anyway
If neither party has any position you give any shits about, yes, I sort of agree you shouldn't be voting... (And I guess I'll concede you aren't voting against your interests and causes if you have no interests or causes.)
If I don't vote for the people who are a part of the party who sent my friends threats and didn't vote for the people who actively hurt the policy I want, I would either be voting for esoteric third party candidates (might as well not vote to save effort), or I would be out of people to vote for.
> If I don't vote for the people who are a part of the party who sent my friends threats and didn't vote for the people who actively hurt the policy I want, I would either be voting for esoteric third party candidates (might as well not vote to save effort), or I would be out of people to vote for
Well no, you'd be forced to participate in primaries or civically engage. You'd have to identify opportunities for compromise. You'd have to disaggregate your false monolith of a national political party. That takes effort.
Also, showing up to vote for an esoteric third party puts you on the board. Someone who shows up is provably not too lazy to vote, which is, honestly, most people who come up with convoluted reasons for avoiding the polls. Take a lazy person's stuff and they won't hurt you. Take a person who's showing up to the poll's stuff, and they might vote for the other guy--or worse, join a primary challenge.
Folks rejecting politics implicitly endorsing the status quo (whether they understand that they are or not is irrelevant to the measurable effect of their choices). They also put up a flag around themselves and their community that effectively marks it for cutting resources to benefit people and communities who reward their electeds.
Friends and I have been threatened with violence multiple times by prominent members of one party and the other party does the same thing to other people. I would love to go into detail but I don't want to get doxxed because it is pretty specific. :(
>Friends and I have been threatened with violence multiple times by prominent members of one party and the other party does the same thing to other people. I would love to go into detail but I don't want to get doxxed because it is pretty specific. :(
So you're a nazi/white supremacist/Boogaloo boy? I wouldn't worry too much about getting doxxed, there are plenty of those around.
Or are you a batshit ancap[0]? That's a smaller group, but still sizable enough to avoid being doxxed just by mentioning it.
In fact, most groups that get that kind of hate (from anyone) are big enough (Trans folks are ~3,000,000 in the US, gay folk are ~30 million. I'd expect you could give at least some detail without doxxing yourself just by mentioning it -- assuming MiiMe19 isn't the name on your driver's license.
As such, I call bullshit on your claims. Prove me wrong.
The situation was specific enough and got enough media attention that yes, I would dox myself by giving pretty much any hint. And no, I am not in any of the groups you gave, or anything related. I hate politics and politics obsessed losers and have better things to do with my time. The only hint I can really give is that years later, despite not even being related to the action that started this whole thing, I (and friends) have been harassed in public and have had people threaten to hurt me just because of this one thing.
lol I'll bet OP has a super hot girlfriend who goes to a different school and plays bass in a punk band. No you can't meet her, she's on tour right now, in cities you've never heard of playing venues you've never heard of. No she doesn't have a bandcamp.
Here in Germany, we have like 20 different parties on the ballot, with maybe 6 of those having a reasonable chance to actually get any seats. Not a SINGLE ONE perfectly represents me and my issues.
I still voted, because my personal laziness or moral superiority does not trump the very real world effects of the "bad ones" winning. Lazy people like you with post hoc rationalizations exist here too, and they're just as bad and wrong.
> I still voted, because my personal laziness or moral superiority does not trump the very real world effects of the "bad ones" winning. Lazy people like you with post hoc rationalizations exist here too, and they're just as bad and wrong.
By not voting, you are clearly saying you are fine with whoever wins. If you were not fine with whoever wins, you would have voted for someone, anyone else.
There's a double standard that I see a lot here, where people want to vote for a party, denigrate those who chose not to participate as being morally culpable for the results of the election, but won't take moral culpability for what their team does when they're in power.
If you vote for team A and they win and then do something bad (inevitable), shouldn't you be morally responsible for that? After all, you seem fine claiming non-participants have moral culpability for whatever the winning team does.
Yes, you are, to the extent that "the other option" would have been better.
This seems incredibly obvious. If my options are "don't bomb children" and "bomb children", there's an obvious choice and obvious culpability. If my options are "bomb children" and "bomb way the fuck more children" the choice is also obvious.
You do not get to pretend a moral dilemna doesn't exist just because you're not a fan of the available choices. You are still culpable.
You have a train hurtling down the track that forks into two groups of people, 10 in one and 5 in the other, some of the people go on to cure cancer and some are murderers and you don't know where they are. Also it's possible batman set up the scenario to kill the bad guys and by flipping the switch you kill the good guys. Or the Joker set it up and the reverse is true.
In this case, you could argue that you only have moral culpability by intervening. Unless you are absolutely sure you have full knowledge of the intended consequences by acting, you can absolve yourself of the moral culpability by non-intervention.
And since we don't know the long term consequences of political actions, there is at least an argument for non-intervention.
I also sat out one election here in CZ, but that does not mean that I was "fine with whoever wins". It was "I really cannot decide which of the two guys is worse and I need to survive either of them."
Fortunately the Czech president does not have that much power.
I have voted in all of them so far. Smaller parties = not much personal attachment + higher chance to find at least one that is, in that particular moment, more aligned to your interests.
In general, I believe that more choice is good and polarizing political systems are subpar.
Well yes, but you're completely misunderstanding how the trolley problem applies to voting, esp. in the USA. You're pretending that "Not Voting" and "Voting" are the switch options, but that's simply not true.
There are just two possible outcomes: Dems or Reps getting power. That's the switch options you have. "Not Voting" simply means letting the trolley take the Rep route and being JUST AS CULPABLE for the results as every single republican voter.
Your fantasy of "not voting" being an actual moral option is like arguing "I disagree with the concept of a trolley, so I'm just going to turn away from the switch". You're morally exactly as culpable, because you made a choice that is morally the equivalent of "not switching tracks".
There is a subtle difference though because a vote is supposed to be a act of support. With the trolley problem there is nothing to support.
Voting for party A/B is a reward that encourages party A/B to do more of what they're doing.
So let's say only 1000 people voted because everyone else hated both options. That would pave a path for party C that would not exist if everyone held their nose and voted for crap.
Not participating in the trolley problem does not remove questions of moral responsibility. You had the choice to throw the lever, you said "either outcome is fine".
That's your choice. "I don't participate at all" doesn't work unless it makes the whole trolley go poof.
>Not participating in the trolley problem does not remove questions of moral responsibility. You had the choice to throw the lever, you said "either outcome is fine".
As the eminent philosopher[0] opined:
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Free will
Everything about him since 2015 has been absolutely egregious. Anyone who hadn't realized it by 2016 will never change their tune. Even if he declares martial law for no good reason they're all still going to justify it somehow. Anyone who's hung on this long will be along for the ride forever.
> cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader?
They've normalized corruption irrespective of magnitude. That's partly a problem of the little corruption existing in the first place. But it's also a problem of education and tribal populism being given this much power.
I think most actually know and don't think it's all that much different from what other have done for decades. I'm not saying they are correct to think it, just that they do think it. They think it's refreshing that the corruption is in the open. It's a societal boy-cried-wolf numbness. People are tired of the of finger pointing and screaming about every thing and now don't listen when the real stuff goes down.
You assumed the leader is corrupt, possibly assumed the leader has bad intentions, and that the world can't possibly be more complex than these assumptions. Assumed the leader made this choice instead of a team behind him.
Then presented a generality. Possibly assumed he doesn't know more than you and "everyone who won't say anything".
Called an entire administration a circus. Another generality.
Suggested bribery without evidence.
How does one respond constructively to a comment like this?
Yes, and that's depressing. Why are so many people not understanding what is going on?
Reminds me of this Bill Gates quote: "We were a bit naive: we thought the internet, with the availability of information, would make us all a lot more factual. The fact that people would seek out—kind of a niche of misinformation—we were a bit naive."
Watching the Great Brainwash happen in real time has given me (I hope) a lot of insight into how anti-fascist Germans must have felt before WWII. It's a hell of a thing to watch half the people you know fall victim to the deluge of simplistic, feral propaganda that's been pouring out of our media sources for quite some time now. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other socials being the primary driving force. All platforms that are incentivized to spread rage and misinformation, and yet we can't seem to quit them as a culture. We rationalized their existence and non-regulation because BUSINESS and FREE MARKET. It's a real sad time for America. We should have known better. It's all of our faults, collectively. For not being big enough to shun the pressure and money. For not doing what was right all along. Now, we'll reap the whirlwind.
It's easy to explain: They have no idea what's happening.
Most people can't keep up with the firehose of news and don't really want to. This particular bit of unethical behavior is just one more bit of inconsequential news which will have completely disappeared from the headlines by tomorrow. It basically never happened to 95% of the country, regardless of political leaning.
Secondly, conservatives live in their own highly filtered and mutated information bubble. Good news is amplified, bad news is either downplayed, justified (pure fiction is acceptable) or simply ignored. So even if they do hear about this, it won't be a big deal.
In short, most people won't care, and conservative media will actively work to overlook or more often, rationalize this sort of unethical behavior to the point where it somehow is totally fine. (Simply read this thread to watch it happen in real time.)
They wouldn't be fine with it if they understood it. Instead they are not paying attention and only consuming propaganda media (Fox News) that refuses to report on Trump negatively in any way.
We're long past the time when FoxNews was the main vector. Now the propaganda is coming from social networks and mainstream media that is afraid of consequences if they tell the truth. It's all just a big mafia system.
It is disconcerting. Having discussed openly with people who were supportive of similar politicians, their logic is often in the line of "all of them are corrupt, but at least his politics are different". Now when you point that certainly corruption exists, but this is another level, they're getting into non-logical territory. People perceive times as grim and will take whomever offers something else than the status-quo baseline politician I guess. Even if they grift throughout and everyone's worse off in the end.
On a baser level, if you go on twitter, there's a whole slew of delusional people who either don't believe this because of "fake news", another portion that's in the same "Clinton/Obama/Biden were even worse", and the rest just doesn't even care so long as "the libs are owned".
Another 36% could've voted against him and chose not to. Even accounting for some amount literally unable to reach the poll booth, yeah, half of America.
> I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader
It's because you are still thinking of the USA as a democracy. Musk helped buy the election for Trump. It's an open oligarchy since companies were allowed an opinion as if they were citizens.
The thing is, most won't hear about this at all. It's always amazing to talk to a Trump voter and realize they don't actually hear about most of this stuff
And if it does break through the right info bubbles, right-wing media pundits and influencers will be on-the-ready to quickly rationalize or what-about it away and coax their audiences back to their "happy" places, where they can nurse their favorite grievances about the left, the media, the trans people, etc
Well, to be fair, 7 million showed up in the streets on Saturday. Up from 5 million before and up from 3 million before that. The last election was decided by 2.3 million votes.
Edit1: That's not to say don't worry about it. That's to say everyone can show their displeasure with peaceful protest and involvement/activism that will make it clear the people of the US disagree with this corruption. No matter how much any internet groups scream "stolen".
Edit2: people vastly underestimate, in their media bubbles, how many showed up from "red" states.
From the 7 millions that did show up, very close to zero of them will be deciding the next election due to the way the election system works in the US.
>From the 7 millions that did show up, very close to zero of them will be deciding the next election due to the way the election system works in the US.
That's not really true. Check the margins of victory in so-called "swing" states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina) for Trump and compare that with each state's turnout at last weekend's protests.
So no. Many more than "close to zero" of those folks will be deciding the next presidential election.
I think you underestimate how many showed up in and from red states. And how many don't get their news from Fox/NewsMax/Trump/Social. At least that's one good thing about all the AI polluting social media with obnoxious slop.
Ok, so the ones that showed up in red states basically don't count. That's the very definition of a red state. The ones that showed up on blue states as well. The ones in swing states may make some difference, the problem is that they almost certainly already voted blue in the last election. That's why i'm pretty confident that, unfortunately, these numbers won't make much difference.
I also believe you are making a category error expecting the next election to be like the last. His shift in approval has already been ~20% for the worse. And people aren't going to forget the demolition of the Whitehouse for a golden ballroom while Republicans twiddle their thumbs.
I mean, we shut down the government and so now we're just waiting (a year) for the midterms. What else do you expect people to do?
Among other things, people are constantly challenging Trump in court and have reversed many of his policies. For example, my passport needed to be renewed this year and he signed an executive order saying I couldn't get an accurate one. The ACLU sued him and now I have an accurate passport. Living your best life in spite of his attempts to ruin it is a valid form of resistance. He wants to erase trans people. I'm out there not being erased. That's something.
It's about a question of if you get to decide the "sex" or "gender" field on your own documents or does the government get to decide and give you no input and no recourse.
The government clearly isn't shut down. I'm still paying taxes through the eftps web site. Only the parts that the executive wants shut down are actually shut down. Perhaps "degraded" is a better word.
>In many parts of Europe a couple of strikes would have taken place. Usans are numb or has no social conscience and muscle.
Americans are not numb. And we have both of those things, or at least most of us do. What we don't have are strong unions. Less than 10% of American workers are union members.
What's more, for as long as there have been unionization efforts in the US (150+ years), the forces of corporations, aided by the government -- to this day -- have suppressed those efforts -- for a long time, brutally and fatally -- and such suppression (although generally not with clubs and guns these days) continues, often with government support.
As such, even a "general strike" would have minimal effect, as many union members are forbidden by law to strike (in various jurisdictions, police, fire departments and others).
The vast majority of US workers are "at will" workers whose employment can be terminated at any time, for any (or no) reason. Workers can do so just the same as employers, so it's definitely fair!
More than half of Americans can't afford an unexpected $USD600 expense. As such, how many do you expect to essentially quit their jobs (possibly multiple jobs) to join a "general strike"?
Labor and unions don't work in the US the same way they do in say, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and other countries with high levels of unionization[0]
As much as I'd love to see repeated "general strikes" in the US, protesting the anti-democratic (small 'd') assaults on the rule of law, freedom of expression and due process, given the state of organized labor in the US, that's just not going to happen.
As such, we organize where we can and mobilize widely. As the pain comes, more and more of folks will begin to see the problem. I hope it won't come too late.
I know HN viscerally hates crypto, and yes Trump is embarrassingly corrupt, but the charges against CZ were a greater wrong than whatever quid pro quo happened in the pardon.
This is the most embarrassing part of all of it. The US is ping ponging between two very different ways of misusing state power.
CZ was charged with violating a highly technical US securities law that is not common to most countries despite not being a US citizen or ever setting foot in the US. His crime was letting his employees (also non-US and under no affirmative obligation to learn the laws of every country in the world just because they run a website) tell crypto whales they could use VPNs to get the non-US, non-nerfed version of Binance.
The public's interest in protecting crypto whales from Binance is extremely tenuous. Unsophisticated users would hit the geofence. These were whales using Binance because they wanted to, not because they were tricked.
The US's right to enforce arcane securities law outside its own borders is also very tenuous. If every country pulls this level of aggressive enforcement of atypical law on every website (even geofenced ones!) we will have total chaos. Should China, Russia, or India be able to hunt you down for violating some arcane law? No? Then why should the US?
This is also happening in the context of an active public debate over the application of this law within the US, one cryptocurrency supporters won fairly definitively in the last election.
Whatever discretion the law provides US enforcers, they should have recognized that it was wrong to use that discretion and left CZ alone once Binance made reasonable gestures at compliance.
Instead, once their political coalition signaled that they should put symbolic heads on platters, they went about scoring career points. This is the kind of misbehavior that drove Aaron Swartz (a friend of mine) to suicide. We should be clear that it's wrong.
And here we are. A choice between venal corruption and cruel punching down at immigrants on one side, and a blind, symbolic use of power for power and ideology's sake on the other.
Thanks for all of the comments. I wasn't replying simply because I haven't seen them, but based on the comments I actually got: I feel like my words would be like yelling into a vacuum regardless of what I actually say.
I don't see where the GP changed their mind. They may not be ok with this particular action while still preferring the current administration to any alternative.
The problem is we dont believe him. There has been ample time to make a u turn. A decade at this point. Trump has never shied away from his corruption. He has been upfront about his intentions from the beginning. I just do not believe that this is the straw that broke the camels back when so many straws have come before.
Serious set of questions here from someone desperately trying to understand people who voted for Trump and how to have conversations with them that can be productive. None of them are meant to be insulting or insinuate anything.
To me, this sort of behavior just seems par for the course for how he has been acting since before his presidency. Did you follow his record in business and politics closely prior to voting for him? If so, what mitigating factors were there that let you still feel comfortable in voting for him?
Is this an isolated source of issue with him? Part of a broader trend? In either case, is it/these a big enough deal for him to lose your support moving forward? For the rest of the political party supporting him?
If there has been a shift in your ability to support him, what is it that broke the camel's back?
It is remarkably simple. There are countless meals on the menu but people get to see only the two on the front page. Say, monkey brains and bull testicles. Few can really appreciate either. There is a little talk about the slugs on page 1. An abysmal small number will turn a few pages and look over the burgers and pizzas... but you can't really order a burger in a restaurant like this? Can you? So even they pretend they really like to eat testicles.
You could have literally opened a random page and order whatever is on there. It is perfectly safe to order the burger as you will most likely be served monkey brains anyway.
No one will rage at you for voting for Afroman. There are no dire consequences.
I just honestly feel like any attempt to equate the two is insane.
I can't really align myself to either party, and I am diametrically opposed to the Democrats on some issues, like gun control, and think that there are a lot of real issues that they push far to the extreme to the point that it is problematic, but... there's also only one party that attempted insurrection and overturning the election, campaigned on all sorts of insane shit, pushes a narrative of needing the military to deal with protestors, etc.
It's not two shit sandwiches, it's a pot of live pit vipers vs a pot of boiled unseasoned kale and spinach. I'm not going to enjoy the latter, but it's probably not going to harm anything more than my taste buds. The other might kill me.
The magic is this: there are no other candidates who can win because you didn't vote for any of those in previous elections and there won't be in the next because you won't now.
It is like you ask someone to chose between death by fire, death by drowning OR finding the love of your life. Then they respond with: I don't want to drown! Or worse, they ask what other people chose.
Imagine yourself making your own choices. Picture it for a moment, doesn't it sound terrifying?
One should also look at it from the perspective of the other candidates. I mean those not part of the uniparty. Imagine making an effort to convince people to vote for a sanity riddled election program. The level of insult people sink to in order to NEVER even consider it.
Not OP but I reluctantly voted for Trump because of the direction he proclaimed he wanted the country to go. I could not tolerate the direction the democrats were wanting to go as it seemed an inevitable path to civil war.
But I knew Trump was shady and didn't like that he partied with Epstein in the 90s. A country takes a long time to change directions. I saw a chance for a smaller less restricting federal government. It was a gamble I was willing to take to at least get the ship turning around.
J/w: what direction does it seem to you that Democrats want? At least judging by its elected officials and internal leaders, it seems like a pretty directionless party to me.
When did your ancestors immigrate to the country? What was the process for immigration then?
For the majority of the history of the country it has never been anything like it is today. Until 1819 you basically literally just showed up. After that, ships had to include passenger manifest and pass that along to the state, and then state's handled immigration - but none there did more than try to charge 'head fees' to keep the truly destitute out, but not all states even did that. 1875/1876 there were laws that changed this - largely banning Asian immigrants and making immigration federal purview. The next couple of decades things got more formalized, but if you were a normal human being capable of supporting yourself you basically got held for a basic check and then were let in. <1-2% got turned away most years. It wasn't until 1921/4 that anything resembling our current immigration system was put into place, and while it saw significant revision in 1965 to how the caps and quotas were organized, we've not seen anything major change.
The Democrats want significant immigration reform, true. They want a path for people that have been living here as productive members of society to stay here. They want them to be treated like human beings.
This is not "flooding" the nation.
> and given them our tax money
This talking point seems to be repeated a lot, but it's just not true. Illegal immigrants pay more taxes in to the system than they receive in benefits - largely because they are ineligible for the vast majority of benefits. If you want to increase our tax revenue, more illegal immigrants is better than less. We effectively rip them off. It's like the claims that the shutdown is over giving illegal immigrants free healthcare - not a dime of the funding being discussed would go to them. You're being lied to.
I'm all for a system where we screen our immigrants for criminals, terrorists, etc. But the current system is broken, and we have built our way of life off of exploiting a large amount of hardworking people that contribute a hell of a lot to our ability to live the way we do. Legalizing them, streamlining the immigration process, etc., is not at risk of bankrupting our coffers.
This country was a frontier in 1819. We needed labor to tame the wilderness. We don't need more unskilled laborers anymore.
We have immigration laws. The US is incredibly generous, and naturalizes more than 1 million immigrants each year.
The American people don't want a "path" for illegal aliens. We already tried that in 1986. All it did was incentivize more illegal immigration.
And what the last administration did was absolutely flooding the nation. They removed nearly every EO related to border security, and then complained that they needed more laws to "fix" the problem they created.
> I'm all for a system where we screen our immigrants for criminals, terrorists, etc. But the current system is broken,
The current system is broken insofar as we are not enforcing the law thoroughly enough. We already have a system, it just needs to be followed. All illegal aliens have to go back.
> I could not tolerate the direction the democrats were wanting to go as it seemed an inevitable path to civil war.
Trumps action with ICE will lead to waco situations. Undocumented immigrants can obtain guns in this country and will not continue to go quietly into the night. Seems to me that his actions are far more likely to lead to civil war
I think a more likely scenario is that a citizen gets tired of being rounded up every other weekend or shaken down for ICE protection money and decides to put a stop to it, one way or another. And it would in many cases be legal too, because those iceholes don't identify themselves.
If somebody that is here illegally picks up a gun and fights citizens or government they are a foreign combatant on US soil. Fighting them is not civil war it is national defense and is the whole reason the federal government was established.
Now, if you are talking about citizens supporting an invasion against those that oppose it that is civil war. I agree that is a none zero possibility. However, telling citizens to get fucked while taking their money and giving it to non citizens, to me, was certain to lead to violent conflict between citizens.
>However, telling citizens to get fucked while taking their money and giving it to non citizens, to me, was certain to lead to violent conflict between citizens.
Whose money? Being given to which non-citizens?
Seriously. Be specific here. the words you used are all in English and are even fairly grammatical. But they don't model reality.
Undocumented folks, by virtue of being undocumented, are ineligible for public assistance of any kind, pretty much everywhere in the US.
What's more, in order to work, they need to provide an SSN and they need to use someone else's because they can't get their own -- because they're undocumented. But they and their employer must each still pay Social Security and Medicare taxes which pay for those programs -- but since they're undocumented, they'll never collect any of the money they paid into those programs in taxes.
So I ask again, specifically, what taxpayer money is being paid to which non-citizens? Please be specific here.
Just stop with that BS. I guarantee that "white nationalism" was the farthest thing from the majority of Trump voters mind. If you come out of the gate saying all Trump supporters are racist most people are just going to roll their eyes at you at walk away. You have already told them you dont like them and that you will most likely not even entertain their reasons as acceptable.
You're the one who was in another comment talking about how the dems ran on a platform of flooding our country with immigrants and giving them our tax money; sounds like you are, in fact, closer to the racist/white supremacist set than you might realize. At the very least, you share their goals or vision for America.
He said "I will be a dictator on day 1", and he meant it. It wasn't "a joke".
He's using US Military on US soil. Sending National Guard in where there is no legal justification for it. This is what the start of a civil war looks like.
That's such a vague response that it's difficult to respond with any specifics, but I will say that I can't imagine how you thought Donald Trump was the better of the two candidates to achieve either of these goals.
The primary reason you yourself gave was a view of "immigration issues" that is detached from the reality that Democrats have continually increased funding for CBP and ICE and increased militarization of the border with every single presidency since and including Clinton.
At the same time, your belief is that failure to enact a nativist crackdown will result in "a civil war". I thought it went without saying, but this is a very extreme view, to say the least...
The connection between nativist policy advocacy and white supremacist ideology in the US isn't new. It goes back to the very notion of "illegal immigrant"; the politician who shepherded the bill that criminalized unauthorized entry to the United States was an open an enthusiastic white supremacist who pushed this bill forward to advance his white supremacy: https://immigrationhistory.org/item/undesirable-aliens-act-o...
At the same time, this relationship is not ancient history. Indeed, nativist sentiments and white supremacist ideology are still closely linked today. See, e.g.:
> The correlation between immigration preferences and racial resentment was significant in every year. The steady correlation of 0.30 throughout the 1990s and early 2000s was impressively strong by the standards of opinion data of this sort. The rise from 0.30 to 0.50 by 2018 indicates an uncommonly strong relationship. [...] [E]very measure we have indicates that Whites' views of immigration are closely tied to their views of race.
There are many, many similar correlations between nativist beliefs and policy support and "racial conservatism", white supremacist beliefs, and Trump support (including support of Trump's extreme immigration measures).
"Racist" is not currently a label that many people in the United States are willing to openly embrace, even to themselves. It's not surprising that actual or perceived accusations of racism are received with defensiveness. But individual (and nominal) disavowal of "racism" is frankly less compelling than the entire history and presently observable empirical reality of nativism in the United States.
Just curious. Since you voted for someone who is a terrible President last time, what are you planning to change about how you make voting decisions next time? Are there particular people or media you plan to listen to less, and others more? Particular aspects you will weight higher or lower?
Is the irony not lost you that Joe Biden pardoned his own son for crimes he was absolutely guilty of. I don't see how that is any less corrupt. This isn't whatboutism either because I'm not trying to say that what Trump is doing is okay, I'm pointing out that this behavior is not particular to Trump and his supporters. The large majority of Americans are fine with corruption as long as it's their team.
You talk as if corruption is a binary: corrupt or not corrupt.
I’m not supportive of Biden pardoning his son. But it’s inarguable that the Trump administration is orders of magnitude more corrupt than Biden’s was. To say “they’re both corrupt” is to flatten everything out to meaninglessness.
Biden pardoning his son was widely condemned by Democrats.
This is despite the fact that Hunter was gone after on a charge that is basically never enforced alongside a media and political campaign ramping up all sorts of lies and half-truths and trying to draw connections to things he was never on trial for, much less convicted of, with an incoming president that had spoken extensively about his desire to weaponize the government to enact revenge on his political rivals, which we have seen him do extensively already.
I don't like that Biden pardoned his son, but I also think the idea that it is at all comparable to the pardons Trump has issued that are blatantly corrupt is absurd. Meanwhile, Jan6 pardonees have a whole Wikipedia section detailing all of the crimes they have gone on to commit since being pardoned.
No. You are making it seem like Biden pardoned his family for petty crimes. He pardoned them in advance for any crime they have committed that is yet unknown. That‘s an unprecedented move and you claiming the other side will „come after your family“ basically confirms that the legal system is corrupt and that there is reasonable ground to do so.
Biden pardoned his son for a petty crime. He pardoned the rest for probably no crime at all.
See again:
> with an incoming president that had spoken extensively about his desire to weaponize the government to enact revenge on his political rivals, which we have seen him do extensively already.
Again no, Biden issued a sweeping pardon for his Son that pardons him of all crimes, known and unknown. Hell, it was a pardon so broad that even left leaning pundits like Politico publicly wrote about it [1]. It took me all of one second to confirm this. Why lie?
Biden issued sweeping pardons to expected targets of Trump's anticipated (and fairly explicitly signalled) partisan weaponization of DoJ, which is an effective and costly political punishment even if it never secured a conviction, but so long as a suitable pretext can be found.
As we now see that being executed after mass partisan purges and, in several cases (sone where this is already adjudicated, more where it is pending) illegal appointments because that was the only way yo get or keep willing hacks in position to carry out the prosecutions, its arguable the only thing Biden did wrong in that regard was not doing it widely enough.
Biden's son had committed and was convicted of a petty crime that is basically never enforced.
The pardon was sweeping.
You seem to be arguing semantics. I care about what his son actually did. If someone is sitting in jail for a marijuana conviction, and gets a blanket pardon, I am going to say they were pardoned for the marijuana conviction, not for some theorized other crime.
Because, again, Trump was explicit he was going to go on a political witch hunt to target his enemies. A blanket pardon is your best defense against manufactured charges in that case - see all of the current cases being brought against his enemies.
I don't really understand why this is a difficult concept for you to grasp.
One can not be happy with that and understand that Trump would have found ways to lock up his son for 20 years. No one thinks this dude was going to be punished for political reasons.
Hunter Biden and the Biden family were investigated for years in various political witch hunts and Hunter was charged with filling out a gun form incorrectly in the end. Trump made it clear he was going on a revenge tour with the DOJ in his second term so I don't blame Joe for the pardons.
1. There is no evidence that Joe partook in hunter's scheme. No evidence of misuse of office or government resources. It was more conspiracy to engage in corruption than actual corruption.
2. Hunter's pardon was still wrong and widely condemned by dems.
Biden misused the office to pardon his son but he was not corrupt.
It's a good thing Trump is as old as he is. Imagine if a 50 year old had this much influence over his party, could ignore any law, and stole this much money.
May I never live to see such a thing happen in the US, but it doesn't feel unlikely.
I have doubts that JD Vance can pull off a Republican realignment to himself. He's not a 2nd gen wealthy person who assumes that every one will do his bidding.
He is precisely that, and I believe it's the secret of his success. Vance doesn't have that. Sure, he's wealthy now, but he didn't grow up with wealthy, narcissistic parents himself. Vance won't be able to command obedience reflexively, automatically, like Trump can, with attitude and habit alone.
Sorry, I was tired and misread your comment and skipped on the "not". It wouldn't have made sense anyway given Vance's upbringing, so sorry for the noise.
I’m very confused. Rural voters can connect with a dynastic NYC real estate developer, but Vance at least has origins much closer to typical Americans.
Is it just media nostalgia? Trump was on the TV shows they liked and so they trust him more?
A lot of politicians have tried to replicate Trump’s style with limited success. We could probably debate forever what it is about Trump that makes him unique. I think his crude and abrasive personality won people over; it felt authentic and cathartic. Nowadays I think he has immense inertia.
I remember hearing a lot of sentiment mid-2010s about how since he was a successful businessman that he will make good decisions in the White House. America was longing for someone that wasn't 'status quo', so to say.
I agree with you on the personality side, but I also think his overall fame from TV, real estate, etc. is just as big a factor to his political success.
Yeah the whole "successful businessman" schtick is pretty much a trope in US elections. Before Trump it was Ross Perot, before Perot it was others like Wendell Wilkie. Trump had that going for him AND the celebrity status like Reagan. These things are basically status buffs for elections in the US.
Trump is also not afraid to say what a lot of people think. Telling a reporter they are "terrible" or talking about making America great. The way he does it resonates with a lot of folks.
> Telling a reporter they are "terrible" or talking about making America great. The way he does it resonates with a lot of folks.
Yeah, but I could do that. It’s pretty easy to, but I’m certain I wouldn’t be able to amass a cult of personality around myself.
Yet if I try, I’m pretty much universally considered an asshole, even from those who agree with me. There’s got to be more than just “he’s not afraid to say what we think”
Trump opponents might cringe at thinking about Trump as a leader, but it is the origin of his success. The L word is generally over-used and over-ascribed. For example, leadership might correlate with being a "hero" or being moral/just/fair,etc however there's lots of proof they don't correlate. It's a fallacy to think that a leader is also a hero. But some people do (fallaciously) ascribe these positive traits to leadership.
That said, in his domain, Trump leads; he generates the headlines and everyone else follows them.
Is JD Vance generating headlines? Barely. Is anyone else generating headlines? Lets consider a few:
- Tim Walz: mainstream media tries to meme Walz into being a headline generator, but he isn't, and poses no serious contention
- Mumar Gaddafi, Sadam Hussein, Hitler, Mussolini, etc: i'm not sure there has been a dictator that did not generate headlines.
- Steve Jobs: strong headline generator, such that he could have run for president and likely won
- pewdiepie: for a spell he was generating headlines, but mainstream media had no solid editorial narrative for the guy (and his hundreds of millions of followers) which posed a social risk. The more they discussed him, the more risk of society penduluming in some unpredictable way either by martyring him or amplifying his politics, so they chose the "ignore him and let whither" as a strategy which seemed to work, as he has drifted into Japan and been off-the-radar
- Luigi Mangione: a nonzero number of liberal voters would decry Trump in one breath and cast a vote for Mangione to be a politician despite evidence he is a cold-blooded murderer. This probably won't change much after conviction.
In conclusion, intelligent people are forced to lament the state of humanity in which leadership is game-ified so easily and yet so difficult to achieve. "How does one consistently generate headlines" is a difficult question to answer and seems to be one of the core essence of humanity. And, as described above, the origin of people's feelings of why a given person is successful.
Yeah, I think this is probably a factor. In particular, the fact that Trump appeared a lot on professional wrestling TV has been cited as something that made many people in demographics who consume a lot of pro wrestling content familiar with him and inclined to view him favorably.
My wife's aunt has been having delusions Trump wants her to help run the country, and maybe preparing for her to run for senate. She's bought "Trump Coins" that will make her rich when we does something in the future...
It's a cult of personality that has taken over people's lives.
Such personality cultists usually filter for other great egos in there sphere, leaving behind burned out parties filled with syccophants. If the history of the USSR teaches us anything, the more dangerous aspirants are bookkeepers for the party, managing silently in the background, secret service personal and (checks notes) clowns? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_Khrushchev#Stalin's_fin...
Unfortunately, this narrative's utility is pretty low and it's intended implications are severely weakened by the current administration's obsession with revenge, blaming everything on someone else, and persecuting political opponents. If such openly hostile and norms-breaking rhetoric did not exist before the pardons, then the pardons would appear suspicious.
The Biden administration went after Trump's lawyers, censored American citizens that supported Trump, and put people in prison for years that walked near the capital on J6 (and never participated in the riots).
In addition to this, Trump was brought up on federal charges that we still don't know today. They were: Charge 1..2..3..4. If you look at all of the court documents released, they didn't even have evidence of an actual crime.
It fell apart so quickly, it was so obviously made up.
Biden's family took money from foreign governments and was definitely involved in Ukraine corruption. It was pretty evident Hunter would have been brought up on charges and sentenced to a long prison sentence, if not for the pardon. This isn't even mentioning anything linking Biden to the crimes, which was a real possibility during the investigation.
It's not revenge, it's justice. I also want justice for the the corrupt politicians during the previous administrations that always seem to get out of everything.
Hillary ran an email server from her office that contained government emails, and you are really going to tell me that there's 'nothing to see here'? We would still be hearing about it today if anyone on the other side had done the same thing.
The real crimes started when Trump was running in his first term and Obama colluded with Russian agents to spy on him. This is really supposed to be okay with no punishment?
All eyes are on Trump and the only thing even close to a crime that was found was bringing home documents that he was allowed to declassify. Something every politician in history has done.
After what I've witnessed in the last decade, it really makes me question the accuracy of our history books.
> It was pretty evident Hunter would have been brought up on charges
No it wasn't. Trump had to threaten Zelenskyy to accuse him at all, which backfired immediately when Zelenskyy denied the accusations. He still claims that Trump manufactured the charges, and we haven't seen any damning evidence that suggests they were credible. I wager that's because the "evidence" wouldn't discredit Biden unless a court was forcibly compelled to do so.
> Hillary ran an email server from her office that contained government emails
This may be news to you, but government officials are allowed to use third-party communique to transmit non-sensitive and declassified information. The reason Hillary was never brought up on charges was because they never found any proof of wrongdoing. Same as Trump's SCIFs, if you want to go there.
> The real crimes started when Trump was running in his first term and Obama colluded with Russian agents to spy on him.
Again, source? We have no evidence that Obama was a Russian agent, whereas several retired KGB officers have attested to Trump's enrollment. I think you're misremembering a few details, but I beg you to link a high quality source if one exists.
He pardoned one family member who actually committed a crime, one who had been subject to some allegations that went nowhere, and several who had no creditable allegations of any criminal activity.
If Harris had won it is likely that none of those pardons would have happened. They happened because Trump was promising to go after the families of people he saw as an enemy.
Trump will need to pardon him and his entire administration. Not because they are criminals, but for fear that the Democrats will go after their enemies.
I dont agree with the pardoning just making a point that presidents have done this for a long time of pardoning controversial people. Democrats and republicans are both corrupt so it isnt suprising.
You missed what I stated, pardoning someone for a specific crime vs what biden(if he was actually doing it) pardoned his son for all crimes he may have done over a 10 year span. Oh wait, that was actually one of the only pardons he actually signed.
edit:
He actually pardoned 5 family members for all non-violent offenses from jan 2014 to jan 2025, does 1 billionaire = 5 biden family members?
Biden pardoned those family members because he knew Trump would personally go after them and make an example of them regardless of what they actually did. It shouldn't have happened, but it's pretty clear why it did.
Also, how on Earth are their "crimes" as egregious as those that Trump has pardoned in his recent term? Seriously, what did they do? How many people did they hurt? You can't just say "corruption" in an ambiguous sense, because then millions of other people would also apply. Also, "I don't know but it's fishy!" doesn't work when we know literally everything in Hunter Biden's life. That was the whole controversy.
The Binance founder directly impacted people in a significant way. The rioters were violent protesters that resulted in loss of life and others fearing for their life. It isn't the pardon itself that is bad, or the number, but the message it sends as to why they would do it. Biden was "if you're in the family of the president, you'll get forgiveness for your poor life decisions". Duh, like it or not, that's always been true, and Biden got roasted for it anyway. He's done, his family is out.
Trump is "if you're rich or you worship me, literal crime is legal".
Earlier you said hundreds. I call bullshit. Including the January 6 select committee members, staff, and police witnesses, the total appears closer to 50.
At this point, I wouldn't touch crypto with a 10 ft pole. What happens when everyone recognizes that the whole thing has turned into a money laundering grift? Who's going to give you anything for your bozo bucks? At this rate, it's not going to take long.
Maybe there's an alternate timeline where crypto was legalized and regulated into something like fair gambling... but that's not what we're getting. Anyone getting into crypto now is just a sucker to be milked dry.
Yeah, I don't think the dominos will fall until the next flash crash when people realize it takes $100+ just to withdraw (because 7 transactions per second isn't many). As soon as confidence is lost, the reaction will be full blown tulip market. We just haven't seen the first bank run yet. And there is literally no backstop for a crypto bank run.
Fees are CURRENTLY around $1 because no one is using the L1 network. There is no demand now because of all of the times when the transaction fees were $30.
>Also, Bitcoin can process far more than 7 tps through the Lighting network.
The lightning network is insecure during periods of high demand because you aren't able to safely close channels. Also, you still need to fund channels on L1 in the first place!
If they remove the guardrails keeping crypto out of the regulated financial industry (read: KYC and AML requirements), your bank deposits will absolutely be comingled with toxic crypto assets, because it will be way cheaper to avoid paying compliance people than the transaction fees.
It won't be bozo bucks because like you said it has a real value. Having international, anonymous, instant money laundering machine is invaluable. It will take legislation to criminalize people from taking part in the money laundering machine to kill the value. That isn't happening in the next 3 years.
I am sorry to tell you that the majority of the services that you may be using (Stripe, OpenAI, Anthropic, PayPal, etc) all have exposure or have some form of funding by crypto.
> Who's going to give you anything for your bozo bucks? At this rate, it's not going to take long.
It's already here. Scan your eye-balls for some Worldcoins ($WLD) to prove you are not a LLM bot.
The bad idea was making bad loans, putting them in CDOs, and then using flawed models to certify them as risk free. That's irrational.
Dividing up the credit risk on a pool of loans so that some people lose money only if all the loans go bad is a very good idea. You just need to make sure they are good loans.
The irony being it would actually help lower the barrier for entry a little to get a home loan on the consumer end of the spectrum but as you said they dropped that barrier subterranean and then predatory crap like payment-option ARMs and a massive lack of informed consent.
I think like, 90% of the crypto trading volume is by people who know it's all a grift, but are hoping to get rich while the music is still playing.
People knowingly buy into pump & dumps, gambling that they're on the early (pump) side and hoping to get out before the dump.
