I once won a power bank in an anonymous raffle at a marketing event of a company that could be imagined as our distant competitor. I voluntarily gave it away to another attendee, because God forbid there's a suspicion of a conflict of interest. But I am clearly a bear of very little brain.
I'm a bit surprised at how little Middle East has tried to pull this lever. Shouldn't they have a lot of say in Trump policy, with just a "we'll pull out of these commitments to your personal circle."
1) Get a couple million dollars you’re willing to gamble.
2) Spend a few tens of K creating some amount of a front of having a company.
3) Buy a dinner or two with the right people in the admin, ideally Trump himself (you can literally do this). Talk like an AM radio host or MAGA-aligned right wing podcaster any time political topics come up (that part’s extremely easy, but you do need to do it)
4) Work out some way to help someone at that dinner line their pockets with any public money they send your way. This will mean only keeping part of what you get, but you’re still gonna beat your investment handily.
Remaining cash is for incidentals and having to repeat the dinner thing (not sure it’s enough for 2x with Trump himself, but should get you a few with other groups of admin members)
Don’t forget to buy and have tailored a Hickey Freeman suit (modern, post-production-shift overseas is fine, no need to track down the good vintage Rochester-made stuff), either pinchingly-tightly-tailored like it’s 2009 (Hegseth) if you’re fairly trim, or ill-fitting (leaning too large in every way) otherwise. Brooks Brothers might be an OK option too, in the latter case. Do not buy a dinner jacket, they just wear business suits everywhere. Red tie is safe. Don’t forget some tasteless dumbshit lapel pin, maybe an AR-15 (don’t go for a US flag unless you’re an elected official) or something outright Trump-branded (if you can get one with his face on it, do that for sure)
The new norm is blanket pardons for everybody at the end of a presidency. And a lot more even-more-openly selling pardons in those final weeks, than already went on.
Real fear of malicious prosecution of out-of-power political enemies (we’re seeing a bunch of this attempted now, though grand juries mostly haven’t been cooperating) and real fear of being held accountable for tons of actual criming you did, guarantee that everyone gets pardons now. The more-corrupt admins will also use this as a tool of control (I think this is why public “fealty” is so constantly on display with this second admin, to a degree it was not the first time)
Ignore pardons and prosecute anyway. If "autopen" pardons are invalid, then so are pardons made by a senile president who just blindly signs whatever's placed in front of him.
