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Comment by joenot443 | Hacker News Reader

Much of Trump's decisionmaking in his first term was erratic and generally unwarranted, but I still I think it's totally fair to ask for clarification about claims of that level of severity.

To my knowledge, if I'm understanding rbanffy's position correctly, this would be the first time in history US president was directly being bribed by a foreign actor, so I still maintain it's worth seeking clarification.

Am I wrong in holding skepticism here? I don't doubt there are political points to be gained for Trump here, especially given the domestically controversial nature of the ban, but I'd really love for someone to hold true to the original notion under question that someone (ByteDance, CCP, etc.) is "paying the incoming president", as rbanffy suggseted.

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> Am I wrong in holding skepticism here?

As somebody coming from a third-world country, it’s a matter of fact that the people view politicians as a corrupt group. They think they are better than the people they represent, they are multiple times richer than the population and campaigns range from distorted truths to clear lies.

Proven or unproven, a claim that a given politician received bribes to influence something is not met with skepticism, but a mere “yeah, of course”!

Some say the US is a rich third-world country, or becoming one.

Why do we bother with the farce that elected representatives are better than us? They are looking for their own interests.

See the inauguration fund. Money completely unaccounted for and that his team is saying pay to get exclusive access to Trump. It’s pay to play and it’s legal (at least for Americans).

> Am I wrong in holding skepticism here?

Certainly. The whole corruption setup is always done in such a way that there is never direct proof, only some more or less well hidden ones. So if you expect somebody here will post a recording of their bribe negotiations, that won't ever happen, Trump would directly order CIA to eliminate such person with extreme prejudice, and that's how it would have been done.

Look, he is crook, smart, properly fucked up man baby with issues that no psychologist could ever fix, but he is a crook at the core. These are facts. Enough evidence with few seconds of googling to condemn 10 such persons of highly amoral and sometimes also criminal behavior. And everybody knows it, even here. So folks understand how to deal with such currently most powerful person, so they do.

I don't get where your doubts come from. Facts are out there, you only need to connect few dots.

Certainly this is not the first time that's happened. Trump has been President before. What he got up to is indeed the first time in history that happened, but not because he was directly bribed by a foreign actor: that's most likely already happened. The case of Trump is entirely stranger.

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