People will happily collect commissions selling products they know are scams or will happily collect management fees for parking investor's capital into grifts.
You'll never get truly everyone to recognize it, and it only takes one sucker at the poker table to keep every seat filled.
> People knowingly buy into pump & dumps, gambling that they're on the early (pump) side and hoping to get out before the dump
I recently heard of a real estate person that wound up buying an entire neighborhood around one of the stadiums for next year's World Cup. The impetus for this decision was to jack up the rates during the tournament, and then sell them off after. Another person thinks renting a bunch of Teslas and then placing them Touro will be another get rich idea during the World Cup. There are all sorts of people that think they are smarter than everyone else and are so confident they just cannot think of any ways their idea will fail.
What makes you think that the participants are not in on the grift? People are different, some rather supports wholesome stuff, some don't give an f. And it's not just morals that differ, risk-taking is also individually different (and can change with age and other life situation too).
> What happens when everyone recognizes that the whole thing has turned into a money laundering grift?
Part of the problem is that this seems to describe most of the economy now. Maybe not specifically money laundering, but it’s all a grift whether we are talking about Binance, OpenAI, or Skydance-Paramount. There are grifts everywhere which just encourages more grifts as people see the resulting success and lack of consequences.
another part is thankful that he is there as a proof that you can get to a high status and high relevance role in society and still mantain your humanity, your inner child alive, not being robotic and just have a blast doing whatever the f you want.
There is no point getting to the top if you then lose all your humanity and playfulness.
Like if the condition to become President were to become a robot like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, thanks no, I pass....Trump on the other hand is the best of both worlds.
He's sending people to concentration camps & bombing boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. He's deported American children. Treatment of asylum seekers, treatment of immigrant's children, wanton discrimination against minority groups…
I mean, did Kim Jong Un not qualify for this role to you? Or is that one actually horrifying and you put up some arbitrary distinction because... Trump?
President Count
--------------------------------
Joe Biden ~8,064 |
Donald Trump ~237 |
Barack Obama ~1,927 |
George W. Bush ~200 |
Bill Clinton ~459 |
George H.W. Bush ~77 |
Don't come here and lie. You almost doubled the number for Joe Biden (the vast majority of which were pardons for simple possession of marijuana) while omitting the extremely well-known fact that Trump pardoned ~1500 people who were convicted for offenses committed on January 6, thus deflating his total by >80%.
Even if the numbers were correct, the numbers are absolutely no use without context, except perhaps to allow partisan mud-slinging on Twitter.
Biden pardoned thousands of non-violent low-level marijuana convictions, which is why the numbers look like that. Trump pardoned a large number of violent protesters.
Not attacking you but using your message to say to anyone reading: Is there a lesson here about what our AI future looks like? The OG thread comment is using summarized information to induce anxiety. When everyone has a 'suped-up AI bot running around the net for them, how much more noise like this is there going to be? How many people will have armies?
Can you imagine positive reasons why the pardon wouldn't be outrageous? This might be a more thought-provoking question. Is there no nuisance to this pardon?
He served 4 months for a laundering case , and has built the most successful exchange. There are bankers and vcs doing far worse things. He deserved the pardon , and no, he doesn't control bitcoin
If we ever get trump out of office we need to re-arrest every last one of these guys. The supremes can whine and cry as we keep them in prison. They can raise an army if the want anything different.
Serious controls need to be placed around the pardon power.
So much of what DJT is doing should be disallowed but isn't. So we can disallow them and then add an amendment to reverse all DJT executive orders and pardons.
They most certainly committed other crimes which were uncovered when they were investigated for the crimes that they were charged and now pardoned of.
Also as I understand it, while the can't be tried twice for the same crime Federally, it's still possible that they can be tried in a state court for committing the same crime.
The moment pardons are abused, the whole concept should be abolished. Pandora’s box is open now, unless you take it away, it’ll be continued to be abused.
It feels like HN is slowly turning into reddit with the comment section becoming mostly snide remarks
Instead of just commenting about being dismayed with the state of things, how about step back and speculate as to why he did this pardon, and what the implications of it are.
I don't know the answer to either, but I surely didn't learn much from what used to be an insightful, intelligent crowd
You're being downvoted but I get where you're coming from.
The dismay is from not needing to speculate, wonder or theorize about why he did this pardon. It's a quid pro quo pardon for helping the Trump family make billions of dollars in under a year using the office of the president. The corruption is entirely flagrant and open.
Yeah, it's a forum of smart people, but none of those smarts are oriented to dealing with this kind of problem. There's a system but it's non-functional, laws but they're ignored, the tools are raw political and social power. It's going to take a while to figure out what to say and do about the slide from normal, functioning democracy into semi-theocratic banana republic.
I don't think we need to speculate much. He did the pardon because CZ bribed him with a lot of money. The implications are that Trump will keep abusing his power to keep receiving bribes.
https://archive.ph/XRw42
Coffeezilla video about this is up already
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
I can't believe the dominant country is running this timeline.
It already no longer is.
Depends on your metrics of "dominant country" tbh. In terms of GDP the US is leading. In terms of purchasing power parity China is leading.
In terms of military prowess the US is superior, if you believe their advertised weapons capabilities. That being said, if we believed what countries said about their own weapons, then Russia has a number of world ending superweapons - clearly they're the leader here /s.
If you believe total number of naval vessels determines might, the Chinese Navy's numbers make them superior. If you believe damage control and logistics determine naval might, the USA has one of the most sophisticated support fleets in the world with world class damage control (combat survivability - but this is a meme).
If you believe technological development makes a nation superior, the USA maintains it's edge with trade allies South Korea and Taiwan.
If you believe total production is what makes a nation superior... China.
Look, you get what I'm saying. The dollar is still the primary reserve currency (for now) and the US still ensures safety in international waters while projecting power regularly.
> The dollar is still the primary reserve currency (for now)
It really worries me that the US president is heavily invested in crypto schemes, since he and his family would benefit with the crash of the dollar. It is the conflict of interest to end all conflicts of interest
The idea I believe is to make a USD-pegged crypto the new reserve currency.
It worries me that the president is a malignant narcissist conman who lies pathologically and has replaced morality with loyalty in the US government.
This is a very real concern, and often understated.
America has very little manufacturing capacity, has lost its edge in batteries and power generation, and is soon to be behind on computing. They're politically fractured, losing all their allies, and no longer have a sustainable military advantage. If they decide to flex their aging muscles against China, they will be outproduced, and can't win in a single decisive blow unless they want to initiate a surprise full nuclear war. They're done. Corruption ate the golden goose, and the people cheered.
You really have to ask the question "does all industrial production aid itself to war?" when making this determination.
Additionally, most people don't consider the Mexico factor. Presently some of the most talented machinists in the world live in Mexico manufacturing parts for American automotive (and other industries).
But, really, this comparison can only be proven in conflict - something both the USA and the CCP want to desperately avoid right now due to his economically coupled they are.
Just in time logistics has been a disaster for the American war machine.
Yes, productive capacity can be repurposed to support military goals - with organizations and technicians already in place.
Mexico has about 1/17th of the manufacturing capacity of the US - adds around 5.8%. America has a labor shortage in manufacturing, which is unlikely to be filled with foreign workers given the current crackdown on brown people. They're also annihilating their intellectual capacity by again cracking down on brown people, and defunding universities.
China is already leading the world in manufacturing and expanding rapidly, their universities are world class, and they have almost caught up in technology. Given their investments in education and strong culture of academic achievement, it's unreasonable to think they won't overtake the US in every domain in the next 3-5 years.
China doesn't have the resources to win a war.
The Malacca straits are to easily blockaded. China needs food imports and energy imports no matter how much alternative energy they build.
No, you can't truck or train it in over land.
They are still facing a massive demographic bomb. They're becoming increasingly authoritarian, which will begin to restrict their production efficiency. They may have a financial bomb as well.
Don't make the mistake that you think that India and Russia are going to be close allies of China.
Russia has extensive territories that China considers theirs historically. Likewise, India and China dispute many territorial issues.
The Malacca straits will certainly be important, but the US will have to reach past China and Chinese allies to the south to blockade it, and will be sitting ducks for drone and missile attacks (see the black sea fleet for a demonstration). China has heavily invested in submarines to avoid exactly this situation.
Authoritarianism in China has a significantly different flavor to US authoritarianism. The US is serving the goals of their dominant elite industries - finance and tech. China has an engineering culture amongst the elite, and is inclined to solve problems with productivity and megaprojects rather than handing money to purely extractive industries.
For an example of the difference between their flavors of authoritarianism and the outcomes they bring, compare their health care systems - the USA has one of the most expensive in the world at ~$14,500 per capita, and poor outcomes due to privatized corruption, while China's 14th 5-year plan has brought universal health care for approx ~$650 per person. China's average life expectancy is higher than the US's.
The US is, objectively, extremely corrupt, and is transitioning to authoritarianism to protect that corruption. China's authoritarianism achieves measurable goals, and has broad (though not universal) public support.
The USA will get curb stomped in a war. They just don't have anything but a massive military buildup from decades of pork barrelling unnecessary military contracts. Their population is sick and stupid. They have alienated their allies. They will lose.
> The US is, objectively, extremely corrupt, and is transitioning to authoritarianism to protect that corruption.
You have no idea what extreme corruption looks like if you think the US is it. (I will admit that it is becoming more corrupt, and that the corruption is tied to the authoritarianism.)
> Their population is sick and stupid.
Yeah... you're just ranting.
The US is no 2 in manufacturing output and way ahead of no 3.
>America . . . has lost its edge in . . . power generation
Energy costs are much lower in the US than in Europe or China. China is the world's largest importer of petroleum and of natural gas. In contrast, the US is self-sufficient in petroleum and natural gas.
China's petroleum comes by ship from the Persian Gulf and from Russia's European ports (since there is no easy way for Russia to get its oil to its Asian ports). Beijing's worry that something might happen to interrupt its long supply lines of petroleum and natural gas is why it has made a large risky bet on solar electricity. The US, which has more land with high solar potential than China, can sit back and wait to see how China's bet on solar will turn out before it makes big bets on solar.
It might be that the cost of electricity specifically is lower in China than the US. If so, that is because Beijing has prioritized building a lot of electricity-generating capacity. It engages in many such infrastructure project to keep its young men employed -- something Washington does not need to do because the US economy provides enough jobs without without Washington's spending on infrastructure projects (so Washington tends to spending on infrastructure only when the project clearly makes economic sense).
Beijing imposes tight restrictions on its citizens' ability to invest outside China, so Chinese individual investors, pension funds, etc, put most of their money into deposits into Chinese banks and into Chinese real estate. Most of the funding for infrastructure projects comes from these bank deposits and from borrowing. Governmental debt (including debt owed by state and provincial governments) is a higher percentage of GDP in China than in the US.
The dollar is going down and down, even if it is a reserve currency it's not used like that anymore right now. Change your POV the situation is horrible
Give it a few years. The US ceding its dominance by trying to re-follow its 1970s/80s playbook (now with less Volcker!) in a 2024+ world will go down as one of the biggest geopolitical own-goals of all time.
Unfortunately its "peers" are not much better. The PROC is still authoritarian and wants to invade Taiwan and some EU countries are still fighting more EU integration so that the EU could become a "real" player.
>some EU countries are still fighting more EU integration
At least this I understand. Foreign powers, especially you-know-which-one have a strong interest in preventing EU from becoming too strong, and unfortunately this is easy to do because:
* it plays on primal human tribal instincts (they want to assimilate us, they will force or enable more immigration, etc)
* the way EU works, you only need to convince some of the countries
If trump were willing to call for extended high interest rates, we’d be in a far better spot. Trump trying to bring them down rapidly is perk of mt stupid especially during rampant speculation in GenAI.
I don't understand, can you explain why high interest rates will help economic development in the USA in light of its staggering held debt?
I'm not an economist, I don't understand how this works.
Holy shit, it runs deep.
Its so gross.
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Comparing gov’t officials to civilians is a stupid comparison.
Biden abolishing police is hyperbole.
CZ enabled a lot of dark shit. He is somehow simultaneously so powerful as to help millions of Chinese, but powerless to do anything about a few thousand of criminals and pedophiles?
This is not a serious take.
It isn't just hyperbole it is completely divorced from reality. Biden said "fund the police" at a state of the union address. Federal law enforcement didn't see cuts. Funding for state police (the bulk of police around the country) increased, with very few localities actually shifting funds from police to other things.
Changpeng Zhao broke the law and got caught. Everyone agrees on that. What you present above is revisionist history about "political persecution," which is the favorite justification of the current administration for pardoning convicted felons, even in the total absence of any evidence supporting a conclusion of political persecution. See also George Santos, J6 rioters, etc.
I don't think it's really necessary to pretend that this pardon was deserved. The pardon happened because (a) Trump wants the support of crypto billionaires and (b) Trump received a large bribe. It's really not complicated.
Painting Trump as sympathetic to ethnic discrimination is really ridiculous. No one believes that, even people who cynically use that justification to support his lawlessness.
You sound biased. If you believe this narrative, I got a few questions for you… - How was Binance any different than any other crypto exchange? - Should Coinbase and every other crypto platform be charged for the same crimes?
Coinbase had the "right" kind of people on their board, and reacted much more rapidly to KYC requirements. For good or for ill, that's the reality.
The real question is about Kraken. How they've managed to remain untouched is a mystery.
> Should Coinbase and every other crypto platform be charged for the same crimes?
Absolutely.
Is there a place for a logical counter-point in there not having been charges against people responsible for the 2008 financial crisis? It seems like a selective enforcement of rules or consequences in both situations to me.
Your argument is a non sequitur. You are saying in essence: "Someone, somewhere, under totally different circumstances was not prosecuted. Therefore, this particular prosecution is selective prosecution, and therefore inappropriate." By that logic, we should just stop prosecuting crimes altogether, on the logic that we are unable to prosecute all crimes consistently.
There wasn't an argument per se, but an attempt to point out a possibly, similarly politically-influenced miscarriage of justice.
It may be a non sequitur to suggest that the pardon of one convicted financial criminal is similar to the lack of convictions in another likely financial crime context, but it seemed germane and parallel to me.
They should be charged too. Every conviction for financial crimes is an incredibly hard fought victory, because this country runs on fraud. Your argument is why we should treasure CZs conviction and seek many many many more like it.
This was part of my point and a nuance I appreciate as well, and that the pardon resonates for me with the apparent lack of charges for those responsible for the financial crisis.
The right thing to do is to prosecute the responsible for 2008, not to pardon people responsible for other crimes...
Yes, exactly, and yet I don't think there has been much in the way of charges brought against those responsible for fraudulently rating the securities.
Those people responsible for the 2008 financial crisis yet not charged, they should be charged with breaking what law?
Some form of fraud for misrepresenting the risk that the mortgages that were bundled together, seems like the obvious answer. But I'm not a forensic accountant or someone with the nuanced legal understanding to define a charge here. Do you think there was no crime in the actions taken by either the banks or the rating agencies? No failure of fiduciary responsibility?
>In the physical world, the Biden admin gleefully abolished the police.
When did this happen?
In the imaginary rhetorical timeline
I wonder which police it was, as well, since the only police the Biden administration had control over were federal agencies such as the FBI.
I’m tempted to think “Fox News is a hell of a drug.”
I thought he was talking about the band.
How does a seemingly intelligent person reach such an empty conclusion?
Bad faith or possibly seeming intelligent != being intelligent.
The law says he should have prevented those bad apples from moving dirty money around, and he did not follow the law.
Do you have a rebuttal for coffeezillas assertion that 2 billion dollars of Abu Dhabi money was invested in Binance using the Trump family coin in order to buy a pardon?
The president is clearly pro crypto and doesn't think this dude did anything wrong, but he also wasn't gonna give a pardon away for free. It's a disgusting abuse of office he should be impeached over. Selling pardons, what a shit show.
Would you agree that all crypto exchanges have moved dirty money around? I don’t see anyone else being punished for similar crimes in crypto.
I don’t doubt Trump tried to advantage himself when doing this. But I do feel like the Binance charge wasn’t consistent at all.
I would think any serious actor would know better than to store funds where they could be seized at a moments notice, so while I'm sure every exchange is guilty, Binances crime was getting caught.
Kinda like getting a speeding ticket, the fact that other people were also speeding isn't a defense.
He's not making an argument.
With these characters, from Trump on down, discourse is not the point.
He is flexing his power by showing he can make an obviously fatuous point and get away with it. Because there are no consequences, for someone like him.
The pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations that it's clear there should be constitutional changes in the pardon power, either congressional review, or strip it altogether.
The way this is going, the President won’t need using any pardon powers, because the judges will all ask the President what the judgement should be in advance.
And the prosecutors will ask who to prosecute.
Finally only fair justice!
Your forget to insert the part where the President asks the convicted defendant if they want to finance their pardon with Klarna or Affirm in the Presidential Library's checkout page
Financed through purchases of the President's own crypto coin
Yeah we already have judgments that the executive branch has gone well beyond it's allowed limits and the majority of SCOTUS stance has been:
"Yeah well let the legal process play out ... in the meantime our guy gets to do whatever he wants, and you're still fired / kicked out of the country / funding cut / an so on".
If it is at all inconvenient for the most powerful folks in the country, they get any limits on their actions protected by SCOTUS ... at the cost of the people.
This is by the way literally word for word official statements of the ruzzian officials. The conviction rates in ruzzian courts are above 99% every year and the official explanation is that the prosecutors and police are so amazing and great, that only real criminals make it to the court. :)
in principle, this is true, if the case does not have a reliable basis, then it will not go to court. If we take this into account, then the magic numbers of 99% will disappear.
These are not only criminal cases, but also administrative and civil law relations.
in principle, there was no need to discuss this at all, usually those who do not understand the legal system and who have never been to court, cry about 99%.
What’s the deal with the ‘zz’?
This is the letters on Russian tanks in Ukraine. Sign of marauders and thieves.
And it stands for SS, this historic German organization
This is currently how it works in some countries that are supposed to be (and were) democratic. Sadly the US is moving in the same direction.
*has moved
Lord Eric ?
That's Lord Eric Frederick Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho Trump to you.
if they were going to pardon everyone, at least this save costs. i guess doge was really saving us money after all /s
Which congress do you want doing that review? The past several congresses have been unqualified to do any sort of constitutional reviewing in my opinion.
The U.S. is running an outdated installation of democracy. The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point. Except the populace is already badly split into warring camps.
> The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point.
Do you mean the French Revolution? If you actually read the history on that (even basic stuff beyond the "Reign of Terror") I don't think any person would want to experience that for their country. It had tons of indiscriminate violence and took a decade of chaos before they sorted out into a real government, which then resulted in Napolean's coup
I read this as a reference to the Fourth and Fifth Republic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fifth_Republic
(I've read that the French are talking about a Sixth, given that they've gone through several prime ministers in the past few weeks/months and seem unable to maintain a government long enough to pass anything.)
ACK on all. I should be a bit more clear maybe.
It's more likely a reference to France currently being the Fifth Republic.[1] The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth happened in 1958 without much violence.
[1] https://thegoodlifefrance.com/short-history-of-the-five-repu...
Thanks, yes, it was a reference to Fourth to Fifth, and maybe soon Sixth Republic (depending on how things go…)
Interestingly, the Fifth has then been running for 67 years so far, which makes the Third Republic still the longest running republic of France! I guess in around three years they'll be having a grand party.
Those 3 years are on shaky grounds, the way they're burning through Prime Ministers ;)
Compared to some other places around the world, looks pretty stable :) Take Peru as an example, they've had 5 different presidents in the last 5 years, shortest one being president for 5 days, and since Ollanta Humala (2011-2016), not a single president has completed their full term.
> The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth happened in 1958 without much violence.
Quoting from the article:
The article even fails to mention Operation Resurrection. Hopefully we don't need coups every time we want a new constituent assembly.You never want the French Revolution... except when your country is ruled by an absolute monarch and you are essentially his slave forever. The American Revolution had the advantage of having the king an entire ocean away and no other neighbor kings panicking and declaring war on you immediately.
we actually had the help of the french king as well, in a sort of "enemy mine" scenario that has resulted in towns near me with french names pronounced in american accents. We've got North Vur-sales (Versailles) and Shar-luh-roy (Charleroi) and I can't help but think that Lafayette would've gone right back home if he know we were gonna do this to his language.
Prussians, too. A lot of Europe seemed to not really feel one way or another about the plucky little colony but had very strongly defined feelings about damaging Great Britain.
I suspect the OP meant their semi-presidential/dual-executive system w/ parliament (although at this point, storming the Bastille is starting to look pretty good...).
Yeah that's pretty much what happened last time I tried to reinstall my distro
The term "the French Revolution" is kinda misleading because by the normal definition of "revolution" they had a few of those not just one.
it's misleading without context. luckily nothing humans ever do is without context and the french revolution has referred to the revolution of 1789 since...well, since 1789.
I don't mean it's misleading in that people are wondering "which revolution?". Everybody knows the French Revolution means the one involving The Terror and the death of Louis XVI.
I mean that it implies France didn't have several other revolutions.
if the phrasing leads everyone to the correct understanding then it's not misleading. it's leading. it's reductive, but it's not misleading.
Tech corps and ex-PayPal guys would be putting billions into making a new constitution and it would be far, far worse than what we have now. And while the French love using violence and destruction to defend their countrymen and their rights, Americans would gladly be lemmings off a cliff so long as someone told them it pissed someone else off.
For better or worse, the US constitution does not have provisions or a process for dissolving itself and developing a new constitution.
The closest thing we have is the amendment process. In theory we could use that to rewrite the entirety of the constitution[0], but good luck getting the required votes in place on any possible replacement. The bar is pretty high: amendments need to be proposed by either a vote of 2/3 of Congress, or by a constitutional convention convened by 2/3 of the state legislatures, and then ratified by 3/4 of all state legislatures.
We couldn't get that sort of agreement to pass something as theoretically uncontroversial as the Equal Rights Amendment. It's laughable to think we could pass a "new constitution" that way.
I expect the only way we could end up with a new constitution is through a bloody civil war, or some sort of coup. Hopefully no one wants something like that, though. I certainly don't.
[0] Technically the entirety of the constitution can't be amended; Article V, Section 5 prohibits an amendment from changing each state's equal representation in the Senate. Though I suppose a "rewrite amendment" might get around that by preserving the Senate as-is as a ceremonial body without any power. That would certainly violate the spirit of that wording in Article V, so I imagine it would be challenged in court.
We don’t need a full rewrite. Despite the divisions in this country, there are a couple things that most people agree on:
- Corporate money should be out of politics
- Gerrymandering should be stopped
If we had amendments for these two things, it could change A LOT. Congress might actually be able to function. Corporate corruption could be prosecuted. We might be possible to put meaningful limits on corporate power.
Of course, the devil’s in the details. How do you write amendments for these two things in a way that actually accomplishes the goals? But though it would be difficult, I don’t think it would be impossible.
Can we throw some form of ranked choice voting in there as well? As someone unhappy with either major party, I want the ability to vote what I actually want with a backup vote indicating what I absolutely don't want under any circumstances.
It's worth noting that Article V, Section 5 doesn't prohibit itself from being amended away. So you just need the constitutional convention to refer two new amendments: the first one stripping the restriction itself, and the second one to do what the restriction prohibited being done.
So theoretically if any one of the party in american system gets 2/3rd people of the same party and they all agree to one person and try to amend the constitution itself to add whatever they want, can't they theoretically create a purest form of dictatorship (one which lasts forever instead of just 5 years)
I mean given how much is already happening in America, I am just curious from a legal standpoint if there could be done something like that (forgetting the insane backlash but still), what could the president of america do to completely sieze the constitution ?
Put it under a the peoples direct majority vote to reset to a past working version control?
Heh, a balkanized USA, or one with different warlords like Afghanistan, would be interesting to see...
"In this region, I'm the ruler, and here we believe in TERF!".
I wanna be a citizen of Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong.
Trademark Curtis Yarvin
Yep. We might have been the first PC, but we're running windows 3.11 while the rest of the world runs a new OS.
We need ranked or approval voting, elimination of gerrymandering. Strongly prefer elimination of Citizens United and the Senate.
Unfortunately, eliminating the Senate (or more precisely, each state's equal representation in the Senate) is the one and only thing that the constitution forbids an amendment from doing (see Article V, Section 5):
> Provided that no Amendment [...] no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
(Awkward ellipsizing, but the elided text is another thing that's not allowed, which expired in 1808, and is otherwise thankfully no longer relevant.)
Better voting systems can be implemented, but since the states run federal elections, each state would have to pass legislation requiring a different voting system. Of course I expect all 50 would not agree on which alternative system is the best, which may or may not matter. And I doubt red states would want to change, as voting systems that better reflect the will of the electorate tend to disadvantage the GOP.
Eliminating gerrymandering is difficult, because it's hard to objectively define what is and isn't a gerrymandered map. There have been some attempts to do so, and I would say they've even been somewhat successful, but people can reasonably disagree with the methodology and thresholds used.
The Citizens United SCOTUS ruling and precedent absolutely needs to be reversed; agreed. Corporations are not people and should not get first amendment protections. Or any kind of protections outside any that are defined in regular law.
Another thing we need to do away with is the Electoral College. Presidents should be elected based on the national popular vote, not by per-state winner-take-all proxies, with vote apportionment that wildly advantages some states over others. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would effectively do away with the EC if states "owning" at least 270 electoral votes were to all sign it, but that's unlikely to ever happen. (Then again, it's more likely that the Compact would achieve that threshold than the passing of a constitutional amendment to abolish the EC.)
> Article V, Section 5
We should amend it [0] so that any state may subdivide within its own borders without the consent of the Senate, provided that no subdivision is smaller (less-populous) than the smallest current state.
In other words, small states don't have to give up their disproportionate representation in the Senate... but they cannot use that power to monopolize being small either. Any state above a certain size (>2x the smallest) may decide that its constituents are best-served by fission.
This adheres to Article V, Section 5, since no state is being deprived of "equal suffrage": Each state has 2 senators, just like always.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admission_to_the_Union
California would have to split into 68 separate states to have the same representation as Wyoming.
Correct, although I can't them every actually going N=67. There are diminishing returns, budgetary costs, difficulty drawing lines, and plenty of residents might simply be against it.
However, that still ought to be California's decision to make, as opposed to minority Wyoming-gang's to veto. Even if a big state doesn't actually do it, having the latent option is itself a subtle influence on interstate politics.
This is all regurgitated speech from a voter in a urban area. 99% chance you live in one of the major metro regions and vote mostly like your neighbors.
For the other half the country, we really don't want to Federal laws to be decided by people in other states that don't share the same values. This is why state rights exist and will not be removed (at least in our lifetime).
> For the other half the country, we really don't want to Federal laws to be decided by people in other states that don't share the same values.
Do you reject majority votes in general or do you merely propose explicit minority protections for non-urban communities?
Looking from a EU perspective, majority votes based on population is quite bad and would result in the european union to not be a union since the low population countries would leave. Germany and France would gain even more power than they have now, so giving smaller countries a small boost in relative power is part of what encourage them to be there.
> Do you reject majority votes in general or do you merely propose explicit minority protections for non-urban communities?
Does your system of voting include anyone who just comes in or is restricted to only citizens with verified ID ? If the latter, then majority voting is completely fine.
What does a verified ID have to do with values?
The context was: "decided by people in other states that don't share the same values."
And as long as they are verified citizens, I personally don't mind if they don't share the same values. No stuffing of the ballot box with non-citizens.
That is way to general of a question, I'm speaking of the system of government in America, a republic democracy, United States.
If whatever city/state you live in wants to have majority-vote for all issues, please go do it.
Sure. I was asking about you personally, in your particular situation. Whether you don't agree with majority votes overall, or whether your are fine with them but want a minority protection for this specific case.
Well, your defense of the status quo states that rural voters inherently deserve more voting power than urban voters for all decisions.
This is all speech from a voter in a rural area, happy they get to tell the rest of the country how to behave despite being a minority of the vote.
Allow me to be "aggressive" as well:
For the other 60% of the country, we don't want Federal laws held up by people in arbitrarily drawn political districts and don't share our values regarding human rights and dignity. This is why, while states do retain broad rights to administer their internal affairs, spending and education, federal laws should be altered with a majority, excepting certain fundamental laws like the Constitution.
> For the other half the country, we really don't want to Federal laws to be decided by people in other states that don't share the same values.
Funny people can look at Arabs or Indians and identify “these people have a diametrically opposed culture and cannot peacefully coexist with me”, but can’t extended that to people that look like them and are also diametrically opposed.
It’s delusional to try and maintain a country that’s developed such opposed cultures. You can try to force peace for a while, but it always bubbles back up.
>It’s delusional to try and maintain a country that’s developed such opposed cultures.
Have the subcultures of the US diverged over time or does it just seem that way because it is easier to publish non-moderate opinions because of the internet?
I want to share this comment that some nice gentleman had written on one of my comments in some different thread.
Helped me understand a lot about modern america, but tldr, no it feels like its always been this way
source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45376949
The Internet and cable probably helped spur this movement of bubbles, where economically and socially insecure people can be told their problems aren't caused by the wealthy or the corrupt, but by non-Christians and immigrants.
I think a lot of people, particularly on the right, cannot define what they actually want this country to look like in 20-30 years or how it needs to get there.
clarifying/limiting presidential power and ending lifetime appointments for federal/supreme court judges could be useful
The first Version had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism as a way to eject populists, treasonous agitators and destabilizing personal.
The U.S. is VMS. France is BeOS. The former actually does work regardless of how kludgy it is.
They’re both obsolete?
If we can't figure out how to get a Congress that most people believe in then I worry that is the beginning of the end for this government.
Hopefully we get to try from scratch a third time if that happens but I worry that collapse will be too tempting for Russia or China to not step in.
Maybe we can be lucky and get conquered by Canada first in that case? What a weird thing to think...
From fiction, we have Clancy's sudden loss of the majority of federal elected officials which allowed for a fresh start. However, that's subject to having governors submitting senators while having elections for congress. Starting from a clean slate would be the only fix. As it is now, it's who is willing to kowtow to the biggest backers to get them over the line and stay in office. On top of the gerrymandering that all but ensures the party in control stays in control, I see no change to the status quo in my life time without an uprising.
Gerrymandering is at the heart of the rot.
The Senate is not subject to garrymandering and if we fixed the issues with the House (literally via any mechanism) the Senate would immediately go back to being the vehicle used to prevent the will of the people (see the Senate under Mitch McConnell any time the House was under Democrat control)
Until the Dem party fixes their brand and wins back some of the Senate seats they used to control in the 90s and early 2000s there will be no positive progress.
The Senate is in a permanent state of gerrymandering.
There were only 13 states when the Constitution was ratified. It was never envisioned to be as disproportionate as it is today, with California's two Senators representing 40 million people vs. Wyoming's 0.6 million.
In 1776, the population of Virgin was about 500K, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts were about 270K, and Delaware and Georgia were about 50K each.
The founders knew exactly what they were agreeing to when they gave each State two Senators. It’s supposed to be a separate check on the Federal power to force a wide swathe of consensus.
California currently has of 60x the population of Wyoming, which means that Wyoming voters have over 60x the voting power in the Senate as California voters.
Whether the founders intended that or not it's a shitty, unfair, and undemocratic system that doesn't act as a check, it just enables permanent minority rule.
It was semi intentional. It wasn't as extreme but the Senate was still a compromise for smaller states to have leverage in government and get them to sign on.
Meanwhile, the house is about 10 times smaller than what the founders envisioned. Maybe that's overkill but we probably should at least expand the house quite a bit. And Probably expand the supreme court as well.
I would argue then that the Senate is extremely overpowered. The disproportionate body should be a brake on the power of the government, not be the literally stronger half of Congress.
The fact that the most democratic part of the US government, the house of reps, is now the weakest part of the US legislature is ridiculous.
If we're dreaming up fixes, I'd say
1) Senate actions should require a strict majority. If anything should require super-majorities, it should be the House of Representatives.
2) The Senate should not be in control of appointments to the exclusion of House of Reps. No idea what the ideal system is there but the disproportionate body should not be more powerful than the proportionate body.
3) The Senate should be able to at most block an action for one term of Congress. That means that every Senate action can be overridden by an election. Which means the disproportionate body is effectively calling a referendum on legislation, instead of being a hard-stop.
the problem is that since 1911 the house has also been a compromise for smaller states to have leverage because it's capped at 435 total members regardless of population. we've gone from a system of dynamic tension between popular rule and representation for smaller populaces to a system where both houses are on the side of the "underrepresented" to an extent where they're actually vastly overrepresented. Combine that with the electoral college (which again allows a ruling elite to overrule the populace and advantages smaller states) and the fact that the elitist president and elitist senate pick the supreme court and you can see where the so-called "underrepresented" populations are actually the ones in charge of every branch of government.
This is, of course, exactly what the founding fathers intended. They disliked kings but they feared rule by common people and always intended there to be a privileged class of citizenry that does the actual ruling because people like you and me are just too ignorant to be trusted with that. That's why they excluded the vast majority of people from voting at all and those that were allowed to vote had their power diluted by various mechanistic means like capping the senate, flooring the house (and later capping it as well), using the electoral college to make sure that those precious few who vote at all don't vote incorrectly and having the least representative members of the executive and legislative branch select the judicial branch so that they're not swayed by "politics" (read: what the governed actually want).
And that's how we have a system that claims to be a democracy but where what people want is actually completely disconnected from what happens, and where "The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all" (https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/).
That is the point of the Senate! These are united STATES, and always have been.
There is no way to prove this but who is your Representative without googling the naming, do you know them? Ever talked to them before?
It might be the point, but it's a bad point. It's a bad system that results in minority rule.
doubly so because the house has been floored since inception and capped since 1911, the president gets elected by the electoral college (which favors smaller states) and the president and senate pick the supreme court so there is no proportional representation anywhere and there hasn't been for over a hundred years
If states are so independent and equal that they demand exact same legislative power as fifty times bigger states, then maybe that equality should be full? Like for example equal federal monetary transhes to every equal state? And equal taxes collected from each state? No?
And now ask the 3.2 million Puertoricans how they feel about that.
Could just as soon argue it's shitty and unfair that populous states like Russia get to impose their will in less populous ones like Ukraine.
Something being more democratic doesn't make it better by default. Hence why there's a bill of rights.
I doubt the founders considered the possibility that political realignment would result in nearly all low population states being on one side of the spectrum.
Counting the two Independents as Democrats, who they caucus with:
Top 25 states: 2 Democrats - 52% 2 Republicans - 40% Split - 8%
Bottom 25 states: 2 Democrats - 36% 2 Republicans - 60% Split - 4%
Top quintile: 2 Democrats - 50% 2 Republicans - 40% Split - 10%
2nd quintile: 2 Democrats - 60% 2 Republicans - 30% Split - 10%
Middle quintile: 2 Democrats - 40% 2 Republicans - 60%
4th quintile: 2 Democrats - 30% 2 Republicans - 70%
Bottom quintile: 2 Democrats - 40% 2 Republicans - 50% Split - 10%
The very top and very bottom are a 55% to 45% split in either direction. It's not a heavy skew, a single party flip in the quintile from the majority to the minority would make it 50/50 even. Those quintiles cancel each other out when voting on party/caucus lines. It's actually the 2nd and 4th quintiles that have the biggest skews. Democrats take the 2nd quintile while Republicans take the 3rd and 4th.
I definitely appreciate your measurements, but I think your analysis is off.
The top & bottom quintiles don't cancel out, but rather support the same trend, which is that Republicans have more voting power per capita.
That said, I am surprised that the top & bottom quintiles are nearly balanced. I'll have to look up which bottom quintile states have Democratic senators.
Thank you for that.
I agree, the data does indeed show that Republicans have more voting power per capita, as they have advantages in the bottom 3 quintiles. However, I don't think the correlation of population to party (at the state level) is as extreme as some try to portray it. There are high population Republican states as well as low population Democratic ones. Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, and New Hampshire are Democratic states in the bottom quintile.
The top has 11 Democratic votes and 9 Republican votes. The bottom has 9 Democratic votes and 11 Republican votes. If they all vote on party lines it's a tie. So it's really the middle population states that give Republicans their current edge.
It's a frequent criticism that smaller states have outsized representation relative to their population. The US is not alone in this, the EU also has the same characteristic. Germany, the most populous, has over 150 times the population of Malta, the least populous, but only 16 times the amount of representation in parliament (96 MEP vs 6 MEP). By comparison, the largest state, California, has 37 times the population of the smallest, Wyoming, but 18 times the representation in Congress and the electoral college (54 vs 3). Granted, it's not an apples to apples comparison as the votes are divided between houses and the relative power of the EU vs the US federal government but it's a comparison nonetheless.
It's a compromise when trying to form a union of political entities that differ so greatly in size. The smaller entities obviously give up some sovereignty to their larger counterparts. The larger ones seem to have to have to reciprocate in a meaningful way to keep a voluntary union.
The existence of the Virginia Plan (the Large State Plan) and the New Jersey Plan (the Small State Plan) indicates that balancing the differing interests of high- and low- population states was a prominent concern of the founders. I think they would expect states to often align by population size since that very thing occurring at the convention led to the compromise written into the Constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Plan
I have a hard time conceiving of matters that states would separate themselves on by population size other then proportional representation in Congress back then.
I suppose, however, that the majority of low-population states were also frontier states, seems like a fairly compelling distinction.
>I suppose, however, that the majority of low-population states were also frontier states, seems like a fairly compelling distinction.
Not so much, unless you consider Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont to be "frontier" states in 1787. Actual frontier states like Georgia were in favor of the Virginia Plan as they figured their population would grow soon enough and they could take advantage of their eventual large population (with slaves being counted as 3/5 of a person) in a "Virginia Plan" world.
The Connecticut Compromise[0][3] ended up in the Constitution as a reconciliation of the Virginia Plan[1][4] and the New Jersey Plan[2][5], with the larger states supporting the Virginia Plan and smaller states supported the New Jersey Plan.
The above is incredibly abridged and ignores much context. As such, I strongly recommend you read Article I, Sections 2 and 3 of the US Constitution[7] (the result of the Connecticut Compromise) as well as the original Virginia and New Jersey plans, or at least the wikipedia pages I linked for a much better discourse on the topic.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Plan
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Plan
[3] The current system. Which differs from the original only in direct election of Senators, rather than them being appointed by state legislatures[6].
[4] Proposed a bicameral legislature with both houses apportioned by population.
[5] Proposed a unicameral legislature with one vote per state.
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_U...
[7] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/
Edit: Added the missing link.
No, I like the way the Senate runs in theory. Equal representation for the states regardless of size. Only if it's alongside the house with proportionate representation.
That seems like a good theory that would keep itself in check.
In execution it's an absolute shit show, I'll give you. But I do believe the theory is sound. With the house and the Senate we get the best of both worlds.
In theory.
Why is the theory sound? It’s an arbitrary number of regions delineated by arbitrary lines given a disproportionate amount of power that run completely counter to the goal of a democracy.
>Why is the theory sound?
Because tyranny of the majority is still a thing. Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes. So the house is there as a large power and senate can check it.
Of course, in practice the house is way under represented so its almost like we have a senate and a mini-senate. That's where things fall apart.
> Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes.
I don't see why that would be the case. To win an election you don't need to win states at all; you need to win lots of voters, and those voters could come from anywhere.
You could lose every single voter in both CA and TX and still win the election, given different political demographics across states.
As an aside, I also think abolishing the Electoral College and going strictly by the national popular vote would increase voter turnout for presidential elections. I live in a solidly blue state, and if I didn't care about down-ballot races, I probably wouldn't bother to vote in presidential elections, since my vote doesn't really matter here. Only votes in swing states matter under the current system.
Tyranny of the minority is not better.
> tyranny of the majority
Aka democracy.
> Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes.
No, it wouldn’t. It would switch to appealing to the most voters, who may or may not happen to live in California and Texas, but that is irrelevant to a democracy.
