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'No idea who he is', says Trump after pardoning crypto tycoon

174 points by jmsflknr 11mo ago

close04 11mo ago
> Trump added that he did not recall meeting Zhao and had "no idea who he is", only that he had been told that the businessman was a victim of a "witch hunt" by the administration of former US president Joe Biden. This sums up this administration quite well. Too often no idea what they're doing but doing it out of spite nonetheless.
- sholain 11mo ago
  The US President and his family's newfound crypto fortune, worth billions, managed by himself, his sons and 'Steve Witkoff' (his business partner who is 'negotiating' deals in the Middle East and Russia, and whereupon 100's of Millions of $ is coming unto World Liberty backed coins) is called 'World Liberty Financial' ... ... and is hosted by Binance which is the crypto platform owned by Zhao. Zhao was found guilty of ignoring oversight regulations allowing nefarious actors (ISIS, Cartels, sex traffickers) to transact on his platform. There's no way in high heaven that the President could be unaware of the fact that Zhao is the CEO who of the platform that hosts almost all of Trump's wealth. Moreover, this man is convicted specifically for ignoring the lighter oversight regulations, with operations in parts of the world that are out of reach of US investigators and justice system.
- rob74 11mo ago
  In other cases that might be true, but in this case, I seriously doubt that Trump really has no idea who the founder of the platform that is deeply involved in his cryptocurrency dealings is. So, either he's lying, or everyone (including his family) is doing everything behind his back. Or his dementia is worse than everyone thinks... > On March 13th, it was reported that representatives of President Trump’s family were in talks to acquire a financial stake in Binance. Soon after, on March 25th, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial (WLF), announced that it would launch a new stablecoin, USD1, and the former Binance CEO posted on X welcoming them to its platform. (https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/forwarding-van-hollen-warren-lead-colleagues-in-pressing-bessent-bondi-on-oversight-of-binance-following-reported-meetings-with-company-executives-and-administration-officials https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/forwarding-...)
  - actionfromafar 11mo ago
    "How dare you!? That's just coincidence. Stop the witch hunt of our Leader Dear Trump!"
- ejcho 11mo ago
  reminds me of https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/at-least-we-owned-the-libs https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/at-least-we-owned-the-li...
measurablefunc 11mo ago
It looks like there is some kind of honor among thieves contrary to the old saying.
- dandanua 11mo ago
  No, it's calculus. Working together they can steal much much more.
spiderfarmer 11mo ago
I was discussing with some Dutch friends last night if we still considered the US a 'better' country than China. The outcome of that discussion should worry Americans.
- bluealienpie 11mo ago
  America has never been concerned about anything other than America. They literally couldn't care less that they have threaten to take over Canada... Potentially Greenland and Panama militarily.
  - actionfromafar 11mo ago
    That's just blatantly false. American power derives not only from raw power, but from alliances. It will be apparent, that it's really hard to get things done when your former allies start slowrolling all your requests. Unless you mean it like, "countries have no friends", but that's not a very interesting observation.
    - jack_tripper 11mo ago
      Now THAT is blatantly false. American power today stems from its power, military and fiscally (which is also backed militarily). Most countries in the world today are allied to the US out of economic, trade and defense necessity and co-dependence, because all other alternatives are worse for them due to the immense asimetric power disparity. This might shock you but most countries in the world don't like the US government and its policies, especially after their illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, but have no way to push back without negative repercussions to their economy, so they have to play along as allies whether they like it or not for their own good. Feel free to down vote all you want, but I'm not revealing anything new or controversial here but it's the truth as all countries, kingdoms and empires throughout history have had alliances with others they didn't like, out of sheer necessity. Same how we in the liberal west have also been trading and having economic ties with the CCP, post-Crimean invasion Russia, Erdogan's Turkey and middle eastern countries that assassinate our journalists, as capitalism post-USSR collapse has prioritized monetary enrichment over fighting for upholding a western ideology.
clort 11mo ago
So, the guy is convicted of fraud - but fraud is business as usual for Trump, so it counts as a witch hunt.
mschuster91 11mo ago
