T-Mobile admits it spent $195000 on Trump hotel while lobbying for Sprint merger | Hacker News Reader

T-Mobile admits it spent $195000 on Trump hotel while lobbying for Sprint merger

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37 pointsrbanffy14 comments

This is getting crazy.

If we had elected Larry Page, would it be a scandal that T-Mobile supports Android phones?

If we had elected Jeff Bezos, would it be a scandal for T-Mobile to use AWS?

Yes I think we ought to view it as a scandal.

It seems you think that the president and his family must not engage in any sort of business. Are there any exceptions to that?

I don't see anywhere in the US Constitution where a vow of poverty is required. If this were the case, then we could only elect professional politicians at best... or maybe just the homeless. They'd have to be orphaned and single of course, to ensure that family members can't pursue any economic activity either.

Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer and Ronald Reagan was an actor. Government workers sometimes flew on Pan Am, an airline which served peanuts and played movies starring Ronald Reagan. Do you think we ought to view it as a scandal? Both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan stood to profit from this.

Yeah it's fine if the president has business interests as long as their political decisions aren't influenced by their finances. If Jimmy Carter was influenced by good deals for his peanut farm, that would be a scandal too. Companies are choosing to patronize the President's hotel business with the goal of receiving preferential treatment.

OK, so then you must not object to T-Mobile at the Trump hotel, because there is zero evidence that:

a. Trump's political decisions were influenced by T-Mobile or any other hotel customer

b. T-Mobile or any other company chose the hotel with the goal of receiving preferential treatment

I can't even find evidence that Trump got involved in the merger deal. The closest I can find is some insinuations based on the fact that Trump met the CEO of SoftBank back in 2016.

The amount of revenue (not profit) is only about 1/20000 of Trump's wealth, which is equivalent to under $10 for a normal person. That is practically nothing. It doesn't even go into Trump's pocket. Most will go to supplies and wages and rent, so it's more like the amount being under $1 for a normal person. That would be a joke of a bribe.

The place is a fancy hotel in DC. That is exactly the sort of place you'd expect to be used by corporate executives who need to meet with government officials in DC.

It would be news if the executives stayed at a Motel 6, or if they picked a hotel in Pennsylvania.

195,000 USD on a hotel bill while lobbying the person that owns the hotel.

Adjusted for inflation, that is probably just a day worth of peanuts for Pan Am.

It's also far less than the cost of having Bill Clinton give a speech in Moscow to bankers who are lobbying his wife in the State Department. That happened.

That's just pure whataboutism

Your claim of "whataboutism" is a tired old attempt to dismiss your own hypocrisy. It's not fooling anybody. The moment you mention it, you have confirmed what is obvious: you don't actually care about the issue, except to get in a dig at the president, and would not hold other presidents to the same standard.

This is textbook whataboutism, no one is saying the other is not corruption, no one is saying other instances are ok. I don't know why you think the discussion is a scale with weight on two sides, with one side being a 'winner'. Crime and bribery are wrong, period.

If there is a 5% profit on that, and Trump has $3.9 billion, then this is 1/400000 of his wealth. That is like a profit of $0.01 to $1.00 for a normal American. (who would have $4000 to $400,000 total, including the value of any car or house)

So it is like the pocket change that people often leave behind in a cup when they buy donuts and coffee. Could I bribe you with a dime? It's most unimpressive, isn't it? Such a bribery attempt would likely backfire due to being an insult.

This is outright bribery. We've become so inured to this kind of thing lately that it doesn't seem to register anymore.

From T-Mobile's perspective: I pay (inflated prices) for hotel stays in a very visible way (bright magenta suits!), you help secure a desired policy outcome.

Seems to be a pattern of those claiming they will "drain the swamp" being even more corrupt than their predecessors. Trudeau's attempt up here in Canada is even more disheartening because we actually believed him.

Waaay at the bottom of the article is the truth. "The spending is only 14 percent of T-Mobile’s total spending on DC-area hotels — half of which went to Hilton hotels...."

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