FYI, we haven't seen the kickbacks from the Melania movie yet. The savings from the BB Bill were already baked in before the movie got made.
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
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Pay for play is what made Trump the President possible, see Super PACs and Citizens United for more details.
PACs financed by, well, any country or organization or person, really, can funnel millions directly to their chosen candidate (or their favorite shell company, and so on).
They call it "donations", because fuck you.
Remember, we're only told about the up-front "donations" that they openly claim for publicity. It's a lot more than that.
He's not wrong.
But fuck I despise Robert Reich. He was part of the Clinton Administration, which cut the social safety net, incentivized moving US manufacturing offshore, and helped pave the way for the Amazons of the world to exploit us all.
Funny how so many books, movies, games, warned us about a dystopic scenario where the ultra-richs would control the world.
This doesn’t shame Bezos. He’s happy with you thinking of him as a shrewd businessman who has the gumption to risk being openly corrupt when he can get away with it.
The target audience is not Bezos. He's probably not happy with that. But I don't really care how he feels either way tbh.
What are you going to do, not shop at Amazon? Avoid AWS?
Pretty easy to not shop at Amazon in my experience
Yeah, but my point is that even if you stop buying from Amazon, it's a drop in the ocean of profits.
Not if a large number of people do it. As far as I know, a large number of people are dissatisfied with Amazon, Bezos, Trump and so on. Apathy is compliance and keeps the tills rolling.
Even if one succumbs to the hopelessness in thinking that resistance is futile, there is still some pleasure to be had from hitting them were it hurts, ie. the only thing they seem to care about - money. How ever small a hit they take from it.
Avoiding amazon is a fair bit easier than AWS. I barely know what websites use AWS
To be fair, bezos and amazon paid more than that that we just don't know about. I suspect direct payments through layers of shell companies, disguised as a failed investment or something.