Indeed. On the list of things to worry about, a Qatari $400M 747 is a lot higher than some gold.

Why are you fixated on the relative amounts, as if that's relevent? A bribe is a bribe is a bribe.

It's a gesture that says "I understand I need to give you this because you are in charge, and I need to go through you to get anything done". That's not how America works, and the fact anyone is giving any amount to get favors through Trump rather than maintaining a level playing field is the problem.

The first instance of this came in the form of tech companies renaming the "Gulf of Mexico" to the "Gulf of America." It was a small thing, but it was a gesture that showed they knew what they had to do to play ball in Trump's economy was to live in his constructed reality where it's the Gulf of America.

Then came the legal bribes where companies paid millions to settle the lawsuits he filed against them. Then came the tech bribes where they are literally giving him bars of gold for favored status.

Next will be him directing internal company culture and policy. Watch out to see which companies stop celebrating pride, it will likely be those who paid him bribes first. Then he will ask them to stop selling to certain "undesirable" customers, and they will oblige.

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ethbr1 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Because an explicit and stated method of this administration is to flood their opponents with things to fight, in the interest of pushing through big things that are important to them while their opponents are busy fighting everything and overwhelmed with the minutiae.

An effective response to that is calibrating ones outrage and asking "Out of all the things I could be fighting, what is the most impactful and important?"

Hence, I think it's a waste of time causing others to think about a token symbolic bribe.

Focus on the $250M+ bribes that are also happening.

	▲	SpicyLemonZest 13 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		What’s impactful to fight isn’t necessarily the same as what’s the highest dollar amount of bribe. I can’t demand that the Qatari government go to prison for giving Trump a plane, but I can (and do) demand that domestic businesspeople who give Trump gold bars should be arrested the day a Democratic president takes office. Tim Cook needs to spend some time in prison, and more importantly other executives need to know they’ll join him if they try to bribe or otherwise assist Trump.
	▲	ModernMech 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The Apple bribe isn't less problematic because the dollar amount is lower though. The magnitude of the damage is not measured in dollars, it's measured by the reach of corruption. Apple's bribe is the crack in the door that lets fascism in to American businesses. Apple, for its part, carries a certain amount of weight in the marketplace. What they do sets a tone, and the tone they've set is they are not above giving obvious bribes to a felonious racist wannabe dictator. If Apple is willing to play ball, most other corporations will as well. Imagine if things were the other way around and they told POTUS to shove it. Maybe other corporations would do so as well.