The usual dementia jokes aside... of all the things surrounding this administration, this is amongst the most harmless. It may be a "presidential" power to pardon on paper, but the reality is that unless the President (or in other countries with powers of clemency to the head of state, whoever wields that power) intervenes personally for whatever reason, petitions for clemency pass through layers of bureaucracy, reviews and meetings. And sometimes, that also includes that candidates get inserted into the process by influential aides - something that has been the case for a lot of Presidents on either side of the aisle. Of course, the issue gets a bit more spicy given Trump's derogatory nickname of "Autopen" Biden, but leaving that aside it's no surprise to me that a US President isn't involved in dealing with clemency petitions all that much.
- watwut 11mo ago
  Considering Trump getting rich of crypto grifting and Trump making sure crypto is as unregulated as possible, this particular pardon is perfectly consistent with Trump policies.
- sholain 11mo ago
  To the contrary, this is possibly an extremely dangerous and corrupt action (I'm saying 'possible' here). Zhao manages Binance upon which Trump's nefarious crypto operation - World Liberty Financial is hosted. Zhao is guilty of wilfully ignoring a lot of very bad and illegal activity by all sorts of bad actors. World Liberty Financial is receiving $100's of millions inbound, coincident with 'deals' made by US and Middle East actors etc.. WLF is co-managed by Steve Witkoff, the 'real estate magnate' who has been charged with Middle Easter nand Russia negotiations (who by the ay has absolutely no diplomatic background, historical context or understanding of this situations and is deeply unqualified) and who notably has been entering into negotiations and discussion with foreign parties without any US State Dept personnel. Sometimes not even translators. Subsequent to those 'deals' with Qatar etc. which the Administration indicated there would be up to $1T invested in the US ... Qatar and other regimes have been flushing massive amounts of noney into WLF, hosted on Binance, overseen by Zhao. The potentiality fore corruption is hard to overstate.
  - 11mo ago
arjie 11mo ago
I think, in general, it's possible to get a view of how an Executive Order is signed by looking at the example of the H-1B $100k fee signing (which we now understand to be far more constrained than it first appeared). Here's a video https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1969157504211808579 https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1969157504211808579 where President Trump's "we need more workers" is contrasted with his aides' statements. It would appear the these things are less an act of the President as a fully informed person making decisions and more of the final rubber stamp on something that staff that he's picked have decided on. Given that, I wouldn't expect him to personally know what he is signing. If, as I suspect, these pardons are pay-to-play deals, it's someone else managing the operation under his guidance and he's just the guy with the pen so to speak.
- ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 11mo ago
  You wouldn’t expect Trump specifically to know what he is signing or any competent President in the same situation?
- lawn 11mo ago
  That was already clear from his last term, and he's much less lucid this time around.
- sholain 11mo ago
  Trump's personal, newfound multi-billion dollar crypto fortune is hosted by Zhao. I don't mean to be breaking any etiquette her by re-indicating this, but it's I think it's unreasonable to suggest that Trump could not know who this person is. This is Trump's new 'personal banker' , who doesn't have to play be the constrained rules of $USD denominated financial regulations.
fabian2k 11mo ago
All of the possible explanations for this are bad and arguably disqualifying for the presidency: - Trump is lying so that he doesn't have to explain a quid-pro-quo pardon - Trump is dement and already forgot about the pardon - Trump wasn't the one actually pardoning him and his administration just did it The last one would be particularly ironic given the obsession with Joe Biden's Autopen.
- newfriend 11mo ago
  And the only plausible explanation: The President is dealing with hundreds of issues per day, including pardoning many people via recommendation. Someone came to him and said "we should pardon this guy who got a bum rap from Biden". Trump said, sure why not, and signed his pardon. No ridiculous conspiracy necessary.
ehnto 11mo ago
He should know though shouldn't he, as acting president of the US he should aim to learn and know these things as part of his service to the country. Like when he's unaware of certain bills or important procedings, maybe he legitimately doesn't know, but he should. It's part of his job to know. Of course the ignorance could be a lie, which is worse, but neither option is good. So in some ways it doesn't really matter, it's already a bad outcome.
- chronci3830 11mo ago
  > Of course the ignorance could be a lie, which is worse, but neither option is good. Why would it be worse? If he knows, at least he has a plan, whether that plan is good or bad. If he doesn’t know at all, then literally even more random shit can occur than what’s already happening.
  - Jyaif 11mo ago
    Mathematically speaking, random actions can't be worse than actively bad actions.
    - etiennebausson 11mo ago
      Persistently bad behavior can be anticipated and accounted for, random actions cannot. Importer have as much issue with the tariffs as they have with the unpredictability of those tariffs. In theory, you try to limit the influence of a persistently bad actor, but it seems the U.S. didn't get the memo.
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
    - IAmBroom 11mo ago
      That is a bizarre claim. Mathematics doesn't even enter into it.
