Hi @freemo

I saw you claiming that you prefer Trump to Biden for US president, which surprized me as I was under the impression that Trump is so bad for democratic & rule of law standards that no reasonable person valuing these things could support him. I also saw you point out some anti-Trump propaganda that was just factually wrong, so you seem to be knowledgeable in that matter. Since I am now wondering whether my views are just a result of such propaganda I was hoping you could verify some of the things that led me to my conclusions.

I am not a US citizen and this exercise is mostly for anti-propaganda calibration purposes for me. You seem to enjoy this kind of discussion, but I know that you are a busy man, so I won't assume a lack of response to have big significance. I will still be grateful for any you give.

Thread follows, ordered by a combination of severity and how sure I am of specific claims.

@freemo
One: Obstruction of justice

Trump took multiple actions to hinder the Mueller investigation, including firing and pressuring people to resign, publicly verbally attacking people who cooperated with authorities, and ordering his subordinates to thwart the investigation in various ways.

The Wikipedia page on the Mueller report provides a reasonable overview of the situation, but the report itself is obviously the main source, and I have read significant fragments of it (but not everything).

This issue seems like an obvious abuse of power to me, and the facts associated with it are mostly a matter of public record, so I don't think I am a victim of propaganda in these regards (although I am open to somehow being wrong here). If I were to guess what I might be getting wrong -- maybe this is not unusual for US politics, and such abuses of power are normal there? And in this case the propaganda only highlighted Trump's abuses to me, despite them being a common occurrence?

@freemo
Two: Lowering transparency

I am a bit biased towards the importance of transparency, hence the high position on the list. I believe it is crucial for any system
we want to keep working to be transparent, and complicated ones like
politics are especially sensitive in this regard.

This is somewhat connected to the first point, discouraging people from testifying, but it is much more prevalent. The refusal to publish taxes returns is the poster boy for this issue, but there are also White House visitor logs, the significant increase in rejected FOIA requests, and, most recently, the restrictions to access of COVID-19 data.

I am much less sure about this point than the previous, especially the FOIA part -- I would be very surprized if the media lied about the increase, but the ones I was able to find didn't specify whether the total number of requests also increased. That data is not easy to query (sic), but checking a couple of data points on the foia.gov web page seems to confirm the claims -- the increases in the number of requests seemed in line with previous years and lower than the claimed increases in rejections.

@freemo
Three: Profiteering and corruption

There are a couple really obvious cases, like the military planes being re-routed to Trump properties, or him suggesting a G7 summit should happen at his resort. There are also less clear ones, like the Saudis renting rooms at Trump's hotel, which I would label as coincidental normally, but the brazen ones plus the lack of transparency I mentioned before raises my priors for foul play.

The blatant profiteering seems pretty clear-cut, the actual political corruption less so. Again, maybe I lack knowledge about the US system, but I was under the impression at least the two former points were clearly illegal.

@timorl Most of the examples of profiteering, except a few minor ones, are actually just normal business and what is expected..

Lets take saudis rending rooms at trump hotels and generally using ones own property to host government activities and being able to charge for it. While this certainly seems wrong at first glance, it is actually something every president has done and is very much the norm.

For example Biden does the same thing, and has done it for his whole career... For example secrete service and aids often need to follow him to wheverver he goes. It is not unusual, and very much the norm, for him to do business out of his home or in a property he owns, like trump, and those aids and SS need to follow him. As such Biden and other politicians, routinely charge the US government for those aids and SS to use or be on his property.

An example of this government employees pay **regular** rent to biden as he has instructed them to rent out one of his cottages and effectively live there.

So yea, this may look bad but the truth is, charging the government to use your own facilities in the course of normal day to day work is very much the norm and Trump really isnt doing that much different in that regard. Just like Biden wanting to be able to work occasionally out of a place he calls home, Trump does the same.

@freemo That is very surprizing to me, I thought it was explicitly forbidden by the emoluments law. DId Biden also do this while he was the VP?

Anyway it seems to me that renting to people who by law have to stay close to you is much different to sending planes to your resorts or organizing international meetings in your business, both in scale and in substance.

By the way, since you implied you might know – is there any other place the Secret Service agents could live while staying close enough to Biden?

@timorl Yes he did it while he was VP and its actively done by most politicians. It is the norm.

But im not sure there is much difference between working out of your home and demanding government agents pay to be there, and working out of your corporate business which you effectively use as a home and do the same.

For me at least the difference between these two are semantic at best.

@freemo I am extremely surprized you don't see the difference, especially at scale, but I'm not sure what I could say to convince you.

@timorl Oh no, I do at scale. I am not justifying it at scale at all. I am not condoning the action, I dont like when other politicians do it either honestly.. But what I'm saying is it is the norm and we are talking about one event he happened to host and made him very little money. You have to keep in mind the amount of money made hosting a shindig and catering it is completely insignificant to someone like trump. Like yea I get that it isnt a violation and shouldnt be allowed, but its not really a good example of trump trying to syphon money off of the government either.

To put things into perspective the salary trump denied as president is likely significantly larger than the amount of money he made hosting a single event at his resotort. I dont condone it, but i find it insignificant in the grand scheme of things is all.