do you have supreme court immunity?
There will never be a payout of 5 k ,from taco, all lies
But the far right pretending to be socialists and for the workers is a long tradition dating back to at least 1920.
Everything is legal when everyone let you write the rules.
Or ignore the rules that someone else wrote to prevent you from doing the thing.
It’s hilarious that everyone here is assuming he’s not just straight up lying about giving that money to everyone and not just the people who vote Republican.
They are very interested in state voter information.
It is hilarious that every MAGA idiot and apparently you think that he is going to pay anyone that money. He has made similar promises before, breaking his promise time after time.
Nobody is getting any money
Oh people will get money. It’s just that the ones who will get aren’t the ones who need it
Yes, but dipshit in chief is lying to you, but hypothetically it would be legal.
If the 5k were reliant on you voting for hin and not somebody else then that could be illegal, but his lie was that everyone would get the 5k just like he previously lied about 2k stimulus on multiple occasions.
But he is lying.
Biden promised to wipe out student debt and by god he tried it on three or more occasions. Is that illegal? Was it illegal for Bernie Sanders to campaign for free college and medical?
But Trump is lying to you.
Saying “I’ll increase quality of life” is not the same as “I’ll give you cash” the first is a normal political promise and the second is a scammer. What everyone else has said and done is not to be compared to this trash bribery. You are right that trump is full of shit but very wrong with your shit both sides argument.
Saying “I’ll increase quality of life” is not the same as “I’ll give you cash”
It is when you have to spend money to get quality of life such as education and healthcare.
Spending taxpayer money on quality of life is something that is expected of politicians, are you implying you expect cash handouts the same way?
Thats how the pandemic stimulus checks worked.
With a specific quid pro quo nature? You really are a fucking moron you know that?
Trump specifically said everyone gets the 5k. He’s a lying piece of shit who breaks laws every day but this is a bad example of that.
You’re saying there’s a reason he couldn’t just give the money now? That’s the difference. There’s no reason he wouldn’t get it passed through right now he’s just trying to buy votes.
is there any rule that say a president cant scam the people?
People are downvoting based on what they want the law to be rather than how it actually is. Trump’s promise is functionally the same as promising tax cuts, it’s just that he knows how to phrase it in a way that makes people feel more directly connected to it.
Turns out the president is above the law, and can only be impeached, given the rare condition that the opposition party has a supermajority in Congress, of course!
Presidential immunity only extends to official acts see here. That said, its so poorly defined as to be irrelevant at the moment.
Still, I suspect distributing checks from the federal government that was not appropriated by congress would very much fail to qualify.
When there are no consequences, everything is an official act.
Laws are as good as they are enforced. Look at speeding in a car. If you don’t get caught, if everyone else is doing it and the few cops around aren’t bothering to pull anyone over, it’s still illegal. Yet it doesn’t matter.
Or more comparable, someone of high importance is caught speeding, but when the cop sees who it is they let them go with a “warning”, i.e. do nothing. Still illegal, but okay for them to do apparently.
This isn’t an enforcement problem. What Trump is doing isn’t illegal and it shouldn’t be illegal. There’s nothing wrong with running for office promising to pass legislation establishing a government program if your side wins. You’re arguing for a standard that would have made it impossible to create Medicare, Social Security, or any other government program. Those all started as promises of, “if my side wins, we’ll pass a law giving people money.”
I see your point. If he was arguing for a law or program. Saying everyone get a check without anything more isn’t the same. For one, it isn’t going to happen because it would need legislation, which means a bill and a plan to fund it. And it’s Trump, so it’s not going to happen because he just says things.
Now if he said he’s going to propose and make Congress pass a law that gives every adult $1000 each month that is funded through tax increases on higher brackets… suddenly he’s pushing for UBI, and that’s a great idea. (or the start of one, I think it needs to be more complex than that for cost of living variations)
They are two very different things.
In one case you’re handing people real money on the street for their vote.
In the other your making a “campaign promise” that everyone knows isn’t actually real.Question from far away: do even the basic, illiterate, red-capped MAGAts not believe it? Or is the fanbase waiting for its manna?
I think they know Trump is full of shit, they just don’t care so long as he’s ‘hurting the right people’.
They’d let Trump shit in their mouth if it meant a ‘librul’ would have to smell it.
Yeah. Well. Thanks. It’s so absurd my mind reels thinking about it.
Believe it’s true literally?
NoIt’s a concept known as Kayfabe. A special kind of pretending, where both performer and audience act as if something is real, when both know it isn’t. It started with American professional wrestling. Wrestlers would do interviews, even greet fans after the show and sign autographs as their characters, not as themselves.
So no, even his MAGA supporters don’t literally believe he’ll give them $5k, they just accept is as a promise that he and the Republicans will do good things for them generally. They like the sound of it, even though they know it’s not “real”.
The way my kid kept pretending to believe in Santa for two years. I saw her point then. Thank you.
It’s not a campaign promise. He’s already elected!
He’s campaigning for the Republicans generally during this midterm Republican “convention”.
Campaigning for ones-self isn’t the only time or way to campaign.
This is what tips me over the edge, all in on maga now. I’m surely gonna collect the 5k from the dude famous for stiffing contractors and bankrupting casinos
This is most r/nostupidquestions thing that has ever been asked here. It’s just bait.