  - ehnto 11mo ago
csomar 11mo ago
The dude is far from being behind Binance. He is behind many of the largest exchanges (ie: ByBit, Okx, Coinex, etc.). Maybe dozens (hundreds?) of them. If you used any of these exchanges, you'll notice they have roughly the same layout, front-end and probably back-end. They are all, also, run by Chinese. Some of them (like Coinex) require no KYC whatsoever and enable P2P trading. Not that all of this matter, anyway, since trading now is moving to DEX where KYC is not really a thing. You still need to on/off-ramp crypto but it seems like the US is about to allow that no questions asked.
tomaytotomato 11mo ago
"Funds are safu" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DelF6zEHXpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DelF6zEHXpE
comrade1234 11mo ago
"Trump also discussed his support for cryptocurrencies and said that the US had to make sure it was a leader in the industry or risk China and its rivals gaining an advantage in the emerging technology." China is anti-crypto and has no interest being a leader in it. It's very painful reading any sort of interview with trump.
karlkloss 11mo ago
From the person who claims that Biden is so senile, that he didn't even know what his autopen signed.
Yizahi 11mo ago
What a trash tier human he is. He is basically saying that he can do whatever to the reporters and no one can or want to do anything with him. He can take any any bribes, corrupt whole branches of government and it is business as usual. Pathetic really.
johneth 11mo ago
He either doesn't know who he is, in which case why is he pardoning him, or he does know who he is, in which case he's brazenly lying. Or he's so dementia ridden that he did know who he was, but no longer, in which case why is he in office?
- lovetox 11mo ago
  He says it in the video, because good people recommended it. I can very much believe that this is how it works.
  - mandeepj 11mo ago
    > because good people recommended it. So doesn’t that mean he should know him now?
czottmann 11mo ago
Contradictions and a lack of shame (about anything) are not lapses, they're integral part of the authoritarian playbook. To be clear, I'm not "Just saying" – I'm actually saying.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 11mo ago
  Being openly hypocritical and doing the very things you criticize (and/or punish) others for doing is show of dominance. It's also a outcome of Wilhoit's law.
ghtbircshotbe 11mo ago
I'm sure it's a complete accident that binance was involved in setting up Trump's current crypto scam https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/technology/trump-pardons-cz-binance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/technology/trump-pardons-... Corruption is basically the operating principle of this administration, as on pretty clear display with the meeting with the president of Indonesia https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8nCxSBA4JsI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8nCxSBA4JsI
npteljes 11mo ago
I don't see why this is newsworthy. The guy has a 26,000-word Wikipedia article just about his lies only. I don't see why every one of his insane utterances must dominate the front page of every English-speaking news site. His detractors, and his supporters all agree that this is the way he is. Did any trend change, compared to his past? If not, then let's move on.
- IAmBroom 11mo ago
  Because there exists a real, nonzero chance that this is the piece of evidence that will convince some of his followers to finally admit he is either insane, shockingly stupid, or incompetent due to dementia.
  - npteljes 11mo ago
    I would personally trade that hypothetical chance to not have to look at this piece of news, and especially for everyone else not having to look at it too. I think this would be a net positive for the short term, and I think that it wouldn't affect the long term either, so it's an overall good choice. Main reason is that reality doesn't seem to concern the voter base of these people like Trump. If it did, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. And I'm not just meaning Trump here, but all the other populist leaders in the world as well. I think if these kinds of articles were effective in that regard, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. So, if the goal is to change the minds of people for the better, instead of banging on about the trivial, we should be looking at how to communicate better. "Told you so" doesn't work.
    - mdhb 11mo ago
      There is literally a hide button right there if that’s your actual wish… somehow you clicked on the one to read the comments and then accidentally clicked on the button to reply multiple times to it.
      - npteljes 11mo ago
apexalpha 11mo ago
It's so obvious they're selling pardons. It's so corrupt.
- burnt-resistor 11mo ago
  Yep. Former New York City Mayor and former mob prosecutor Rudy Giuliani allegedly (via leaving the room and an aide making the ask) offered one for sale to John Kiriakou for $2 million ($1 million to Trump and $1 million to Giuliani) in 2019. I'm guessing with inflation, it's probably around $3 million in 2025 money.
_yb2s 11mo ago
Of course Trump knows exactly who he is, but has to deny it, he’s the criminal he has contracted to run his cryptocurrency system that allows him to accept bribes in exchange for political favors. He didn’t just buy a pardon, but actually runs Trumps online payment system for purchasing pardons.

