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”
No, it’s not legal, but at this point there are no federal officials left who are willing to enforce the law when Republicans break it.
Two centuries ago, a somewhat obscure Scotsman named Tytler made this profound observation: ‘A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.’
Also if you have sex with a minor is illegal but if you are the President then it’s OK.
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.
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.
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.
“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
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
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.
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.
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.
What if someone says, “5000 will be on the table if I’m really happy. Candidate x winning will make me really happy”?
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.
Yes it is illegal for you to do that, as it would be for Trump. But no, Trumps proposed 5k checks to all adult citizens, as I understand it, is legal. I’m pretty disappointed in the other answers. A few relevant points.
- Remember the model for sending checks to folks: CARES. Both Biden and Trump have previously done this.
- Congress can legally amend and pass laws. Note that the law that makes bribing for votes illegal is not in the constitution, so it requires only the usual legal action to amend it.
- I note that the policy Trump proposed isn’t discriminatory on who you vote for; your hypothetical does. (I suspect this is irrelevant for the legality, but certainly helps the optics.)
do you have supreme court immunity?
It’s very different. One is “I will give YOU money if you vote for me” and the other is “I will give EVERYONE money if I win”. The main difference is that one is not discriminating against who people voted for. The first is buying votes, the second is a campaign similar to “I will retroactively lower taxes for this year if I win”, which I don’t think anyone would see as problematic but it’s exactly the same outcome as the one you’re finding problem with, i.e. give people money.
It’s a stupid campaign because anyone with half a brain understand that he’s not going to do it and that that money would have to come from someplace else, but it’s still a campaign promise similar to any other promise politicians make to ask you to vote for them.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
It is a very unfortunate situation, one that definitely affects 70 billion people. But please solve your own problems on your own. So far I’ve filtered out
/Trump/iand still about 30% of the posts are about him.There’s just one country who’s political problems are spammed all over. They should find their own communities.
Laws protect the rich and bind the poor. The law is operating exactly as intended.
That’s the secret to Conservative power in America.
Step 1: Make everything illegal
Step 2: Accept bribes to overlook crimes of allies
Step 3: Punish the shit out of your opponents.
Congrats! America is now Russia, with better food and shittier fascists.
It’s still illegal; it’s just that nobody will enforce the law against the orange bastard. The motherfucker was literally convicted of 34 felonies and hasn’t paid any fines or faced a minute of jail time, FFS.
Was it illegal for Bernie Sanders to campaign on free medical and college?
Rather than tilt and rave let’s approach this from another angle: Trump promised funds from DOGE and balanced budgets on multiple occasions and you’re never going to see any of it. He is a liar.
What a moronic take. Line genuinely.
The guy is a huge troll, I have tagged them thusly and he had continued to live up to that moniker
my tag just says “moron”
they’re not smart enough go earn the troll tag ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I do agree, when I tagged the person it wasn’t so clear to me, but they seem very consistent.
rofl imagine being the fucking clown pretending free medicsl and college would be a bad thing.
Again: Fucking. Clown.
Was it illegal for Bernie Sanders to campaign on free medical and college?
No because that would have been done through normal policy change and actually a thing an elected official should try and do. What is going on in the question (even if it is a lie) is bribery. It’s not even remotely the same, and it speaks volumes of your character that you would even try and equate them.
Trump’s and Bernie’s plans would both require congress because the president literally has no access to funds without it.
I worry about people spreading these lies because it is in fact a great policy stance.
If it’s a great policy stance, they should do it now when they know they have control of both legislatures. Why wait?
So you think promising money he’ll never give out is a “great policy stance”? Huh???
giving out money is a great policy
voting for Trump or believing anything he says is idiocy
Your suposition is that the power of the purse still applies here. Trump has operated the executive as a collective slush fund, many times using horrible arguments that fail in court and then proceeding anyways. Also he’s allocated money from military coup projects like Venezuala to funds not under congressional control illegally.
Bernies plan is to first expand Medicare to all ages. Going off Trump’s logic this would be done by directing CMS by executive order to adjust the rates, the treasury department to allocate the necessary trust fund expenditures, the IRS to apply the necessary taxes, and the justice department to aggressively target every single possible violation in the private health insurance industry. Bernie’s actual plan is to use the bully pulpit as intended to pressure congress to act in accordance with those changes ahead of time, completely different. That’s because Trump moves to erode government into the pockets of the rich and Bernie seeks to build it stronger to benefit everyone. Executive overreach expansion has only been applied to benefit the rich effectively where everywhere else it had failed.
The DHS and especially ICE also lost funding and shut down a lot of offices for over a month until the GOP passed a reconciliation bill.
Even if overreach is occuring he is not going to pull 1.5 Trillion Dollars out of his ass.
He had a whole goddamn sentencing hearing where they sentenced him to nothing. Explicitly.
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.
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.
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?
Americans refuse to apply the law to trump for some reason
How do you expect that to happen when the fascists own and operate all three branches of government and are hands on with DoJ?
Americans have no choice in the matter, if we’re talking about legal channels.
For real. Like yeah, lemme just waltz my ass on over there and issue a citizens arrest. That will go over splendidly.
All the idiots who say this shit think they would be the one to kill Hitler if they were born in Nazi Germany. There’s a reason it took a foreign military invading to push him to do it himself.
I’ve even heard dipshits say “Well America had a Civil War in the past” as if that war was declared by the people and not their governments and fought by their militaries.
Conservatism is entirely about the laws applying differently to different people. The king is special. The nobles are a little less special. The peasants are trash. The slaves are worse. That’s the conservative world. Hierarchy. So of course they don’t want to apply rules to their chief.
They are worse than children.
there’s a major error in that the president, according to legal experts, can’t be arrested by anyone but congress and the house, which makes no sense. he should simply be president from a poison at this point.
No. It’s just moronic to argue that this is or should be illegal. For fuck’s sake, people in this thread are arguing it should be illegal for politicians for run for office promising to establish new government programs or give people money. They’re letting their campist impulses cloud their judgment.
it’s very different to say ‘‘I’ll extend medicade to all’’ vs ‘‘if I win this election I’ll cut you a literal check’’ there are different meanings here.
