The $28M to Melania personally is the tell. Amazon could've made this documentary for $5M and marketed it for $10M and still gotten whatever political cover they wanted. Instead they structured a deal where most of the money flows directly to the president's wife. That's not sloppy negotiating, that's the point. Someone at Amazon legal signed off on creating a paper trail that looks exactly like what it is.
it turns out all you need to do is 1) blatantly ignore/violate the law, 2) have appointed justices to the court who will provide you will full immunity while in office (Trump vs United States)
I mostly don't blame Amazon.
If the mob boss demands $10M in protection money in order to allow your $2.5T business to operate, you pay, especially if that mob boss happens to be the head of federal law enforcement.
Maybe we shift a bit of focus towards Congress, supreme courts and frankly voters who are apparently OK with this.
I agree that we should be blaming the voters who decided that naked bribery and corruption is an American value (moreso than, say, their bleating about gun rights), but…
The people most capable of fighting back, and who ultimately have the most to lose in a kleptocratic, authoritarian state, apparently to be cowards and losers. Bezos and Jassy could tell the administration to pound sand, given how critical AWS is, and that Amazon is part of the like, 4 companies propping up the teetering stack of cards holding up the thing this administration (and its weaponized voters) think represents “the economy”. But they won’t, because they’re a bunch of feckless children, desperate for scraps.
No one is arguing that the US has never been a corrupt nation, that's always been a given.
Many are just making the simple observation that the great grifter, some say the greatest of all time, has really taken the US bribery game up to the highest levels, easily a magnitude, if not two, beyond anything seen before.
It's truly impressive stuff. It's made a big impression on many about the globe.
Beyond a bribe it's just wicked propoganda at that. Was just stunned at this review,
> So, what’s the point? How does this superficial, wilfully deceitful reality readjustment serve the sociopathic ascension of Trump’s will (because everything has to)? Watching Melania get fitted for expensive clothes in gaudy rooms, or talk up how extravagantly staged she demands her balls be - and both happen a lot in Brett Ratner’s unrelentingly boring feature doc debut - only strengthen perceptions of her as a chilly, lifeless socialite wannabe.
Ok, ice burn mostly so far. Expected. But:
> And I realised then what the point was - Trump is tightening his family business’ grip on the White House beyond his years and before our eyes. MELANIA is not the story of the First Lady of American politics, but the imagining of the first homeland monarch in U.S. history. This is not a film concerned at all with the America of today; it is propaganda that serves the formation of a future non-democracy.
I'm all too afraid that there is something truly wicked this boring dry flop of a movie will accomplish, over time, for some incredibly infernal anti-Democracy forces in the world. That one of the top 3 richest men in the world would give a messely couple million bucks for an anti-Democracy pro-Regal pro-Imperial project like this is perhaps unsurprising, beyond the simple dimension of grift it obviously presents.
As this is HN, I wonder what this implies for technology companies as a whole. It's easy to see how the Trillion dollar companies are engaged in this e.g. Tim Cook attended the premiere.
And we see how crypto companies court the Whitehouse through various mechanisms.
How might this factor into "mere" unicorn startups? I think it does but not sure how.
My guess is that if you're an early stage startup that isn't an AI company already worth billions, you can probably ignore this as noise and focus on building product. It's reasonably likely that by the time your startup is sufficiently large, there will be a new administration (because it takes a few years and presumably he will not be president in 2029).
I think one implication is that ad-driven tech companies are at great risk. In a political system where National Champion businesses are selected/assisted on the basis of bribery, advertising becomes irrelevant. Why spend money advertising Widget X when this widget is already the only one that's officially sanctioned?
21 comments
[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 42.4 ms ] threadNo points for guessing which social media company got the bulk of that ad spend.
emolument clause be dammed.
it turns out all you need to do is 1) blatantly ignore/violate the law, 2) have appointed justices to the court who will provide you will full immunity while in office (Trump vs United States)
Tech CEOs attend Amazon-funded "Melania" screening at White House
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46761370
Maybe we shift a bit of focus towards Congress, supreme courts and frankly voters who are apparently OK with this.
The people most capable of fighting back, and who ultimately have the most to lose in a kleptocratic, authoritarian state, apparently to be cowards and losers. Bezos and Jassy could tell the administration to pound sand, given how critical AWS is, and that Amazon is part of the like, 4 companies propping up the teetering stack of cards holding up the thing this administration (and its weaponized voters) think represents “the economy”. But they won’t, because they’re a bunch of feckless children, desperate for scraps.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/white-ho...
No one is arguing that the US has never been a corrupt nation, that's always been a given.
Many are just making the simple observation that the great grifter, some say the greatest of all time, has really taken the US bribery game up to the highest levels, easily a magnitude, if not two, beyond anything seen before.
It's truly impressive stuff. It's made a big impression on many about the globe.
you can't be serious, right?
those were made _after_ the Obamas had left office (and Harry/Megan had left the royal family)
Michelle Obama didn't personally get paid $28 million to do a film about her _while she was First Lady_
> So, what’s the point? How does this superficial, wilfully deceitful reality readjustment serve the sociopathic ascension of Trump’s will (because everything has to)? Watching Melania get fitted for expensive clothes in gaudy rooms, or talk up how extravagantly staged she demands her balls be - and both happen a lot in Brett Ratner’s unrelentingly boring feature doc debut - only strengthen perceptions of her as a chilly, lifeless socialite wannabe.
Ok, ice burn mostly so far. Expected. But:
> And I realised then what the point was - Trump is tightening his family business’ grip on the White House beyond his years and before our eyes. MELANIA is not the story of the First Lady of American politics, but the imagining of the first homeland monarch in U.S. history. This is not a film concerned at all with the America of today; it is propaganda that serves the formation of a future non-democracy.
I'm all too afraid that there is something truly wicked this boring dry flop of a movie will accomplish, over time, for some incredibly infernal anti-Democracy forces in the world. That one of the top 3 richest men in the world would give a messely couple million bucks for an anti-Democracy pro-Regal pro-Imperial project like this is perhaps unsurprising, beyond the simple dimension of grift it obviously presents.
https://screenspace.substack.com/p/the-animated-pics-vying-f... via the lovely https://bsky.app/profile/numb.comfortab.ly/post/3mdncqwyuks2...
And we see how crypto companies court the Whitehouse through various mechanisms.
How might this factor into "mere" unicorn startups? I think it does but not sure how.
My guess is that if you're an early stage startup that isn't an AI company already worth billions, you can probably ignore this as noise and focus on building product. It's reasonably likely that by the time your startup is sufficiently large, there will be a new administration (because it takes a few years and presumably he will not be president in 2029).