>Aka democracy.
Yes. I hope I don't need to explain the many times that the majority sentiment was in fact not the correct one. A pure democracy under the basis the US was founded under would end up much more conservative than what we have today.
> It would switch to appealing to the most voters.
So it'd switch to appealing to urban cities and ignore the rural areas. Iirc the top 10 cities today make up some 40+% of voters. Why bother going to Omaha when you can focus instead of LA and NYC?
Tyranny of the majority may be undesirable but tyranny of the minority is even worse. At least the majority, are, you know, the majority.
You are taking a very narrow one sided view. We live in a Republic of states, not a Federal Democracy. I know you would like this to happen, but it won't here for good reasons.
There is no “good” reason. It just so happens to be the way the power dynamics of the past have played out, and there has not yet been sufficient motivation for the population to go to war.
ya so instead we get multiple lifetimes of minority rule and stagnation.
Minority forces of change also happen for the good as well. There aren't too many landmark cases where the majority suddenly voted to give more representation, more power to workers, nor simply cede powers previously enjoyed by government.
Arbitrary or not, States are sovereign things. They set their own laws.
Having 1 chamber that allows equal representation
And
Having 1 chamber that allows proportionate
Is a good system in theory. Otherwise, States (which are again separate entities) with high populations just steamroll those that have low populations.
The system now allows states with high populations to be appropriately represented in the house, which sends bills to the Senate.
I feel like it's a good system, in theory. You get your population representation and checks and balances for rural areas as well.
The barrier of entry to becoming a state is currently too high, and the barrier to stopping to be a state is even higher.
You keep saying "in theory". If the practice -- as you seem to admit -- doesn't actually work, then what's the point defending the theory? It doesn't work in practice, so it's a bad idea.
> Arbitrary or not, States are sovereign things.
In practice that's not really true. The federal government has many, many levers it can use to get states to fall in line.
>The federal government has many, many levers it can use to get states to fall in line.
This is a separate problem that should be fixed.
> (which are again separate entities)
In theory, but in practice, most states are highly dependent on a few very populous and productive ones, for economic and military protection.
Not to mention that the Feds control the purchasing power of the currency and international trade, so the states aren’t sovereign to do anything of consequence.
Hence in practice, this whole theory of states being sovereign goes out the window.
States are sovereign entities with their own laws. They can even, in theory, secede from the union.
The Senate is a good system, it's just that most states are Republican.
Some of the larger states might consider splitting themselves into separate states to better represent their populations. Though that may not be constitutionally possible.
If we ever add additional states to the Union (Puerto Rico, D.C., etc.), they'll want to enjoy having an equal say with every other state in the Union. It's a compelling feature of our system.
The House, as a proportional system, actually needs to be re-normalized. There are not enough representatives to have an actually proportional vote.
Is it a good system? I'm not sure I understand why? The system as it's designed seems to want to incentivize having many low population states as a way to spread and gain power, and as such the current 100 power holders are incentivized to to protect their power by preventing the dilution of their power that would come with more states.
Additionally, because the population of the country is not evenly distributed across all the states, senators from some states have disproportionate power and control this is frequently mentioned and brought up several times in this post alone. Not sure what aspects make it a good system, some type of beleaguered point about preventing tyranny of the majority? At what cost? tyranny of the minority, political stagnation?
> Is it a good system? I'm not sure I understand why?
States have sovereignty and rights.
The point is that all states have equal representation.
> Not sure what aspects make it a good system, some type of beleaguered point about preventing tyranny of the majority? At what cost? tyranny of the minority, political stagnation?
Because states are political test tubes and need autonomy.
> Additionally, because the population of the country is not evenly distributed across all the states, senators from some states have disproportionate power and control
In my lifetime, the Senate has been majority Democratic party controlled [1].
If you go back to the second Bush term, it's been 60% Democrat.
The current party makeup is only temporary. Things are constantly in flux.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...
States can not "in theory" secede from the United States. See Texas v. White: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._White
From the point of view of the U.S. legal system, the Confederacy's secession was "absolutely null".
It's more complicated than that single case [1], and the chief justice admitted there were other routes:
> Chase, however, "recognized that a state could cease to be part of the union 'through revolution, or through consent of the States'".
Secession does not have to be done legally. Who knows what, if any, conflict that might bring about.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States
Most states are Republican only because of first past the post system. If states internally did democratic majority elections, then most of them would turn progressive very fast. Including Texas, which is already democratic, but is suppressed by a blatant corruption via gerrymandering.
The Senate is a terrible system. There's no logical reason why citizens in one state should have orders of magnitude more say in the federal government than citizens in another.
The founders aren't infallible gods, and they really fucked up here.
Unlike in many other countries, where provinces or regions are merely administrative divisions created to decentralize or streamline administration, the US emerged when states voluntarily came together and decided to create a country. The states were willing to outsource part of their autonomy to a federal level, on condition that guardrails were put in place to limit the power of that federal level. Those guardrails were: bicameralism, equal representation of states in the Senate, and the electoral college. The House is the voice of the people, the Senate is the voice of the states.
The practical consequence of this system is that it effectively prevents a majority of voters from large urban centers from imposing their will onto rural populations, at least at the federal level. It was designed that way.
I've seen comments here claiming that countries like Canada or France deliver better outcomes than the US. They are stronger welfare states, yes, but they also have become overly paternalistic nanny states, with heavy-handed regulations, and high taxes stifling individual initiative.
The practical consequence of this system is that it effectively allows a minority of voters from rural areas to impose their will onto large urban centers
Which you want the opposite to happen , not a better system.
How in the world is minority rule better than majority rule?
We don't have minority rule though, we have a balance.
What?
We absolutely do have minority rule. In both the Senate and the House, the Republican majorities represent a minority of the population.
Trump easily won the popular vote. What makes you say that they represent a minority of the population?
The fact that both the House and Senate are nearly 50% by party again points to the fact that we have a good balance.
Did I mention Trump?
The fact that we have minority rule in the Senate, House, and Supreme Court is exactly why we don't have any checks and balances any more and Trump gets to act like an emperor.
Again, you're saying "minority rule". But Trump (Republican) won the popular vote. So which party is the minority? Do you have another way of determining which party is the majority/minority besides votes for the President?
It seems clear that the majority in the 2024 election preferred Republican governance, and so they gained control over President/House/Senate.
Yes, minority rule. You keep bringing up the presidency, but I'm talking about the Senate.
Republicans have a majority in the Senate when their senators received a minority of votes, by about 24 million votes.
Is this a joke? You think Democrat Senators got 24 million more votes? Where are you getting these nonsense numbers?
Update
Here are some rough numbers I found quickly (because your numbers are obvious nonsense):
Looks like the system is working to me. The Senate vote not withstanding of course because of some smaller states, but it's not some extreme miscarriage of justice as you imply. The majority party won and is currently enacting policies that voters wanted. I'm sorry that your beliefs aren't as popular as you thought.Sorry, I copy and pasted wrong, the Democratic senators represent 24M more people, and had about 2.8M more votes, yet have 6 fewer seats counting the independents that caucus with the Dems.
So fewer voters and constituents for a pretty significant majority in senators.
Trump got 49% of the votes cast, which is roughly a quarter of the US population.
Do you have a better way of determining which party is the "majority" in Congress? That is what we are discussing here. Whether the current makeup of Congress accurately represents the votes of the people or not.
Obviously I understand that not every person voted in the election (many are not even eligible). It is simply not relevant to this conversation, and is an often trotted out diversion meant to diminish the mandate given by the actual voters.
In this case it’s much simpler: the question was minority rule and you can see that power in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches is held by Republican politicians representing less than a majority—Trump is arguably the best claim they have on plurality since he is come very close to winning the popular vote since so many Democrats stayed home—and enacting policies which are very unpopular, in most cases policies which are unpopular even among registered Republicans.
> There's no logical reason
If you study the U.S. history in detail the you see the reasons and the main ones are quite "logical".
You might not agree with them (I don't necessarily), but that doesn't make them illogical.
They were logical at the time they were implemented. Most of those reasons have been invalid since the Civil War, and should have been fixed during Reconstruction, except the winners didn't have the foresight or political will to do what needed to be done.
Gerrymandering is particular powerful because Congress has refused to reapportion representatives for over a century. They just decided to stop following that part of the Constitution back in 1929. We still have the same number of representatives as we did when we were less than a third our current population. Each representative now covers 20 times more people than when the Constitution was ratified.
Yes and: our first-past-the-post form of elections begets gerrymandering.
My future perfect world:
Friendly amendments to my wishlist cheerfully accepted.There's so many reasonable, impactful reforms which could be done. And my wishlist is based on my (imperfect) understanding of best available (political) science. And I'm all ears about SCOTUS reforms. And I doubt any reforms will stick, so long as our gini coefficient is so out of whack (wealth vs democracy, the timeless struggle).
Money is. Politicians are for sale.
This is my take as well. Nothing will improve until we roll back Citizens United.
Citizens United is impossible to roll back with the structural problem of the Senate.
Approval ratings for Congress, barring a post-9/11 spike, have been under 30% for most of my life. By this standard I'd say we're in the middle of the end.
For the most part, folks like their own Congress people though. They just don't like the others.
> If we can't figure out how to get a Congress that most people believe in then I worry that is the beginning of the end for this government.
We know, from comparative study of existing representative democracies, how to do that better (have an electoral system for the legislative branch that provides results that are substnantially more proportional than under the current system); what we don’t have is a practical way to get from where we are to where we need to be given the construction of the electoral systems in the states and nationally and the politicians and interests that has entrenched and the Constitutional amendment process.
I feel like we'd have a better idea of what congress is qualified to do if they ever actually tried to do something but they seem to have broadened their role from "prevent executive overreach and govern" to "prevent govern". Congress is where you send something if you want to be sure it doesn't happen.
That being said, there's always the option of just getting rid of the president's ability to overrule the people on criminal matters. We could probably go after state governors as well, that's just as rife with abuse.
> Which congress do you want doing that review? The past several congresses have been unqualified to do any sort of constitutional reviewing in my opinion
States can reject dumb amendments. Congress proposes amendments, the states ratify them [1].
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-5/
It has. But the breadth and depth of how they're being used by this one in particular is really far, far worse than other recent ones of both parties.
Wide pardoning with autopen was both heavy and illegal
Trump has his executive orders explained to him right before he signs them.
Yesterday he was asked about this pardon and barely knew what was going on:
The Biden autopen-shadow-government conspiracies are hilarious, though. Every accusation is a confession with MAGAs.0: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/3861521/...
> these past few administrations
I remain amazed at how, again and again, no matter how specific and unique an abuse by the Trump administration is, it is always, invariably, Really Joe Biden's Fault. Like, the frame has been adopted by the MAGA base, but also the cranky left. The media does it too. Here on HN bothsidesism is a shibboleth that denotes "I'm a Serious Commenter and not a Partisan Hack".
But it leads to ridiculous whoppers like this, and ends up in practice excusing what amounts to the most corrupt regime in this country in over a century, if not ever.
No, this is just bad, on its own, absent any discussion about what someone else did. There was no equivalent pardon of a perpetrator of an impactful crime in a previous administration I can think of. I'm genuinely curious what you think you're citing?
This comment is a perfect explanation of my observations on here too. Thanks.
Yeah, a lot of people on HN can’t seem to cope with the truth. I guess they’ll finally understand over the next 12 mos
>But it leads to ridiculous whoppers like this, and ends up in practice excusing what amounts to the most corrupt regime in this country in over a century, if not ever.
Amen. Preach it, brother!
>No, this is just bad, on its own, absent any discussion about what someone else did. There was no equivalent pardon of a perpetrator of an impactful crime in a previous administration I can think of. I'm genuinely curious what you think you're citing?
I don't know what the poster was referring to, but I AM mad at Biden for pardoning his family. It's a molehill of an issue compared to the current administration though.
I would be very mad at Biden pardoning his family if the next president was going to be Bush. With all of Trump's calls for retribution, and actions in that direction since the election, it is hard to blame Biden for trying to shield his son from unjust exercises of the law, while Trump was publicly touting him as one of his biggest enemies.
I was less mad that Biden pardoned his family, when Trump did it first for Kushner in Dec. 2020. The precedent was already there.
> Here on HN bothsidesism is a shibboleth that denotes "I'm a Serious Commenter and not a Partisan Hack".
HN users don't necessarily do that because they want to. They might do it as a pre-emptive defense mechanism against the brigades of de-facto censors that roam the site.
Moderation via populism is an anti-feature on its face, but Hacker News has the worst possible version of that sort of feature by making downvoted/flagged comments completely hidden unless you are logged in and showdead.
It's a pretty horrendous system if you're interested in good faith and honest debate.
I have showdead enabled, and in my experience, the only dead comments are ones which violate the site guidelines or are otherwise Bad Posts regardless of the political affiliation of the poster. Stuff like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45689291
I have showdead enabled, and ime it's a pretty fair split between truly bad comments and merely unpopular ones. I use the vouch button pretty often.
I also have showdead enabled and in any remotely controversial thread, among the uncontroversial Bad Posts you will find a reasonable number of posts that are well argued and have effort put into them, but get downvoted anyway.
There are a number of reasonable posts in this very thread that are either already dead or on their way out - and I don't even agree with some of their positions.
Maybe some examples from this thread of the actually dead ones?
Any post bringing up any context behind CZ's behavior that makes crypto or CZ not sound bad is getting downvoted.
Maybe some examples from this thread of the actually dead ones?
The fact that this arguable, but clearly reasoned and expressed comment is now deep gray kinda puts an exclamation point on the argument, I'd say.
(Honestly I think the moderation paradigm at HN has some bad externalities too, but really this isn't a solvable problem in the general case and nowhere does it well. The showdead mechanism at least makes the censorship visible to those who know where to look.)
It does. And it's completely understandable why, from a game theory point of view.
The censors want Hacker News to keep its reputation as a place where you can have debates in good faith, while allowing their censorship powers to shape the conversation.
Pointing this behavior out upsets the calculus by warning their potential marks. So of course they want to strategically hide it.
When Obama really increased the number of pardons, a lot of contemporary opinion writers said stuff along the lines of "this is a dangerous precedent and we're lucky that the pardons are fairly popular and sane." Now we're seeing unpopular, not sane pardons.
When democratic norms erode like pardons becoming more acceptable, it's like laying tinder and kindling for a fire. You still need a fire; a bad actor who is willing to light the material on fire. That bad actor is Trump. But the warnings from abusing these limitations from previous administrations was exactly for this moment. Nobody is saying Trump isn't the bad one, he is. But the conditions were laid for him. Now we need to survive him.
When we look back at Roman Senators and Emperors, it's often hard as modern people to point to one, single bad figure because we don't have a lot of contemporary thought or reading from the time. But when we look back we can see the seeds of "decline" in eras rather than single figures.
I don't buy it. A president that will literally direct his AG in public to prosecute his political enemies is simply not bound by norms, period. To pretend that he'd never have pardoned Zhao but for Obama's "increased number of pardons" is, to be blunt, ridiculous on its face.
And in context, you're doing exactly what I mocked above, tut tutting about civil behavior and norms and The Discourse while the system burns down around you.
But don't worry! You can always take solace in the fact that it was Really Barack Hussein Obama's Fault.
Obama did once wear a tan suit, and on another occasion put his feet up on the Resolute Desk.
> And in context, you're doing exactly what I mocked above, tut tutting about civil behavior and norms and The Discourse while the system burns down around you.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do then. I agree Trump is bad. Am I supposed to just say that 3 times and click my heels and then he'll go away?
These are observations designed around trying to make sure, once Trump is gone, that we don't get another Trump. I can't change the current President and this constant purity testing about hating Trump changes nothing.
The reason Trump will have to blatantly violate the Constitution if he tries to run again is because the country was so spooked after FDR's third term that it limited Presidential terms. One could have made the same argument then, the only reason FDR ran a 3rd term is because he's FDR and a different person wouldn't do that. But that amendment is why there's a bright line around a 3rd term now.
> I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do then.
Not equivocate.
Why are you reading equivocation there? You're being way too defensive. Just because Trump is the worst doesn't mean other things aren't also bad, just less bad. Are you implying that I'm not supposed to talk about anything other than how Trump is bad? Again what's the point of this purity testing?
If I caveat my statements a million ways to convince you that I'm not equivocating then will Trump stop being President?
You're pretending that Trump's pardon is not a singular act but the result of some kind of imagined erosion of norms for which you blamed Obama specifically. That's textbook equivocation. A vote for Romney wouldn't have fixed this.
You're also simply incorrect, which is why I'm spending the bytes to try to correct you.
> I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do then.
Refocus you're attention. The problem is not with the pardon power. You said:
> That bad actor is Trump. But the warnings from abusing these limitations
But that's the thing, the pardon power is not supposed to be limited. How would you limit it? Who would actually tell the President "No" and on what authority? The obvious choices are Congress and the Courts but they already checks to balance the the President. That's why they can't check it -- the pardon power is the President's check on them (along with the veto power).
Hamilton said:
That's what it's for. After all the process, if justice is not done, and there's no way to undo it, then justice will not survive and there will be no confidence in the system. But with great power comes great responsibility, so you need someone very responsible in that position or else it doesn't work.So then how do we fix it if not by adding laws and rules? We don't elect people like Trump, who think they are above the law. That's it. I know it seems kind of glib but it's not a high bar to just avoid malignant narcissists.
The reason Trump is abusing the pardon power is because he does not consider what he's doing an abuse. He sees that he has the "right" to do it under the Constitution, and to him, anything he has the right to do, he can do. And you know what, despite him being abusive he does have the right. But that's the thing, we gave him that right, and we can take it away and give it to someone else who won't abuse it.
That is the actual check on the pardon power, but that's on us. It's on us because Trump abused the pardon power in his first term by dangling pardons in front of Paul Manafort when he was being investigated by the DOJ, so none of this should be a surprise to anyone. Obama's "abuses" and Bidens "abuses" are on everyone's lips here, but not a single word for Trump's 1st term abuses (mine is the first mention of the Manafort pardon in over 1000 comments). So if you really want the root cause of his power abuse beyond his psychopathology, it's that -- because not only did we not care he did that, we actually reelected him as he promised to abuse his power during the campaign, so why wouldn't he actually do it?
> So then how do we fix it if not by adding laws and rules? We don't elect people like Trump, who think they are above the law. That's it. I know it seems kind of glib but it's not a high bar to just avoid malignant narcissists.
Right but he is the President. I didn't vote for him. I donated and canvassed for the Harris campaign. But Trump won. So what are we getting by making 1000 internet comments of which 800 are about how bad Trump is?
This whole exchange reminded me why I don't participate in politics on HN. It's all just venting. I'll stick to doing things like canvasing and not reading the anxieties of HN commenters.
> Right but he is the President.
Yeah, and that he specifically is President should tell you something -- maybe the fight isn't at the pardon power.
> So what are we getting by making 1000 internet comments of which 800 are about how bad Trump is?
We might come to understand the root of the problem is the psychology of a specific individual and the cult that surrounds him, rather than what Obama did a decade ago. It's not that Obama's use of the pardon power caused a slippery slope of executive overreach that has resulted in today's corrupt pardons. We are not dealing with "overreach" here, what's happening today is categorically different.
> This whole exchange reminded me why I don't participate in politics on HN. It's all just venting.
I dunno, hopefully in this exchange you've learned that the pardon power is not supposed to be limited under the Constitution and why, so now you can stop making arguments that we should limit the pardon power. When you take that off the table, viable solutions become easier to spot. Limiting the pardon power is not viable because there is no Constitutional mechanism to do so. Under the Constitution, any limits put in place can just be ignored by the next POTUS who decides he wants to ignore them.
I never said we should limit the pardon power. I just said Obama increased the number of pardons and contemporary commenters criticized that, fearing a regression of norms.
I made no policy prescriptions whatsoever.
> When you take that off the table, viable solutions become easier to spot.
So do you have a viable solution here?
You had said:
> When Obama really increased the number of pardons, a lot of contemporary opinion writers said stuff along the lines of "this is a dangerous precedent and we're lucky that the pardons are fairly popular and sane." ... the warnings from abusing these limitations from previous administrations was exactly for this moment. Nobody is saying Trump isn't the bad one, he is. But the conditions were laid for him.
I take this to mean that Obama had abused his power past his authority, and you used the word "limitations" here to mean that there are some sort of institutional or structural limits which he was exceeding, thus paving the way for the current abuses.
The implication is that if Obama had stayed within the bounds (which bounds?) then the condition would not have been laid for Trump to do what he's doing.
My point is the conditions were there whether or not Obama did what he did, because the power never had limits, never was intended to have limits, because the limiting factor was not electing a bad guy. If any conditions were laid, they were by the Founders in how they structured the Constitution and the pardon power. They just didn't think that with elections, the electoral college, impeachment, and the insurrection clause we would be dumb enough to actually elect an insurrectionist.
> So do you have a viable solution here?
Nope! I mean, as far as the Trump administration goes they are going to burn themselves out, the only question is how much damage they are going to do on the way down and what the blast radius is. The important question now is what to do with America after that happens and I don't know what that looks like. Maybe balkanization, I dunno depends how bad it gets. If some key Republicans come to their senses this can be solved relatively quickly and painlessly, then we can talk about revising the Constitution. Otherwise who knows.
>I don't buy it. A president that will literally direct his AG in public to prosecute his political enemies.
This is what happened to Trump though, the established politicians do not like him and did everything they could to stop him from running.
> the established politicians do not like him and did everything they could to stop him from running
Again, this is a excuse-making whopper. The republican aisle in the senate refused to convict him twice, which would have prevented him from running. I won't argue "do not like him" in the abstract, but in practice established politicians in his party are 100% behind the guy.
The federal efforts at prosecution were also hesitant more than "everything".
"boooooth siiiiiiides" screamed the reactionary centrist.
Yes.
Biden pardoned his son for clear crimes, yes!
That’s a relief, I would’ve been worried about his mental capacity if he had pardoned Hunter for not committing a crime.
Usually a pardon is for a conviction with some level of ambiguity or prosecutorial misconduct. Hunter himself admits to the privilege of being pardoned.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5568271-hunter-b...
Trump did it first with Kushner.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-don...
While you’re changing the constitution, include:
The power to pardon needs to be removed all together. All it does is show that the President overrides the department of justice. How anyone ever thought this should be a thing, I have no idea.
I think a congressional pardon power to allow national leniency on previously accepted sentences that are now viewed as unjust might be worth holding onto. It being such a casual presidential power has made it ripe for corruption for a long time but I would weigh that with civil rights era pardons for sham trials - I think we do still need a national sanity check relief valve for local injustices.
And the dysfunction of congress probably works in our favor here since pardons should be exceptional - not routine. A routine pardon is just a demonstration of the justice department failing at a systemic level.
> I think a congressional pardon power to allow national leniency on previously accepted sentences that are now viewed as unjust might be worth holding onto.
That sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. For the branch of government in charge of making and changing laws.
It sounds more fit for the branch of government in charge of enforcing the laws. Specifically, with laws that are made by the branches responsible for making/changing them, which would be ridiculous on their face.
If the branch responsible for making and changing laws was also responsible for the reversion of enforcing those laws - effectively what a pardon is - then there's absolutely no check on gratuitous law being passed.
> If the branch responsible for making and changing laws was also responsible for the reversion of enforcing those laws - effectively what a pardon is - then there's absolutely no check on gratuitous law being passed.
I mean, it is a normal thing for a legislature to remove and amend old laws. That's not "a check," but it's a normal part of what it means to be a legislature. You're not just appending new laws, you're maintaining the entire set of laws.
And as for checks, judicial review is the obvious one.
I heard the intention was that sometimes it's against the public good to prosecute some people even though they have comitted crimes. Good examples of it being used as intended was pardoning the perpetrators of the whiskey rebellion, the confederate army, vietnam draft dodgers and more controversially, Nixon. I guess it's also intended in cases where obvious miscarriages of justice have been committed. It made sense in 1785 or whenever but along with lots of the rest of the constitution it's long obsolete and has been twisted, stretched and mangled into a hideous caricature of itself over the centuries.
How hard can it be to specify that pardons can be given by a committee of 25 randomly selected individuals with an Ivy league education when at least 2/3 is in favor with no existing financial ties and no information regarding the identity of whoever's fate is at stake?
Right, not hard at all, but apparently whoever wrote the Constitution was a fucking moron.
I think you're onto something, for a kind of second-chance review function, but instead of "with an Ivy League education", perhaps you most want people knowledgeable about both judicial process and society.
"Ivy League education" isn't a totally bad predictor, but it's going to be very biased towards people with privileged socioeconomic backgrounds, who therefore may have blind spots of aspects of society that apply to the situation. (No matter how many books they've read, classes they've taken, years of volunteering with the less-advantaged they've done, and hours of NPR they've listened to.)
The US Constitution wasn't written with the wellbeing of random ordinary citizens in mind. You could argue it was the exact opposite in fact.
More importantly it was written under the assumption that political elites would understand and act against the risk of electing a broken demagogue.
But alas, the modern GOP’s cravenness beggars belief.
> The power to pardon needs to be removed all together. All it does is show that the President overrides the department of justice.
The Department of Justice is subordinate to the President as part of the executive branch with or without the pardon power; if you want something other than "the President overrides the Department of Justice" as a matter of Constitutional law rather than an intermittently-observed convention of restraint (which Trump absolutely has not observed outside of the pardon power), you need a fundamental reformation of the Constitutional structure of government, far beyond the elimination of the pardon power.
While it’s true that the Department of Justice sits within the executive branch, the assertion that it is simply “subordinate” to the President - functioning as his personal legal arm - is an oversimplification that misses both the design and evolution of constitutional governance. The President does not have unlimited authority over the DOJ. The DOJ’s powers are exercised pursuant to laws enacted by Congress, and its officials - especially the Attorney General and U.S. Attorneys - swear oaths to uphold the Constitution, not to serve as personal agents of the President’s will.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that while the President may remove executive officers, he cannot lawfully direct them to commit acts that are unconstitutional, obstruct justice, or violate statutory mandates. The constitutional structure also relies on normative independence - a separation within the executive branch that maintains rule of law. This is not a “convention of restraint” but an operational necessity derived from the Take Care Clause (“he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”). That clause doesn’t mean “whatever the President says is law”; it means the President must ensure that the law itself is enforced faithfully, even when doing so constrains his own interests.
Finally, while the pardon power is broad, it’s not the linchpin of executive authority over the DOJ. Removing or limiting that power wouldn’t change the fact that the DOJ’s prosecutorial discretion must still be exercised consistent with law, ethics, and constitutional constraints - not simply the President’s personal preferences. Our system is not designed for a monarch with “absolute control” over prosecutions. It’s designed for a chief executive bound by law and accountable through oversight, impeachment, and ultimately, the electorate.
> While it’s true that the Department of Justice sits within the executive branch, the assertion that it is simply “subordinate” to the President - functioning as his personal legal arm - is an oversimplification that misses both the design and evolution of constitutional governance.
The idea of the republic as opposed to a monarchy is that no part of the government is anyone's personal...well, anything...but that doesn't really negate the degree of control the President exercises, both in theory and in practice barring highly variable personal restraint, over the DoJ.
> The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that while the President may remove executive officers, he cannot lawfully direct them to commit acts that are unconstitutional, obstruct justice, or violate statutory mandates.
That doesn't mean the President doesn't override the DoJ, it means the President doesn't override the law.
> The constitutional structure also relies on normative independence - a separation within the executive branch that maintains rule of law.
Yes, that it relies on this but does not actually provide any mechanism by which it can effectively be assured is the fundamental design issue I am referring to being necessary to address if one wants "the President overrides the DoJ" not to be a simple fact independently of whether or not the pardon power exists and is vested in the President's discretion.
> Finally, while the pardon power is broad, it’s not the linchpin of executive authority over the DOJ.
I literally said that the pardon power is irrelevant to that, which is the exact opposite of describing it as the lynchpin.
> Removing or limiting that power wouldn’t change the fact that the DOJ’s prosecutorial discretion must still be exercised consistent with law, ethics, and constitutional constraints - not simply the President’s personal preferences.
To the extent that is true, that is only a negative constraint on prosecution applied by the courts, it can never compel a prosecution that the executive has declined. (Congress, of course, could punish the President for preventing prosecutions, via the impeachment power, but that’s hardly a substitute for real independence from the President of all or part of the prosecutorial power if that is what is desired. Or, for that matter, much of a remedy at all if more than 1/3 of the Senate is on board with the President's conduct.
The de facto absolute Presidential authority over DoJ stems from two powers:
1. The ability to dismiss the Attorney General at will (alternative: Congress)
2. The ability to pardon at will (alternative: Congress)
Remove those two Presidential powers, and the DoJ becomes much more independent.
Imho, the DoJ side of the judiciary branch is important enough to the separation of powers that this should have been done a long time ago.
The Attorney General should be elected, like most of the state AGs are. An elected AG with the DoJ underneath them would be much more independent.
A fragmented executive power, like most states have, does solve problems stemming from the unitary executive, but also increases the difficulty of ascribing responsibility for bad outcomes whose source isn't exclsuviely in one bailiwick, complicating effective democratic accountability.
You could probably make a good case that doing this for just the AG is still a good thing.
(Of course, federally, that becomes both a major Constitutional change and raises the question of how they would be elected? The same Electoral College that elects the President? A separate electoral college? Direct election unlike the President? Of course, the first problem is one with any means of making the DoJ independent of Presidential control.)
Despite abuses of it, there are still too many reasons to need it, like when President Franklin Pierce pardoned an abolitionist for harboring fugitive slaves, or when George Washington pardoned Revolutionary War vets involved in the Whiskey Rebellion.
Better yet, there are a ton of cases since the 1980s prosecutors exploiting technicalities and mandatory minimum sentencing laws to get nonviolent drug offenders imprisoned for 10+ years on simple possession (not to to sell drugs, not PWID, just possession).
> The pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations
Past few?
How about Ford pardoning Nixon? Or George H.W. Bush pardoning a bunch of Iran-Contra conspirators, thus covering his own ass?
Both of those were very bad, but nothing compared to the raw corruption in Trump's pardons.
The word "nothing" is completely inappropriate in describing Watergate and Iran-Contra, among the worst political scandals in American history, both involving gross abuse of executive power.
I certainly don't see how the pardon of Changpeng Zhao is worse than the pardon of President Richard Nixon or Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Crimes committed in office by the highest officials in the US government are a whole different level than crimes committed by some corporate CEO.
Ford at least had the misguided excuse of wanting to put the scandal behind and focus on the future.
Trump's pardons include hundreds of literal insurrectionists, promises to pardon in exchange for not testifying against him (witness tampering), and other blatant corruption. He fired the head of the OPA and installed a political hack to speedrun awful pardon choices and made a mockery of the process in a far more corrupt and damaging manner than anyone before him, and it's not even close.
> Ford at least had the misguided excuse of wanting to put the scandal behind and focus on the future.
I'm more concerned with the effects of the pardons on the country and on democracy than I am with judging the rectitude of the pardoner. Allowing the President to escape the law set a terrible precedent with obvious repercussions into the present.
I'm not trying to defend Trump. My point is that the stage was set for Trump. Abuses of executive power, of which I've given two egregious examples—Watergate and Iran-Contra—have been swept under the rug for far too long. To always "put the scandal behind and focus on the future" is to encourage future misbehavior. I would note that in stark contrast, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has just gone to prison.
I'm more concerned about the effects of this constant "both sides" legitimization of fascism and the constant shift of the Overton window than I am about the effect of pardons.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Where is "both sides" coming from when Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, and Trump are all Republicans? And where in the world do you get "legitimization" from my comments, other than how Presidential pardons have practically legitimized crimes in office?
The response to every new overreach by Trump is "this is just more of what's been going on" when it absolutely is not, it's dramatically different. Today's Republicans are a very different beast from Gerald Ford's. It's absolutely "both sides"ing the issue.
> The response to every new overreach by Trump is "this is just more of what's been going on"
This is a strange take on my comments. To be absolutely clear: I object in the strongest possible terms to the crimes of the Nixon and Reagan administrations and to the subsequent pardons of Nixon and Reagan administration officials. I have no desire to legitimize those pardons, and indeed I think the pardon power should have been eliminated or at least strictly limited a long time ago. Moreover, I objected to your attempt to minimize those past scandals, which you described as "nothing".
Thus, my comments are in no way a defense or legimitimization of Trump. They become a defense of Trump only in your own mind when you insist on discounting the past, which I do not. And when I suggested that previous pardons set the stage for Trump, I meant that shielding the executive branch from the legal consequences of their crimes only emboldens someone like Trump to act without any fear of legal consequences for his own crimes in office. The terrible precedents set in the past have come back to haunt us in the present. Again, that's not "legitimization" in any sense.
Trump is the kind of actor who will explore the entire space of pardons; the history of this does not matter. He does not know the path-dependency of what will be tolerated.
I'm afraid that you've missed the point. The crimes were Watergate and Iran-Contra. The pardons, which came later, indeed from different Presidents in subsequent administrations, allowed previous administrations to escape legal consequences of their crimes.
Granting pardons is not by itself a crime. Should pardons be eliminated or strictly limited? Sure. But pardons are not really the main issue with the Trump administration. Rather, the main issue is general lawlessness and abuse of power. When I mentioned setting the stage, I didn't mean setting the stage for granting pardons specifically but rather setting the stage for abusing executive power generally.
If you asked Donald Trump about the “beautiful” Watergate office complex, what would he say? If you asked him which commentator on Fox News might be most familiar with Iran-Contra, would he know? His reaction to being given power is to test it. Gerald Ford is not goading him into this.
> pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations that it's clear there should be constitutional changes in the pardon power, either congressional review, or strip it altogether
Strip it. I also started on the line of Congressional review (or pardons only activating on the consent of the Senate). But I concluded the entire power is out of place.
If the courts overreach, address it through legislation. Congress can annul sentences through law, no special pardon power needed. If a law is unfair or being applied unfairly, moreover, it should be fixed comprehensively.
There isn’t a place for one-man pardons in a republic. Even the imperium-obsessed Romans didn’t give their dictators, much less consuls, automatic pardon power. Caesar had to get special legislation to overrule the law.
Biden abused pardon power. So has Trump. Both parties have good reason for passing an amendment through the Congress. This is probably in my top 3 Constitutional amendment we need in our time. (Multi-member Congressional seats, popular election of the President and changing “the executive Power shall be vested in a President” to “the President shall execute the laws of the United States.”)
I'm waiting to see if he pardons the diddler
Genuinely curious: what were the abuses by the Biden and Obama administrations?
Biden promised not to pardon his son and then pardoned his son. And not simply pardoned. Pardoned also for crimes not yet discovered
Wasn't that because there was a high chance of trump going after biden's son when he was in power, making up whatever charges he needed just as a power play?
no one should be above the law.
Also it's not like the democrat did not weaponize the justice to put trump in jail for 4 consecutive years.
No one at the top faced consequences for January 6th because Merrick Garland slow-rolled everything. How was the DOJ weaponized by Biden?
> Also it's not like the democrat did not weaponize the justice to put trump in jail for 4 consecutive years.
Trump went to jail? News to me.
He only pardoned his son after Trump was elected, because Trump made it clear that he was going radicalize the DOJ to do extremely punitive things to his enemies. And that's exactly what has happened.
Up until the election he seemed very willing to let Hunter face the music.
Every decent father would've done the same thing.
honestly? I think between this and hunter biden you could probably drum up some bipartisan support as long as you don't let either side find out that they accidentally agree with the other. I'm of a mind that the power of the pardon is one of many (many, many, many) ways that the so-called "egalitarian" founding fathers made sure to preserve the power of the aristocracy over that of the people. After all, a conviction has to come from a jury, and that means that a pardon is by definition the powerful elite overruling the people.
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https://www.axios.com/2025/09/06/biden-pardon-autopen-concer...
That's it? Using autopen is abuse of power?
The cheerleaders for the current authoritarian coup that swarm around here are all too happy to conflate the Hunter Biden pardon and what's currently going on. As if we can't currently open a god-damned news website and read about the Comey, James and Bolton prosecutions and deduce that, yeah, Biden pretty much had no choice even though it was a shitty thing to do.
This is because these dipshits are eagerly carrying water for a vindictive dictator. They are not operating in good faith but due to the alignment of the owners of this site with those self-same fascists you are meant to act as if they're not trolls.
Nope, Biden pardoning his son was also widely condemned across the political spectrum as an abuse of the pardon power.
I was of two minds about that pardon. On the one hand it seemed like an abuse of pardon power. On the other hand, it was also reasonable at the time to expect abuse of presidential power to prosecute political enemies. So on balance I was OK with it. I think the compromise I'd like to see is to curtail both powers.
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Literally at no time did the Biden administration ever direct the Department of Justice to investigate a political enemy.
Exactly the opposite of what the Trump administration had been doing.
But what about if we just imagine the evidence of Biden interference in DOJ decisions?
Then they’re basically the same!
/s
He sicced Letitia James on Trump.
What evidence do you have that the administration requested the DOJ to initiate that investigation?
Have you ever heard of Whitewater?
Because he was prosecuted for doing drugs and owning a gun? There's literal video of Joe Rogan smoking pot and he talks about his concealed weapons permit. It would be a slam dump case, some how i don't think he's getting prosecuted because its selective law open to abuse. Seems perfectly good use of pardon.
>would be a slam dump
You are watching a very different game from me.
Well, slam _dump_ does sound like a potentially apt description.
The Hunter Biden issue was not about smoking marijuana... that would have been the very least of his multitude of legal problems. Biden's own DoJ was prosecuting the cases - which is important context to consider here.
> Since 2018, Weiss had been investigating Hunter Biden as U.S. attorney. In 2023, Republicans asked Garland to appoint a special counsel, some specifically demanding Weiss, a Republican appointed to his role by President Donald Trump. Garland ultimately appointed Weiss, giving him additional authority. However, congressional Republicans then expressed criticism, some stating Weiss was untrustworthy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_C._Weiss
6 years of investigation and all they could find was that Hunter did drugs and owned a gun. I am sure if we drug tested congress, we could prosecute a bunch of congressmen for the same crime. Maybe thats why supreme court is looking at the constitutionality of the law and its all been ruled unconstitutional in one of the courts districts but hey lets prosecute Hunter Biden for it.
That was not all of Hunter's legal problems - he had serious tax evasion charges[1], along with other Biden family members (all of which were pardoned, unprecedentedly by President Biden).
Trying to minimize Hunter's significant legal problems to "he did [many hard, highly regulated] drugs and [illegally] owned a gun [which was thrown into a dumpster]" is disingenuous and factually incorrect.
Hunter's (and other Biden family member's) legal issues were so plainly severe, with a near-guarantee of prison time, President Biden was forced to issue an unprecedented, unconditional pardon for "offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024." A decade-long period during-which any crimes Hunter committed were erased and forgiven.
Nobody is above the law? This was Biden's own DoJ.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco-weiss/pr/grand-jury-ret...
Six years of investigation and all they could find is that he put false information on a government form and paid his taxes late. Six years. Mueller investigation was only two years and how many charges did he find? Jack Smith investigation was one year before he has charged people with dozens of charges. This prosecutor had six years and couldn't dig up anything. Either hunter biden is the smart person in world that was so smart that he left no evidence of crimes or it was partisan witch hunt.
Also if the gun charges were so serious, why aren't we prosecuting Joe Rogan, its literally a slam dunk case. He smokes pot(a schedule 1 drug) on his podcasts and brags about his concealed weapons permit. You don't even need to find witnesses, just show the jury of him smoking pot and a copy of his federal form. Or we could just cross reference the ATF background database with states' Medical Marijuana Registries. Could prosecute tens of millions of people including Joe Rogan.
At the time that did reek of corruption and misuse of power, but given current state of things, it was the right move.