174 points by jmsflknr 11mo ago

> Trump added that he did not recall meeting Zhao and had "no idea who he is", only that he had been told that the businessman was a victim of a "witch hunt" by the administration of former US president Joe Biden. This sums up this administration quite well. Too often no idea what they're doing but doing it out of spite nonetheless.

sholain 11mo ago
The US President and his family's newfound crypto fortune, worth billions, managed by himself, his sons and 'Steve Witkoff' (his business partner who is 'negotiating' deals in the Middle East and Russia, and whereupon 100's of Millions of $ is coming unto World Liberty backed coins) is called 'World Liberty Financial' ... ... and is hosted by Binance which is the crypto platform owned by Zhao. Zhao was found guilty of ignoring oversight regulations allowing nefarious actors (ISIS, Cartels, sex traffickers) to transact on his platform. There's no way in high heaven that the President could be unaware of the fact that Zhao is the CEO who of the platform that hosts almost all of Trump's wealth. Moreover, this man is convicted specifically for ignoring the lighter oversight regulations, with operations in parts of the world that are out of reach of US investigators and justice system.
rob74 11mo ago
In other cases that might be true, but in this case, I seriously doubt that Trump really has no idea who the founder of the platform that is deeply involved in his cryptocurrency dealings is. So, either he's lying, or everyone (including his family) is doing everything behind his back. Or his dementia is worse than everyone thinks... > On March 13th, it was reported that representatives of President Trump’s family were in talks to acquire a financial stake in Binance. Soon after, on March 25th, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial (WLF), announced that it would launch a new stablecoin, USD1, and the former Binance CEO posted on X welcoming them to its platform. (https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/forwarding-van-hollen-warren-lead-colleagues-in-pressing-bessent-bondi-on-oversight-of-binance-following-reported-meetings-with-company-executives-and-administration-officials https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/forwarding-...)
- actionfromafar 11mo ago
  "How dare you!? That's just coincidence. Stop the witch hunt of our Leader Dear Trump!"
ejcho 11mo ago
reminds me of https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/at-least-we-owned-the-libs https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/at-least-we-owned-the-li...

measurablefunc 11mo ago

It looks like there is some kind of honor among thieves contrary to the old saying.

dandanua 11mo ago
No, it's calculus. Working together they can steal much much more.

spiderfarmer 11mo ago

I was discussing with some Dutch friends last night if we still considered the US a 'better' country than China. The outcome of that discussion should worry Americans.

bluealienpie 11mo ago
America has never been concerned about anything other than America. They literally couldn't care less that they have threaten to take over Canada... Potentially Greenland and Panama militarily.
- actionfromafar 11mo ago
  That's just blatantly false. American power derives not only from raw power, but from alliances. It will be apparent, that it's really hard to get things done when your former allies start slowrolling all your requests. Unless you mean it like, "countries have no friends", but that's not a very interesting observation.
  - jack_tripper 11mo ago
    Now THAT is blatantly false. American power today stems from its power, military and fiscally (which is also backed militarily). Most countries in the world today are allied to the US out of economic, trade and defense necessity and co-dependence, because all other alternatives are worse for them due to the immense asimetric power disparity. This might shock you but most countries in the world don't like the US government and its policies, especially after their illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, but have no way to push back without negative repercussions to their economy, so they have to play along as allies whether they like it or not for their own good. Feel free to down vote all you want, but I'm not revealing anything new or controversial here but it's the truth as all countries, kingdoms and empires throughout history have had alliances with others they didn't like, out of sheer necessity. Same how we in the liberal west have also been trading and having economic ties with the CCP, post-Crimean invasion Russia, Erdogan's Turkey and middle eastern countries that assassinate our journalists, as capitalism post-USSR collapse has prioritized monetary enrichment over fighting for upholding a western ideology.

clort 11mo ago

So, the guy is convicted of fraud - but fraud is business as usual for Trump, so it counts as a witch hunt.

mschuster91 11mo ago

The usual dementia jokes aside... of all the things surrounding this administration, this is amongst the most harmless. It may be a "presidential" power to pardon on paper, but the reality is that unless the President (or in other countries with powers of clemency to the head of state, whoever wields that power) intervenes personally for whatever reason, petitions for clemency pass through layers of bureaucracy, reviews and meetings. And sometimes, that also includes that candidates get inserted into the process by influential aides - something that has been the case for a lot of Presidents on either side of the aisle. Of course, the issue gets a bit more spicy given Trump's derogatory nickname of "Autopen" Biden, but leaving that aside it's no surprise to me that a US President isn't involved in dealing with clemency petitions all that much.

