318
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
318 points (94.4% liked)
Not The Onion
11114 readers
554 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Heres how this grift works, its become quite common and started with books. Once you know it you will see it all the time.
Politician writes book = politicians pr firm hires ghost writer to write book.
Politician says one controversial/spicy/tell all thing in book
Politician goes on all news shows to promote book/super spicy new hot take
Politicians PAC/dark money donor/political party/putin buys up millions of copy of said book injecting millions into campaign not subject to campaign finance laws that can be spent without regard to laws or limits because its "income".
This massive buy immediately puts book on best seller list while books sit in warehouse.
Books in warehouse legitimately sold/given away at campaign events or give as " FREE" copy if you donate X amount today.
Politician gets to be on all cable news shows, gets a massive injection of untraceable cash that isnt subject to campaign finance law, and now is a new york times best selling author. Win, win, win.
Its just money laundering
Trumps shoes? Same as his super hero cards. Its a way to launder in untraceable money from putin, perhaps folks he sold nuclear secrets to, and god knows who else. If it doesnt seem to make sense that all of the sudden trump is selling sneakers its because it doesnt. Hes laundering dark money in full view of the public.
personally, i find the one with artwork more subtle, where they have some artist draw some low effort crap, then sell it for millions to cover up what the money was actually for.
Is this still an almost exclusively republican graft or are there now also democrats who have started doing the same thing?
Edit: since this question is apparently gathering downvotes without an answer, an explanation for why I posed this question:
As far as I know this is not a "both sides" problem, but it's something that is being systematically done by republican politicians, not by democrat politicians. Framing it as something that is done by "politicians" paints all politicians as equally bad and deplorable, but that is simply not the case for this practice.
Now I do not consume all possible media all the time, so it's possible that I am out of the loop in this instance and this practice is now also being done by democrats, which is why I asked the question.
I didn't see "Republican" in the breakdown, just "politician".
Yeah, it's a "both sides" argument, while it actually isn't both sides. The comment is trying to paint politicians from both sides as equally bad, while I have only read articles about republicans doing this. And they've been at it for years, it must have been 2019 or 2020 when I first read about the book thing.
But moral standards for democrats are slipping as well, which is why I wanted to give that poster the benefit of the doubt and I was hoping that someone could provide a source showing that (some) democrats too are now guilty of this.
I don’t think it’s all money laundering. NFTs sure, but this seems more like the MAGA hats he sold to all of his fans.
Maybe democrats should take a page out of his book and sell tangible items instead of just asking for donations.