It protected one individual - there have been a rash of politically motivated moves by the justice department that have targeted plenty of others. I can understand the pardon but the fact that so many other people were left out to dry just reinforces our multi-tiered justice system.
That's why it was not just one individual -- he also pardoned Fauci, members of Congress who served on the J6 investigations, and Gen. Milley for the same reason.
It's clear that he was correct that Trump was going to target his political enemies, but it sounds like he can't win here -- if he pardons everyone including Comey, people would say he's abusing the power by pardoning everyone. If he only pardons a few then he's accused of leaving others "high and dry."
Yeah, that's a very fair point. The persecution of Fauci and anyone associated with bringing the charges against Trump would've also been very predictable targets for pardons.
Truly don’t understand the equivalence here.
If you just argue both sides are the same, you get to excuse yourself from self reflection.
Just as a judge should not be ruling on a case where the defendant is throwing suitcases full of money at him, a judge should also not be ruling on a case where the defendant is his own son. Both are inappropriate uses of a power intended for the application of mercy and the correction of faults in the justice system. Both are the sorts of things that should lead to recusal.
Biden's use is far more forgivable, as it's a given that his son was being prosecuted politically to punish Biden (though certainly he was guilty) and would likely have been prosecuted more under Trump, like Comey is being prosecuted today. And certainly "saving your children" is a far more forgivable sin than naked bribery, but being better than Trump is a low bar, but it's still not okay to excuse criminals from punishment because they have an important family member.
I will help: people don't like it when the presidential pardon is used for self-serving shit.
How is pardoning people like Fauci, or even Hunter, that Trump was clearly going to target as part of an "enemies" list, more "self-serving" than literally pardoning anyone that makes you/give you millions of dollars?
(Changpenh Zhao - made him billions; Trevor Milton - donated $1.8 million; Walczak - his mom donated millions)
You don't have to prove it to me that Trump is a lot more self-serving than Biden. This should be obvious to anyone with half a brain.
That said, this shouldn't be a competition of who is "more self-serving". Just because your neighbour murdered two people, doesn't mean that you get to murder one.
Really? What ever positive opinions I had left of Biden went out the window with that decision.
It would be weird if he didn't? He pardoned his entire family, as Trump made it clear he was aiming to harass Biden's entire family for revenge. And the way he's been acting this presidency has only confirmed that's not beneath him.
The decision is a lot more respectable than "this guy gave me a bribe." They are worlds apart. And some may be theoretically willing to roll the dice on that for their family, but it reads naive.
Doesn’t it affect your opinion in any way that Trump’s DOJ has been used exactly like his harshest critics last year said it would?
It's not binary. I can not respect both decisions. Just because I don't respect Trump does not mean I must respect Biden's decision or vice versa. Current POTUS is absolutely vile. The previous guy was put in a position and a decision was made that I did not agree with, but over all, no he wasn't using the federal money to directly line his pocket as compensation for being investigated for things he actually did.
So if you were the outgoing president, and the incoming president said out loud in front of the nation he was going to abuse his power to jail your family members out of spite, you would just let that happen on principle?
Again, the threats were not levied just at family members, but only family members received the pardon. So let's not get all sanctimonious on this issue. If he was doing this as anything other than self preservation of his family we could talk, but actions speak louder than words and he chose family over principles.
Simply untrue. He pardoned hundreds of people, many of them with the same blanket pardon, and commuted the sentence of thousands.
Pardoning Hunter was also because he was technically guilty. They’d rather believe had something to pin on him.
If he’d pardoned a whole team of people he’d also signal to the world that he believe they are guilty too.
> only family members received the pardon.... If he was doing this as anything other than self preservation of his family we could talk
Seems like you should do some more research about this before forming such strong opinions, because you are not correct -- Biden preemptively pardoned more than just his family. He pardoned Fauci and Miley after Trump accused them of treason; as well as some members of the J6 committee like Liz Cheney (Trump retweeted a post that claimed Cheney was guilty of treason and should face a military tribunal).
I still think you should answer my question though, because it establishes a baseline for acceptability. I believe that you personally would pardon your own family against such threats because I believe most decent people would. So if you're willing to pardon your own family, then there's a conversation to be had about why you would need to, and whether that protection should be extended, for the good of the nation, to other people not related to you.
The problem we see right now with the pardon power was predicted by the founders:
And boy was he right! We are at that future day! So they saw this coming yet decided to include it anyway. Why?Hamilton argued:
and They recognized the system might need a release valve, or would make mistakes, and they included the pardon power to correct them. They made it broad and "unfettered" as Hamilton put it because they expected the person who would exercise the power would be "prudent".And in doing so they ensured that the pardon power reflects the soul of this nation. We get the government we vote for, and the pardon power is used in a way that we the voters tolerate.
The problem isn't the pardon power is broad, it's that we as an electorate are so willing to elect someone who is comfortable abusing those broad powers and other authority for his personal gain.
I will close by just noting that both of the abuses of the pardon power we are talking about were precipitated by Trump. Biden wouldn't have pardoned any of the people you're mad about if Trump hadn't first promised to abuse his power to persecute them. Biden had the good judgement and foresight to take Trump seriously, because he turned out to be 100% right.
I think the point is, Biden said he pardoned his son to prevent political persecution of him by Trump. Biden's fears have been borne out - the Trump administrationg is persecuting Trump's enemies. Does that change your opinion of Biden's pardon?
Where's the preemptive pardons for Comey, James, Schiff? So no, it's not much of a move of the needle since it was only family members.
It wasn't only family members. Biden granted clemency or pardons to over 4200 people. Notably for the same blanket pardon from 2014 to 2025 for family members, includes Dr. Anthony Fauci, and General Mark Milley.
And all of the members of Congress on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack for anything having to do with their role on that committee.
Schiff was on that committee. He said the pardon was unnecessary and unwise.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-jos...
At that Biden was the only president who had used DOJ to persecute his predecessor. So basically he started this shit, and when it turned out the other guy won the election, he pardoned his obviously guilty son, and other obviously guilty party members.
You say persecute yet those without an agenda say investigate. It was not persecution to look into the events of January 6. Conflating the investigation as persecution is not a very honest take on the events.
I'm talking about the NY real estate bs. It was bs, everybody does it, including the prosecutor Letitia James, there were no victims, it was a selective enforcement of a law, the statute of limitations had expired and the prosecutor ran on the promise that she will find something to get Trump.
You said Biden and DOJ, not NY State. Get your story straight.
Biden did not order his DOJ to prosecute anyone. Unlike Trump with Pam Bondi, Biden did not personally direct Merrick Garland, who promised to run the DOJ independently and did -- to the point Garland even prosecuted the President's own son.
The Trump prosecutions were not only warranted, they were insisted by Republicans; the Republican Senators explicitly declined to convict Trump in his second impeachment because they anticipated he would be prosecuted in a court of law for January 6. From Republican Leader Mitch McConnell when he explained his rationale during the 2nd impeachment trial:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/13/politics/mitch-mcconnell-acqu...
By labeling him as "practically and morally responsible" and then refusing to vote to impeach, explicitly citing our criminal justice system as the appropriate venue for recourse, Mitch McConnell essentially demanded that Biden's DOJ prosecute him for J6.In refusing to convict Trump on J6, McConnell set the precedent that it is improper to impeach a President if he commits crimes between the Election and the Inauguration as Trump did. According to McConnell, accountability lies in the Courts. If it's true that the incoming administration also cannot prosecute those crimes, then POTUS is essentially immune from any and all accountability under the Constitution, which cannot be the case; POTUS would be able to commit or attempt to commit any crimes he wants between Nov and January 20 at the end of his term, up to and including high crimes like insurrection against the government.
Republicans shirked their Article I duty by refusing to impeach a man they publicly blamed for provoking events which led to the deaths of multiple people. Specifically it was Republican Senators who punted it to the Biden DOJ, which made them Constitutionally bound to prosecute.
I'm talking about the NY real estate bs. It was bs, everybody does it, including the prosecutor Letitia James, there were no victims, it was a selective enforcement of a law, the statute of limitations had expired and the prosecutor ran on the promise that she will find something to get Trump.
That case was tried and adjudicated before a court of law, and Trump was convicted on the merits. Trump had the opportunity to argue that the prosecution was selective, vindictive, or otherwise unjust, and his arguments failed.
Obviously he's upset by this outcome, but even if you agree with him, his response has been to burn down the rule of law and the entire concept of justice. Even if you feel he was wronged by James, weaponizing the DOJ against James is not justified by "She started it".
Are you trying to claim that it's never valid to investigate a former President? What the fuck?
I'm talking about the NY real estate bs. It was bs, everybody does it, including the prosecutor Letitia James, there were no victims, it was a selective enforcement of a law, the statute of limitations had expired and the prosecutor ran on the promise that she will find something to get Trump.
no equivalence indeed, it's way worse. Biden's son has never contributed to anything, CZ has and had a net positive impact on the Blockchain industry.
And I say this as someone who despise Trump. A broken clock can be right twice a day.
> CZ has and had a net positive impact on the Blockchain industry.
So, a net negative impact on society.
And HN's bias comes out again.
I'm glad he pardoned CZ. The previous administration + SEC are responsible for this mess by not passing reasonable laws. Coinbase fared much better fighting them all the way.
Trump did the right thing here.
You mean a net positive for other crypto scammers by showing how easy it is?
What did the Jan 6 rioters contribute to?
To this useless comment, among others.
Equivalence may be a strong word, but pardoning your kids is classical Borgia shit straight out of the worst times of Italian Renaissance, and most people would condemn it if it was done by leader of some Central American Ruritania.
Of course, once it is done by a president representing the party you (generic you) feel affiliated with, the double standards inevitably kick in.
> Of course, once it is done by a president representing the party you (generic you) feel affiliated with, the double standards inevitably kick in.
Less that, more we're all aware of what Trump campaigned on and what he promised to do to Biden's entire family. And we're disheartened that there's cultists (not you) trying to convince us that we should let our families suffer if dear leader demands it.
I don't know these people, I don't have a strong feeling if any of them go to jail for something they did, because I'm not in a personality cult. But I care a lot more if people are going to jail just because a more corrupt person got the keys to everything. Turns out, those fears were valid, and I'm increasingly alarmed that there's still so much vitriol towards Biden pardoning a checks notes gun charge, than there is for the blatantly corrupt shit we see every day.
If your family is threatened by the incoming president, your only reasonable course of action is to move them all abroad to some safe country.
A paper you signed is insufficient protection from truly Erdoganesque leaders who are about to gain an imperial presidency. It is just bad politics from all perspectives: inefficient in its original purpose and controversial at the same time.
Looking at how this administration is now using the DoJ to hunt even people like Comey and Bolton whose crime was being a non-Trump-aligned Republican…
It’s probably good that Biden took away this particular show trial option from them.
Non-Trump-aligned Republicans are now the worst enemies of the state, because they pose a credible threat.
Disloyalty is the worst crime around Trump. You must never stop proving your loyalty. Just look at videos of their meetings.
Each person speaking must first have a little sermon praising and thanking God, oh sorry no, not God, I meant Trump.
It’s worth clarifying that the investigation into Bolton started in 2022 during Biden’s term. Hard(er) to say whether the ultimately issued indictment was politically motivated, but we need to keep an eye towards accuracy on these topics.
I was against the Biden pardons at the time but in hindsight with the current administration pushing poorly done prosecutions for political purposes I have changed my mind on them. Trump will say his pardons are similar but looking at the facts I don't find them comparable (I'm still livid that he pardoned Blagojevich, who was literally caught on tape talking about selling a US Senate seat).
No. Almost everybody hated it out of context, but in context many understood that one man was about to obtain unprecedented power over all three branches of government and use it to vindictively pursue personal vendettas. These people were correct, this then happened.
Personally, I’m reminded of how every dysfunctional country’s deposed regimes flee or are killed. We sheltered Americans find it easy to forget that peaceful transfer of power is an accomplishment of lawful society, and as rule of law weakens we have only more chaotic, ignominious, and probably eventually violent transitions to look forward to.
Reaction to the Biden pardon is a pretty huge thing to be completely unaware of. You should reevaluate whether you’re in a media bubble.
He didn't just pardon his family members and issue questionable preemptive pardons, he also issued the most pardons of any president ever, and not by a small margin, but by a factor of 20 compared to Trump up to now, in a single term, including pardons for violent criminals and yes, white-collar fraudsters as well. They didn't get much publicity because most of them were committed at the tail end of his term while the media were focused on the election and on the transition of power, because of double standards, and because the actors were low-profile. It really shouldn't be controversial to point out that the abuse of presidential power didn't start nor end with Trump. He most certainly wouldn't have gotten re-elected if that were the case.
it doesn't matter how you count it, what you are saying is bullshit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_or_gra...
the substance of the pardons matters a great deal, as well.
Maybe my source was outdated, at least it should be accurate when comparing first terms. Quite the editorial spin on this Wikipedia article, it proves my point about double standards. I'd share some articles listing some murderers and embezzlers pardoned by Biden, but I don't like linking to politically biased sources regardless of their substance since it usually ends up with people nitpicking about the source. It's very easy to find evidence that these weren't 4,000 pardons for innocent marijuana users on Google anyway.
Carter pardoned 200,000 draft dodgers. Biden pardoned 256 people, the rest were mass commutations.
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> I'm concerned about the diversity of your media consumption
… says the conspiracy theorist spouting Breitbart nonsense
Do you have a complete list because thats literally what trump is doing. In no way shape or form is any past president comparable to the depravity and recklessness of trump its not even close. If you say its close you are so misinformed or ignorant or willfully evil. Seriously crypto scams, open bribery from kushner and the saudis, the Qatar jet, the gold card visas for the cartel family... the list of insane actions goes on and on and its so depressing to see anyone fall for it or not be seething in rage because this country will not make it if this family and the people driving project 2025 are not brought to justice
> Do you have a complete list because thats literally what trump is doing.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/07/biden-gra...
Lol did you even read that...
Commutations are not pardons. They were for weed and being gay in the military offences, you know things that do t actually matter...
Trumps pardoning fraudsters and criminals who have harmed people's lives
https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center/press-rel...
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/understanding-trump-pardon...
Do you feel these are comparable to the pardons by Trump this term?
Trump is forgiving friends of debts to the US. Blatantly. He is for sale and always has been.
But both sides!
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Biden pardoned several family members
Along with various other people to try to protect them from malicious political prosecution. Much like how Comey, Bolton, and a variety of current and former government officials are now being prosecuted on questionable charges.
The Bolton investigation started in 2023, during the Biden admin.
Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current administration abusing the Justice Department to go after them. Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others.
And from what we've seen, he was right to do so. Although, they've been angling to declare his pardons void so they can go after whoever they wish.
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By considering the facts of the matter, sure it's as you said. But if you ignore every detail then it does look like everyone is exactly as bad as each other and it's impossible to say anything is good or bad.
You have the causality mixed up. It’s not bad because they’re doing it. They’re doing it and it’s bad.
That's nothing like what's being said, I'm really surprised you read it that way.
Well yes some people commit crimes and others don't. It's not a double standard, it's the same standard.
> Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current administration abusing the Justice Department to go after them. Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others.
Are pre-emptive pardons a common thing for American presidents to do?
Only when the incoming administration labelled your family a "crime family" and led stadiums to chants of "lock them up".
No. Absolutely not. I can't think of anyone using a pre-emptive pardon until Trump's first Presidency.
Sadly I think Biden's choice was completely rational given how Trump is weaponizing the US justice system.
Proclamation 4311.
> Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current administration abusing the Justice Department to go after them
Ha ha. They (democrats overall) need to look inwards for that.
> Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others. Fauci screwed up our country so bad, it aint even funny. The fact that he needed a PRE-EMPTIVE (i.e. he wasn't even accused of anything at the time) pardon says it all. And the fact that Biden gave it to him, says everything there is to say about Biden.
> And from what we've seen, he was right to do so. Not even close.
> Although, they've been angling to declare his pardons void so they can go after whoever they wish. They should.
- Look at what Biden did to the southern border. And look at it now. - Look at almost any "democrat" run major city. Any. Then look at the crime rates and cost of living. - And the recent farce that was this "No Kings" crap...
Trump isn't perfect. Far from it. He's got major flaws, both in character and execution. However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country". As a whole.
> However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country".
His foreign policy means even the EU is now looking inward more because we simply don't trust you guys anymore. Thanks, we were depending on you guys too much anyway! It will take a while before we're weened off of you for sure, but your global influence will shrink tremendously thanks to your current president's untrustwortiness.
In dutch we have a saying which is roughly translated as "Trust comes on foot, and leaves by horse"
> However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country". As a whole.
This is a ridiculous standard. Each of his policies (individually) only hurting some Americans is not a flex.
Everything, always hurts “someone”. There is no universal good.
The totality is what matters, not you, not me.
> However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country". As a whole.
Any? His energy policy.
I have plenty more.
What about it? What’s wrong with it?
Oil prices are down, we now produce more oil than anybody else, and enjoy low energy prices domestically.
Where’s the problem?
Electricity prices are up. The administration is cancelling solar and wind projects because of ideology.
Electricity prices are up everywhere. We're still way lower than many many places. There's many parts of the US (take a wild guess where all the data centers are going...) where electric rates are <$.10/kwh.
Now compare that to...
Yes, solar and wind projects are being canceled, and yes, there may be an element of ideology involved, but the reality also is that the math aint working.
If the math worked, Europe's energy prices wouldn't be where they are now, given the commitment they've made to renewables. I'd much rather see a national focus on nuclear, which is as clean as any other form of energy, and to a degree that is happening now.
Lies and more lies. You've fallen for them too.
The math is clear - solar + batteries is the cheapest source of electricity. China isn't generating 80% of all new electricity with solar because they want to be green above all else.
> Europe's energy prices wouldn't be where they are now, given the commitment they've made to renewables
Again a tired old lie. Europe is a big place, just like the US. Some countries have high prices and some countries don't.
Be better informed. Stop lying.
I guess we are pretending that climate change isn't real now.
Whether it is or isn't is not the point. A national energy policy has to work for its people first. If it's not working it needs to be changed.
And I guess the two countries (combined) that have almost 3B people don't believe in climate change either? Because if they did...
I agree it has to put the people first, just like China is doing. And if you want to get on the climate change soapbox, it's too late. The US produces more global warming emissions per capita than any other country, and China's not going to catch up.
The US has been a top, if not the top, producer and exporter of oil for some time. Trump's not particularly involved in that above and beyond using it as a campaign slogan.
The problem is that the rest of the world is very actively moving on, led by China. A great many oil importing countries reduced their imports last year. China deploys more solar in 6 months than the US has deployed ever and is distributing this technology to the rest of the world far cheaper than they can bring it here. The US had a program to get 1000 new auto chargers installed. China installed 100,000. People are simply unaware of the sheer scale of the Chinese juggernaut. They think that since we're ahead now (questionable) and we're going 95 MPH, we'll always be ahead. They don't realize that China is going 250 and we're getting passed.
Trump would do well for the country to plan ahead JUST A LITTLE BIT.
But as Bolton said, it's unclear if Trump knows the difference between his personal interest and the national interest, or if he's even aware there is a national interest.
We were producing more oil than anyone else prior to Trump coming in. We’ve been posting ATHs on that front for years every year
I know, and yet...we were draining the SPR for some odd reason. Why's that?
Now we're not, and yet, we're selling pardons for bribes. Why's that?
Because the energy market has more inputs than oil and that was a lever used to keep gas prices specifically stable.
We already stopped that a while ago so I don’t know why you’re referencing it other than the blatant partisanship you’re showing across the thread.
What level of evidence would you need to accept that this admin had done something negative?
Easy: what passes for diplomacy has been so awful that nobody wants to buy weapons from us anymore, nor do they value our treaty commitments. Oh the irony of proposing to meet in Budapest.
Buy weapons from us?? That’s your barometer?
And they are not “our” treaty commitments. Treaties by definition involve more than one party.
But out of curiosity, what commitments are talking here? Talking in abstracts is meaningless.
>Trump isn't perfect. Far from it. He's got major flaws, both in character and execution. However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country". As a whole.
They're usually not that bad for his billionaire grifter buddies, I'll give you that.
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I would say normalizing armed law enforcement wearing masks and refusing to provide any ID is utterly bad for the COUNTRY. Or maybe it's only bad for the people who get assaulted or shot by them and have no way of recourse. Let's hope that's not you, eh?
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Personally directing the Attorney General to prosecute his political enemies and then firing prosecutors until he finds one who will agree to do it. Basically what Nixon was to be impeached for now happening on a weekly basis.
Can you name some examples? I have a reply in my head, but I wanna make sure I’m precise.
He posted on Truth Social explicitly directing Pam Bondi to prosecute Bolton, James, and Comey. Then the DOJ charged them with crimes.
In the James case, Kristin Bird and Elizabeth Yusi (prosecutors in EDVA) were both fired for refusing to bring charges, only to be replaced by Trump's personal attorney Lindsey Halligan (who is not even a prosecutor).
In the Comey case, again they fired Erik Siebert, also from EDVA, because he wouldn't prosecute. They put Trump's personal attorney on instead and she immediately gave the prosecution a greenlight against a tight statute of limitations deadline.
Just watch: today there was a report that prosecutors in Maryland are hesitant to bring charges against Adam Schiff. My guess is whoever is gumming up the works there will be fired and replaced by another Halligan.
Got it. It's gonna take me some time to reply to this, because I wanna get my facts right, and on mobile right now.
This is why it is pointless to reply to people like you.
You badger and badger and badger. You want examples, you want evidence. You want, you want, and you want. Never do you provide evidence. Never do you provide examples. And if you do provide something you claim to be an example, it's usually some vague declaration that really isn't true. But if someone pushes back, it's on them to "prove you wrong".
And the minute someone points out the actual facts of a situation in a way you are incapable of denying or shouting down, you run to your echo chambers to look for the talking points.
Why?
Why carry water for this administration? Their policies are going to be bad for you as well.
Straight up nazi shit incoming.
ICE
Tariffs
You may not notice it yet, but he has ruined the reputation of your country. People consider it insane to travel there now for vacations. We are actively avoiding American garbage. We are migrating away from American clouds.
He is focussed on short term bullshit while what matters on the world stage is soft power. America was considered trustworthy, the defacto leader of the world.
Now you're just a bully, an impotent one at that. You are no longer taken seriously.
You will notice the effects eventually, possibly after Trump is already rotting in his grave.
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> What matters on any stage is … power. Pure, unadulterated power.
This is some straight-up nihilistic BS. Might does not make right, instead standing for what is right is what creates might.
> Soft power is for pansies.
Here are some quotes you may want to familiarize yourself with:
https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/lack-of-empathy.html
Maybe one or more of those will resonate and provide perspective as to many of your recent posts in this thread.
Ha. That's funny. But no, it seems you have drank the kool-aid and are delusional.
But you're right about one thing: FAFO
Touché.
We shall see.
Trump is definitely the most egregious by a very wide margin, but the pardon power has been abused by every President in my lifetime. It's a truly insane feature of our constitution that needs to be changed.
It doesn't really matter who is more egregious, but IMO a country's leader pardoning his own family members is about as banana republic as it gets.
Well, no, you can clearly be more banana republic than that:
* Using the justice system to corruptly punish the opposition and prevent them from competing in elections,
* Using the security/military/law enforcement establishment to simply kill the opposition,
* Using the regulatory bureaucracy, and/or the security/military/law enforcement establish, to coerce media into friendly, or at least out of critical, coverage,
* Using the regulatory bureaucracy, and/or the security/military/law enforcement establish to reward people providing personal material benefit to the leader, or to punish those not doing so,
* Using the pardon power to assure that crimes committed in the course of doing any of the preceding items are unprosecutable
Pardoning family members, by itself (provided that the standards applied are different than those that would be applied to non-family members), is certainly corrupt as a form of nepotism, but hardly the outer limit of banana republic behavior.
> IMO a country's leader pardoning his own family members is about as banana republic as it gets.
That is until you see what's currently happening, the President personally directing the DOJ to arrest his political enemies, of which Biden and his family are considered to be primary antagonists (remember they labelled them the "Biden crime family" and chanted "lock them up"). That is the most banana republic as it gets, so how is preemptively defending against that behavior out of bounds?
> the President personally directing the DOJ to arrest his political enemies
They tried to put true in jail for 4 years, and kept saying he is a Nazi so people would try to shoot him. I don't think it's so different
> They tried to put true in jail for 4 years
I had made an extended repones about that notion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45689915
But it suffices to say Biden did not direct any prosecutions at all.
> kept saying he is a Nazi so people would try to shoot him.
These are very different things, you'll need to make a better argument to conflate them. The actions Trump took to direct his DOJ to prosecute is political enemies is a direct action that violates the presumed and intended independence of the DOJ.
You equate those direct actions with something neither Biden nor any Congressional Democrat I know of actually did. Biden never called Trump a Nazi, and never tried to get him killed. In fact Biden increased protection on Trump after there was an attempt on his life.
Do you have any quote I'm unaware of? I do recall that the current Vice President JD Vance has called Trump a Nazi, so apparently that's not really such a concern.
Trump has been accurately labelled a "fascist" by elected Democrats. I don't think that's any different from Trump calling Democrats "communists". He's also called them "fascists" as well.
Because he knew that Trump was a criminal who’d illegally go after his own family purely out of spite.
The prosecution of Hunter for being a user of controlled substances while in possession or acquiring a weapon was pretty clear cut IMO and been used against many more than Hunter as an easy way to put away drug users for a long time. He likely was pardoned in part because Hunter had the resources to actually get that law overturned, signaled intent to do so, and the establishment can't compromise their precious drug laws being found unconstitutional.
It absolutely is, and it's complete ass covering from an administration that utterly failed in its primary duty - putting Trump in prison.
Nice to see the people who fucked it up isolated from the consequences of his second term. (/s)
Trump is miles ahead of other administrations in abusing it but as far back as my political awareness reaches (the Clinton admin) there have been clear awful examples like Marc Rich[1]. I certainly have a political lean but there are some really indefensible pardons on each side.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich
Did you miss all the Biden pardons, including unprecedented pardons for crimes they may commit?
No, I'm well aware of and disapprove of a number of them - this is still worse.
Are you equating Trump's pardons and commutations to Bidens? For review, Biden's were largely for non-violent drug offenders and preemptive pardons for people like Anthony Fauci and federal employees prosecuting Jan 6 defendants and the like. Save for his pardon of his son Hunter (who's own prosecution was littered with politics), Biden's were largely pedestrian.
Biden commuted many, many murderers and rapists -- not just "non-violent offenders". It was not pedestrian. Here are two: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-12-24/biden-co...
Commuted from death to life in prison. Not pardoned. That's a whole different thing.
Parent post did not limit the activities to pardons only, it included both.
No, the parent did.
Yes actually. As far as I'm aware even the President can't pardon crimes someone may commit in the future. Can you point out the ones where he did that?
Do you think he would have issued those if anyone else was succeeding him? Has Trump validated those concerns?
The only reason Trump hasn't challenged the constitutionality of the pre-emptive pardons is because he indends to do the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Sounds reasonable. This is ok for Trump to do because of Hunter Biden.
The Hunter Biden pardon was necessary because it was clear that despite his admission of guilt, he was not going to receive a fair punishment. The Republican party leadership was very open in expressing their intentions for him, and had _already_ circumvented the judicial system to give him cruel and unusual punishment.
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Would be nice if Trump only pardoned people who the incoming administration explicitly said they would target, after years of constant harassment and misinformation.
I think I would support those pardons even though I think Trump and his family and his cronies are acting the way really bad people act.
Taking the above scenario as license to sell pardons for person gain is such a stretch it looks like bad faith to me.
Agree. It seems to have (never had?) any positive benefit.
IDK, I think Carter's pardon of draft dodgers was a pretty good use of the pardon power.
The problem seems to be that we have unjust laws and punishments. We should have some way to apply mercy in that case. For example, I (hope to) see a future where people jailed for MJ related crimes get a mass pardon.
> The problem seems to be that we have unjust laws and punishments. We should have some way to apply mercy in that case.
The solution is to fix that and make it retroactive. Remove the unjust law and release anyone who was convicted for violating it.
A pardon is just a bad, unfair bandaid fix.
Chelsea Manning. Prosecuting her and other whistleblowers instead of the officials they blew the whistle on was a mockery of justice. Though that wasn't the stated reason for the commutation, it was long overdue.
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Obama commuted the sentences of 1,715 individuals and issued 212 pardons for non-violent fedral drug convictions.
I mean there are lots of people arrested on effectively political charges, and it's good to be able to reflect on it years later and get them out of jail. I'm not convinced Changpeng Zhao's charges would have ever been brought against him if the Biden admin didn't go so hard against crypto, I'm happy to see him pardoned. Hopefully next Trump can get whistle blowers like John Kiriachou
Doesn't necessarily have to be left up to the whims of one person though.
Why not? A large portion of the punishment is just going through the court system. For a significant amount of time all you can do is stress about your next court date, you can't get work and burn through your savings. In his case he has already paid tens of millions in his money and the company paid billions. He spent four months in jail, and has spent years out of work.
By the time a pardon comes the persons life is usually already in deep distress, and whatever they were working on is likely already over. I don't see why it's such a tragedy to let some people get pardoned who maybe don't deserve it.
Trump essentially defines all convictions that he doesn't agree with as political charges though.
That might be true, but CZ is a good candidate for a pardon. Did you know before Gensler went after him at the SEC he asked CZ for a job and was rejected?
What does that have to do with anything? Executive branch leaders can have both individual lives and public responsibilities.
If anything, it's better he was rejected for the job, as getting it would have provided an incentive to bury the prosecution.
I agree it is a good pardon, the past administration + SEC were not laying a foundation of up to date commodity/currency/securities laws, they were enforcing by prosecution. This is not a way to run a country.
No, government is the greatest threat to liberty. If the guy in charge of prosecuting feels the need to not just not prosecute, but actively protect someone from the state, then we really really don’t want (who? his unelected subordinates?) prosecuting people. It’s supposed to be an “err on the side of” failing to prosecute criminals. The whole point is yes… sometimes we want criminals to get away with crime, because it’s better than the alternatives.
What is the alternative? One of them is the public vote for a leader, the state destroys that leader (or his allies, etc) and then what? Do we think the public just says “Oh, well, I guess we didn’t pick the right guy?”
There should be a limit on the number of pardons a president can do during their tenure so that they have to at least think a bit before using it. It is a very powerful tool that actually allows a last resort. But this kind of egregious abuse of it's power means it needs to be kept in check.
It'd take a constitutional amendment. So all we can do is not elect someone who will trade pardons for money (on this scale).
Eh, or the next POTUS can just drone strike whoever has been pardoned by the previous one. Immune for official acts and all that.
I remember there being an article in The Onion or something similar "Supreme Court grants presidency complete immunity; dies in drone strike."
Lincoln pardoned basically the entire Confederacy. I'm not sure what the expert opinion is on that but it seems legit.
Well, after killing many of them.
Right, the ability to pardon is a diplomatic tool. Sad that it's being used as a get your buddies out of jail free card or a way to collect donations.
I think at this point whatever policy differences between us are probably secondary to just putting people in power, literally anyone, who aren't so corrupt it would be called too heavy handed in fiction.
Or just not have pardons at all.
This.
The Indian constitution too gives the President the power to pardon someone convicted. However, the Supreme Court has since clarified that this power is not absolute, and the court can subject it to a judicial review. ( https://compass.rauias.com/current-affairs/pardoning-powers-... ).
You're comparing our (flawed) democracy with a fake democracy.
Parent poster was considering ways on how to limit abuse of a certain political power, and I thought they may be interested on how other countries handle it. (Not though that I am not sure our indian approach is necessarily right - the Supreme Court of India is considering the Presidential powers of pardon only as a remedy to some judicial injustice / miscarriage. But sometimes there can be a political reason too, to pardon somebody. For example, someone cited the Lincoln example of pardoning the confederates. Legally, that may not be sound (ignoring crimes committed by them) but politically such things may be necessary to heal a society and create politically stability. And in such cases, the judiciary is not the right institution to make a judgement call on whether a political pardon was right or not.)
Honest question- which one is fake?
At this point in time? Both
What about two years ago?
Is it a democracy if there are only two parties? Is it a democracy if people vote to chose electors, not for the actual candidate?
One can argue China is a democracy, they have elections as well.
> Is it a democracy if there are only two parties? Is it a democracy if people vote to chose electors, not for the actual candidate?
I don't see why not
> You're comparing our (flawed) democracy
Sweet child. It was never a full democracy, I'd qualify it as a developing democracy, depending on how much damage this administration does, and when does USA enact the urgent reforms needed to transform into a full-fledged democracy.
Right now it's an oligarchy, capitalism as a political system. Money is a crucial component of campaigns, bribery is rampant, impunity becomes progressively less subtle. It had good PR after WW2 though, but reality hasn't matched the propaganda.
I say it from another eroding democracy, it seems like true democracies are incompatible with populous countries.
How would that help? They'll reserve the pardons only for corruption and leave the regular folks, eg with fake convictions , without justice. You're not checking any power without addressing the cause
> There should be a limit
There is, and the Constitution says the limit is impeachment and removal from office by Congress. That won't happen unless we fix how we talk about the ones responsible, to wit:
The Republican Party pardoned these criminals. The Republican Party is snatching Americans off the streets. The Republican Party is using the military to murder people on boats. The Republican Party is demolishing down the White House. The Republican Party is deporting people over free speech. The Republican Party has imposed the biggest tax increase in living memory with tariffs/import-taxes. The Republican Party is going pay itself your tax dollars in "lawsuit settlements".
There were 4 years of his first term and now 10 months of... all this. Today there is zero possibility of an oversight or mistake, any legislator who won't impeach and convict is choosing to support these things.
Nothing will improve while those legislators believe the blame will sail past them and stick solely to Trump.
> the Constitution says the limit is impeachment and removal from office by Congress
Why do you think most US presidents wait until the end of their term to pardon people?
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I don’t think the majority of voting Americans have problems with any of those acts though. Think Joe you pass in Walmart cares about what happens to the White House ballroom?
They were fed "waste fraud and abuse" in the beginning of the year. and suddenly it happens in broad daylight and people shrug?
At this point it's just brainwashing. Some people's principals are clearly less about their own conviction and treating all this like a sports team. Whoever team "wins", even if the stadium burns down around them.
> Some people's principals
Another (more charitable?) explanation is they just never make the connection:
> It’s easy to find authoritarians endorsing inconsistent ideas. Just present slogans and appeals to homey values, and then present slogans and bromides that invoke opposite values. The yea-saying authoritarian follower is likely to agree with all of them. Thus I asked both students and their parents to respond to, “When it comes to love, men and women with opposite points of view are attracted to each other.” Soon afterwards, in the same booklet, I pitched “Birds of a feather flock together when it comes to love.” High [Right-Wing Authoritarian scorers] typically agreed with both statements, even though they responded to the two items within a minute of each other.
-- https://theauthoritarians.org/ (2006 ebook)
It's privately funded so it doesn't fit under "waste, fraud, and abuse" in the same vein as things that use taxpayer money.
Conflict of interest by attempting to curry favor for his vanity project by making donations? That's a fair criticism.
It is allegedly privately funded.
Remember that Mexico allegedly would pay for the wall.
The ironic part is, we became the wall. Many immigrants stayed in Mexico because they couldn't cross to USA. Trump invited our wimpy president to a secret meeting, afterwards Mexico silently made the change of attitude from country of passage to destination.
Aren’t private donations supposed to go to the treasury where they are then allocated by congress?
Yeah: If someone donates money to the government for any purpose, that becomes government funds, and the Constitution says Congress and only Congress has the authority to decide where those go. Not the President.
So either Trump is doing this officially as a President, but with funding that is illegal/unconstitutional...
... Or the funding is legal, but Trump is doing it as a private citizen, which is a federal crime. [0]
[0] https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
The Supreme Court will jiggle the constitution and some forgotten legal precedent from the magna carta will fall out and 5-4 this is actually not a problem at all if you think about it.
Everything Trump does, is, by definition, a minor question.
> It's privately funded so it doesn't fit under "waste, fraud, and abuse" in the same vein as things that use taxpayer money.
Does Trump paying himself $230 million in taxpayer dollars in compensation for his various criminal prosecutions fit under "waste, fraud, and abuse"?
There’s no chance that it’s actually privately funded, right?
”Libs hate this one weird trick - bribes isn’t waste, fraud and abuse!
Learn more at TrumpIsKing.gov”
Doesn't matter if a trillion dollars was shat by God himself out of a plane into the Treasury. They failed to get historic district planning permission, they failed to save historic materials and objects, and lied about the plan. The now revealed plan is an gaudy, boorish, tasteless, and tacky abomination because that is the essence Trump.
> Think Joe you pass in Walmart cares about what happens to the White House ballroom?
Joe in Walmart thinks what Facebook memes and Fox News tell him to think. The same subversive forces that support the administration's lawlessness control the media diet of a plurality of Americans.
If you want Americans to care about wants going on, you have to inform them about it first.
Polling on it has been bad even amongst Republicans it isn’t great.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/devastating-poll-reveals...
The ballroom is scheduled be ready in January 2029 assuming no delays. But by that time Trump will be at the end of his term. So is he doing this for future presidents (would be very much unlike him) or is he planning to stick around after Jan 2029?
Steve Bannon is doing countless interviews and shamelessly saying he will be president again in 2028.
It is one thing for Bannon to say it. It is another thing for a prominent sitting senator to say it [1]. (That would be senator Lindsey Graham.) I wish John McCain was still around... he would have had the courage to stand up and talk sense into these people.
[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5519134-lindsey-graham-d...
> I wish John McCain was still around... he would have had the courage to stand up and talk sense into these people.
At one point I would have agreed, but then in 2017, McCain made his "We will regret what we are about to do" speech before the R's removed the filibuster requirement for the Gorsuch confirmation. And as an Arizona voter, I switched my registration from Independent to Democrat.
> “I fear that someday we will regret what we are about to do. In fact, I am confident we will,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “It is imperative we have a functioning Senate where the rights of the minority are protected regardless of which party is in power at the time.” > > Nonetheless, McCain voted with McConnell on the rules change, saying he felt he had no choice.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/senate-gop-invokes-nucle...
technically, he is currently scheduled to be president for the entirety of 2028 because the election is in November 2028 and the presidential term ends on January 20, 2029.
but that's probably not what he meant.
The bro grifters are going to bro grift because it gets them views and merch sales. Trump won't live that long: age, appearance, bad health habits, and obesity... and talk about not getting into heaven and display of extra NGAF by pardoning real pieces of work in a fury like he's already on his way out of office. By July 2026, Dear Orange Leader will most likely be pushing up daisies. Poor health and impaired decision-making skills are what are signaled.
He wants to stick around
The life expectancy tables are kinda against it though
Most of the people in that sample-data are poor and have less access to doctors and medicine.
Life-expectancy tables for multimillionaires and national politicians are probably significantly different.
I'd say Joe Biden showed us a nice illustration of how there's limits to what doctors can do, even if you're the world's most powerful man and there's billions at stake keeping you alive and functional.
His father Fred Trump died at 93. In Jan 2029 Trump will only be 82... and will have another 10 years to go if he lives as long as his father.
He's making his mark like a dog on a fire hydrant.
Or maybe he just actually wants to improve things and isn't the monster you think he is?
Why not paint the whole thing Green or like fix the bridges?
The fact they have to host large dignitary parties on tents on the lawn is a huge security issue in these days of fiber optic drones.
People are complaining because Trump is doing it. Nobody would care - hell, the media would probably excitedly talking about the plans - if it were anyone else.
> Nobody would care - hell, the media would probably excitedly talking about the plans - if it were anyone else.
Bull! People would complain for any President who:
1. Lied to everyone promising it "wouldn't interfere with the current building." [0]
2. Broke federal laws which have always governed changes to these public properties and landmarks.
3. Unconstitutionally spent funds Congress did not approve-of, which applies regardless of whether those funds came in as taxes or as donations.
