Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/11/donald-trump-once-donated-thou.html
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Donald Trump donated thousands to Senator Kamala Harris—Joe Biden’s 2020 VP pick—for her 2011 attorney general election as the AG office investigated Trump University’s allegedly illegal business practices
“I’ll notice that Kamala Harris is a black woman & he donated to her campaign so I hope we can squash this racism argument now.”
“I’m not racist - I’d try to influence any attorney general investigating my businesses no matter what race they are!”
- Trump, probably
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Love how Trump’s folks are trying to simultaneously argue that
- Trump didn’t know anything about the woman whose campaign he was supporting, and
- Trump clearly isn’t racist because he supported a woman of color for office
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The real story, of course, is that this is what ultra-wealthy people do in America. There’s a good chance he and Ivanka both donated to Harris’s opponent in the same election, too.
A shame that campaign finance reform was nailed into a coffin by Citizens United, and a real shame that it’s very unlikely that Biden and Harris want to pry it open with crowbars.
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I was wondering why electing civil servants is considered a good idea, and why the election campaign would need to cost more than $5,000 but then I’m not American, so it all just seems odd.
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Greasy Guy greases a lot of palms. News at 11:00.
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I’m with the other commenters here that I don’t make much of this: rich people give money to politicians to curry favour without necessarily caring who they are.
However, I just heard Morning Joe say: “He thought she was so nice he donated twice,” and I was nearly crying with laughter.
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“I hope we can squash this racism argument now.”
Pfft. No.
If you’re trying to pay off someone in power when you have a legal case in front of them, race has nothing to do with it. Gargamel would happily pay off Papa Smurf if he thought it would benefit him, but you can bet he still wants to catch him and all the other Smurfs.
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It’ll be fun to see this spun in the wingnut media: “She’s corrupt! She took bribes! From us!”
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Gargamel only gave $5k to Harris Smurf. I heard Smurfette got $130k.
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Bill Barr illustrates the problem with letting The Leader hire and fire attorney generals at will
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But attorneys general aren’t hired or fired at will. They’re hired or fired with the advice and consent of the Senate. Just because the Senate is currently made up of a majority of lickspittle Trump lackeys, and just because Barr perjured himself repeatedly during his confirmation hearing, doesn’t mean that electing civil servants is a good idea.
Oh look, it’s James O’Keefe’s whole career
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California has elected their Attorneys General for centuries now, maybe you should take it up with them
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If they follow through on the words and promises it’ll be nice, but this is far from the first time that establishment Dems have made those nice statements and not followed through.
And from the 1990s…
With the election of Bill Clinton and a large contingent of new members of Congress who ran on a government “reform” platform, there was great hope that the first significant reforms of the campaign finance system in 20 years would pass. But instead of a White House signing ceremony, we see hopes for this year dashed and spending in the 1994 elections soaring to new heights. What happened, and what can we expect next year?
More importantly, these are also politicians who are still addicted to big-money donations themselves despite it being demonstrated by more progressive former rivals that a Dem can raise lots of money exclusively through small donors. I’d have more confidence that they were approaching with crowbars instead of nail clippers if they were setting an example in their own campaign conduct.
Finally, I don’t see the words “FEC reform” and “shortened campaign season” in there. Focus on those two things and the power of the duopoly establishment (which sucks up the vast bulk of campaign funds between two parties) and the need to raise megabucks in general are greatly reduced without the need for a Constitutional amendment that may take a generation to put into place.
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I know, technically, 5 of something is plural - but thousands of dollars? Makes it sound like a hefty sum. Five grand is not any money at all in that world.
Then again, five cents is too much money to give a politician.
There are other options available.
Donald Trump once used his charity’s coffers to pay his own son’s $7 Cub Scouts registration fee. This is not a person who spends his own money on stuff he doesn’t care about.
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Oh so it was an attempted bribe. I had heard this story as “Harris is so right wing even Trump supported her”.
