No it’s not bribery. He changed his stance for Musk’s endorsement. Musk then exercised his free speech into a Trump PAC. There was no coordination. Besides, even if there was coordination, it was a just a gratuity after the service!

Because they all take super PAC money and dont want the flows to stop.

Except ofc Bernie and a handful of others

Every ad should be a clip of Trump raging against electric cars, then the Musk tweet, then a clip of him praising electric cars. End with: do you really think he works for you?

I'm sure you can build more ads on this theme with the millions of other things he flip flopped on when someone promised him a bag of cash.

"We" aren't going after them for this because they all do it, Trump just said it out loud. Welcome to American politics. This will never get fixed because the people in power stand to lose millions of dollars if it does. People will posture, pander, and pretend, but they will never get a majority willing to take the pay cut and actually fix it. It's ~~the~~ a glitch in a capitalist republic.

In an ideal, fair, and just world, yeah, but have you been following the Supreme Court lately? This is their King we're talking about!

I' e come to realize that sadly, legslity is irrelevant. If there are no consequences, then there's effectively no law for rhe powerful.

The SCOTUS ruling that they can declare the president above the law was really about shiwing they can make anyone above the law, if they wish.

The last eight years have highlighted how the US is in fact, a caste system.

It's not bribery until he actually pushes for EVs (Tesla, specifically) as President. And then it will be an official act, so he's immune.

To be bribery it needs to involve literal gold bars... and people who aren't Republicans.

The supreme court got bribed into saying bribery is fine as long as you pretend it's not a bribe.

Which is ridiculous because most manufacturers are building multiple new factories for batteries and EVs. It's a pretty shitty pander all things considered.

The Supreme Court ruling splits a very fine hair. If you give a government official money and say "make sure my housing development goes through", that's a bribe and it's illegal. If you show them money and say "I'll give you this if my housing development goes through", that's a gratuity and is perfectly fine.

Why, yes, this is a stupid as it sounds.

Didn’t the Supreme Court rule that, unless a candidate was engaged in open bribery, campaign contributions constitute free speech?

The core of the CU decision is that engaging in political speech is not a campaign contribution. Even if you spend money to engage in that speech. Even if you pay some 3rd party organization to engage in that speech on your behalf, unless that 3rd party organization is operating in collusion with the actual campaign.

Or to put it another way, if you run off a bunch of flyers supporting Kamala Harris and pass them out, that's not a campaign contribution despite ink and paper (and your labor) not being free. If Staples agrees to print those flyers free of charge for you, Staples is not making a campaign contribution. Unless the campaign itself is involved with the process. Now, just scale that up to massive corps and political nonprofits.

People try to describe it as "deciding money is speech and corporations are people", but both of those are long held by law - corporations have had 1A rights for a long, long time and likewise arguments that restricting things used to engage in protected expression is in fact restricting protected expression have held for a long, long time (for example you can't just place a $10,000,000/week tax on printing presses to silence newspapers).

a) yes

b) maybe he'll be held accountable for this within the course of the next 20 years

Hope and pray that the courts see it your way!

I mean, it's one electric charger, Michael. How much could it cost? 1.125 billion?

Also, driving cyber trucks.

Which would actually kinda be hilarious, if I didn’t have to share the road with those morons.

Can they start wearing fake purple hearts, too?

People are saying it should be illegal and the fact that it is legal is an issue that we should fix...

Having your position on issues for sale isn't illegal when you're not in office, but it's certainly not normal politics. It's fuckin' the weird for a politician to openly admit they're for sale.