Feel free to detail what other President did the same actions and nobody cared. Trump's bad reputation comes from his bad actions like these, not the other way around.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru9kvsvf5Ao
Let's give the benefit of the doubt to the person who blatantly lies, and repeatedly has shown contempt for the law. We gotta be fair even if he and their cohorts aren't, right?
The White House is a pretty significant symbol of this country, so yeah, I think they might care that a big chunk of it was just torn down.
You think they're too dumb to understand the difference between "tearing down" and "renovating"?
I assure you, they are not.
> > a big chunk of it was just torn down
> You think they're too dumb to understand the difference between "tearing down" and "renovating"?
Are you? You think the East Wing is being "renovated"?
Renovation is renewal, repair, restoring function and safety.
What's happening instead? Knocking the safe and functional East Wing flat (walls, roof, both floors, 30+ internal rooms) and replacing it with a completely new structure with new foundations and a different purpose... and with a new footprint larger than the entire White House of 2024!
Nowhere even remotely close to the same thing. Might as well brag that you "repaired" your sedan by selling it and buying a new truck.
Yes, it is being renovated. Adding a new room is renovation.
They aren't demolishing the entire White House...
The East Wing isn't being renovated. It's gone, and being replaced with something else.
So the White House is being renovated then, right?
Bingo.
You keep using that word, but it doesn't mean what you want it to.
Renovation is as your interlocutor says, a restoration. Remodeling is what is happening there, tearing apart something and putting something new in its place. It's a more drastic and expensive work.
Fine, remodeling. The specific word is not finally the point. Incessant semantic pedantry doesn't change the fact that Trump is not destroying the White House.
Most people understand that any sort of "remodeling" or "renovation" often requires some demolition first.
And I get your point, but that is a crucial distinction when you're talking about historical buildings. If said ballroom was simply an extension, no one would complain about the placement.
A chunk that hasn’t been around that long - but most people aren’t being told that part.
Go to a Walmart in Ohio or Wisconsin and ask. Ask what % will change their next vote because of it
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/09/30/ohio-family-farmer...
https://upnorthnewswi.com/2025/10/20/wisconsin-soybean-farme...
What do they care about? Price of groceries? Health care maybe?
Red team win. Blue team crying amd punished, maybe bleeding.
I think that's the wrong way to view the problem. Think about it this way: before Nixon resigned his approval rating was still 23%.
You can get a quarter of the country to say yes or not care for any given question no matter how obviously dangerous or stupid. But having a 25% approval rating would be very, very bad.
I recall there being some… upset, when a previous resident planted a garden.
Please don't place the burden of proof on others with absurd tasks.
I think they will care if their life gets worse, they just don't realize that these things are the cause.
I get it but it is imperative that this never happen. The reason is that a pardon is the only recourse the people have against the supreme court
Pardons by American presidents:
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_or_gra...Off the top of my head regarding Biden's numbers: https://apnews.com/article/biden-commutes-2500-nonviolent-dr...
"he is seeking to undo “disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today under current law, policy, and practice.”
Numbers matter less than reasons. We should be asking why, not how many.
Would you be saying the same if the numbers were different?
Yes. Smart people are educated to look at statistics with a critical eye, and we should be educating everyone we can do to the same.
Yes? Our boy in the big top hat pardoned the entire Confederacy—he's Pardons—Georg. Nobody would be dumb enough to use number of pardons to argue Lincoln was corrupt or abusing power.
4000 of Biden's pardons were mass pardons. 1500 of Trump's second term pardons are also a mass pardon of Jan 6, a decision I completely agree with. I would have pardoned them too because people were losing their minds over it to the point of not being able to be productive anymore. Honestly I feel the same way about the stupid laptop thing, you all clearly can't be normal about it so I'm ending it.
Should just do away with the system entirely.
Add this to the list of abuses this admin has done. This is just one of the legal ones.
As opposed to the previous President? Pardon abuse is not something Trump invented.
Poor drug dealers: Extrajudicial murder in international waters.
Rich drug dealers: Freedom.
Be a rich drug dealer.
Is there any proof that any of the Venezuelan boats were drug dealers? Any proof in court, ideally?
There is not.
Submarines generally aren’t fishing.
And we're ok with murdering dozens of people that might maybe have some kind of drugs on them? In peacetime? Without evidence? Outside of our own territory/water?
We're lucky Venezuela hasn't attacked us back yet.
And even if they were smuggling drugs, what if there were children on board? Do they deserve to die because of the crimes of their parents? What if they kidnapped someone and forced them to pilot the boat? Does that person deserve to die?
Imagine the US instead pulling the ship over and shooting every person, regardless of age or guilt, in the head—and then leaving. This is no different.
> Without evidence?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45693880
True. Sometimes they hunt for the Titanic.
Do you also assume all black SUVs with tinted windows are drug smugglers? Because it's the same level of evidence. ie: it isn't.
> We're lucky Venezuela hasn't attacked us back yet.
Do you actually think this is a possibility? How do you see that playing out?
"Today's defensive action we have taken demonstrates the first step to discourage these unmarked foreign terrorist attacks against our civilians. It is our duty to protect our people, which we will continue to do against the rising numbers of offensive boats assaulting us."
I imagine sooner or later, they will stop our black ops boats from shooting people.
Dictators, like Maduro (and wannabe dictators), are notoriously coward. They won't risk their life against an enemy that will certainly bomb them from afar, but they would happily risk their whole country if that kept them safe.
Hell, even Trump wouldn't be that bold if he didn't know Venezuela has no will, or means, of putting him at risk.
I think you would have said the same thing about Leopoldo Galtieri before the Falkland war.
Your doubt in US intelligence and military capability shows. Venezuela attacking US assets would result in swift, almost instantaneous elimination of the threat.
The speed boats hauling ass in international waters are known smugglers on known routes using customized craft only drug smugglers use.
Policy of vaporizing these boats with weapons is both a) fairly effortless target practice for our military and b) puts major financial strain on that drug cartel operation.
Yes, I doubt. The US intelligence has invented intelligence plenty of times in the past, and I absolutely do not trust that particular shadow branch of ICE.
Even if what they say is true, destroying boats with people on them without proof is wild.
The intel is correct, as fentanyl is currently considered an extreme top priority threat to eliminate by the government (due to this being on ongoing operation, information given will be limited.) If this were some false flag or CIA op they'd just stage the boats getting blown up rather than destroy random innocent boaters. There's enough chain of command between the missile and the brass that this action would be executed correctly and with precision.
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More generically:
Poor criminal: jail/death penalty/etc.
Rich criminal: freedom
Famous and rich criminal: the presidency
CZ already paid a fine and finished serving his time in jail. He was already free before the pardon.
Wasn't he barred from working in financial services? I imagine a full pardon would remove any pesky details that might stand in the way.
Additional coverage (from other HN submissions):
QZ: <https://qz.com/trump-pardon-binance-changpeng-zhao>
Reuters: <https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pardons-convicted-bin...>
The Guardian: <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/23/binance-t...>
If one leaves all integrity and morals the president of the richest country in the world can really amass a ton of wealth. I actually suspect that the shares the “US” government s getting from intel and other companies actually goes to trump somehow. Everything is up for sale with this administration. Just sad, the high moral ground the country occupied is just wiped out and it’s now just like any other corrupt Asian country
> and it’s now just like any other corrupt Asian country
Seems like we are getting the worst aspects of countries like China (anti-democratic 1 party rule, state directed oligarchy, targeting of ethnic minority groups) with none of the best aspects of China: strong investment in education, research, and modern infrastructure like high speed trains and zero carbon electricity production.
Maybe mimicking authoritarianism isn't the answer to our problems.
Hey, corruption is rampant on each and every continent, except Antarctica. Asia is not the worst by far. Why are you singling out Asia specifically?
It's bizarre to me, an Australian, how the pardon power is used in the US. Our federal, state and territory executive governments all have a pardon power, inherited from English law, that is, formally, unlimited (like the US federally and indeed it's less restrictive than many US states for state crimes).
It is a power used very sparingly, even though legally it is unlimited - the state of New South Wales is, as far as I know, the only one which publishes details about uses of the pardon power; in an average year there are 0 successful pardon/commutation applicants, and it's an exceptionally merciful year if they grant 2 or more. Other states and the federal government may or may not be a bit more generous, but we're talking very small numbers. Most pardons are for reasons of unsafe convictions where for whatever reason no remaining avenues of appeal are available (rare, these days, because each state has introduced laws to enable post-conviction reviews).
Historically, particularly in the 19th century convict era, the pardon power was much more important, and was indeed abused for political reasons on a number of occasions, but it seems that for the most part it quietly exists in the background and only gets significant public attention once every blue moon for a high-profile murder case or similar.
What explains the difference? Is it the requirement for sign-off by the King's viceroys that prevents abuse? Collective Cabinet governance that is accountable to Parliament? Maybe our political culture means politicians' friends tend to end up in prison less often and thus there's less opportunity for the abuse of pardons specifically? It's not particularly clear to me - if anyone's got some good comparative studies send me links!
As an Australian? Dude, your country is the most authoritarian of the current English speaking "western" countries.
The parliamentary countries like Australia just have made it so that they forever encroach in civil liberties and hide it all in bureocracy and pretend things work as intended and that democracy is working but when it was covid time they utterly crashed dissent. Same with most cases of effective opposition to power. The first in line to try and control the internet, speech and more from its citizens who don't even notice it that much because it's so ingrained in the culture of self censorship.
Having said that, yes, the pardon powers are ridiculous and they're being used more and more in ridiculous ways like this one from trump or the "pardon for everything just in case, for future and past" from Biden.
The swamp is now a protected wetland.
Most corrupt president in living memory (ever?) pardons convicted corrupt businessman, while directly profiting from said corrupt businessman's industry
Years ago people would have thought you were talking about the DRC, Haiti or Uzbekistan. Today's it's the USA.
Don't kid yourself, US political corruption pre-dates Trump. This is just bringing it to a new level.
Yes, he clearly said "most corrupt", not "first corrupt".
I find comment such as yours rather pathetic, for reasons I can't quite put into words. It's like you want to make excuses for Trump but you're not really willing to actually commit to it.
Political corruption was not invented by Trump. We know. But that's really not the point at all.
I don't understand this. Should only Trump be blamed? I think that's stupid. All presidents before him were just as corrupt as him, only Trump doesn't care how people think of him, so he's not very sublte, like the other presidents. In that way I think Trump is actually revealing the corruption.
> All presidents before him were just as corrupt as him
That is not even close to true. What other Presidents were "just as corrupt" and how?
> All presidents before him were just as corrupt as him
Is that so? Please list the ways in which former presidents have violated the Emolument clause, profited directly from their office (i.e., issuing their own cryptocoin), and increased their family's net worth by billions while in office.
Either put up the facts, or stop with the "whataboutism" nonsense.
It's honestly a shame that comments from people like you will be silently forgotten, when your unending ceaseless discharge of excuses to sweep the rug for the current status quo should be something that you should never be allowed to forget. I guess you have a point though, a flame left unextinguished will only grow and that was the result here. Not too many outcomes remain when you only add more fuel, but there is always another way to solve that problem :)
> Zhao, in November 2023, pleaded guilty in Seattle federal court and agreed to step down as Binance CEO as part of a $4.3 billion settlement by the company with the Department of Justice.
Did he already pay the $4.3 billion? That's a lot of money, even for the federal government.
I understand that the commutation of George Santos means he does not have to pay the court ordered restitution to the people he defrauded.
Puts an even grosser spin on this incineration of the rule of law.
Penalties within plea deals likely have different rules but given a pardon is a higher rung of absolution I am horrified to wonder if he could clawback any personal financial penalties he has paid or even seek compensation.
From what I can tell, Binance had to pay the $4.3B, while Zhao had to pay $50M.
The status of each isn’t something I can readily find.
Whatever he hasn't paid of that $50M, he'd no longer be on the hook for
COLLINS: Today you pardoned the founded of Binance. Can you explain why you did that?
TRUMP: Which one was that?
COLLINS: The founder of Binance
TRUMP: I believe we're talking about the same person, because I do pardon a lot of people. I don't know. He was recommended by a lot of people.
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3m3v6mnpkb52i
“Today you pardoned the founder of Binance,” Collins began. “Can you explain why you chose to pardon him, and did it have anything to do with his involvement in your family's —
“Which one, who was that?” Trump asked.
“The founder of Binance,” Collins continued. “He has involvement in your own family’s crypto business.”
“The recent one? I believe we’re talking about the same person, because I do pardon a lot of people,” Trump said. “I don’t know. He was recommended by a lot of people. A lot of people say that — Are you talking about the crypto person? A lot of people say he wasn’t guilty of anything, he served four months in jail, and they say that he wasn’t guilty of anything.”
As Collins attempted to clarify, Trump jumped in, saying, “Well, you don’t know much about crypto — you know nothing about nothing, you fake news!”
Trump then continued answering the question.
“He was somebody, as I was told — I don’t believe I have ever met him — but I’ve been told he had a lot of support. And they said what he did is not even a crime. That he was persecuted by the Biden administration. And so I gave him a pardon at the request of some very good people.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-scolds-kaitlan-col...
actual puppet
Fuck. Guys. Psst. You have another demented leader.
I agree this isn't a very satisfying answer, but realistically how else do you expect Presidential pardons to go? Trump has pardoned over 1000 people and Joe Biden has pardoned over 4000. Do we expect them to know the intricate details of every single case?
And I mean, wasn't the last Administration effectively Autopen? Yes, the President receives recommendations and tries to make the best judgement on those.
What would Biden's answer be for pardoning Fauci?
> What would Biden's answer be for pardoning Fauci?
Leticia James. Lisa Cook. James Comey. Also he didn't break any laws?
> Trump has pardoned over 1000 people and Joe Biden has pardoned over 4000.
The numbers don't really mean much when it's pardoning classes of people (marijuana convictions, insurrectionists, etc.).
I'm sure SBF and Elizabeth Holmes will be next.
Only 16% but rising fast. https://polymarket.com/event/sbf-released-from-custody-in-20...
This particular market is too illiquid to mean anything.
Right now, there is only about $500 in liquidity if you wanted to buy in at the 20% ask with a market order. After that the next sell limit order it as 96%.
2m in outstanding volume on Kalshi: https://kalshi.com/markets/kxtrumppardon/trump-pardons/kxtru...
That's the total market volume, not the volume on SBF.
I imagine at least one guy that could create the market for you and then get the profit.
I consider SBF's crime way less serious given that the end result actually made money for "victims"* which was the intended goal from the start.
However Binance guy knowingly commits money laundering and gets the pardon?
* Those victims who did not wait through the full asset recovery process and sold their debt to "vulture investors" for pennies on the dollar.
If your definition of “making money” is turning bitcoins into USD at bitcoins low point, and then paying that back to them in 2 years, alright.
You can have whatever opinion you want about the bankruptcy process, but FTX was most certainly insolvent, due to fraud, and at that point whatever happened after the recovery to make people as whole as possible (which for many was not even close) really shouldn’t get credited to SBF.
If he gets the blame for buying them, he gets the credit, too.
Call me crazy, but if my bank tells me that my deposits are in safe assets like treasuries, but then the CEO takes the money to Vegas and puts it all on red, even if the CEO wins that bet, I'm very ok with that CEO going to jail.
Of course, if the bank is upfront that they take customer deposits to Vegas, then its fine.
Or if they took my deposit and commingled it with company funds and bought some illiquid luxury real estate in the Bahamas for their staff to live in totalling $240m. If they’re upfront about that, probably nobody deposits with them.
So he intended to get caught and have his investments seized and go up in value while seized. Noble.
Not necessarily. I think the intention was to drive up the value of FTX assets by investing in companies and coins that increased said value of the FTX platform. The value of held FTT was dependent on the value of FTX.
SBF already did an unauthorized interview in prison with Tucker Carslon.
Gislaine Maxwell will be next.
Holmes has nothing to offer him.
They're trying to turn it in to a culture war/"big pharma" type issue. They've been trying since he got in to office – see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44002658
Will it work? If I had to bet then I'd say probably not. For any other president this would not even merit any thought beyond "lol" and that alone is worrying.
Fraud talent.
SBF, maybe. Elizabeth Holmes, no chance.
No chance SBF ever goes out (until he's done with his sentence).
Two huge factors against him:
* Most people don't even know who CZ is, so this is meh-tier. People know SBF and find him repulsive, literally. Whoever puts SBF out of jail will face a massive PR backslash, he's not important enough to be worth that.
* SBF stole from the rich, the only real crime in the US.
Very few times you see someone who is equally hated by: the law, the public and the rich. He's screwed, lol.
I would add that SBF was at one point the 2nd largest donor to Democrats.
SBF/FTX was also a massive donor (using customer money) to Republicans. They routed that money through Ryan Salame, I guess to avoid appearing to be as unprincipled as they actually were.
The common theme to the donations ("payoff" or "bribe" might be more accurate), whether to D or R was to weaken any push for crypto regulations.
Actually the opposite. SBF was lobbying for crypto regulations. Of course those regulations would benefit FTX as an incumbent.
Correct. I think it is fair to say that SBF would rather be associated with Democrats based on how he wanted to hide the donations to Republicans.
I'll bet he's kicking himself now... he made the wrong bet associating himself with Democrats, who let justice take its course despite the donations, when these days Trump will just take a payoff and issue a pardon.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/02/sam-bankman-fried-considered...
I watched this documentary:
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-ruin-ftx-documentary...
The way CZ managed to tie up FTX in a knot was a masterclass. (about 59min in).
> Whoever puts SBF out of jail will face a massive PR backslash [sic]
We’ve been hearing variations of “massive PR backlash” should Donald Trump do XYZ for literally a decade now.
There has never been any consequential backlash whatsoever.
> massive PR backslash
Personally I do not believe there can be PR backslash for convicted criminal voted in as president.
What are the odds Shkreli gets a pardon so he can be an officer of a publicly traded company again?
He's already out. Livestreaming his stock trades on X everyday. Probably has less interest in being an officer. He can still short pharma companies freely now.
A pardon has effect on more aspects of a sentence than the carceral period.
Regarding your first point - how about George Santos? I suspect Santos was more well known than any of the crypto-scammers, was clearly guilty, was derided by both ends if the political spectrum - yet Trump commuted him.
Commute != pardon. Santos is still convicted and guilty of all of those charges. He just doesn't have to serve the rest of the sentence. I'm not sure if those were felony charges, but if they were and he's in a state that doesn't allow felons to vote...
A pardon makes it all go away. None of the baggage of convictions follow. Finding a job or a place to live is something they can do, as well as voting again.
By not pardoning, the state can't recharge them.
SBF was/is left (and I suppose mostly signaled rich in that camp), Ulbricht libertarian, but they were caught and therefore had to serve time in jail regardless. That is how our system works. SBF specialized in large scale grifting (like Madoff), Ulbricht in providing an anonymous platform for trafficking. They're competitors of Trump, but given their experience, intelligence, and disadvantage (jail time) if bend loyal they're an asset.
It isn't about any of these people though. Trump is about only one thing: himself (a trade he shares with someone like KJU of North Korea). Specifically, as a narcissist, Trump is all about his image: business and might makes right, no matter the rules. Trump therefore hates the left, truth, honesty, ethics, empowering the weak and minorities, et cetera. Most importantly, he is signaling here: 'if you do business with me, we do the criminal path, and you get caught then I have the power to pardon your sentence.'
Whether Trump is currently a criminal or not, he was and is a convicted felon.
The above is also why I very much suspect Ghislaine Maxwell has dirt on Trump.
You're probably right, because she smoozed with Biden, but with Trump anything is possible with the right bribes.
Does SBF have any ability to pay a bribe at this point?
I suppose one might assume he has some funds stashed offshore somewhere.
His parents might but I don't think they're accepting bribes from Stanford profs. Maybe CZ can advocate for him to have a rival again.
The Ivy League colleges should start campus on prisons for their alumni and other inmates who could learn and continue the grift.
Is it called a bribe at this point, or is it tribute?
Indulgence might be the most appropriate term.
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Is white collar crime / financial fraud just not going to be a crime in the US any more?
That already officially happened a few months ago. In addition to stopping all cryptocurrency fraud investigations, the administration stopped prosecuting white collar crimes under the FCPA:
https://www.connecticutcriminallawyer.com/blog/trump-adminis...
If you have access to people in positions of government influence, it's a good time to accept bribes from foreigners, especially via cryptocurrency. But if that is you then you probably already know that.
> If you have access to people in positions of government influence, it's a good time to accept bribes from foreigners,
FCPA addresses bribery of foreign governments...
Fair point, but either way we're not enforcing that law anymore.
It's clear you're not that familiar with the law if you got a fundamental aspect about it incorrect, so why is this bad on its face? Ending enforcement of laws is not de facto bad.
In this case, FCPA hinders American companies from competing in foreign locales where greasing the local wheels is a requirement for getting things done. Like it or not, this is the world we live in but an argument could be made that dropping enforcement is pragmatic.
Then Congress should rescind the law. Otherwise laws don't mean anything.
Do you similarly disagree with the decision by the executive to end enforcement of weed laws? The DEA could be raiding state dispensaries daily but isn't.
Congress should rescind that law also. It also doesn't mean anything when it's not enforced, and rescinding it has broad popular support.
But as you probably know, practically speaking it's not feasible to enforce every law on the books at all times, so the balance of laws enforced tells you about the priorities of a government. This one sees white collar crime as a feature, not a bug.
> This one sees white collar crime as a feature, not a bug.
What issues do you see with not prosecuting Americans for following local customs? The places where the bribery happens can already jail the US citizens committing the bribery. The US doesn't prosecute Americans for smoking weed in Amsterdam even if it's illegal in the US.
As always, that depends on how much you're already worth.
Maximum sentence allotted for small fries and lenience for the bigger conman who share a piece of their own pie to clean the slate. Fair game in Crookville.
Depends, are you voting to keep interest rates where they are? Are you a DA who successfully prosecuted the president?
He already served his sentence and was released a while ago.
What do you mean it's not a crime? The only thing the pardon does is remove his criminal record.
As long as you "donate" enough to Trump/Republicans, fraud won't be prosecuted
This Administration loves criminals.
This Administration is criminals.
This Administration loves itself.
We are allowing this to happen. For so many years corrupt politicians have avoided any consequences so it grows and becomes new normal.
Market manipulation has been the norm for many years because nobody did anything to stop it.
Pardoning criminals is becoming the new normal. Next normal is going to be launching wars to distract public and is going to cost a lot of lives.
Key line:
> "Since Trump’s election, Binance has also been a key supporter of his family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture, a business that has driven a huge leap in the president’s personal wealth."
"Huge leap" meaning $5 billion,
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-wlfi-world-liberty-financ... ("New crypto token boosts Trump family's wealth by $5 billion")
$5B, so far.
Not sure why you quote it, that's pretty huge. I'd call any double-digit percent increase on a billionaire's wealth huge.
I think the parent is quoting the phrase simply because they are defining it, and not using sarcasm quotes.
They're saying it's an understatement.
(It's a literal quote of the WSJ).
But Binance founder doesn't work for Binance anymore so why pardoning founder help Binance?
The current head of binance (and cofounder) is Yi He. Who happens to be in a relationship with CZ and is the mother of his children.
Because it sets a precedent
According to Binance, he owns 90%. Whether he is CEO or not probably doesn't prevent him from influencing Binance operations to support Trump's coin.
If you have Republican senators or a Republican House rep, call their offices and tell them what you think of this.
They're all complicit in this. They'll do nothing. And Susan Collins will be very "concerned".
Yes! This will be the time they finally push back on Trump.
Midterms are coming up next year. If they are afraid their association with Trump might take them down, they'll crack.
Honestly I suspect fear of Trump is really their only motivation right now.
So long as most of these states have party primaries, particularly closed party primaries, it doesn't really matter because anyone insufficiently pro-Trump is getting primaried hard.
They still have to face competition in the general though. If Republican voters are disgusted enough, they might vote for a Democrat, but they are more likely to stay home and just not vote. Which could be enough for them to lose their seats.
> If Republican voters are disgusted enough
If Republican voters were capable of being disgusted enough, it would have happened by now.
Of course he did. Republicans can’t complain about Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich any more.
I was aware of the allegations that Marc Rich's ex wife gave money to Clinton ($450k to the library) is what led Clinton to pardon, but I never really dug into it.
Per wikipedia, Clinton's defense was that it was actually a favor to Israel, given Rich helping to finance their intel services. Maybe everybody else knew this, I didn't.
I’ve read the same, I can’t see any net benefit here aside from grift.
I mean, in all honesty, if our system is going to allow the grift and one is amoral enough to do so, have at it. It may catch backup later.
Of course they can. Republicans (well MAGA in particular) don't are about hypocracy. They make exceptions for Trump on everything.
I mean, that was one pardon 25 years ago and widely criticized across the political spectrum.
It's hard to count how many purely political and money-based pardons Trump has done this term, and there is essentially no pushback on his side.
I'm impressed. Leavitt managed to Blame the Biden administration, effectively asserting that Zhao's crimes were a result of the Biden administration's "war on crypto." Never mind that Zhao was engaged in criminal activity for which he was prosecuted, tried, and found guilty.
Changpeng Zhao pled guilty for violating the Bank Secrecy Act and not complying with anti-money laundering requirements.
That also happened to a lot of big banks over and over again.
Three days ago one of the biggest was found guilty for helping Sudan’s government commit genocide by providing banking services that violated American sanctions [0]. Sounds worst.
Binance is a casino for millennial and gen Z and like casinos is used by criminal to launder money.
Should Changpeng Zhao be pardoned? I don't know, I don't care he is a small fish.
Should BNP CEO serves prison time? probably.
- [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bnp-paribas-shares-fall-us-17...
Whataboutism. Has to be called out.
What about the whataboutism of whataboutism? I.e. meta-whataboutism
The use of whataboutism and the ‘calling out’ of whataboutisms are both mechanisms of narrative control.
”Using logic and ethics against me is unfair?”
Friends of ”I thought there would be no fact checking ”
The person is making a valid point about the inconsistency in how non compliance was handled in traditional finance and blockchain.
Perhaps folks think that is not a "valid point" here because it is off topic, seeking to distract from the topic of whether this particular guilty person should be punished.
Saying "so and so did it too and nothing happened" may be correct, but doesn't address the topic. If you're saying that, how does it apply to the topic (the Binance founder)?
Are you saying that you're ok with the other people getting away with it, and thus you're ok with this guy also getting away with it via this purchased pardon?
Or are you saying those other people should have been punished, and thus this pardon was wrong to sell?
It’s of course on topic to talk about the bigger picture of whether people in general are charged with these specific types of crimes or should be.
I hate the whole fallacy callout stuff in general. God didn’t create them, half barely work, none work in every situation, and they’re just abused to death by people to shut down conversation in a shallow way.
Whataboutism is a rhetological fallacy. Making fallacies is bad. Pointing out fallacies (or as you put it, "narrative control") is good.
Controlling the narrative is often the point of using rhetorical fallacies.
Like the intolerance of intolerance there is discretion over what are acceptable intolerances. With whataboutism there is discretion over what are acceptable appeals to hypocrisy.
Whatsboutism is merely saying your appeal to hypocrisy is invalid. Which would hold more weight with me if the side saying it never made appeals to hypocrisy of their own. Otherwise they’re being hypocritical about making appeals to hypocrisy.
On the substance, I hate what Trump has done. I would not take the position that what Trump did is ok because of what Biden did.
An "appeal to hypocrisy" is always invalid because that term is essentially synonymous with whataboutism and 'tu quoque' fallacies
The underlying failure of all of them, and why they are fallacies, is because the guilt of one side of an issue has nothing to do with the hypocrisy of the other. Thus, trying to pivot from the former to the latter is a distraction, rather than a genuine attempt to discuss the topic (which is the former).
> Which would hold more weight with me if the side saying it never made appeals to hypocrisy of their own.
"The side"? Dude, I'm a person, not a side, and you barely know anything about me, much less what I've done and do. The accusations of whataboutism weren't made by nebulous, ethereal concepts, they were made by people.
You can't pick and choose different behaviors of different people and lump them together as if they are the same person, then claim that the differing behaviors indicate some sort of hypocrisy or other conflict. What you're describing is diversity of thought among different people.
Even if you could, it's not even a good discussion, because then others could respond that your meta-criticism is itself hypocritical in the same way that you're responding to criticism by claiming that it is hypocritical. So you keep adding layers until the actual topic (the original criticism) is long forgotten. In fact, that is why whataboutism is used: its users don't want to focus on the original criticism.
Sounds like what I said, a form of narrative control. A charge I made of both appeals to hypocrisy and appeals to whataboutism.
My personal preference would be logical and factual discussions only but I accept that’s not the world we live in.
The deleterious effect of the additional layers is ameliorated by the nesting of information on HN, you don’t have to keep digging if you don’t want to.
> Sounds like what I said, a form of narrative control.
Yes, whataboutism is both a rhetological fallacy and a form of "narrative control".
> A charge I made of both appeals to hypocrisy and appeals to whataboutism.
"Appeal to whataboutism" isn't a thing. It's just called "whataboutism", and since whataboutism and "appeal to hypocrisy" (seems synonymous with whataboutism) are both fallacies, pointing them out is just called "pointing out fallacies". Fallacies don't need any 'appeals' or arguments made against them, because they are already fallacious, that's why we call them fallacies.
And yes, pointing out fallacious arguments could be called "narrative control", too ;) So could be saying anything! After all, anyone saying anything is trying to "control the narrative" to include that thing. What a silly, needlessly conspiratorial neologism for a uselessly vague concept!
The discretion of the validity of pointing out hypocrisy is the core of the issue. I would 100% agree with you if all discussions are purely logical, but they’re not, so I don’t.
The introduction of whataboutism into the lexicon was to counter Russian appeals to hypocrisy. This was linked to Trump in an effort to discredit both. Those of us who have long memories do remember a time when pointing out the hypocrisy of the West was considered a valid thing to do. See the work of Noam Chomsky as an example.
A Tu Quoque fallacy, or as you put it, "pointing out hypocrisy", is a fallacy. Some people do not like logical discussions, so they use that fallacy anyways. That is totally ok, I'm not the boss of them.
But, it will likely be pointed out that their fallacious arguments are fallacious, and at that point, they can choose to make valid arguments, or to continue their string of failures by unconvincingly making more fallacious ones.
> The introduction of whataboutism into the lexicon was to counter Russian appeals to hypocrisy
Cool! "Appeal to hypocrisy", or Tu Quoque, is a fallacy and any arguments invoking it are accordingly fallacious. Coining another synonym ("whataboutism") doesn't change things. Those making fallacious arguments can try to make valid arguments (if there are any) for their case next time.
> Those of us who have long memories do remember a time when pointing out the hypocrisy of the West was considered a valid thing to do
I've got a long memory, too, and the Tu Quoque fallacy was never a valid defense, no matter what you called it. That's what makes it a fallacy.
Doesn't make the double standards any less true.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but Zhao was convicted of crimes which were a direct result of his operating a crypto exchange, and not any other criminal activity. It may be possible to operate a legally-compliant crypto exchange, but I am not sure that any current exchange is fully compliant with US law. If we agree on these facts, and think that the 'war on drugs' is what has resulted in 'drug possession' and 'drug trafficking' convictions, then it seems reasonable to say that Zhao was convicted as the result of a 'war on crypto'.
I am actually not sure that either the 'war on drugs' or a 'war on crypto' is a bad idea, but they do seem analogous.
> and not any other criminal activity
He made a lot of money from the other criminal activity. That's what money laundering is: just because you're not directly trafficking children, for example, doesn't mean you have clean hands when you make significant profits from the people who are.
What you're describing is (in my view) the best casus belli for both the 'war on drugs' and a 'war on crypto', but a moral case does not make a criminal case (on its own).
I don't even necessarily think a 'war on crypto' is needed. The problem is that crypto seems to function as a get out of jail free card for very straightforward financial crimes: you just do the financial crime, but apply a thin veneer of 'but with crypto' and the legal system is utterly bamboozled.
Crypto's problem is that when the law is updated to deal with these stunts, it's suddenly just a crappy version of the existing financial system.
I completely agree that crypto is being used as an end-run (if you'll pardon the expression) around the existing financial oligopoly, whose regulatory burden is paid for by the monopoly rents extracted by the government-endorsed players. The problem is that criminal laws aren't being maximally applied against banks, so instances like this do give the appearance of 'unfairness'.
The war on drugs creates almost all the negative externalities of drugs to try and stop people making their own choices.
It is both a reason not to buy drugs now (you're sponsoring all that other stuff) and a reason it's a ridiculous and immoral policy.
It is also on no way comparable to crypto.
Except, correct me if this is wrong, but he wasn't even convicted of money laundering, let alone the underlying crimes you suggest he was launder the proceeds of. It was simply for failing to register / setup an appropriate AML system. Whether any ML occurred, by whom, and in relation to what... are outstanding questions. If he had done all that and all they got him on was a 4-month technicality, that tends to suggest he was probably innocent (or the investigation was inept).
I'm not sure you understand the point. It isn't that CZ himself was specifically putting forth the effort to launder money. It isn't that he was specifically doing things to try and make it easier. The point is that he had a legal duty to actively attempt to prevent money laundering. Binance was legally required to do this to operate in the US, and did not. The court case produced messages from the Chief Compliance Officer pointing out a myriad of ways in which they were not complying with various laws of this nature and they were ignored.
The BSA is not a technicality and trying to reframe it as one is wild. It is to make sure that people that have a financial incentive to turn a blind eye to money laundering don't turn a blind eye to it. You don't need to be directly involved in the money laundering to be incentivized to let it happen.
The guy was punished with a 4-month jail sentence. It's reasonable to assume his crime was of the sort that would result in a 3-6 month sentence... generally misdemeanors.
It's certainly in a different category than speeding or jaywalking, but it's a lot closer to that than to the 150 years that Bernie Madoff got.
The CEOs of Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, etc. have not been indicted for anything. Those exchanges have had some compliance issues but they were minor compared to Binance, FTX, BitMEX, etc.
For the accurate context:
CZ was pardoned for a single charge of failure to have an effective compliance program. No fraud, no victims, no criminal history. No money laundering.
CZ is the first and only known first-time offender in U.S. history to receive a prison sentence for this single, non-fraud-related charge. The judge found no evidence that he knew of any illicit transactions and that it was reasonable for him to believe there were no illicit funds on the platform.
Trump is a very twisted person, and this makes the US look bad, but the underlying crime was "compliance."
Sorry, this is not true. All financial institutions are required to have AML controls, which cost a lot of money.
These controls are mostly performative, but Binance wildly flouted them. This pardon means that basically no crypto company needs to worry about AML now, which is bad for the world.
The reason that nobody gets convicted for this is because they have somewhat adequate controls, whereas Binance basically welcomed money launderers with open hands.
The point being, no money laundering was pointed out to the court, although I sure this happened to some scale. Binance works with the police, before and after the conviction, it's not a laundromat like some Russian cryptocurrency exchanges.
But you are right the AML controls were weak, and CZ was convicted for this. KYC requirements arrived to Binance very late. But they were not convicted of fraud (like Sam Bankman-Fried from FTX). No users lost money. A lot of commenters get this wrong.
The US banks get slapped for similar compliance breaches all the time e.g.:
https://qz.com/bank-of-america-bofa-occ-bank-secrecy-act-bsa...
Binance also had internal communication that specifically told personnel to ignore certain AML rules and certain customers.
Compare with TD bank, that laundered money for the cartels - AFAIK nobody is in prison.
Yeah, it does seem unfair. However, it's important to note that you must have these controls, and Binance didn't. The effectiveness of these controls is not the point (sadly).
This is a super, super low bar. One can meet the BSA requirements by sending every transaction to the regulators, but Binance didn't even do that.
That should be addressed as well.
> Trump is a very twisted person, and this makes the US look bad, but the underlying crime was "compliance."
Yes.
If a CEO of any major US or EU bank would overnight decide to terminate its mere 'compliance' program, they would absolutely get convinced.
Big banks spend more than $1 billion each a year on compliance, i.e. abiding by the law. CEOs of banks that don't, get convinced, period.
It's like saying hospitals have been hiring people without credentials as doctors, or airlines hiring people with no credentials as pilots etc etc, and they were convinced for this 'compliance' issue, even though the case did not (try to) determine victims, criminal history or fraud. Yes, that's absolutely normal.
Financial institutions must put in place measures to prevent money laundering, if they don't, they get convinced, even without having to determine whether money laundering took place. Just like a hospital gets convinced if it knowingly as a policy hires people as doctors without credentials, even without having to determine if there were victims. This is completely normal.
In china the party just declares people it wants to imprison guilty. In the US we have “compliance”. Both serve the same purpose against the people.
I hope HN has a way to vouch a comment before it's flagged, because I know this one would be (for being correct.)
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then you know nothing at all about the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
I wish you would link to text rather than video. This channel owner may be very well informed, but I don't want to subject myself to the performative yelping of some guy sitting in front of a smoke machine with mood lighting. Except where original footage is concerned, video is about the worst medium for communicating complex facts the sensory stimulation is a distraction from the content. This presenter might be a genius, but I don't want to spend the time trying to untangle the substance from his hyped-up 'coffeezilla' delivery.
I had Claude reformat youtube's transcript of the video.
---
# Trump's Pardon of CZ: A Timeline of Alleged Corruption
*Author's Note:* This situation represents what appears to be straight-up corruption that everyone should oppose, regardless of political affiliation. This isn't about politics—it's about the facts.
## Background: The Original Charges
*November 21, 2023* Binance and Changpeng Zhao (CZ) both plead guilty in a historic $4 billion plea deal. They admitted to lacking proper anti-money laundering controls and willfully looking the other way. The charges specifically involved allowing terrorists, cyber criminals, and child abusers to use their platform.
*April 30, 2024* CZ is officially sentenced to four months in prison.
## The Trump Connection Begins
Shortly after sentencing, Donald Trump wins the presidency and announces the launch of *World Liberty Financial*—his major crypto project. This will become crucial to understanding the alleged corruption.
## The Suspicious Timeline
### March 12, 2025: The MGX Investment A company called MGX invests $2 billion into Binance, specifically in cryptocurrency (the exact type wasn't announced initially).
### March 13, 2025: The Wall Street Journal Report The Wall Street Journal reports that Binance has been reaching out to Trump allies since the previous year to strike a business deal with the family as part of a plan to return to the US. Possibilities included: - The Trumps taking a stake in Binance - A deal through World Liberty Financial
### March 25, 2025: USD1 Stablecoin Launch World Liberty Financial announces a stablecoin called USD1.
*Why stablecoins matter:* They're incredibly profitable because they farm yield from treasury bills while people use them. The major players are USDT and USDC. However, it's extremely difficult to launch a new stablecoin—people don't trust or use new ones easily.
### May 1, 2025: The Key Revelation The $2 billion MGX investment into Binance was conducted entirely in *USD1* (Trump's stablecoin).
*Why this matters:* - There was no reason to use USD1 instead of other currencies - They could have used BNB (Binance's own coin), which would make more sense - The only reason to use USD1 is to benefit World Liberty Financial - Stablecoins are backed by treasuries, so holding $2 billion in USD1 generates *$60-80 million per year* in risk-free revenue for World Liberty Financial (from 3-4% treasury yields)
### A Few Days Later CZ announces he has applied for a Trump pardon. *Timing: right after announcing the deal was done in USD1.*
### June 2025 World Liberty Financial announces a partnership with PancakeSwap (associated with Binance) and a $1 million reward trading campaign to increase USD1 usage.
## The AI Chips Connection
### September 15, 2025: New York Times Investigation The New York Times reveals suspicious timing around the MGX investment:
1. MGX deposited $2 billion into World Liberty Financial 2. Two weeks later, the White House agreed to allow the UAE access to hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips 3. Many chips would go to G42, controlled by the same sheikh connected to MGX
*Official response:* The deal was "totally unrelated to any government business." But MGX clearly benefited from one side of this arrangement.