watwut 11mo ago
Considering Trump getting rich of crypto grifting and Trump making sure crypto is as unregulated as possible, this particular pardon is perfectly consistent with Trump policies.
sholain 11mo ago
To the contrary, this is possibly an extremely dangerous and corrupt action (I'm saying 'possible' here). Zhao manages Binance upon which Trump's nefarious crypto operation - World Liberty Financial is hosted. Zhao is guilty of wilfully ignoring a lot of very bad and illegal activity by all sorts of bad actors. World Liberty Financial is receiving $100's of millions inbound, coincident with 'deals' made by US and Middle East actors etc.. WLF is co-managed by Steve Witkoff, the 'real estate magnate' who has been charged with Middle Easter nand Russia negotiations (who by the ay has absolutely no diplomatic background, historical context or understanding of this situations and is deeply unqualified) and who notably has been entering into negotiations and discussion with foreign parties without any US State Dept personnel. Sometimes not even translators. Subsequent to those 'deals' with Qatar etc. which the Administration indicated there would be up to $1T invested in the US ... Qatar and other regimes have been flushing massive amounts of noney into WLF, hosted on Binance, overseen by Zhao. The potentiality fore corruption is hard to overstate.
- 11mo ago

arjie 11mo ago

I think, in general, it's possible to get a view of how an Executive Order is signed by looking at the example of the H-1B $100k fee signing (which we now understand to be far more constrained than it first appeared). Here's a video https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1969157504211808579 https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1969157504211808579 where President Trump's "we need more workers" is contrasted with his aides' statements. It would appear the these things are less an act of the President as a fully informed person making decisions and more of the final rubber stamp on something that staff that he's picked have decided on. Given that, I wouldn't expect him to personally know what he is signing. If, as I suspect, these pardons are pay-to-play deals, it's someone else managing the operation under his guidance and he's just the guy with the pen so to speak.

ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 11mo ago
You wouldn’t expect Trump specifically to know what he is signing or any competent President in the same situation?
lawn 11mo ago
That was already clear from his last term, and he's much less lucid this time around.
sholain 11mo ago
Trump's personal, newfound multi-billion dollar crypto fortune is hosted by Zhao. I don't mean to be breaking any etiquette her by re-indicating this, but it's I think it's unreasonable to suggest that Trump could not know who this person is. This is Trump's new 'personal banker' , who doesn't have to play be the constrained rules of $USD denominated financial regulations.

fabian2k 11mo ago

All of the possible explanations for this are bad and arguably disqualifying for the presidency: - Trump is lying so that he doesn't have to explain a quid-pro-quo pardon - Trump is dement and already forgot about the pardon - Trump wasn't the one actually pardoning him and his administration just did it The last one would be particularly ironic given the obsession with Joe Biden's Autopen.

newfriend 11mo ago
And the only plausible explanation: The President is dealing with hundreds of issues per day, including pardoning many people via recommendation. Someone came to him and said "we should pardon this guy who got a bum rap from Biden". Trump said, sure why not, and signed his pardon. No ridiculous conspiracy necessary.

ehnto 11mo ago

He should know though shouldn't he, as acting president of the US he should aim to learn and know these things as part of his service to the country. Like when he's unaware of certain bills or important procedings, maybe he legitimately doesn't know, but he should. It's part of his job to know. Of course the ignorance could be a lie, which is worse, but neither option is good. So in some ways it doesn't really matter, it's already a bad outcome.

chronci3830 11mo ago
> Of course the ignorance could be a lie, which is worse, but neither option is good. Why would it be worse? If he knows, at least he has a plan, whether that plan is good or bad. If he doesn’t know at all, then literally even more random shit can occur than what’s already happening.
- Jyaif 11mo ago
  Mathematically speaking, random actions can't be worse than actively bad actions.
  - etiennebausson 11mo ago
    Persistently bad behavior can be anticipated and accounted for, random actions cannot. Importer have as much issue with the tariffs as they have with the unpredictability of those tariffs. In theory, you try to limit the influence of a persistently bad actor, but it seems the U.S. didn't get the memo.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
  - IAmBroom 11mo ago
    That is a bizarre claim. Mathematics doesn't even enter into it.
- ehnto 11mo ago

csomar 11mo ago

The dude is far from being behind Binance. He is behind many of the largest exchanges (ie: ByBit, Okx, Coinex, etc.). Maybe dozens (hundreds?) of them. If you used any of these exchanges, you'll notice they have roughly the same layout, front-end and probably back-end. They are all, also, run by Chinese. Some of them (like Coinex) require no KYC whatsoever and enable P2P trading. Not that all of this matter, anyway, since trading now is moving to DEX where KYC is not really a thing. You still need to on/off-ramp crypto but it seems like the US is about to allow that no questions asked.