Technically, the equivalent would be you standing outside a polling place with a sign saying “I will give every adult in the area $500 if Candidate X wins”.
Ostensibly, you could just be lying (just like Trump) - and that would probably be covered under your 1st Amendment rights.
It’s stupid, but there is enough of a disconnect between action and reward that it might skirt past.
No, that’s not how that works.
18 U.S.C. § 597 - U.S. Code - Unannotated Title 18. Crimes and Criminal Procedure § 597.
Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate; and
Whoever solicits, accepts, or receives any such expenditure in consideration of his vote or the withholding of his vote—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
That seems pretty straightforward. So the law is correct, it’s just useless because the system founded on these laws is broken.
I didn’t realize Ayn Rand’s ghost had a lemmy account.
This isn’t broken at all. Unless you think every form of government social spending should be illegal, then you shouldn’t try to make it a felony for politicians to run for office promising to establish government programs or give people money through acts of Congress. You’re advocating for full on libertarianism.
I think you are confusing paying someone a direct bribe for their vote, with infrastructure spending. When you say it isn’t broken at all, are you saying that an imperfect dystopia based on power and money is the utopian goal that we all seek? I say a lot is working, but a lot is broken. When you say ‘not broken at all’ then I cannot believe you have a good understanding of the societal wherewithal.
You need to work on your reading comprehension.
Well…there is no way I can defend against an argument like that.
It would be pointless. Your reading skills are not developed enough to merit a proper reply.
What if someone says, “5000 will be on the table if I’m really happy. Candidate x winning will make me really happy”?
I should look forward to Trump getting charged with that, then?
But more seriously, there would be countless lawyers happy to argue that a general statement such as “$500 to every adult in the county if John Smith wins” does not technically break that particular law because it’s not explicitly targeted at any one individual recipient, nor is it contingent on them participating in an election whatsoever.
Just as I’m also sure there would be more than one sympathetic Trump-appointed judge to side with the defendant too.
US laws mean nothing if they aren’t actively being followed.
People in this thread forget that the Supreme Court already gave Trump immunity from prosecution.
Though this becomes wishy with politicians/parties. You offering to pay for people’s healthcare costs if they vote for your favourite candidate would probably be illegal, but a candidate promising to institute universal healthcare is just a campaign promise, so this law leaves a very legitimate open question of when something a candidate says stops being a campaign promise and starts being a legally problematic bribe, because ultimately all campaign promises boil down to “vote for me and I will do something good for you/something you like”.
You could very much argue that a candidate promising UBI is effectively not very different from what Trump promised.
“I will give you money if you vote for me”
Is different from
“I will give everyone money if I win”
The first is paying someone to vote and is outlawed by the law you cited. The second has a disconnect between the money and the vote. Everyone gets the money, even those that voted for the other guy. Thus it might be legal.
Oh I’m REALLY playing devil’s advocate on this one
Promising everyone, no exceptions, 5k if you win, is kind of a campaign promise rather than a bribe.
I’m going to shower for 2 hours to get the stench off me now
Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate;
“I will give everyone money if I win” is offering money to people for voting. Voting for the candidate is implied, yes, but offering to pay everyone is still offering money to people for voting.
Sounds to me like this has to be tried in court (unless it has not already) for a legal president to be made, and thus decided if it is legal or not. IANAL
Yes.
And even worse, we’ve seen it done by other presidents in recent memory, like when Biden promised a $2000 COVID aid check if the Dems won Georgia, which they did, and then the amount shrank to $1400.
Biden wasn’t president at that time.
Totally man.
Wasn’t Biden out here promising $2000 checks. Nope. No sir-ee.
Biden has also been very well known for 40+ years for not paying contractors, so we should have known his word wasn’t good.
Oh wait now hold on…
These stimulus checks were approved and backed by Trump but blocked by the Republican controlled Senate. Biden wasn’t offering them as a reward for voting a certain way. He was warning that if those seats were lost Republicans would block the checks. Trump was pushing for these checks publicly
Biden wasn’t offering them as a reward for voting a certain way.
Okay.
He was warning that if those seats were lost Republicans would block the checks
You realize that’s the same thing, right? Elect my guys and you get money.
I don’t think you read your own article.
I don’t think you read your own article. Joe was already picked and he was referring to the runoffs. The actual situation was that Trump was promising the checks and then when he lost the Republicans blocked the funds for it as punishment for not electing him again. Biden supporting them and needed a majority to overcome the block. The first part of the checks was released under Trump still in December, but no more disbursement was being allowed by congress.
Yes, the situation isn’t 100% one-to-one, but it’s similar enough to what Donald is doing.
“Elect my guys and you get money.” (And the messaging at the time was 100% like that.)
Though the scummy nature of promising people $2000 of their own money and only approving $1400 is notable.
That article was from Jan 5, 2021.
Surely the best response the Democrats could say is “if we win the midterms we’ll use Trumps financial plans to give you all 5k”… Trump can hardly then criticise it, it takes away the advantage of the bribe and if they win the midterms they can then declare “it was all bollocks there is no trillion dollars left lieing around to hand out”
I mean, There’s also the more direct approach if one wants to give out bribes in return for votes… Remember this? Tell me more about how amazing and just the Western Democracy is.
Laws protect the rich and bind the poor. The law is operating exactly as intended.