## The Polymarket Betting
### October 11, 2025 A whale linked to suspicious insider trading activity on Hyperliquid was connected to a Polymarket account called "big winner 01." This account started betting that Trump would pardon CZ by the end of 2025—a seemingly wild bet with only a couple months left in the year.
## The Pardon
### October 23, 2025 Trump pardons convicted Binance founder CZ.
*White House response:* Press Secretary Caroline Levitt claimed Trump "exercised his constitutional authority" and that CZ was "prosecuted by the Biden administration and their war on cryptocurrency."
*The reality:* The charges had nothing to do with politics. They were about anti-money laundering violations and allowing money to flow to criminals. Binance's own chief compliance officer had internal chats noting they should probably not allow money to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Crimea.
The Wall Street Journal reported the pardon will likely pave the way for Binance to return to the US.
## The Bottom Line
The problem isn't just loosening crypto enforcement—it's making the president's family such obvious beneficiaries:
- Nearly all of USD1's success came from this inorganic $2 billion investment - The market cap spike for USD1 directly corresponds to the Binance deal - It's a clear pay-to-play scheme happening in plain sight
*The author's conclusion:* This appears to be blatant corruption where deals were made to profit from the pardon, regardless of one's political views.
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? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
I don't get the outrage either.
He was sentenced to 4 months in prison. He already served that time and got out.
So what does a parden get him? No criminal record?
This pardon seems rather minor to me.
He can run Binance again.
True, but is that an injustice? Is it likely to happen?
He was accused of not having adequate know your customer compliance measures to prevent money laundering.
Not like he stolen customer funds.
It's definitely unlikely to happen again, so I'm sure he's definitely not going to run similar ~scams~ companies!
Good news: This shows they absolutely need any and all money they can get.
Bad news: They are getting the kickback money.
Does it? Trump famously cashed a 17¢ check
The US is a banana republic now. Absolute joke of an administration.
The administration says CZ wasn't guilty and was persecuted by the previous administration.
https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1981457002921677059
I wonder if civil forfeiture will work against Trump once he's out of office. Trump's net worth before becoming President was under US$1 billion. Now it's over 6 billion. A civil claim for the difference based on the Emoluments Acts.
"The Foreign Emoluments Clause bars the president and other federal officials from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State” without the consent of Congress. It reflects the framers’ desire to prevent federal officials from succumbing to foreign influence.
The Domestic Emoluments Clause provides for the president to receive a fixed salary and bars him from receiving “any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.” It was designed to insulate the president against undo pressure from Congress or any individual state."
[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/emol...
You dont live in a country where Rule of Law matters anymore.
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Rule of law? Anymore? No president has ever been punished in any meaningful capacity in our entire history. Washington used loopholes to avoid setting his slaves free[1] for christ sake.
[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/george-washington-...
What about Nixon’s impeachment and resignation? What about Trump being a convicted felon 5 ways to Sunday (yes they overturned this since he won again, but I doubt it would have gone this direction if he’d lost.)
How much time did Nixon spend in prison? Or did he opt to be caned instead?
1. There is no downside to impeachment. It has the same impact as a strongly worded letter. 2. Nixon decided to resign and not the alternative for doing something so insane: A restoration of damages. 3. Like I said, they were overturned. I mean even the NYT was trying to figure out the result: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/nyregion/trump-trial-hush...
The reality is the system will bend itself to avoid the problem, because it's been designed to avoid that problem.
No, this is pretty squarely outside the scope, and only specific amounts received from in-scope parties (i.e. governments) would be subject. And there's a standing issue. Basically the emoluments clause doesn't have real teeth for most purposes, even where it applies.
> only specific amounts received from in-scope parties
Like Quatar and the used 747.
It should apply there, though the first Trump admin argued a very narrow interpretation that mostly exempts the president in the first term, at the end of which the case was declared moot (leaving us in suspense about what SCOTUS would have said). Great commentary on emoluments and needed reforms in light of this here: https://www.execfunctions.org/p/trump-20-and-the-foreign-emo...
I hope so. That way we can rebuild the White House the way it was and pay for it by seizing Mar-a-Lago and selling it off.
Trump is a corrupt idiot and a terrible president, but the White House controversy is dumb too. I'm sure the addition will be ugly like everything Trump builds, but that building is not exactly a historic artifact that mustn't be mutated. It's been gutted more than once.
Bit like suggesting the controversy over bombing boats in the Caribbean is dumb because the U.S. has bombed ships before. The way it's happening is completely unprecedented and absurd.
Comparing extra judicial murders to tearing down part of a building is absurd, please get a grip.
Of course murder is worse. I didn't suggest otherwise. I was responding to the claim that "the White House controversy is dumb" because the building has been modified before. Flagrantly violating the law while blowing a half a billion dollars in transparent bribes on a vanity project while the government is shutdown is beyond outrageous. It's not "dumb" that it's a controversy. It would, in any other administration, be a slam-dunk impeachable offense.
Agreed. They saw how successful the silly rose garden thing was at diverting attention away from serious issues (Epstein files) and will happily keep pulling that lever until it stops working.
My main issue is how Trump said one thing and did another:
> “It won’t interfere with the current building,” Trump said on July 31. “It’ll be near it, but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.” - NBC
It seems probable he ignored any number of laws about how he did it, too.
Just imagine if Biden did this.
> I'm sure the addition will be ugly like everything Trump builds
Maybe it will serve as a reminder
It would work in a situation involving Supreme Court-packing, and that’s about it
I suspect Trump will leave office in a box, not on his feet. Such a civil claim would then have to be against his estate, which probably complicates things.
It would be against whomever is in possession of the stolen wealth, which will not likely be his estate. And yes, this should be a priority of any platform for rebuilding our country. Justice needs to be served. And by the time we're finally rid of these America-last fuckers, people still supporting the Trumps are going to be as rare as people still supporting the Iraq War.
I'd love to believe you--yet folks support the cult of personality and forget the policies. It's not hard to find people that'll say Nixon should've stayed in office, and Reagan might as well have his own religion.
> I wonder if civil forfeiture will work against Trump once he's out of office.
He's only out of office if he dies. There's no way he's leaving voluntarily.
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Why not start with the obvious example and collect the whatsbouts during the trial.
Yes, and everybody who enriches themselves using their political positions. These jobs are as public servants. They're supposed to be working for the people. That's why the emoluments clause is there.
Interestingly I have never seen someone with a Pelosi hat, shirt, or mural painted on the side of their RV.
I don't think there would be much outcry from either side if Pelosi, along with others who did the same things, were to be blocked by new legislation or prosecuted for breaking existing law.
Although the Domestic Emoluments Clause currently applies specifically to the President, so we would likely need new legislation to generally prevent things like congressional insider trading.
This not the "gotcha" you think it is; yes, we should get anyone that is committing a crime. Nobody is deifying Pelosi as some god above the law.
> Why would we want to?
Because crimes should be prosecuted.
> Should we do the same to her?
Obviously yes. Why would we give a damn? See also: Epstein files & Clinton. Release them, round him & the rest of them up.
Yes.
(And I say that as a Democrat in California)
It really does seem like folks on the right assume that people who vote Democrat have a lot more love for Democrats than we actually do. The whole Bill Clinton in the Epstein files thing is another example—like yeah man let him hang.
There's very little loyalty, there's some truth to the party being a bunch of minorities nervously huddled around the DNC for warmth.
Some people treat politics like a tribal sport where "morally OK" is determined solely by which team did it.
Their mental model of the "other side" is someone who is similarly team-driven.
These folks get really confused when "whatabout your team?" falls flat on people who want to live by principles or morality, rather than hat color.
It's also a rhetorical trick. The moment you admit "Yes, Bill Clinton should go to jail if he's on the list," they will start to pester you, "You admitted Clinton should also go to jail, so why are you only protesting Trump? You hypocrite!"
I think it's best not to engage. These people aren't here for logical arguments, and they won't be persuaded by logic.
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Yeah I agree, we should be holding the ruling class accountable for building generational wealth while average Americans can barely afford basics.
Every time someone digs into this, it turns out Pelosi’s large wealth is much more tied to buying SF real estate long before the tech boom sent the real estate prices soaring. It doesn’t take insider trading for someone to have gotten rich in the SF real estate market. Plenty of people became millionaires just by owning a condo they bought in the 1970’s. It is no surprise that someone whose career has been real estate investing in SF since the 1960’s made some money…
i beg you to reject the team-sports political mentality.
yes, we should absolutely do the same to her. why would you bring up nancy pelosi when no one else has?
Not just yes, but fuck yes we should.
- Zhao has ties to World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture that Trump and his sons Eric and Donald Jr. launched in September.
- Trump’s most recent financial disclosure report reveals he made more than $57 million last year from World Liberty Financial
they just reported 1B from crypto ventures, so 57m seems like lunch money...
I wonder what those ventures actually are and how that money is made?
It's all transactional. Do something Trump likes, he'll help you, laws, morals, and ethics be damned.
The pardoning of all of over 1000 people involved in January 6th is a good example of this.
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Is autopen a particular sore point in the US for some reason?
Yet you can decide that the secret documents store in your toilet are declassified with a thought?
There's a potential implication that the president wasn't the one making the decisions and they were political favors doled out by unnamed and unaccountable staff. If the president felt strongly about that perception he could've signed them himself. But he seemingly didn't.
The autopen has been widely used without controversy, including by Trump.
The controversy with Biden is that the autopen was allegedly used without the President's knowledge or directive. Nobody has a problem with POTUS's signature getting on a piece of paper without his hand actually holding the pen; that's not the point here.
"Allegedly" is the key word here. Alleged by people who allege a whole lot of untrue things and don't seem to have any evidence for this particular thing.
There is absolutely no evidence it was used without his knowledge.
Did he say that pardons were issued that he did not approve of?
There is not, but right wing propaganda avoids lots of actual news, events and statements because it doesn't look good.
To fill the time there are lots of narratives about non issues without evidence.
I think the conspiracy is that someone pardoned people without Joe Biden's approval right before Trump was inaugurated.
There's a conspiracy theory that Biden wasn't competent enough to sign stuff, at least for some period at the end of his term, with the implication being that none of those presidential acts are valid. Anybody who believes this is mired in an impenetrable misinformation bubble and should be dismissed out of hand.
There’s a conspiracy theory that Biden was secretly competent at the end of his presidency despite public appearances otherwise.
Hey I'm not disagreeing that he was in cognitive decline, but the idea that all executive action should be nullified because of that is crank shit.
> What about pardoning 8,000 people by autopen?
Is there more to this comment than whataboutism? The core concern raised in this part of the thread is Trump's outsized corruption:
> It's all transactional. Do something Trump likes, he'll help you, laws, morals, and ethics be damned.
Ah yes. Pardoning folks who were imprisoned for possession of marijuana is exactly the same--worse even, because "autopen"--as pardoning folks who were imprisoned for insurrection / political violence in support of the guy doing the pardoning. Very smart take.
No one was imprisoned for "insurrection." The vast majority were charged only with entering restricted grounds.
18 were charged with seditious conspiracy. Over 500 were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers. And many more were still awaiting trial, including Daniel Ball, who was accused of throwing explosives at police officers, were also pardoned by Trump. Many of these pardoned individuals have gone on to commit further felonies, including Daniel Ball, who was just arrested for plotting to murder Hakeem Jeffries.
But again, you seem to be missing the point: a president pardoning people who support him is very different than pardoning ordinary people who were imprisoned for crimes that are no longer crimes.
Biden issued several blanket pardons for any crimes that people may have committed for a period of a decade. That doesn't strike me as particularly discerning.
Your comments don't strike me as engaging with the material of anyone elses unless you can score political points, why are you here?
Was he bribed to do so?
Crime is legal
You heard it everyone, crime is legal as long as you pay off the Don.
As the sub on Reddit would go: I voted for this!
Idiots... They see as a positive thing or just ignore it
Pedophile felon destroys takes a wrecking ball to half of the White House without saving historical materials or objects, furiously pardons all sorts of crooks and fraudsters, and talks about not getting into heaven. Sounds like an admission of 6-8 months left to live.
I'm not sure it will be a problem for Changpeng Zhao but let's say I was convicted of a felony in the US, served time in prison and then was pardoned by the president. What would my employment prospects be in comparison to someone who didn't receive a pardon?
Likely bad because the conviction will still show up in background checks. (A pardon doesn't entail expungement.) As you said, this won't be an issue for CZ because he's not going to be looking for the kinds of positions where HR screens the resumes
“You must have very good connections and network, definitely a good hire for the future.”
So the lesson is that if you have enough money to buy US president, you can buy freedom
Wait, this guy was already out of prison? From what I read he was fined $50M and 4 months in prison.
So the pardon only removes the criminal conviction?
It has zero impact on the time he served.
This doesn’t seemed like the outrageous situation from reading comments.
Is there any way to read this other than Trump is cuddling up to crypto because it’s a tool for him and his cronies to make dodgy money?
in this particular case maybe. but i don't think he's pardoning only crypto people. as long as criminals can offer sth useful to him, they will get above the law.
> ...it’s a tool for him and his cronies to make dodgy money?
It's a vehicle to sell "access". The greed is only half of it.
The worst part is that they're selling access to foreign interests who pay them off. These people can't exactly show up with bags of gold to bribe King Sh*t Gibbon (yet), crypto is the next best thing.
It's industry agnostic. The Trevor Milton pardon wasn't because he loves gravity powered vehicles.
Yes - he campaigned on making America more crypto-friendly in general; this could also be read as part of making good on that promise.
Just like being bank-friendly means allowing criminality in bank management. And being transportation-friendly means allowing people to drive drunk!
I hope this is satire. Only a moron would think this.
It answers the question posed. Unless you think only morons have opinions that differ from yours.
Moronic opinions are still moronic and should be called out as such. Making America more crypto friendly by pardoning fraudsters is an objectively stupid take.
This makes me hate cryptocurrency more and make me support candidates that want feel the same, that we should be prosecuting cryptocurrency fraud. How is that making it more friendly?
At least the FBI director broke the big news in crime fighting today, how a couple black basketball players were arrested for sports betting.
It is amazing this investigation went forward during a shutdown.
Are we great again?
So is Friedman next?
Didn’t he donate to the wrong guy?
I think he made public mention of "donating to the wrong guy" to get one side to like him more. IIRC, he donated similar or more to the "other" side, but just didn't make a big deal of it publicly.
No issues. Trump can forgive almost anything for the right price.
But does SBF have any money?
His parents do. He was already a trustfund baby when he started.
His parents are retired Stanford professors. Despite their criminal involvement in FTX, that isn't exactly the type of people Trump coddles too.
Surely, they can't be worse than the Qataris?
It helps if you’re into really gaudy gold stuff I guess. Tim Cook cracked the code.
You sure? What else do you know about his parents?
Money is money
Well, considering the incredible service Zhao has brought to the American people, this is totally understandable.
/$
He was convicted for allowing US citizens to sign up and place trades that could theoretically be matched by people from sanctioned countries. Technically an incredibly bad service for American people who must be protected from such liberties.
>>Representatives of the Trump family have held talks to take a financial stake in the U.S. arm of Binance.
I’m sure it’s pure coincidence that the Trump family made millions from Binance, CZ, and donations from Trevor Milton and Paul Walczak right before those pardons.
I am having trouble understanding the rational for these pardons. The best I can come up with is that they've decided that there is literally nothing that would cause them to lose the support of Republican voters, and the actions are being instigated by right wing trolls.
Sub-headline: "Pardon follows months of efforts by Changpeng Zhao to boost the Trump crypto company"
Subtext, a convicted fraudster pardons a convicted fraudster
CZ was not convicted of fraud or even money laundering. There's a reason the sentence was only 4 months. His charge was the first ever prosecution of a platform/bank poorly implementing KYC and not doing enough surveillance of its users to comply with the letter of AML regulations. The case relied on the theoretical possibility of US citizen users placing trades that are matched by people from sanctioned countries - it did not even find cases of such trades. Big banks routinely pay fines for this, and never face imprisonment.
Regardless of what you think of the circumstances of the pardon, the prosecution was not related to fraud and was an unusual case by a DOJ that was recently embarrassed by FTX and was arguably symbolic in intent.
The amount of corruption around this is crazy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
(this video has a nice timeline of the related events, including the GPU for crypto "deal")
See you guys later on the ‘Trump pardons Diddy’ thread.
At least pardons are public in the us .
"President Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of the crypto exchange Binance, following months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company."
You Americans elected a mobster as President.
Well, half us Americans did:) The other half is still in total disbelief
Closer to 20% of Americans did.
Disbelief, maybe. But you have to own it now.
Once is an aberration. Twice is your democracy speaking.
Eggs were so expensive though. /s
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I feel there is some perversion happened - the American culture in particular has been strong on a hero cutting through and going across the laws and rules toward his goals (and the recent years super-hero craze is an epitome of it). And i feel that in some perverse way Trump got tuned into such a hero storyline and naturally abusing it to no end for his own gain.
We Americans had our choices robbed of us. And we cannot think outside of the ballot sheet.
I agree with you. The system is ridiculous, it gives the voter two options, and that's all. People point out that monopolies are bad, but a duopoly is very far from being a solution for it. Americans (and many other countries in the world) need better representation.
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In contrast, SBF is still in jail despite being Biden's second biggest donor.
CZ crime was not complying with anti laundering US laws, which basically meant he didn't do KYC to keep USA users out. He got 4 months.
SBF stole user funds to basically role play as a billionare.
SBF was sentenced to 25yrs, Binance guy got 4 months.
I'd say that SBF is a bigger crook in contrast. He gave himself a special privilege to withdraw unlimited funds from FTX.
Give him time, there's plenty of Trump presidency to go.
The USA is officially a banana republic.
Conservatives around the world seem to be comparing notes because over here the now former president pardoned quite a few high-profile cases and at least one before the sentence was given, which was bizarre, as you can't do that and the president, holding a PhD in law, should have known this.
In any case it appears that not only funds are safu, but Zhao is safu as well.
It's incredible that American corruption can happen out in the open like this. And this isn't a uniquely Trump phenomena. Political pardons are an amazing thing, and they have been used by presidents for a long time now with extremely little scrutiny and no possibility for repercussions. The executive being able to overrule the judiciary is an absolutely jaw-dropping American institution. So much for checks and balances.
It's like there's a new social contract that states: it's not corruption if it's done in the open.
It's genuinely just this.
The rise of more grass-roots news sources (podcasts, memes, social media) also leads to tons of conspiracy theories, and mistrust that builds this idea of corruption being ubiquitous, just not out in the open. And yes, that happens, but this atmosphere magnifies it 10x.
So when someone like Trump does it out in the open, people are more likely to excuse it because "everybody is already doing it, at least this is out in the open".
The US has always been kind of scammy vs other western nations. In the movie when he says "have you no shame sir?", the answer typically is "nope".
The American dream is basically getting rich by scamming.
It didn’t use to be this way.
> The executive being able to overrule the judiciary is an absolutely jaw-dropping American institution.
No, its not, pardon and the closely linked power of clemency are common powers in representative democracies, often situated with the chief of state or the head of government (in the US, and other Presidential systems, the President is both), or sometimes the cabinet instead of the head of government in a parliamentary or semi-parliamentary system (in some cases, one or the other is assigned by law to a subordinate bureaucracy rather than being HoS/cabinet discretion, as is the case with pardon but not clemency in Canada.) It is generally more used in the US than other Western states, in part because the US has a much harsher criminal justice system with much longer sentences and much weaker provisions for relief other than executive pardon than other systems, but the power itself is common. [0]
The way it is used under Trump is wildly abnormal (for the US or the other representative democracies), though.
[0] see, e.g., https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/pardon-power-is-co... ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon ; etc.
The president just prior to Trump pardoned his own son for crimes, and pre-emptively pardoned various other family members and political allies for any possible crimes before they could be prosecuted. Again, this is not new, this is ongoing open-air corruption, and Trump's escalation is the result of everyone being OK with it before now.
The son committed a crime and it could be argued it would have been a net benefit for democracy for him to accept the sentence.
It's also true his son was prosecuted politically, because few if any people go to jail for 4473 falsification.
It's also true that this is new and unprecedented.
I mean the pardon was the check and balance on the judiciary. However it's been turned into a tool for personal gain than a saving grace for mistakes of the federal crimes convictions. Both parties have pushed for this monarchic power to be expanded over time. I think it has a place but much like a lot of the federal government it needs a complete overhaul. The checks and balances system works alright but when a unitary party controls every branch there is no one to check that power.
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> And this isn't a uniquely Trump phenomena
Reminds of Biden pardoning his relatives without even saying for what. Just blanked pardon for everything. No democrat dropped his jaw.
> Reminds of Biden pardoning his relatives without even saying for what. Just blanked pardon for everything. No democrat dropped his jaw.
Everyone I talked to (more than 10, including myself) that I knew who voted for Biden was pissed, disappointed, even angry at his pardoning of Hunter.
That was incredibly corrupt and many Democrats in fact "dropped [their] jaws." And it's not the only instance of political corruption like this, either (Bill Clinton notoriously did something similar). Neither of these cases retroactively justify Trump pardoning anyone who sends him a few million dollars.
He was pretty explicit about the reason why.
He feared Trump would force the DOJ to prosecute them.
And, based on what Trump's done so far with the DOJ and his enemies, he was right to do so.
"My president is right to pardon whoever it likes, but not your president.. "
I think this whole pardoning thing should go away. It makes the presidents Kings.
If the goal of the pardon was to handle a corrupt Judicial branch, then a better answer would have been for the Executive branch to nominate someone for a pardon to the Legislative and require a 2/3 majority of the Legislative to approve.
But something like that would fly in the face of the "Unitary Executive" insanity and would (I suspect) require a constitutional amendment, which is no longer remotely feasible.
In no part of my post was there anything about my president vs. your president.
That's not the point of the comment.
A first comment said "without saying why". The second comment just says that this is blatantly not true, and that the rationale presented has been since confirmed as a very accurate prediction.
There's an argument the prosecution was political. See: https://x.com/balajis/status/1981423831572238856
Sorry, is this person comparing the rights and immunities of a head of a sovereign nation to those of a CEO of a company? I don't think France, as a sovereign country, is completely bound by US law whereas binance, when it is operating in US jurisdiction is. I'm not totally familiar with US finance law but I'm pretty sure a more fair comparison would be to other banks where KYC requirements and anti money laundering rules can be strict. From what I read about the prosecution, Binance ignored many warning signs from their own executives about the possibility and the lack of controls within their platform to comply with the law.
It's not much of an argument... he wasn't being held responsible for the actions of a few binance users, we was being held responsible for his own failure to implement compliance processes required by law.
The laws exist to restrict funding for countries under sanction, drug operations, terrorist organizations, etc.
We can argue about whether these laws are a good idea (either in general or in specific details), but you need to change the law, not just now follow it.
This is a terrible precedent... unless you're a con man, that is. (Balaji Srinivasan isn't stupid. I would guess he understands how real what he's arguing here is.)
balajis is personally invested in propping up the ecosystem.
How does pardoning CZ "prop up the ecosystem"?
It sends a clear message: Pay off Trump and you can ignore financial rules with impunity.
He had already served his sentance.
That message is still crystal clear, is it not?
The prosecution was not political lol, he went out of his way to support money laundering on the Binance platform. The reason he complied with the prosecution and pled guilty rather than try to fight it out in court was that they were able to produce a ton of evidence that he deliberately ignored regulators and regulations designed to prevent money laundering in order to make money off sanctioned groups and criminal organizations using the exchange as a way to circumvent KYC/AML laws. Please don't take what Balaji says about companies he invested in at face value.
It must really suck and be incredibly disheartening to be one of the folks who pursued this to a conviction.
The justifications for why the pardon is okay are ridiculously flimsy and I assumed that it was because they weren't really trying, but bewilderingly it does actually appear to have convinced some credulous people on Hacker News, so I suppose enough consent was manufactured that people think going out of your way to let money launderers use your platform is not a big deal? Maybe it's because people don't understand that typically the reason people launder money is because they committed major crimes to get that money and have no way to actually use it without getting caught.
For example if your crypto is the proceeds of ransomware, you're going to have a hard time cashing out without using something like Monero (which effectively has no offramps) without going through an exchange that knows perfectly well that you're trying to touch tainted goods. Exchanges like Binance that just don't bother to check who their customers are when they withdraw cash for such assets are just as critical to the ransomware plague as any security bug or social engineering issue. It's one of the reasons that pre-crypto, even though ransomware was technically feasible, it was never able to grow into a large-scale operation--no offramps. But hey maybe the official stance of CZ supporters is now that ransomware is good, actually, and if you don't like it it's because you have partisan bias (???)
Those prosecutors were deeply embarrassed by missing FTX at the time, so they then had the SEC and IRS harass and threaten innocent US citizens in Japan and the US as they fished for charges merely because they happened to once work for or hung out with CZ or employees at Binance.
CZ is the first and only known first-time offender in U.S. history to receive a prison sentence for this single, non-fraud-related charge of improper platform AML KYC implementation. Big banks routinely pay a fine for this, and never face imprisonment. The judge found no evidence that he knew of any illicit transactions and that it was reasonable for him to believe there were no illicit funds on the platform. Credit where it's due, they somehow pulled off a 4 month sentence for this unprecedented charge. And now it's all for naught.
Having a bad compliance system is very very different from actively resisting having a compliance system.
Historically bank CEOs have been smart enough to note this difference.
CZ already served the time in prison. It's not clear to me whether he and Binance have paid the fines yet.
Balaji was the former CTO of a rival company. Wouldn't he be incentivized to not support CZ?
No. He had the same financial incentives to not want to have to worry about the BSA and dealing with AML etc. as CZ.
This is not a company vs. company sort of issue, this is a "I want to avoid regulations that would cost me money as a fundamental aspect of my industry " issue.
If Coinbase thought they could legally not worry about all of this, do you think they would want to deal with it?
The sheer quantity of money used in cryptocurrency for money laundering and activity where traditional payment processors will not accept payments (largely illegal, e.g. drugs, counterfeit goods) also means that the keeping the ecosystem healthy involves having ways for this money to flow.
No. The entire crypto ecosystem requires a steady infusion of capital and an absence of regulations to prosper, since their primary use case outside of speculation is for handling money by people who can't get past normal KYC/AML checks. If those people no longer have anywhere to on/off ramp into the crypto ecosystem, most of its "legitimate" (in the sense of actually getting real value out of it rather than just speculating) use goes away.
I don't think you know what you're talking about. Surely everyone on the Coinbase platform is vetted seeing as they're a publicly traded company. Presumably the vast majority of Binance users are not in fact money launderers.
"People who don't want KYC/AML checks" are not necessarily money launderers, and there are still plenty of people who just want to speculate. But money launderers are the people who need to send vast amounts of money through the crypto ecosystem and represented a very significant fraction of the assets managed by Binance (not that this actually affects whether what they were doing was illegal or not, BTW). Maybe you should read the indictment to find out what was actually going on, instead of making claims based on what seems reasonable to you!
(Frankly, the idea that being convicted for making the conscious decision to go out of your way to circumvent KYC/AML laws is somehow the result of partisan bias is ridiculous in itself, so none of this [or how Balaji claims to feel about the matter] is even really relevant).
Because Trump couldn’t have that!
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The only way to get around the pardon power being abused is to punish crimes by death, quickly and on the spot.
Can't we just amend the constitution to remove pardon power? Or at least shift it to Congress?
Maybe we can just ignore it entirely. Laws don’t matter.
Unpopular opinion: America needs/ed this. They nerve truly believed that a Ceaușescu, Hitler, Stalin, Mao were possible in the US. Maybe one or two generations will suffer, but this is a required lesson, for the future maturity of the nation, long term. Assuming they come out in one piece at the other end, of course.
This is not rhetorical question: did accelerationism ever worked?
If only we could ask Baudrillard.
Accelerationism is to a simulacrum as the thing being accelerated (society) is to the simulation thereof (our idea of society).
Accererationism is what accelerationism does. It disrupts the status quo, for good/bad/otherwise, and largely independently of our personal stance on the goodness, badness, and/or desirability of said disruption.
The current volatility in the market is one aspect of accelerationism, and it seems to be working, in that the markets are still open for trading; many are making out like bandits. Perhaps that volatility as a market opportunity is the point.
Whether or not banditry is occurring is left as an exercise to the reader.
You believe the US on the path to killing tens of millions of its own citizens for the sake of some ideology like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler because a non-violent white collar criminal was given a shortened sentence? Interesting.
You can kill someone without weapons.
And just like the Great Leap Forward, America is well on its way to letting many thousands die from lack of healthcare.
By that criteria, Obama would be one of the greatest mass murderers in history.
Do you not believe the GOP eliminating SNAP, medicare, and social security will lead to the deaths of millions of Americans?
Do you not believe that Trump, who threatened extrajudicial killings of drug smugglers today [1], isn't going to abuse that power to murder any citizen he doesn't like?
Do you not believe Trump is a fascist, white supremacist, rapist, 34 time convicted felon, rapist, and pedophile?
>Do you not believe the GOP eliminating SNAP, medicare, and social security will lead to the deaths of millions of Americans?
I would suggest not equating libertarian policies with systemic genocide. How about we calm down?
>Do you not believe that Trump, who threatened extrajudicial killings of drug smugglers today [1], isn't going to abuse that power to murder any citizen he doesn't like?
I don't see any evidence of that yet
>Do you not believe Trump is a fascist, white supremacist, rapist, 34 time convicted felon, rapist, and pedophile?
I think he's a 34 time convicted felon, but I haven't confirmed the number.
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> Pardon follows months of efforts by Changpeng Zhao to boost the Trump crypto company
How is this not outright corruption?
It is and you'll not doing much against it
Unpopular opinion: the case against him/binance was always that as a non us citizen, outside the us, he failed to obey US law and in a paperwork and licensing sense not a violent or otherwise serious manner.
I don’t like trump. But “CZ” basically paid a ransom to let Binance come in from the cold. Why shouldn’t he pay another to get a clean slate and maybe go back to being CEO?
Better headline: Convicted criminal Trump pardons convicted criminal Binance founder
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Seems not right
our culture is ill
Serious question - it seems that many of this Administrations activities are illegal in some way or the other. I know that government officials are shielded from a lot of actions so they can not be prosecuted.
What actions that have been taken could actually be prosecuted? For example, I would have to assume that the ballroom demolition and build-out is illegal, there were $0 appropriated from Congress for this, and it doesn't seem like direct donations would be legal either. They are donations to the government and Congress has to appropriate that money too.
NOTHING is going to happen while the Republicans control congress, period. What could be done when the next administration comes in? Not just about the ballroom, but the various other things like this pardon. What of these actions are prosecutable?
> it seems that many of this Administrations activities are illegal
Many are. This one is not. The President has sweeping pardon powers.
The solution is to strike the final phrase in Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution: “and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” [1].
There isn’t a place for one-man pardons in a republic. If the courts overreach, address it through legislation. (Even the imperium-obsessed Romans didn’t give their dictators, much less consuls, automatic pardon power. Caesar had to get special legislation to overrule the law.)
With Presidents of both parties having so recently abused pardons, we may be in a place where a wave could pass a Constitutional amendment at the federal level, allowing it to be punted to the states.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_Stat...
It seems like whatever party gets into power, suddenly doesn't want to change the system they inherited. I remember Trudeau talking about eliminating first past the post in Canadian elections. But once he got into power he forgot about it.
We need a way to vote for popular ideas via referendum at the federal level. That might get it through.
> seems like whatever party gets into power, suddenly doesn't want to change the system
“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution” [1].
No President. No courts. Partisanship may work to our advantage in a divided government. What you would need, however, to reach two thirds is some members of the President’s party signing on. That could happen if the President is taking a dump in the polls, and the opposition looks likely (but isn’t yet assured) to gain the Presidency next term.
> We need a way to vote for popular ideas via referendum at the federal level
We need a plebiscite institution. But that can be done at state level for Constitutonal amendment approval. What we don’t want is direct democracy proposing amendments. California is a modern example of why republics are more stable than pure democracies, for anyone who forgot about Athens.
>California is a modern example of why republics are more stable than pure democracies
California is one state among 50. People using it as an example of some sort of government being bad are objectively in bad faith.
Please inform me how my state's citizen referendums are bad? We are about to have a vote on voter ID laws, which I do not approve of, but what's important is that the people who care are able to have their will made manifest, and it will actually go up for a vote.
Meanwhile nordic countries have vastly more direct democracies and don't have the problems you insist.
If you cannot make your argument without california, you do not have an argument, because california's shitty government predates democrat control, because it was always built as this crazy world where rich and connected people had control. California's government is built wrong, not because of democracy, but against it.
> inform me how my state's citizen referendums are bad?
Straw man. Nobody claimed this.
> nordic countries have vastly more direct democracies and don't have the problems you insist
What are you referring to? “Finland has traditionally relied on the representative form of government, with very limited experience of the deployment of the referendum in national decision-making” [1]. And while Sweden and Norway have referenda, neither has binding referenda on demand or even a requirement for referendum to amend the constitution [2].
> if you cannot make your argument without california, you do not have an argument
California features the largest and most powerful direct-democratic institution, its referenda, in America. It’s going to come up when we discuss direct democracy.
That said, I have no idea how you reach my comment and conclude that California is not only the only argument I make against direct democracy, but even essential to it.
> california's shitty government predates democrat control
Are you mixing up direct democracy and rule by Democrats, the party?
[1] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-24796-7_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_by_country
> What we don’t want is direct democracy proposing amendments.
I think the opposite. That is exactly what we need. A lot of the problem we have come from the fact that the constitution speaks almost entirely in terms of what various government bodies do and provides no way for the people to directly override government actions they disagree with. This has led us to our current situation which is based on politicians exploiting loopholes (e.g., gerrymandering, stacking various judicial/administrative posts, manipulating voting laws, etc.) in order to preserve their position against potential electoral response.
In some cases these problems have been overcome or mitigated at the state level. . . via ballot measures. In California, for instance.
> California is a modern example of why republics are more stable than pure democracies, for anyone who forgot about Athens.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but from where I'm standing California looks a lot more sane and stable than the US as a whole.
> What we don’t want is direct democracy proposing amendments. California is a modern example of why republics are more stable than pure democracies, for anyone who forgot about Athens.
speak for yourself. the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as evidenced by the current political climate in the US.
> the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as evidenced by the current political climate in the US
We're not a direct democracy. You can't find proof of a pudding in a taco bowl.
Direct democracies fail in self-reinforcing factionalism. "When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government...enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens." This has consistently happened across history, even in small direct democracies, it's one of the essential takeaways from the Athenian experiment [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Socrates
In history generally the only way governments are ever restructured is through civil war (or invasion).
Every amendment to the constitution restructured the government. We are certainly in an era of high divisiveness and a Congress that had abdicated all of its powers to the other branches so that they’re never caught actually holding a position, but the US government system has restructuring built into it
> In history generally the only way governments are ever restructured is through civil war (or invasion)
This is total crap. Tale of Two Cities is set against the backdrop of Britain’s reforms, in contrast to the French Revolution. America has peacefully seen through Teddy Roosevelt’s trust busting, FDR’s New Deal and the Civil Rights Era, each peaceful restructurings of how our government works.
Revolutions transfer and consolidate power. Reforms broaden them. Those who miss this lesson of history and fall for glorified fictions of peasants’ revolts earn a consistent fate across millennia of human history.
Side note: strongly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6E4_Bcmscg&t=14s
Uhm, the Republicans will change their mind quickly when the next Democrat president takes control with the expanded powers they inherited from the Trump administration (even the Supreme court doesn't like to contradict itself so quickly). I'm pretty sure...if America survives at all, we will have a constitutional convention really soon that push through changes because the current status quo has become an unstable mess.
I trust the gang of six’s use of the shadow docket is cleverly designed to make sure only a republican president meets their unitary executive theories.
Do you think they will let the Democrats take control given the risk to them if they take control? I see Gerrymandering after the supreme court annuls the voting rights acts. And then more shennanigans for a third term.
That's why I premised this with "If America survives at all". There is definitely a possibility that the whole country just falls apart. A constitutional convention is more of a best case scenario.
Gerrymandering is only relevant for congressional house elections, it can't protect the senate and doesn't influence the presidency. Usually one party will take control of all three branches in a huge swing in power, the house is the just the first to flip usually because it is re-elected every 2 years.
> constitutional convention is more of a best case scenario
Constitutional Convention is the abort button. It means giving a group of people basically limitless power to amend our Constitution, which in practice, means to do anything to the law. If we called one today, with most states in Republican hands [1], we’d be essentially handing complete control of our government—over and above the Constitution—to the GOP.
[1] https://www.ncsl.org/about-state-legislatures/state-partisan...
> Constitutional Convention is the abort button. It means giving a group of people basically limitless power to amend our Constitution
No, it doesn’t.
It gives a group of people basically limitless power to propose Amendments to the Constitution.
Any Amendments so proposed still require 3/4 of states to ratify them, either by votes of their legislature or by ratification conventions called in the states (at the option of Congress when calling the Convention at the request of states.)
Unless by "group of people" you mean not just the people in the national convention, but the people in the state legislatures or conventions, as well. But, at that point, you might as well say that by including an amendment process, the Constitution itself “gives a group of people basically limitless power to amend our Constitution”.
> It gives a group of people basically limitless power to propose Amendments to the Constitution
Sorry, I actually missed this. Thank you for clarifying. (I mixed it up with the New York State process, where the Convention's proposals go straight to popular ratification.)
Between sweeping abuse of executive orders, declaring emergency powers, and the pardon system (there's a reason it used to be called the "royal pardon"), my only hope is that this will finally open the public's eyes to the MASSIVE overreach that a US president has. It needs to be heavily curtailed.
The pardon system in particular really pisses me off. The argument that one rando at the top of the pyramid somehow magically knows better than the entire judicial system is such a load of horsecrap. For any injustice that the pardon system might be able to correct, it can and does just as easily introduce more injustices.
> "Many are. This one is not. The President has sweeping pardon powers."
I understand it's debatably possible to prosecute the public corruption that motivated a pardon, even though the pardon act itself is unreviewable. I.e., the DoJ attempted a criminal bribery investigation of Bill Clinton's pardon of the donor Marc Rich,
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/15/us/us-is-beginning-crimin... ("U.S. is beginning criminal inquiry in pardon of Rich" (2001))
> "Some lawyers have said that proving such a case could be exceedingly difficult because bribery cases usually required the cooperation of one of the parties. Moreover, contributions to political parties or to Mr. Clinton's library foundation are legal, and the president's pardon authority is unreviewable."
I assume similar logic might apply to World Liberty Financial and Trump's CZ pardon.
"Well, when the president does it ... that means that it is not illegal" -- Richard Nixon (1977)
"Well, when the president does it ... that means that it is not illegal" -- SCOTUS (2024)
That leaves impeachment as the only legal remedy, which you've correctly identified as not a possibility with the current congress.
His two previous impeachments don't seem to have slowed him down, so it seems unlikely that a third would be any different. Not to mention his felony conviction.
The actual legal remedy is impeachment + conviction by the senate. That hasn't happened yet and seems unlikely unless he actually loses the support of his own party.
> For example, I would have to assume that the ballroom demolition and build-out is illegal, there were $0 appropriated from Congress for this, and it doesn't seem like direct donations would be legal either.
Maybe it's funded by the $230M he's demanding from the Department of Justice?
What about the acts of piracy (in the classic, seafaring way) and coldblooded murder of foreign citizens, carried out by US soldiers, claimed to be "drug dealers" (like that was a capital offence anyway)?
I’m curious if any of the involved personell will ever be tried for that.
> What of these actions are prosecutable?
The President must first be impeached by both parts of Congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_in_the_United_Stat...
The Senate runs a trial for the "high crimes" with the supreme court justice presiding. They can sentence a sitting president IIRC (or just remove him from office in which the DOJ can then prosecute normally).