tomaytotomato 11mo ago

"Funds are safu" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DelF6zEHXpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DelF6zEHXpE

comrade1234 11mo ago

"Trump also discussed his support for cryptocurrencies and said that the US had to make sure it was a leader in the industry or risk China and its rivals gaining an advantage in the emerging technology." China is anti-crypto and has no interest being a leader in it. It's very painful reading any sort of interview with trump.

karlkloss 11mo ago

From the person who claims that Biden is so senile, that he didn't even know what his autopen signed.

Yizahi 11mo ago

What a trash tier human he is. He is basically saying that he can do whatever to the reporters and no one can or want to do anything with him. He can take any any bribes, corrupt whole branches of government and it is business as usual. Pathetic really.

johneth 11mo ago

He either doesn't know who he is, in which case why is he pardoning him, or he does know who he is, in which case he's brazenly lying. Or he's so dementia ridden that he did know who he was, but no longer, in which case why is he in office?

lovetox 11mo ago
He says it in the video, because good people recommended it. I can very much believe that this is how it works.
- mandeepj 11mo ago
  > because good people recommended it. So doesn’t that mean he should know him now?

czottmann 11mo ago

Contradictions and a lack of shame (about anything) are not lapses, they're integral part of the authoritarian playbook. To be clear, I'm not "Just saying" – I'm actually saying.

Eddy_Viscosity2 11mo ago
Being openly hypocritical and doing the very things you criticize (and/or punish) others for doing is show of dominance. It's also a outcome of Wilhoit's law.

ghtbircshotbe 11mo ago

I'm sure it's a complete accident that binance was involved in setting up Trump's current crypto scam https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/technology/trump-pardons-cz-binance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/technology/trump-pardons-... Corruption is basically the operating principle of this administration, as on pretty clear display with the meeting with the president of Indonesia https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8nCxSBA4JsI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8nCxSBA4JsI

npteljes 11mo ago

I don't see why this is newsworthy. The guy has a 26,000-word Wikipedia article just about his lies only. I don't see why every one of his insane utterances must dominate the front page of every English-speaking news site. His detractors, and his supporters all agree that this is the way he is. Did any trend change, compared to his past? If not, then let's move on.

IAmBroom 11mo ago
Because there exists a real, nonzero chance that this is the piece of evidence that will convince some of his followers to finally admit he is either insane, shockingly stupid, or incompetent due to dementia.
- npteljes 11mo ago
  I would personally trade that hypothetical chance to not have to look at this piece of news, and especially for everyone else not having to look at it too. I think this would be a net positive for the short term, and I think that it wouldn't affect the long term either, so it's an overall good choice. Main reason is that reality doesn't seem to concern the voter base of these people like Trump. If it did, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. And I'm not just meaning Trump here, but all the other populist leaders in the world as well. I think if these kinds of articles were effective in that regard, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. So, if the goal is to change the minds of people for the better, instead of banging on about the trivial, we should be looking at how to communicate better. "Told you so" doesn't work.
  - mdhb 11mo ago
    There is literally a hide button right there if that’s your actual wish… somehow you clicked on the one to read the comments and then accidentally clicked on the button to reply multiple times to it.
    - npteljes 11mo ago

apexalpha 11mo ago

It's so obvious they're selling pardons. It's so corrupt.

burnt-resistor 11mo ago
Yep. Former New York City Mayor and former mob prosecutor Rudy Giuliani allegedly (via leaving the room and an aide making the ask) offered one for sale to John Kiriakou for $2 million ($1 million to Trump and $1 million to Giuliani) in 2019. I'm guessing with inflation, it's probably around $3 million in 2025 money.

_yb2s 11mo ago

Of course Trump knows exactly who he is, but has to deny it, he’s the criminal he has contracted to run his cryptocurrency system that allows him to accept bribes in exchange for political favors. He didn’t just buy a pardon, but actually runs Trumps online payment system for purchasing pardons.