> NOTHING is going to happen while the Republicans control congress, period
For anyone interested, for the past 30 years, Republicans dominated for 22 years in total, while Democrats only 8.
Some problems: Trump has already argued that if what he does falls under official acts, it's essentially absolute immunity. Trump also tried to argue that everything he did while during his presidency, was official acts. The supreme court agreed that if something is and official act, it is protected by absolute immunity.
So my guess is that whatever Trump is doing now, he'll later argue was done as a president.
Second, should be convicted of anything, the best shot is if it's a state law violation. I'm going to bet everything I own that Trump will either pardon himself, all his cronies, and/or when the time comes, step down and have Vance pardon him. So with that all federal crimes become pardoned.
The supreme court has been very frank about this: The only, and I do mean the only mechanism is a successful impeachment. And even if Trump by some miracle is successfully impeached, we have no way of knowing how that will play out. The current supreme court majority are seemingly true believers of the unitary executive theory, so I'm guessing that with time - we'll just see Trump get more and more unchecked power. And since it's going to be done via the shadow docket, it'll likely be valid for Trump only.
I think for all intents and purposes - and I don't mean to sound defeatist when I'm saying this - people should just accept the fact that Trump will be untouchable for the rest of his life.
Assuming a normal election where the pendulum swings back and a normal transfer of power (no certain things), the outgoing President could pardon everyone from his chiefs of staff and cabinet officers to low-level federal law enforcement on the way out, and then the Democrats would wring their hands and say there's nothing they can do, bar some large scale political realignment where Republicans lost control of numerous state legislatures and governorships by a large margin, as well as in Congress.
The best opportunity for a major restructuring of the legal environment would bea Constitutional Convention, but because Republicans have pursued this as a strategic goal for a while, Democrats invested all their relevant energies in being against it rather than developing any kind of strategy of their own, guaranteeing that they would get rolled if one actually took place because they went in with wholly defensive mindset and no plan to win. The fundamental flaw of the modern Democratic party is that it sees itself as a vehicle for competent management of the status quo, not a force for implementation of its voters' political aspirations. Thus is pays lip service of what its supporters want but operates to dampen and delay those same supporters whenever it gets into office in the name of continuity and responsibility. It operates on a combination of political rent seeking and fundamental conflict aversion.
This is why I find myself increasingly impatient with self-styled moderates. Wanting to talk things out and compromise is good, but it only works when there is mutuality between counterparties. When the political opposition is indifferent to questions of truthfulness or corruption, moderation degrades into appeasement; moderates will sell out their own supporters in the name of peace and quiet, while giving away the strategic initiative over and over. The previous Trump administration engineered a mob overrunning Congress in an attempt to stay in power, and only failed because the Vice President declined to aid the scheme; a mistake the current one surely doesn't intend to repeat. The incoming administration spent a great deal of energy prosecuting every footsoldier they could find who set foot inside the Capitol, but shied away from going after the people who actually organized it. The results speak for themselves.
Why it is even accepted that pardons can be issued before conviction?
Yes, this also seems bonkers to me.
This is not "good guys versus bad guys", the democratic party are not going to wash all this badness away. They have been guilty of basically the same things, even if at a lesser scale. Biden tried to appropriate billions outside of congress for student loan forgiveness. Political pardons have been a factor since the beginning of the US experiment. Pelosi has been using her position for self-enrichment in the open for decades now.
We need them all gone. Anyone who makes "politician" a career is precisely the wrong type of person to be an elected official. It should never be about personal gain. Wipe them all out, implement campaign finance reform, set term limits, prioritize election security & availability...
We need a reset.
seems like not enough anger in this thread is directed at CZ
shameless corruption
I'm not sure why Presidents were given the ability to pardon. Besides corruption, bias, or self-interest, nothing else can come out of it.
Unfortunately, sometimes our judges, juries, and officers are also biased or incorrect; pardons are useful when the delivery of justice was mistaken or excessive.
> pardons are useful when the delivery of justice was mistaken or excessive
If you look at a slew of the recent pardons, the beneficiaries had already pleaded guilty. In those cases, the pardons should be ineligible. I think the most a President could do - should be - give defendants the ability to appeal the case to a new judge or jury. It's wrong and should be corrected! Added it to my todo list
A guilty plea doesn't really mean actual guilt in the modern justice system. The state is overwhelmingly powerful in the cases it brings.
Unfortunately, very often the best thing to do is just let them have their way and walk away with a lot less of a punishment than would be the case should you dare to fight them.
Financially and personally, it's what they do to pressure you into submission. It happens from criminal cases all the way down to fucking family court. It's absurd and it's broken.
I truly believe that almost every single attorney should have to lose sleep at night over how their actions impact others.
Pardons only enable presidents to direct their goons to operate outside of the rule of law without repercussions.Having one individual with strong incentives to enable their team stay in power as much as possible retain the power is shocking.
Judges and juries are at least superficially removed from that sort of corrupt incentive system.
> Pardons only enable presidents to direct their goons to operate outside of the rule of law without repercussions.
It is clear that they don't only do that, as that has not been their principal (or even a common) use for most of the history of the pardon power.
It is equally clear, however, that they do allow that; the check on that, like on most discretionary Presidential powers, is the Congressional power of impeachment; obviously, that is not a meaningful constraint when the Congress and the President are aligned on abuses, but the entire point of having separately elected bodies is to make it less likely that things that the public would see as abuses are supported by both political branches simultaneously. (Obviously, the fact that one whole house of Congress and 1/3 of the other are elected at the same time as the President, and that the weighting of the electoral college for the President are a blend of the apportionment to the House and Senate makes those elections less independent than one might want, even before considering the way the electoral structure contributors to partisan duopoly, though.)
That’s not an argument for pardons, it’s an argument for a better appeals process.
> I'm not sure why Presidents were given the ability to pardon.
Because of the impossibility of law written in advance perfectly covering all cases and to provide a mechanism for correction of overpunishment that cannot be effectively anticipated in crafting general law. (That's more the reason why the traditional power of chief executives seen in state governments and the British government they were all more or less modeled on was retained when a federal executive was created; the US Constitution was very much not create ex nihilo in a historical vaccuum.)
> Besides corruption, bias, or self-interest, nothing else can come out of it.
Every viewpoint is "bias" relative to every other viewpoint, so that piece is a nullity, but it is certain;y not the case that corruption and self-interest are the only impacts or motivations for applying the pardon power.
Which isn't to say that there aren't arguments for putting more guardrails around the application of the power by the executive (or perhaps just radically changing the nature of the federal executive, to improve the application of its powers generally and not just the pardon power).
Presidents can pardon to provide a check on the courts. If congress doesn't like the pardon they can impeach the president.
It's a consequence of the executive's power to... well, execute the law. They can simply decide to not focus prosecution on certain crimes. If they can do that, why not let them also pardon people?
No, it’s based on English clemency. https://govfacts.org/explainer/the-presidential-pardon-power... has a nice explanation of the power and its history.
> I'm not sure why Presidents were given the ability to pardon.
Won’t somebody please think of the ~~children~~ turkeys?!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Thanksgiving_Turkey_P...
Joking aside, Wikipedia does have a history of it. It goes way back, way before the USA was even a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_pardons_in_the_United_...
it's part of our Christian values.
Just wait until the blanket pardon comes out for all of his staff.
Even more depressing reading the comments that think this hasn't always been the case. It's red guy, it's blue guy, no it's orange guy facepalm
Fraud is now legal
If you're already rich and can stomach writing a flattering letter to Dear Leader you're leaving money on the table by not committing massive fraud right now.
I feel like democrats should make it clear that if there's still a fair election and they regain power, they'll go after both the corrupt people in this admin and entities buying favors. The current state can't be too good for the society, at least there should be a clear possible downside for being a part of it.
CZ was not involved in fraud, the case only found him guilty of not doing enough to surveil his customers to sufficiently block US citizens from using a crypto exchange that other people from sanctioned countries could use.
As long as you bow to King Trump.
I have no proof of this, but I would bet that there will be some quid-pro-quo involved between Trump and the pardonee. Trump does not usually give things away, he leverages his power to get more power/money.
He didn't pardon Maxwell despite her coming out and saying she didn't see Trump do anything awful with Epstein.
He had her transferred to a much nicer jail though, against regulations and without explanation.
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Fraud has been an essential component of Trump's business his whole life, he clearly doesn't see it as a crime. And the crypto guys have spent a lot of money getting into his good graces. He knows a good grift when he sees it.
Beyond the Trump effect, a lot of fraud has always been "legal", mostly because the victims can't afford to go after the fraudsters.
Genuine question:
If one wanted to get in on the Trump grift, and had no moral qualms, how would you do it?
Can you come up with a realistic fast path to snag, say, $5 million within 2 years from Trumpland?
I don't think the direct approach to Trump or his inner circle would be ideal, considering how crowded the field of professional grifters and griefers surrounding him is. You'd really have to stand out to get noticed.
But they've recently lost a key connection to the broader MAGA youth movement. A quick-witted young person with good public-speaking skills and a psychopath's morals could step into that role without much difficulty, perhaps acting as a bundler for GOP political contributions that could then be skimmed. The retirement plan sure sucks, though. And you wouldn't want to be too overt about it, or you'd risk ending up like Steve Bannon.
It may also be possible to get in with the Girardist movement associated with Peter Thiel and J. D. Vance. A few weeks' intensive study would likely allow you to sling eschatological BS with the best of them. You'd get paid on the lecture circuit, again following the trail blazed by Charlie Kirk, spreading the good news about mimetic theory and the bad news about Greta Thunberg.
Then there's the covert approach. Karl Rove has long since quit the field, Lee Atwater is dead, and Roger Stone isn't getting any younger. There's always money on the table if you're willing to do what the other guy won't. Trouble is, there are plenty of people willing to do anything for Trump, now that the rewards have become so transparently obvious. The same question keeps coming up... in a field full of seasoned crooks, what can new talent do to get noticed by the right people and overlooked by the rest?
Dude, that's a lot of work. I don't think any of us can become the next Charlie Kirk just to ride a quick drift.
It's gotta be more low-effort and high-confidence. I'm thinking more like: incorporate a company with a mission of "Providing AI without woke bias." The product would be simply GPT-OSS behind a system prompt of "You are a Fox News host" and a simple guardrail, wraped in a generic web and mobile UI. It'd be a couple of days of vibe coding and setting up AWS backend. Now, how do you legally funnel a few million into your pockets from that?
And going head-to-head with Elon Musk and Grok isn't a lot of work? You need an angle, something he either hasn't thought of or isn't (yet) brave enough to embrace publicly. Me, I got nothing.
How much did he pay?
We don't know but I guess it involved quite a bit of bitcoins
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What if some criminal blatantly says "I'll give you $1bn if you pardon me" and Trump does it? Is that enough for something to happen? Because it seems like that's the only place we can go from here...
That would be technically illegal rather than merely repugnant. It would not however be illegal if the criminal dropped a hint in the news that he would donate to, say, a ballroom that was to be named after the president.
And even if it were outright illegal, the Supreme Court has now ruled that the president is personally immune from criminal prosecution as long as they claim that their illegal activity was carried out in the course of their presidential duties, and not a personal crime committed on the side. Which leaves congressional impeachment and conviction as the sole recourse against presidential misbehavior. Which becomes a problem when the majority in Congress doesn't care that the president is doing illegal things. We haven't had a constitutional crisis like this since the FDR administration.
The bar is much lower https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/politics/trump-pardon-...
The currency here is loyalty, not USD.
It's not enough. The only thing that might make a difference will get this comment removed. And we may have even passed the point for that to have an impact.
The states are going to start engaging in economic warfare with the federal government before too long.
>What if some criminal blatantly says "I'll give you $1bn if you pardon me" and Trump does it? Is that enough for something to happen? Because it seems like that's the only place we can go from here...
According to SCOTUS[0], as long as it's a "gratuity," it's not a bribe and not illegal. No. Seriously.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scop...
It's high time the Republicans embrace their new leadership with a re-branding of their outfit's name and henceforth call themselves The Banana Republicans
I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader? He even does this bizarre maffia like deals out in the open for his own interest, that's how confident he is no one will say anything
The message is clear from his circus administration, you can do anything as long as you bribe them
He pardoned the guy from Nikola, Trevor Milton, that staged a product demo to trick investors.
Why? Milton hired Pam Bondi's (the US attorney general's) brother to represent him.
King has to show his power by doing bad things constantly. If he only does good, he's just a people pleaser.
Americans cannot accept they have a corrupt government lead by a corrupt politician who is now corrupting the justice system. They prefer to continue propagating the myth of a "healthy democracy" and "open market".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias explains so much of our world.
I personally do not know any Americans that are as you described. 1/3 of Americans are as you describe, 1/3 are definitely not at all as you described, and another 1/3 is too apathetic to care about anything.
The recent "No Kings" protests were the largest in US history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstra...
Exactly. Very few Americans are out there actively "promoting the myth" right now that aren't ideologically aligned with the current Republican administration. That's a distinct (if significant) minority.
Also, while I believe more Americans should be protesting, people in other countries (like myself, at one point) may have an inaccurate idea about what heavy US protest "ought to" look like in the media they see.
We'd love to be protesting at the iconic White House and federal Capitol building, creating horizon-to-horizon crowds for the rest of the world to marvel at... But for me (and ~40% of the population) that's a 3500-3700 km trip. How often would you expect someone in Portugal to travel the distance to Moscow for a day of protest? (Worse, assume no good trains.)
Instead, we gather at local state locations, which will typically not get shown (or recognized) internationally, except when folded into a sentence about how "millions protested across the nation."
> 1/3 is too apathetic to care about anything
I think at least some of that 1/3 has their own problems that prevent them from being able to devote energy to politics
This is measured via election participation, so a confounding factor is the recent uptick in voter suppression tactics; these tactics are employed most visibly in states with large minority populations (e.g. states in the Deep South).
These tactics include: consolidating polling places in urban areas; restricting the ability to submit an absentee ballot or otherwise vote by mail; restricting early voting; voter ID laws; and "poll watchers" who intimidate those at polling places, sometimes illegally.
Moreover, those forced to vote in-person at polling places are not given time off from employment to do so. This overwhelmingly disenfranchises the working class, who just so happen to overwhelmingly vote for progressive policies that favor the working class over the middle/upper classes.
I know of way too many people that "aren't political" or just don't want to think about it. That's not the same as "having their own problems", that's juvenile behavior.
> that's juvenile behavior
IMHO those words are based on an immature understanding of human beings and their limitations.
We not only have physical, financial, and temporal limits; even more powerfully, we have emotional limits. When we're scared or traumatized, we often can't act except to keep things immediately safe as much as they can; we are in survival mode. That's also how bad leaders get good people to do evil things - terrorize them, push them into survival mode, and direct their fear at the leader's targets.
What we can do is recognize those mechanisms and limitations in ourselves, using empathy (a universal human trait), our frontal cortex, and compassion - always the first step to taking of our emotions and being effective - and recognize it in others. Calling them names only traumatizes them more. Empathy and compassion gets them to a better place where they can act. It's not easy - that's why the word 'courage' exists; that's why it's sometimes called, 'grace under pressure'.
Effective leaders know this. What we're missing - what so many people are missing - is good, effective leaders. AFAICT, the leaders we'd expect to rise to this occasion also are traumatized - and they have an obligation to do better if they want to be leaders.
This doesn’t actually work in the real world where people cannot be isolated from or protected from people who keep doing this to them.
You can’t ’out empathize’ someone doing 24/7 manipulation against people.
The only thing that works are real consequences against bad actors.
And that there was no real consequences for bad actors is exactly why we are in the situation we are in now.
> This doesn’t actually work in the real world
It not only works, it is basic leadership skills that I and others use every day. You're unwittingly advocating your enemy's morals, saying only force works.
However, consequences are important too, depening on the situation.
What you’re advocating is appeasement.
You can’t out reasonable an unreasonable person, when then unreasonable person refuses to respect your (or others) boundaries.
Most of the time, in a civil society, other members of society (police, etc.) enforce the consequences silently that allow what you are describing to work.
If they won’t/don’t, what you are describing is a guaranteed path to failure with specific personalities. The evidence is all around you.
There is a reason why self-defense includes the option for violence nearly everywhere, why every society has some equivalent to armed police, why nations always have militaries, etc.
Advocating a failed approach in a given circumstance isn’t good leadership (even when it’s ‘being the good one’), it’s the worst leadership approach possible.
> What you’re advocating is appeasement.
Nope; that's the old knee-jerk insult that people use when you don't embrace aggression. Appeasement or non-appeasement has nothing to do with it, but that's the word they say to use in the flow-chart.
Many people - maybe you - are driven to conflict as an ideology, as if there is no other effective or higher power. That justifies the bad people; that's what they want you to embrace; you're helping them without realizing it.
Fascists already ‘know’ that violence is inevitable. By accusing the opposition of it first, they delay it and get the upper hand.
Read up on appeasement and tell me it isn’t applicable. [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain]. It is exactly what you are proposing.
For fascists, there is no place they won’t go, or bridge they won’t cross, because they’re fundamentally driven by fear and insecurity. Fear and insecurity they themselves create through their actions. It’s an insatiable hunger.
It’s why inevitably, tanks are the only thing that works.
Or are you under the impression the opposite approach is winning?
Surrendering just speeds up the consumption, because the only thing they actually respect is fear of consequences. Which is why they work so hard to avoid them. Because they know, deep down, they are inevitable - and will be terrible.
Unless they kill or control anyone who can actually apply them first, anyway.
Or maybe people don’t want to discuss politics with you because they know you’ll label them juvenile, racist, vile POS and saying they aren’t political is the easiest way out of getting into a heated argument with you at the BBQ party. Most sane people know that arguing with you will not change anything (neither your opinion, nor the sad facts that we are all ruled by criminals no matter who we vote for).
I’m following politics and I have my opinions about things but you can be sure I won’t be discussing them with coworkers and friends.
Or maybe you don't know me at all, or any of the people I know. So don't act like you do to make a pointless internet comment.
Worrying about politics is the luxury of chattering classes.
Try living on or very near the poverty line, and then try and spend time worrying about politics. You are worrying about much more real (to you) problems.
When shit gets bad enough to motivate people on the poverty line, you're in deep shite.
Lots of poor people are politically active. Treating politics as some sort of vanity hobby for the reasonably well off is equivalent to saying that the working class doesn't have any meaningful political opinions. Maybe you meant they don't have time for obsessing over politics as an end in itself, but in my experience the majority of working class people have an interest in and opinions about politics, even if they're alienated rather than enthusiastic about political participation.
I should be more clear. My point is the sneering at the ~30% who are not politically engaged.
A boat load of meaningful change comes from working class agitation, but most of the political noise comes from the chattering classes, who have the luxury of creating cliques online, making and then banning phrases.
Of course the working classes have valid opinions. The issue is, unlike thier richer friends, they are living the discrimination that both left and right claim to endure. This leaves little time for mass organisation.
This has to be the most American thing I've ever read: the cognitive dissonance of the disconnect between income inequality and political systems.
I've got a (probably former at this point) buddy who makes less than $15K/year. He seems to have lots of time to listen to right wing propaganda podcasts and likes telling "jokes" about how minorities are problematic. He was never really interested in politics when we were growing up and I suspect never voted before 2024. Poor people have interests and opinions too.
They may also have been drawn into the all-too-tempting position of not opposing raw corrupt authoritarianism because the opposition party (the Democratic Party) and pre-Trump America both have deep flaws that are largely ignored.
I mean, their problems are politics, they just can’t do anything about them
There are many things anyone can do. You are not giving enough credit to the people shutting them down one by one. You won't hear them say they can't do anything.
You would be surprised…
Regarding CZ and Binance and the Trumps, they have kind of a symbiotic relationship.
After Binance and CZ pleaded guilty to money laundering in November 2023, for which they paid over $4 billions in fines, WLFI (which is a clone of AAVE belonging to the Trump family) launched a stablecoin called USD1. Magically on March 2025, $2 billion flowed into Binance through MGX, a state backed Abu Dhabi fund, later revealed to have been paid in USD1 (two months before it was unveiled and without at the time no effective audits), effectively propping WLFI’s coin (backed, unbacked, nobody knows, I assume backed). CZ applied for a presidential pardon inmediately after in May 2025.
WLFI now gets to earn about $60–80 million per year in yield from the USD1…
…As long as Binance doesn’t redeem those $2 billion.
I still don’t know what MGX got out of this deal, but I am pretty sure they didn’t walk empty handed.
For anyone unaware, financial fraud investigation YouTuber Coffeezilla just released a good video laying this all out a few hours ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
Even if you accept it, what are you going to do? Violence is not an acceptable option for most people. So, we carry on.
So you're saying that if people do accept it then nothing can be done, so better not to accept it and continue to live in a fairy tale controlled by criminals? I don't get it.
No. To make changes you have to participate or vote. But, if you dont like what we have now you are stuck with it until elections come up. No amount of complaining on the internet is going to change that. So, you just keep doing what you are doing because now is not the time we can make changes.
The time to make changes will never come because this is a corrupt system, voting means less and less each year.
If you take that stance you have concluded that it is futile or the only way to make change is through violence. If that is your conclusion we have already lost. When violence starts there is no telling how it shakes out or how many die. That is why rational people will avoid it as long as possible.
This is obviously false based on widespread protests and constant criticism. If you can’t find Americans who oppose Trump’s regime it’s because you don’t want to.
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> political violence being much more common historically than racial or other forms of violence
This is true if you take a very loose definition of "political violence" lol and probably just disingenuous at best.
The choice was between two corrupt options (same as its been for a long time). There is a lot of evidence coming out that the Biden administration was corrupting the justice system, FBI, and foreign relations for the benefit of the DNC and his family.
Honestly, the billionaire is less corrupt-able than the DNC nexus (we all know Biden wasn't running the show, and neither would Harris).
> billionaire is less corrupt
Why would you think that? Do you think that presents from foreign dictators (like plane or investment in crypto fund) are less corrupt?
> There is a lot of evidence coming out that the Biden administration was corrupting the justice system
This kind of vague fluffy language is becoming very common. What evidence? Where is it coming out from?
Not a fan of the other guy but keeping a decrepit old man from the press because you know he can‘t do the job, all while - surprise surprise - the exact same guy who is older than my grandpa when he died gets diagnosed with a long time form of stage 4 bone cancer that can‘t possibly have gone unnoticed while he was having access to presidential healthcare is kind of a big deal.
What does that have to do with “corrupting the justice system, FBI, and foreign relations for the benefit of the DNC and his family”?
If anything it would be a counter argument. Always strikes me as odd that Biden is somehow both a senile decrepit old man and a criminal mastermind depending on which is most useful at any given moment.
> senile decrepit old man and a criminal mastermind
both can be true at the same time. Biden was not always a senile incapable man. The corruption of the justice system seems to come from the fact that he's son has been operating in the shadows of the white house for a long time and it seems that very few people noticed it. But, of course, I know that Biden and his family are school kids when compared to a full fledged mafia boss like the current president.
> Always strikes me as odd that Biden is somehow both a senile decrepit old man and a criminal mastermind depending on which is most useful at any given moment.
Biden is not a criminal mastermind, and he never was. He changed into a decrepit old man, surrounded by a cabal of people that did not shy away to use the tools of the president's office for their personal gain. We know now that a lot of the president's autopen signatures did not originate from Joe Biden. This group of people also had a general interest in hiding the president's condition.
> Honestly, the billionaire is less corrupt-able than the DNC nexus
This is satire, right?
The grandparent comment shouldn't be wondering about anything now, should they....
Because it isn't about actions, it is about sides. Tribalism.
It is the loss of complexity. Many cannot understand that by choosing the lesser of two evils does not mean you support evil. It means your choices are limited. We have turned the political issues into good and evil, rather than disagreements in how to achieve our mostly shared goals. We can no longer see the other side as friends and family, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyone countering this can just proclaim "both sides" and in some sense they will be right, they have evidence and people do abuse that framework. But at the same time that destroys the bridge between us. The abuse of calling both sides evil along with the accusation that all use cases are instances of abuse. It binarizes the environment, creating a simple world where there are only two choices. Which is easy to do when everything is so complex, as we're so tired and don't want to think.
It's also why this administration's strategy is so effective: overload the opposition. After all, Brandolini's Law states: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it." They've weaponized it. It's an effective strategy, and hard to defend against. I'm sure someone will offer a solution, "it's so simple, you just..." and we perpetuate the game.
It's not half. I think close to 32% were fully supportive (voted for him) and around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in practicality they basically said they were fine with whoever won.
I don't know which is worse, that 32% were in support of the corrupt leader or that 68% in total are either supported him or didn't care enough to support anyone else
> around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in practicality they basically said they were fine with whoever won.
Or, they were not fine with whoever won.
We've got two abismal parties to choose from. Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not a great one.
I'd like to believe at least some of those 36% would vote for a decent candidate/party. But once you lose faith in the system, and realize that it doesn't represent you, you might just stop participating in it.
> We've got two abismal parties to choose from. Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not a great one.
No, we have one destructive/harmful party (R) and one status quo party (D). They are not the same level of bad and that's immediately obvious from this last year.
The problem with that is the status quo wasn't that good.
To compare the two parties with a house on fire, absolutely the sadistic pyromaniac arsonist burning down the neighborhood one house at a time is a bad guy and needs to be stopped. But when person trying to rally everyone to go after him is the abusive slumlord, it doesn't always resonate as effectively as it might.
A healthy society wouldn't tolerate either one. I wonder if the Democrats seeming inability to stop right-wing abuses has been partially motivated by the knowledge that successfully stomping out that sort of corruption would curtail their own abuses, too.
> I wonder if the Democrats seeming inability to stop right-wing abuses has been partially motivated by the knowledge that successfully stomping out that sort of corruption would curtail their own abuses, too.
Absolutely. And we know this because when they were last in power they did nothing to counter corruption or limit executive power. Instead they were partaking in it.
Trump is exploiting a system his predecessors created.
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> Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not a great one.
This is only a remotely viable claim if you think the two evils have extremely similar amounts of evil.
if you're on a train to pittburgh, it stops in poughkepsie and you don't get off, you decided to go to pittsburgh by doing nothing. your reasons may be your own, but your ass is in pittsburgh.
If you are on a train going off a cliff and you can turn the train around to go off a different cliff, but decide it isn't worth the effort just to go off a different cliff, you still end up going off a cliff. Nice.
> you still end up going off a cliff. Nice.
This false equivalence is exactly what counts for being "fine with this corrupt leader."
I refuse to vote for a party that was complicit with the threats against me and my friends. The other party is pretty ass too, despite being closer to what I want politically.
> refuse to vote for a party that was complicit with the threats against me and my friends. The other party is pretty ass too, despite being closer to what I want politically
Sure. There are a lot of other people like you. Political operatives work hard to find folks like you, because groups who won’t vote are groups you can transfer resources from. (Same, oddly enough, for folks who will vote for you regardless of what you do. You can take advantage of that loyalty to buy votes on the margin.)
It’s dumb. And it directly undermines the causes you and others like and around you support, because again, your devoted non-participation creates political capital on the other side of any issue you would have voted on. But it’s common and a real part of any electoral—possibly political—system, and no elected who wins and keeps office can afford to ignore the free resources predictable non-voters offer up.
I don't really care if it hurts the causes I want, I am not voting for the people who send my friends death threats. Either way, neither party really supports what I want so voting for one would hurt the causes I want anyway.
> I am not voting for the people who send my friends death threats
Uh, then don't. I guarantee you have more people and issues on your ballots than the person who allegedly sent your friends death threats.
> neither party really supports what I want so voting for one would hurt the causes I want anyway
If neither party has any position you give any shits about, yes, I sort of agree you shouldn't be voting... (And I guess I'll concede you aren't voting against your interests and causes if you have no interests or causes.)
If I don't vote for the people who are a part of the party who sent my friends threats and didn't vote for the people who actively hurt the policy I want, I would either be voting for esoteric third party candidates (might as well not vote to save effort), or I would be out of people to vote for.
> If I don't vote for the people who are a part of the party who sent my friends threats and didn't vote for the people who actively hurt the policy I want, I would either be voting for esoteric third party candidates (might as well not vote to save effort), or I would be out of people to vote for
Well no, you'd be forced to participate in primaries or civically engage. You'd have to identify opportunities for compromise. You'd have to disaggregate your false monolith of a national political party. That takes effort.
Also, showing up to vote for an esoteric third party puts you on the board. Someone who shows up is provably not too lazy to vote, which is, honestly, most people who come up with convoluted reasons for avoiding the polls. Take a lazy person's stuff and they won't hurt you. Take a person who's showing up to the poll's stuff, and they might vote for the other guy--or worse, join a primary challenge.
Folks rejecting politics implicitly endorsing the status quo (whether they understand that they are or not is irrelevant to the measurable effect of their choices). They also put up a flag around themselves and their community that effectively marks it for cutting resources to benefit people and communities who reward their electeds.
welcome to Pittsburgh!
Honest question: Why do you think they are the same?
Friends and I have been threatened with violence multiple times by prominent members of one party and the other party does the same thing to other people. I would love to go into detail but I don't want to get doxxed because it is pretty specific. :(
>Friends and I have been threatened with violence multiple times by prominent members of one party and the other party does the same thing to other people. I would love to go into detail but I don't want to get doxxed because it is pretty specific. :(
So you're a nazi/white supremacist/Boogaloo boy? I wouldn't worry too much about getting doxxed, there are plenty of those around.
Or are you a batshit ancap[0]? That's a smaller group, but still sizable enough to avoid being doxxed just by mentioning it.
In fact, most groups that get that kind of hate (from anyone) are big enough (Trans folks are ~3,000,000 in the US, gay folk are ~30 million. I'd expect you could give at least some detail without doxxing yourself just by mentioning it -- assuming MiiMe19 isn't the name on your driver's license.
As such, I call bullshit on your claims. Prove me wrong.
The situation was specific enough and got enough media attention that yes, I would dox myself by giving pretty much any hint. And no, I am not in any of the groups you gave, or anything related. I hate politics and politics obsessed losers and have better things to do with my time. The only hint I can really give is that years later, despite not even being related to the action that started this whole thing, I (and friends) have been harassed in public and have had people threaten to hurt me just because of this one thing.
Okay, so you're a January 6th rioter/insurrectionist.
I get it, you don't want to come clean as you might have some "'splainin' to do" Lucy.
Enrique, is that you?
lol I'll bet OP has a super hot girlfriend who goes to a different school and plays bass in a punk band. No you can't meet her, she's on tour right now, in cities you've never heard of playing venues you've never heard of. No she doesn't have a bandcamp.
Here in Germany, we have like 20 different parties on the ballot, with maybe 6 of those having a reasonable chance to actually get any seats. Not a SINGLE ONE perfectly represents me and my issues.
I still voted, because my personal laziness or moral superiority does not trump the very real world effects of the "bad ones" winning. Lazy people like you with post hoc rationalizations exist here too, and they're just as bad and wrong.
> I still voted, because my personal laziness or moral superiority does not trump the very real world effects of the "bad ones" winning. Lazy people like you with post hoc rationalizations exist here too, and they're just as bad and wrong.
We're not talking about me. So maybe cool it.
Those are the same thing in our system.
By not voting, you are clearly saying you are fine with whoever wins. If you were not fine with whoever wins, you would have voted for someone, anyone else.
There's a double standard that I see a lot here, where people want to vote for a party, denigrate those who chose not to participate as being morally culpable for the results of the election, but won't take moral culpability for what their team does when they're in power.
If you vote for team A and they win and then do something bad (inevitable), shouldn't you be morally responsible for that? After all, you seem fine claiming non-participants have moral culpability for whatever the winning team does.
Yes, you are, to the extent that "the other option" would have been better.
This seems incredibly obvious. If my options are "don't bomb children" and "bomb children", there's an obvious choice and obvious culpability. If my options are "bomb children" and "bomb way the fuck more children" the choice is also obvious.
You do not get to pretend a moral dilemna doesn't exist just because you're not a fan of the available choices. You are still culpable.
Consider this scenario:
You have a train hurtling down the track that forks into two groups of people, 10 in one and 5 in the other, some of the people go on to cure cancer and some are murderers and you don't know where they are. Also it's possible batman set up the scenario to kill the bad guys and by flipping the switch you kill the good guys. Or the Joker set it up and the reverse is true.
In this case, you could argue that you only have moral culpability by intervening. Unless you are absolutely sure you have full knowledge of the intended consequences by acting, you can absolve yourself of the moral culpability by non-intervention.
And since we don't know the long term consequences of political actions, there is at least an argument for non-intervention.
I also sat out one election here in CZ, but that does not mean that I was "fine with whoever wins". It was "I really cannot decide which of the two guys is worse and I need to survive either of them."
Fortunately the Czech president does not have that much power.
How about parliamentary election?
I have voted in all of them so far. Smaller parties = not much personal attachment + higher chance to find at least one that is, in that particular moment, more aligned to your interests.
In general, I believe that more choice is good and polarizing political systems are subpar.
Participation adds a moral dimension. It becomes a trolly problem — do you throw the switch and take culpability for the outcome?
Well yes, but you're completely misunderstanding how the trolley problem applies to voting, esp. in the USA. You're pretending that "Not Voting" and "Voting" are the switch options, but that's simply not true.
There are just two possible outcomes: Dems or Reps getting power. That's the switch options you have. "Not Voting" simply means letting the trolley take the Rep route and being JUST AS CULPABLE for the results as every single republican voter.
Your fantasy of "not voting" being an actual moral option is like arguing "I disagree with the concept of a trolley, so I'm just going to turn away from the switch". You're morally exactly as culpable, because you made a choice that is morally the equivalent of "not switching tracks".
There is a subtle difference though because a vote is supposed to be a act of support. With the trolley problem there is nothing to support.
Voting for party A/B is a reward that encourages party A/B to do more of what they're doing.
So let's say only 1000 people voted because everyone else hated both options. That would pave a path for party C that would not exist if everyone held their nose and voted for crap.
Not participating in the trolley problem does not remove questions of moral responsibility. You had the choice to throw the lever, you said "either outcome is fine".
That's your choice. "I don't participate at all" doesn't work unless it makes the whole trolley go poof.
>Not participating in the trolley problem does not remove questions of moral responsibility. You had the choice to throw the lever, you said "either outcome is fine".
As the eminent philosopher[0] opined:
[0] https://genius.com/Rush-freewill-lyricsThere are more moral frameworks out there than just utilitarianism.
Everything about him since 2015 has been absolutely egregious. Anyone who hadn't realized it by 2016 will never change their tune. Even if he declares martial law for no good reason they're all still going to justify it somehow. Anyone who's hung on this long will be along for the ride forever.
> cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader?
They've normalized corruption irrespective of magnitude. That's partly a problem of the little corruption existing in the first place. But it's also a problem of education and tribal populism being given this much power.
>I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader?
Don't think fox news is going to report that he enriched the prez...
I think most actually know and don't think it's all that much different from what other have done for decades. I'm not saying they are correct to think it, just that they do think it. They think it's refreshing that the corruption is in the open. It's a societal boy-cried-wolf numbness. People are tired of the of finger pointing and screaming about every thing and now don't listen when the real stuff goes down.
Yeah that seems possible too. Sad but plausible
I want to understand what you said.
You assumed the leader is corrupt, possibly assumed the leader has bad intentions, and that the world can't possibly be more complex than these assumptions. Assumed the leader made this choice instead of a team behind him.
Then presented a generality. Possibly assumed he doesn't know more than you and "everyone who won't say anything".
Called an entire administration a circus. Another generality.
Suggested bribery without evidence.
How does one respond constructively to a comment like this?
>How does one respond constructively to a comment like this?
How indeed? You certainly didn't.
Most polls that I've seen show it closer to 40% than half
Yes, and that's depressing. Why are so many people not understanding what is going on?
Reminds me of this Bill Gates quote: "We were a bit naive: we thought the internet, with the availability of information, would make us all a lot more factual. The fact that people would seek out—kind of a niche of misinformation—we were a bit naive."
Its difficult to digest lol. Im from Europe but damn I feel the Americans - its legit embarrassing to watch.
Watching the Great Brainwash happen in real time has given me (I hope) a lot of insight into how anti-fascist Germans must have felt before WWII. It's a hell of a thing to watch half the people you know fall victim to the deluge of simplistic, feral propaganda that's been pouring out of our media sources for quite some time now. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other socials being the primary driving force. All platforms that are incentivized to spread rage and misinformation, and yet we can't seem to quit them as a culture. We rationalized their existence and non-regulation because BUSINESS and FREE MARKET. It's a real sad time for America. We should have known better. It's all of our faults, collectively. For not being big enough to shun the pressure and money. For not doing what was right all along. Now, we'll reap the whirlwind.
It's easy to explain: They have no idea what's happening.
Most people can't keep up with the firehose of news and don't really want to. This particular bit of unethical behavior is just one more bit of inconsequential news which will have completely disappeared from the headlines by tomorrow. It basically never happened to 95% of the country, regardless of political leaning.
Secondly, conservatives live in their own highly filtered and mutated information bubble. Good news is amplified, bad news is either downplayed, justified (pure fiction is acceptable) or simply ignored. So even if they do hear about this, it won't be a big deal.
In short, most people won't care, and conservative media will actively work to overlook or more often, rationalize this sort of unethical behavior to the point where it somehow is totally fine. (Simply read this thread to watch it happen in real time.)
Only had of Americans vote, only half of them voted for Trump, and his approval rating is down significantly since inauguration.
It is not accurate to say that half of Americans are ok with this. It’s just our system doesn’t allow for doing anything about it except wait.
Arguing over whether half or a third are okay with this is splitting hairs anytime that isn't an election (where these margins matter).
That even a third is okay with this is a clear enough signal. He represents their values.
> It’s just our system doesn’t allow for doing anything about it except wait.
"Healthy democracy"
"I Could ... Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters" - Trump
They wouldn't be fine with it if they understood it. Instead they are not paying attention and only consuming propaganda media (Fox News) that refuses to report on Trump negatively in any way.
We're long past the time when FoxNews was the main vector. Now the propaganda is coming from social networks and mainstream media that is afraid of consequences if they tell the truth. It's all just a big mafia system.
Not sure we can blame fox news, it has like 5MM peak daily viewership...
FB, Twitter, Tiktok on the other hand...
Note that they all are, or will soon be controlled by one political grouping.
It is disconcerting. Having discussed openly with people who were supportive of similar politicians, their logic is often in the line of "all of them are corrupt, but at least his politics are different". Now when you point that certainly corruption exists, but this is another level, they're getting into non-logical territory. People perceive times as grim and will take whomever offers something else than the status-quo baseline politician I guess. Even if they grift throughout and everyone's worse off in the end.
On a baser level, if you go on twitter, there's a whole slew of delusional people who either don't believe this because of "fake news", another portion that's in the same "Clinton/Obama/Biden were even worse", and the rest just doesn't even care so long as "the libs are owned".
Half of America isn’t fine with Trump. Only 22.3% of Americans voted for him and his approval rating has gone down significantly since then.
Another 36% could've voted against him and chose not to. Even accounting for some amount literally unable to reach the poll booth, yeah, half of America.
> I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader
It's because you are still thinking of the USA as a democracy. Musk helped buy the election for Trump. It's an open oligarchy since companies were allowed an opinion as if they were citizens.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citi...
The thing is, most won't hear about this at all. It's always amazing to talk to a Trump voter and realize they don't actually hear about most of this stuff
And if it does break through the right info bubbles, right-wing media pundits and influencers will be on-the-ready to quickly rationalize or what-about it away and coax their audiences back to their "happy" places, where they can nurse their favorite grievances about the left, the media, the trans people, etc
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Well, to be fair, 7 million showed up in the streets on Saturday. Up from 5 million before and up from 3 million before that. The last election was decided by 2.3 million votes.
Edit1: That's not to say don't worry about it. That's to say everyone can show their displeasure with peaceful protest and involvement/activism that will make it clear the people of the US disagree with this corruption. No matter how much any internet groups scream "stolen".
Edit2: people vastly underestimate, in their media bubbles, how many showed up from "red" states.
From the 7 millions that did show up, very close to zero of them will be deciding the next election due to the way the election system works in the US.
>From the 7 millions that did show up, very close to zero of them will be deciding the next election due to the way the election system works in the US.
That's not really true. Check the margins of victory in so-called "swing" states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina) for Trump and compare that with each state's turnout at last weekend's protests.
So no. Many more than "close to zero" of those folks will be deciding the next presidential election.
Edit: Corrected prose.
I think you underestimate how many showed up in and from red states. And how many don't get their news from Fox/NewsMax/Trump/Social. At least that's one good thing about all the AI polluting social media with obnoxious slop.
Ok, so the ones that showed up in red states basically don't count. That's the very definition of a red state. The ones that showed up on blue states as well. The ones in swing states may make some difference, the problem is that they almost certainly already voted blue in the last election. That's why i'm pretty confident that, unfortunately, these numbers won't make much difference.
I also believe you are making a category error expecting the next election to be like the last. His shift in approval has already been ~20% for the worse. And people aren't going to forget the demolition of the Whitehouse for a golden ballroom while Republicans twiddle their thumbs.
I mean, we shut down the government and so now we're just waiting (a year) for the midterms. What else do you expect people to do?
Among other things, people are constantly challenging Trump in court and have reversed many of his policies. For example, my passport needed to be renewed this year and he signed an executive order saying I couldn't get an accurate one. The ACLU sued him and now I have an accurate passport. Living your best life in spite of his attempts to ruin it is a valid form of resistance. He wants to erase trans people. I'm out there not being erased. That's something.
I'm from the UK and don't understand what you mean by accurate passport? Would you mind explaining?
https://www.aclu.org/cases/orr-v-trump
Thank you
It's about a question of if you get to decide the "sex" or "gender" field on your own documents or does the government get to decide and give you no input and no recourse.
Thank you
> we shut down the government
The government clearly isn't shut down. I'm still paying taxes through the eftps web site. Only the parts that the executive wants shut down are actually shut down. Perhaps "degraded" is a better word.
In many parts of Europe a couple of strikes would have taken place. Usans are numb or has no social conscience and muscle.
There was a No Kings protest just a few days ago, millions of people across nearly every state demonstrated against the administration.
>In many parts of Europe a couple of strikes would have taken place. Usans are numb or has no social conscience and muscle.
Americans are not numb. And we have both of those things, or at least most of us do. What we don't have are strong unions. Less than 10% of American workers are union members.
What's more, for as long as there have been unionization efforts in the US (150+ years), the forces of corporations, aided by the government -- to this day -- have suppressed those efforts -- for a long time, brutally and fatally -- and such suppression (although generally not with clubs and guns these days) continues, often with government support.
As such, even a "general strike" would have minimal effect, as many union members are forbidden by law to strike (in various jurisdictions, police, fire departments and others).
The vast majority of US workers are "at will" workers whose employment can be terminated at any time, for any (or no) reason. Workers can do so just the same as employers, so it's definitely fair!
More than half of Americans can't afford an unexpected $USD600 expense. As such, how many do you expect to essentially quit their jobs (possibly multiple jobs) to join a "general strike"?
Labor and unions don't work in the US the same way they do in say, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and other countries with high levels of unionization[0]
As much as I'd love to see repeated "general strikes" in the US, protesting the anti-democratic (small 'd') assaults on the rule of law, freedom of expression and due process, given the state of organized labor in the US, that's just not going to happen.
As such, we organize where we can and mobilize widely. As the pain comes, more and more of folks will begin to see the problem. I hope it won't come too late.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_comparisons_of_t...
We inspired the French revolution and had a 7-million-person protest this past weekend.
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I know HN viscerally hates crypto, and yes Trump is embarrassingly corrupt, but the charges against CZ were a greater wrong than whatever quid pro quo happened in the pardon.
This is the most embarrassing part of all of it. The US is ping ponging between two very different ways of misusing state power.
CZ was charged with violating a highly technical US securities law that is not common to most countries despite not being a US citizen or ever setting foot in the US. His crime was letting his employees (also non-US and under no affirmative obligation to learn the laws of every country in the world just because they run a website) tell crypto whales they could use VPNs to get the non-US, non-nerfed version of Binance.
The public's interest in protecting crypto whales from Binance is extremely tenuous. Unsophisticated users would hit the geofence. These were whales using Binance because they wanted to, not because they were tricked.
The US's right to enforce arcane securities law outside its own borders is also very tenuous. If every country pulls this level of aggressive enforcement of atypical law on every website (even geofenced ones!) we will have total chaos. Should China, Russia, or India be able to hunt you down for violating some arcane law? No? Then why should the US?
This is also happening in the context of an active public debate over the application of this law within the US, one cryptocurrency supporters won fairly definitively in the last election.
Whatever discretion the law provides US enforcers, they should have recognized that it was wrong to use that discretion and left CZ alone once Binance made reasonable gestures at compliance.
Instead, once their political coalition signaled that they should put symbolic heads on platters, they went about scoring career points. This is the kind of misbehavior that drove Aaron Swartz (a friend of mine) to suicide. We should be clear that it's wrong.
And here we are. A choice between venal corruption and cruel punching down at immigrants on one side, and a blind, symbolic use of power for power and ideology's sake on the other.
> his employees (also non-US and under no affirmative obligation to learn the laws of every country in the world just because they run a website)
Employees of financial businesses are absolutely obligated to learn the laws of every country where they provide services.
I don’t think the problem is HN’s hate of crypto - it’s the horrendously ignorant takes like these that people dislike.
Surely you don’t believe that CZ was charged for shits and giggles, just because he happened to make a website that Americans use?
Hi, Trump voter here. I'm NOT fine with this.
Thanks for all of the comments. I wasn't replying simply because I haven't seen them, but based on the comments I actually got: I feel like my words would be like yelling into a vacuum regardless of what I actually say.
If you’re not fine with criminals who get away with fraud, why vote for a well known fraudster? He’s been conning people since the 80s
He was clear about how he intended to run the country in his last term. And in the lead-up to the election. You are complicit in his crimes.
People are going to pile on you for not seeing this coming, but I really do appreciate your ability to change your mind and tell people about it.
People need space to make a U-turn. I hope you get some grace because it's a lot easier to say "I told you so" than "I was wrong."
I don't see where the GP changed their mind. They may not be ok with this particular action while still preferring the current administration to any alternative.
How wasn't his first 4 years enough time?
> People need space to make a U-turn
The problem is we dont believe him. There has been ample time to make a u turn. A decade at this point. Trump has never shied away from his corruption. He has been upfront about his intentions from the beginning. I just do not believe that this is the straw that broke the camels back when so many straws have come before.
Serious set of questions here from someone desperately trying to understand people who voted for Trump and how to have conversations with them that can be productive. None of them are meant to be insulting or insinuate anything.
To me, this sort of behavior just seems par for the course for how he has been acting since before his presidency. Did you follow his record in business and politics closely prior to voting for him? If so, what mitigating factors were there that let you still feel comfortable in voting for him?
Is this an isolated source of issue with him? Part of a broader trend? In either case, is it/these a big enough deal for him to lose your support moving forward? For the rest of the political party supporting him?
If there has been a shift in your ability to support him, what is it that broke the camel's back?
It is remarkably simple. There are countless meals on the menu but people get to see only the two on the front page. Say, monkey brains and bull testicles. Few can really appreciate either. There is a little talk about the slugs on page 1. An abysmal small number will turn a few pages and look over the burgers and pizzas... but you can't really order a burger in a restaurant like this? Can you? So even they pretend they really like to eat testicles.
You could have literally opened a random page and order whatever is on there. It is perfectly safe to order the burger as you will most likely be served monkey brains anyway.
No one will rage at you for voting for Afroman. There are no dire consequences.
I just honestly feel like any attempt to equate the two is insane.
I can't really align myself to either party, and I am diametrically opposed to the Democrats on some issues, like gun control, and think that there are a lot of real issues that they push far to the extreme to the point that it is problematic, but... there's also only one party that attempted insurrection and overturning the election, campaigned on all sorts of insane shit, pushes a narrative of needing the military to deal with protestors, etc.
It's not two shit sandwiches, it's a pot of live pit vipers vs a pot of boiled unseasoned kale and spinach. I'm not going to enjoy the latter, but it's probably not going to harm anything more than my taste buds. The other might kill me.
The magic is this: there are no other candidates who can win because you didn't vote for any of those in previous elections and there won't be in the next because you won't now.
It is like you ask someone to chose between death by fire, death by drowning OR finding the love of your life. Then they respond with: I don't want to drown! Or worse, they ask what other people chose.
Imagine yourself making your own choices. Picture it for a moment, doesn't it sound terrifying?
One should also look at it from the perspective of the other candidates. I mean those not part of the uniparty. Imagine making an effort to convince people to vote for a sanity riddled election program. The level of insult people sink to in order to NEVER even consider it.
Not OP but I reluctantly voted for Trump because of the direction he proclaimed he wanted the country to go. I could not tolerate the direction the democrats were wanting to go as it seemed an inevitable path to civil war.
But I knew Trump was shady and didn't like that he partied with Epstein in the 90s. A country takes a long time to change directions. I saw a chance for a smaller less restricting federal government. It was a gamble I was willing to take to at least get the ship turning around.
J/w: what direction does it seem to you that Democrats want? At least judging by its elected officials and internal leaders, it seems like a pretty directionless party to me.
Flooding the nation with immigrants and given them our tax money and berating anybody that questioned it. That is a 100% sure path to civil war.
When did your ancestors immigrate to the country? What was the process for immigration then?
For the majority of the history of the country it has never been anything like it is today. Until 1819 you basically literally just showed up. After that, ships had to include passenger manifest and pass that along to the state, and then state's handled immigration - but none there did more than try to charge 'head fees' to keep the truly destitute out, but not all states even did that. 1875/1876 there were laws that changed this - largely banning Asian immigrants and making immigration federal purview. The next couple of decades things got more formalized, but if you were a normal human being capable of supporting yourself you basically got held for a basic check and then were let in. <1-2% got turned away most years. It wasn't until 1921/4 that anything resembling our current immigration system was put into place, and while it saw significant revision in 1965 to how the caps and quotas were organized, we've not seen anything major change.
The Democrats want significant immigration reform, true. They want a path for people that have been living here as productive members of society to stay here. They want them to be treated like human beings.
This is not "flooding" the nation.
> and given them our tax money
This talking point seems to be repeated a lot, but it's just not true. Illegal immigrants pay more taxes in to the system than they receive in benefits - largely because they are ineligible for the vast majority of benefits. If you want to increase our tax revenue, more illegal immigrants is better than less. We effectively rip them off. It's like the claims that the shutdown is over giving illegal immigrants free healthcare - not a dime of the funding being discussed would go to them. You're being lied to.
I'm all for a system where we screen our immigrants for criminals, terrorists, etc. But the current system is broken, and we have built our way of life off of exploiting a large amount of hardworking people that contribute a hell of a lot to our ability to live the way we do. Legalizing them, streamlining the immigration process, etc., is not at risk of bankrupting our coffers.
This country was a frontier in 1819. We needed labor to tame the wilderness. We don't need more unskilled laborers anymore.
We have immigration laws. The US is incredibly generous, and naturalizes more than 1 million immigrants each year.
The American people don't want a "path" for illegal aliens. We already tried that in 1986. All it did was incentivize more illegal immigration.
And what the last administration did was absolutely flooding the nation. They removed nearly every EO related to border security, and then complained that they needed more laws to "fix" the problem they created.
> I'm all for a system where we screen our immigrants for criminals, terrorists, etc. But the current system is broken,
The current system is broken insofar as we are not enforcing the law thoroughly enough. We already have a system, it just needs to be followed. All illegal aliens have to go back.
> I could not tolerate the direction the democrats were wanting to go as it seemed an inevitable path to civil war.
Trumps action with ICE will lead to waco situations. Undocumented immigrants can obtain guns in this country and will not continue to go quietly into the night. Seems to me that his actions are far more likely to lead to civil war
I think a more likely scenario is that a citizen gets tired of being rounded up every other weekend or shaken down for ICE protection money and decides to put a stop to it, one way or another. And it would in many cases be legal too, because those iceholes don't identify themselves.
If somebody that is here illegally picks up a gun and fights citizens or government they are a foreign combatant on US soil. Fighting them is not civil war it is national defense and is the whole reason the federal government was established.
Now, if you are talking about citizens supporting an invasion against those that oppose it that is civil war. I agree that is a none zero possibility. However, telling citizens to get fucked while taking their money and giving it to non citizens, to me, was certain to lead to violent conflict between citizens.
>However, telling citizens to get fucked while taking their money and giving it to non citizens, to me, was certain to lead to violent conflict between citizens.
Whose money? Being given to which non-citizens?
Seriously. Be specific here. the words you used are all in English and are even fairly grammatical. But they don't model reality.
Undocumented folks, by virtue of being undocumented, are ineligible for public assistance of any kind, pretty much everywhere in the US.
What's more, in order to work, they need to provide an SSN and they need to use someone else's because they can't get their own -- because they're undocumented. But they and their employer must each still pay Social Security and Medicare taxes which pay for those programs -- but since they're undocumented, they'll never collect any of the money they paid into those programs in taxes.
So I ask again, specifically, what taxpayer money is being paid to which non-citizens? Please be specific here.
Illegal aliens are eligible for the following benefits:
Federal Benefits
* Emergency medical care
* School meals
* K-12 education
* WIC nutrition program
California State Benefits
* Full-scope Medi-Cal
* Cash assistance (CAPI)
* In-state college tuition
* Disability and Family Leave
FYI emergency medical care is not a federal benefit. You and your health insurance provider are on the hook for whatever it costs.
You knew who he is, and you voted for him anyway. You really didn't see this kind of rampant corruption coming from his 2nd term?
Well, you voted for it. Were you not capable of critical thought when you entered the voting booth?
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If you think this is wrong, please, I implore you to do something about it.
Your reps (or likely preferred choice of reps, if they didn't win their district) are enabling this, and don't give two shits about anything I say.
Trump is the most openly corrupt leader in american history. How can you vote for him while claiming to be against corruption?
Because he’s giving them the one thing they really care about “white nationalism”
They will overlook everything else he does. Everything
Just stop with that BS. I guarantee that "white nationalism" was the farthest thing from the majority of Trump voters mind. If you come out of the gate saying all Trump supporters are racist most people are just going to roll their eyes at you at walk away. You have already told them you dont like them and that you will most likely not even entertain their reasons as acceptable.
You're the one who was in another comment talking about how the dems ran on a platform of flooding our country with immigrants and giving them our tax money; sounds like you are, in fact, closer to the racist/white supremacist set than you might realize. At the very least, you share their goals or vision for America.
What exactly did you think you were voting for then? Because everything he's done has been extremely predictable.
A chance of making the federal government smaller and less overbearing. Also a path that didn't inevitably lead to civil war.
He said "I will be a dictator on day 1", and he meant it. It wasn't "a joke".
He's using US Military on US soil. Sending National Guard in where there is no legal justification for it. This is what the start of a civil war looks like.
That's such a vague response that it's difficult to respond with any specifics, but I will say that I can't imagine how you thought Donald Trump was the better of the two candidates to achieve either of these goals.
The primary reason you yourself gave was a view of "immigration issues" that is detached from the reality that Democrats have continually increased funding for CBP and ICE and increased militarization of the border with every single presidency since and including Clinton.
At the same time, your belief is that failure to enact a nativist crackdown will result in "a civil war". I thought it went without saying, but this is a very extreme view, to say the least...
The connection between nativist policy advocacy and white supremacist ideology in the US isn't new. It goes back to the very notion of "illegal immigrant"; the politician who shepherded the bill that criminalized unauthorized entry to the United States was an open an enthusiastic white supremacist who pushed this bill forward to advance his white supremacy: https://immigrationhistory.org/item/undesirable-aliens-act-o...
At the same time, this relationship is not ancient history. Indeed, nativist sentiments and white supremacist ideology are still closely linked today. See, e.g.:
https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/150/2/40/98317/Immigrati...
> The correlation between immigration preferences and racial resentment was significant in every year. The steady correlation of 0.30 throughout the 1990s and early 2000s was impressively strong by the standards of opinion data of this sort. The rise from 0.30 to 0.50 by 2018 indicates an uncommonly strong relationship. [...] [E]very measure we have indicates that Whites' views of immigration are closely tied to their views of race.
There are many, many similar correlations between nativist beliefs and policy support and "racial conservatism", white supremacist beliefs, and Trump support (including support of Trump's extreme immigration measures).
"Racist" is not currently a label that many people in the United States are willing to openly embrace, even to themselves. It's not surprising that actual or perceived accusations of racism are received with defensiveness. But individual (and nominal) disavowal of "racism" is frankly less compelling than the entire history and presently observable empirical reality of nativism in the United States.
> Hi, Trump voter here. I'm NOT fine with this.
Welcome to the resistance!
Just curious. Since you voted for someone who is a terrible President last time, what are you planning to change about how you make voting decisions next time? Are there particular people or media you plan to listen to less, and others more? Particular aspects you will weight higher or lower?
Just to be clear, I'm not part of any "resistance". I don't know what that is. Sounds awfully tribalistic - something I go out of my way to avoid.
Honestly, why did you vote for this then?
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Is the irony not lost you that Joe Biden pardoned his own son for crimes he was absolutely guilty of. I don't see how that is any less corrupt. This isn't whatboutism either because I'm not trying to say that what Trump is doing is okay, I'm pointing out that this behavior is not particular to Trump and his supporters. The large majority of Americans are fine with corruption as long as it's their team.
You talk as if corruption is a binary: corrupt or not corrupt.
I’m not supportive of Biden pardoning his son. But it’s inarguable that the Trump administration is orders of magnitude more corrupt than Biden’s was. To say “they’re both corrupt” is to flatten everything out to meaninglessness.
Biden pardoning his son was widely condemned by Democrats.
This is despite the fact that Hunter was gone after on a charge that is basically never enforced alongside a media and political campaign ramping up all sorts of lies and half-truths and trying to draw connections to things he was never on trial for, much less convicted of, with an incoming president that had spoken extensively about his desire to weaponize the government to enact revenge on his political rivals, which we have seen him do extensively already.
I don't like that Biden pardoned his son, but I also think the idea that it is at all comparable to the pardons Trump has issued that are blatantly corrupt is absurd. Meanwhile, Jan6 pardonees have a whole Wikipedia section detailing all of the crimes they have gone on to commit since being pardoned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_January_6_United_Sta...
No. You are making it seem like Biden pardoned his family for petty crimes. He pardoned them in advance for any crime they have committed that is yet unknown. That‘s an unprecedented move and you claiming the other side will „come after your family“ basically confirms that the legal system is corrupt and that there is reasonable ground to do so.
Biden pardoned his son for a petty crime. He pardoned the rest for probably no crime at all.
See again:
> with an incoming president that had spoken extensively about his desire to weaponize the government to enact revenge on his political rivals, which we have seen him do extensively already.
> Biden pardoned his son for a petty crime.
Again no, Biden issued a sweeping pardon for his Son that pardons him of all crimes, known and unknown. Hell, it was a pardon so broad that even left leaning pundits like Politico publicly wrote about it [1]. It took me all of one second to confirm this. Why lie?
[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/02/hunter-biden-pardon...
Biden issued sweeping pardons to expected targets of Trump's anticipated (and fairly explicitly signalled) partisan weaponization of DoJ, which is an effective and costly political punishment even if it never secured a conviction, but so long as a suitable pretext can be found.
As we now see that being executed after mass partisan purges and, in several cases (sone where this is already adjudicated, more where it is pending) illegal appointments because that was the only way yo get or keep willing hacks in position to carry out the prosecutions, its arguable the only thing Biden did wrong in that regard was not doing it widely enough.
> Biden issued sweeping pardons to expected targets of Trump's anticipated
A suitable pretext meaning a crime.
Biden's son had committed and was convicted of a petty crime that is basically never enforced.
The pardon was sweeping.
You seem to be arguing semantics. I care about what his son actually did. If someone is sitting in jail for a marijuana conviction, and gets a blanket pardon, I am going to say they were pardoned for the marijuana conviction, not for some theorized other crime.
You don't get a blanket pardon for a marijuana conviction. You get a pardon for that exact crime. No one gets a blanket pardon. That is my point.
Because, again, Trump was explicit he was going to go on a political witch hunt to target his enemies. A blanket pardon is your best defense against manufactured charges in that case - see all of the current cases being brought against his enemies.
I don't really understand why this is a difficult concept for you to grasp.
One can not be happy with that and understand that Trump would have found ways to lock up his son for 20 years. No one thinks this dude was going to be punished for political reasons.
Hunter Biden and the Biden family were investigated for years in various political witch hunts and Hunter was charged with filling out a gun form incorrectly in the end. Trump made it clear he was going on a revenge tour with the DOJ in his second term so I don't blame Joe for the pardons.
1. There is no evidence that Joe partook in hunter's scheme. No evidence of misuse of office or government resources. It was more conspiracy to engage in corruption than actual corruption.
2. Hunter's pardon was still wrong and widely condemned by dems.
Biden misused the office to pardon his son but he was not corrupt.
Biden didn't pardon, the auto pen did.
JFC did an auto pen write this comment. Might as well.
Biden obviously wasn‘t in the mental state to do anything himself in the last year of his presidency.
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It's a good thing Trump is as old as he is. Imagine if a 50 year old had this much influence over his party, could ignore any law, and stole this much money.
May I never live to see such a thing happen in the US, but it doesn't feel unlikely.
We better hope JD Vance isn't able to capture the cult of personality after Trump is gone.
I have doubts that JD Vance can pull off a Republican realignment to himself. He's not a 2nd gen wealthy person who assumes that every one will do his bidding.
And trump himself isn’t exactly that?
He is precisely that, and I believe it's the secret of his success. Vance doesn't have that. Sure, he's wealthy now, but he didn't grow up with wealthy, narcissistic parents himself. Vance won't be able to command obedience reflexively, automatically, like Trump can, with attitude and habit alone.
Sorry, I was tired and misread your comment and skipped on the "not". It wouldn't have made sense anyway given Vance's upbringing, so sorry for the noise.
JD Vance is a great debator, and might appeal to some urban Republic voters. But I don't see him having and away on the rural voters like Trump does.
"I was told there wouldn't be fact-checking" is a great debater?
I’m very confused. Rural voters can connect with a dynastic NYC real estate developer, but Vance at least has origins much closer to typical Americans.
Is it just media nostalgia? Trump was on the TV shows they liked and so they trust him more?
A lot of politicians have tried to replicate Trump’s style with limited success. We could probably debate forever what it is about Trump that makes him unique. I think his crude and abrasive personality won people over; it felt authentic and cathartic. Nowadays I think he has immense inertia.
I remember hearing a lot of sentiment mid-2010s about how since he was a successful businessman that he will make good decisions in the White House. America was longing for someone that wasn't 'status quo', so to say.
I agree with you on the personality side, but I also think his overall fame from TV, real estate, etc. is just as big a factor to his political success.
Yeah the whole "successful businessman" schtick is pretty much a trope in US elections. Before Trump it was Ross Perot, before Perot it was others like Wendell Wilkie. Trump had that going for him AND the celebrity status like Reagan. These things are basically status buffs for elections in the US.
Trump is also not afraid to say what a lot of people think. Telling a reporter they are "terrible" or talking about making America great. The way he does it resonates with a lot of folks.
> Telling a reporter they are "terrible" or talking about making America great. The way he does it resonates with a lot of folks.
Yeah, but I could do that. It’s pretty easy to, but I’m certain I wouldn’t be able to amass a cult of personality around myself.
Yet if I try, I’m pretty much universally considered an asshole, even from those who agree with me. There’s got to be more than just “he’s not afraid to say what we think”
Trump opponents might cringe at thinking about Trump as a leader, but it is the origin of his success. The L word is generally over-used and over-ascribed. For example, leadership might correlate with being a "hero" or being moral/just/fair,etc however there's lots of proof they don't correlate. It's a fallacy to think that a leader is also a hero. But some people do (fallaciously) ascribe these positive traits to leadership.
That said, in his domain, Trump leads; he generates the headlines and everyone else follows them.
Is JD Vance generating headlines? Barely. Is anyone else generating headlines? Lets consider a few:
- Tim Walz: mainstream media tries to meme Walz into being a headline generator, but he isn't, and poses no serious contention
- Mumar Gaddafi, Sadam Hussein, Hitler, Mussolini, etc: i'm not sure there has been a dictator that did not generate headlines.
- Steve Jobs: strong headline generator, such that he could have run for president and likely won
- pewdiepie: for a spell he was generating headlines, but mainstream media had no solid editorial narrative for the guy (and his hundreds of millions of followers) which posed a social risk. The more they discussed him, the more risk of society penduluming in some unpredictable way either by martyring him or amplifying his politics, so they chose the "ignore him and let whither" as a strategy which seemed to work, as he has drifted into Japan and been off-the-radar
- Luigi Mangione: a nonzero number of liberal voters would decry Trump in one breath and cast a vote for Mangione to be a politician despite evidence he is a cold-blooded murderer. This probably won't change much after conviction.
In conclusion, intelligent people are forced to lament the state of humanity in which leadership is game-ified so easily and yet so difficult to achieve. "How does one consistently generate headlines" is a difficult question to answer and seems to be one of the core essence of humanity. And, as described above, the origin of people's feelings of why a given person is successful.
Yeah, I think this is probably a factor. In particular, the fact that Trump appeared a lot on professional wrestling TV has been cited as something that made many people in demographics who consume a lot of pro wrestling content familiar with him and inclined to view him favorably.
My wife's aunt has been having delusions Trump wants her to help run the country, and maybe preparing for her to run for senate. She's bought "Trump Coins" that will make her rich when we does something in the future...
It's a cult of personality that has taken over people's lives.
Such personality cultists usually filter for other great egos in there sphere, leaving behind burned out parties filled with syccophants. If the history of the USSR teaches us anything, the more dangerous aspirants are bookkeepers for the party, managing silently in the background, secret service personal and (checks notes) clowns? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_Khrushchev#Stalin's_fin...
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Unfortunately, this narrative's utility is pretty low and it's intended implications are severely weakened by the current administration's obsession with revenge, blaming everything on someone else, and persecuting political opponents. If such openly hostile and norms-breaking rhetoric did not exist before the pardons, then the pardons would appear suspicious.
This is nonsense.
The Biden administration went after Trump's lawyers, censored American citizens that supported Trump, and put people in prison for years that walked near the capital on J6 (and never participated in the riots).
In addition to this, Trump was brought up on federal charges that we still don't know today. They were: Charge 1..2..3..4. If you look at all of the court documents released, they didn't even have evidence of an actual crime.
It fell apart so quickly, it was so obviously made up.
Biden's family took money from foreign governments and was definitely involved in Ukraine corruption. It was pretty evident Hunter would have been brought up on charges and sentenced to a long prison sentence, if not for the pardon. This isn't even mentioning anything linking Biden to the crimes, which was a real possibility during the investigation.
It's not revenge, it's justice. I also want justice for the the corrupt politicians during the previous administrations that always seem to get out of everything.
Hillary ran an email server from her office that contained government emails, and you are really going to tell me that there's 'nothing to see here'? We would still be hearing about it today if anyone on the other side had done the same thing.
The real crimes started when Trump was running in his first term and Obama colluded with Russian agents to spy on him. This is really supposed to be okay with no punishment?
All eyes are on Trump and the only thing even close to a crime that was found was bringing home documents that he was allowed to declassify. Something every politician in history has done.
After what I've witnessed in the last decade, it really makes me question the accuracy of our history books.
> It was pretty evident Hunter would have been brought up on charges
No it wasn't. Trump had to threaten Zelenskyy to accuse him at all, which backfired immediately when Zelenskyy denied the accusations. He still claims that Trump manufactured the charges, and we haven't seen any damning evidence that suggests they were credible. I wager that's because the "evidence" wouldn't discredit Biden unless a court was forcibly compelled to do so.
> Hillary ran an email server from her office that contained government emails
This may be news to you, but government officials are allowed to use third-party communique to transmit non-sensitive and declassified information. The reason Hillary was never brought up on charges was because they never found any proof of wrongdoing. Same as Trump's SCIFs, if you want to go there.
> The real crimes started when Trump was running in his first term and Obama colluded with Russian agents to spy on him.
Again, source? We have no evidence that Obama was a Russian agent, whereas several retired KGB officers have attested to Trump's enrollment. I think you're misremembering a few details, but I beg you to link a high quality source if one exists.
He pardoned one family member who actually committed a crime, one who had been subject to some allegations that went nowhere, and several who had no creditable allegations of any criminal activity.
If Harris had won it is likely that none of those pardons would have happened. They happened because Trump was promising to go after the families of people he saw as an enemy.
Trump will need to pardon him and his entire administration. Not because they are criminals, but for fear that the Democrats will go after their enemies.
When in doubt, what about.
The motto of the Democrats.
I mean is it any different than Joe Biden given blanket pardons hundreds of people for crimes that they may have committed over a 10 year span?
Is it? What do you think?
I dont agree with the pardoning just making a point that presidents have done this for a long time of pardoning controversial people. Democrats and republicans are both corrupt so it isnt suprising.
This is such a weird redirect. Biden seems to have pardoned a large amount of low level marijuana offenders.
So yes, there is a difference between what Trump is doing and what Biden is doing.
You missed what I stated, pardoning someone for a specific crime vs what biden(if he was actually doing it) pardoned his son for all crimes he may have done over a 10 year span. Oh wait, that was actually one of the only pardons he actually signed.
edit:
He actually pardoned 5 family members for all non-violent offenses from jan 2014 to jan 2025, does 1 billionaire = 5 biden family members?
Biden pardoned those family members because he knew Trump would personally go after them and make an example of them regardless of what they actually did. It shouldn't have happened, but it's pretty clear why it did.
Also, how on Earth are their "crimes" as egregious as those that Trump has pardoned in his recent term? Seriously, what did they do? How many people did they hurt? You can't just say "corruption" in an ambiguous sense, because then millions of other people would also apply. Also, "I don't know but it's fishy!" doesn't work when we know literally everything in Hunter Biden's life. That was the whole controversy.
The Binance founder directly impacted people in a significant way. The rioters were violent protesters that resulted in loss of life and others fearing for their life. It isn't the pardon itself that is bad, or the number, but the message it sends as to why they would do it. Biden was "if you're in the family of the president, you'll get forgiveness for your poor life decisions". Duh, like it or not, that's always been true, and Biden got roasted for it anyway. He's done, his family is out.
Trump is "if you're rich or you worship me, literal crime is legal".
Earlier you said hundreds. I call bullshit. Including the January 6 select committee members, staff, and police witnesses, the total appears closer to 50.
Yes
Yes
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At this point, I wouldn't touch crypto with a 10 ft pole. What happens when everyone recognizes that the whole thing has turned into a money laundering grift? Who's going to give you anything for your bozo bucks? At this rate, it's not going to take long.
Hasn't that been apparent for years now though? It's a cool idea but really no real use that doesn't boil down to some sort of crime
Maybe there's an alternate timeline where crypto was legalized and regulated into something like fair gambling... but that's not what we're getting. Anyone getting into crypto now is just a sucker to be milked dry.
Yeah, I don't think the dominos will fall until the next flash crash when people realize it takes $100+ just to withdraw (because 7 transactions per second isn't many). As soon as confidence is lost, the reaction will be full blown tulip market. We just haven't seen the first bank run yet. And there is literally no backstop for a crypto bank run.
It doesn't take $100 to transfer. Fees are currently around $1. You are off by a factor 100!
Also, Bitcoin can process far more than 7 tps through the Lighting network.
I wonder where your misconceptions come from?
>Fees are currently around $1.
Fees are CURRENTLY around $1 because no one is using the L1 network. There is no demand now because of all of the times when the transaction fees were $30.
>Also, Bitcoin can process far more than 7 tps through the Lighting network.
The lightning network is insecure during periods of high demand because you aren't able to safely close channels. Also, you still need to fund channels on L1 in the first place!
Oh, there will be runs.
If they remove the guardrails keeping crypto out of the regulated financial industry (read: KYC and AML requirements), your bank deposits will absolutely be comingled with toxic crypto assets, because it will be way cheaper to avoid paying compliance people than the transaction fees.
Will definitely be entertaining to watch if it happens.
It won't be bozo bucks because like you said it has a real value. Having international, anonymous, instant money laundering machine is invaluable. It will take legislation to criminalize people from taking part in the money laundering machine to kill the value. That isn't happening in the next 3 years.
I am sorry to tell you that the majority of the services that you may be using (Stripe, OpenAI, Anthropic, PayPal, etc) all have exposure or have some form of funding by crypto.
> Who's going to give you anything for your bozo bucks? At this rate, it's not going to take long.
It's already here. Scan your eye-balls for some Worldcoins ($WLD) to prove you are not a LLM bot.
You might want to go look at CDO's... or synthetic CDOs.
In comparison, crypto looks like a rational product relative to that.
The bad idea was making bad loans, putting them in CDOs, and then using flawed models to certify them as risk free. That's irrational.
Dividing up the credit risk on a pool of loans so that some people lose money only if all the loans go bad is a very good idea. You just need to make sure they are good loans.
The irony being it would actually help lower the barrier for entry a little to get a home loan on the consumer end of the spectrum but as you said they dropped that barrier subterranean and then predatory crap like payment-option ARMs and a massive lack of informed consent.
I think like, 90% of the crypto trading volume is by people who know it's all a grift, but are hoping to get rich while the music is still playing.
People knowingly buy into pump & dumps, gambling that they're on the early (pump) side and hoping to get out before the dump.
People will happily collect commissions selling products they know are scams or will happily collect management fees for parking investor's capital into grifts.
You'll never get truly everyone to recognize it, and it only takes one sucker at the poker table to keep every seat filled.
> People knowingly buy into pump & dumps, gambling that they're on the early (pump) side and hoping to get out before the dump
I recently heard of a real estate person that wound up buying an entire neighborhood around one of the stadiums for next year's World Cup. The impetus for this decision was to jack up the rates during the tournament, and then sell them off after. Another person thinks renting a bunch of Teslas and then placing them Touro will be another get rich idea during the World Cup. There are all sorts of people that think they are smarter than everyone else and are so confident they just cannot think of any ways their idea will fail.
What makes you think that the participants are not in on the grift? People are different, some rather supports wholesome stuff, some don't give an f. And it's not just morals that differ, risk-taking is also individually different (and can change with age and other life situation too).
> What happens when everyone recognizes that the whole thing has turned into a money laundering grift?
Part of the problem is that this seems to describe most of the economy now. Maybe not specifically money laundering, but it’s all a grift whether we are talking about Binance, OpenAI, or Skydance-Paramount. There are grifts everywhere which just encourages more grifts as people see the resulting success and lack of consequences.
A part of me despises this orange guy,
another part is thankful that he is there as a proof that you can get to a high status and high relevance role in society and still mantain your humanity, your inner child alive, not being robotic and just have a blast doing whatever the f you want.
There is no point getting to the top if you then lose all your humanity and playfulness.
Like if the condition to become President were to become a robot like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, thanks no, I pass....Trump on the other hand is the best of both worlds.
> and still mantain your humanity
I am getting Poe's Law'd … right?
He's sending people to concentration camps & bombing boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. He's deported American children. Treatment of asylum seekers, treatment of immigrant's children, wanton discrimination against minority groups…
Humanity? Playfulness?
I don't say this lightly and I understand that it's neither a thorough nor an explicit question, however, I mean this in all seriousness:
What the fuck?
I see child, I don‘t see humanity.
They are synonymous really.
I’m not sure he’s maintained his humanity by maintaining his playfulness with the very lives of people being his playthings.
That is a strange way to spell "malignant narcissism".
I mean, did Kim Jong Un not qualify for this role to you? Or is that one actually horrifying and you put up some arbitrary distinction because... Trump?
Seems like just nuking the stupid AML rules would be better.
Pardon count per president:
Don't come here and lie. You almost doubled the number for Joe Biden (the vast majority of which were pardons for simple possession of marijuana) while omitting the extremely well-known fact that Trump pardoned ~1500 people who were convicted for offenses committed on January 6, thus deflating his total by >80%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_or_gra...
Even if the numbers were correct, the numbers are absolutely no use without context, except perhaps to allow partisan mud-slinging on Twitter.
Biden pardoned thousands of non-violent low-level marijuana convictions, which is why the numbers look like that. Trump pardoned a large number of violent protesters.
This is meaningless without context.
Not attacking you but using your message to say to anyone reading: Is there a lesson here about what our AI future looks like? The OG thread comment is using summarized information to induce anxiety. When everyone has a 'suped-up AI bot running around the net for them, how much more noise like this is there going to be? How many people will have armies?
Median net worth of pardonees? 6500 of Biden’s are for marijuana offenses. Not exactly corruption there.
Words and sentences can easily be misconstrued in threads like these.
I truly want to know of a better way to have discussions on a topic of this importance.
Don't let Trump pardon anyone? People are outraged because it is outrageous.
Can you imagine positive reasons why the pardon wouldn't be outrageous? This might be a more thought-provoking question. Is there no nuisance to this pardon?
Or better yet, prosecute corruption.
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I don't get the hate.
He served 4 months for a laundering case , and has built the most successful exchange. There are bankers and vcs doing far worse things. He deserved the pardon , and no, he doesn't control bitcoin
If we ever get trump out of office we need to re-arrest every last one of these guys. The supremes can whine and cry as we keep them in prison. They can raise an army if the want anything different.
Serious controls need to be placed around the pardon power.
Double Jeopardy is disallowed in the United States, they would have to be convicted on new crimes.
So much of what DJT is doing should be disallowed but isn't. So we can disallow them and then add an amendment to reverse all DJT executive orders and pardons.
I'm joking! Everything will be broken by then.
They most certainly committed other crimes which were uncovered when they were investigated for the crimes that they were charged and now pardoned of.
Also as I understand it, while the can't be tried twice for the same crime Federally, it's still possible that they can be tried in a state court for committing the same crime.
Name them as terrorists on bullshit nonexistent evidence and disappear them to CECOT. We already know you can get away with it.
that's for the gravy seals.. i mean ice gestapo. Send them where they sent the largely innocent.
The moment pardons are abused, the whole concept should be abolished. Pandora’s box is open now, unless you take it away, it’ll be continued to be abused.
Just the ones that Trump pardoned right?
there are good pardons out there. People who were rotting in prison for small amounts of drugs, etc.
.. but if you are trying to imply hunter biden, then fuck yeah I don't fucking care, put him in prison if that's what it takes.
Yes and also that the pardon power has been abused by every president (not just trump)
It feels like HN is slowly turning into reddit with the comment section becoming mostly snide remarks
Instead of just commenting about being dismayed with the state of things, how about step back and speculate as to why he did this pardon, and what the implications of it are.
I don't know the answer to either, but I surely didn't learn much from what used to be an insightful, intelligent crowd
You're being downvoted but I get where you're coming from.
The dismay is from not needing to speculate, wonder or theorize about why he did this pardon. It's a quid pro quo pardon for helping the Trump family make billions of dollars in under a year using the office of the president. The corruption is entirely flagrant and open.
Yeah, it's a forum of smart people, but none of those smarts are oriented to dealing with this kind of problem. There's a system but it's non-functional, laws but they're ignored, the tools are raw political and social power. It's going to take a while to figure out what to say and do about the slide from normal, functioning democracy into semi-theocratic banana republic.
I don't think we need to speculate much. He did the pardon because CZ bribed him with a lot of money. The implications are that Trump will keep abusing his power to keep receiving bribes.
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