It's all private capital. The only people who are exposed to this deal are the banks who make loans to Musk and Twitter, and the investors who put capital in to take Twitter private or to invest in xAI. If one of those entities is mad they will sue, and the legal system works pretty well for fights between different capital holders. Doesn't really matter what the general public's opinion is.

Trump pardoned Trevor Milton today, who scammed investors out of millions doing things like his now infamous "rolling a truck down a hill to make it looks functional" demo.

Milton donated $1.8M to Trump, and Miltons lawyer's sister is Pam Bondi, the Attorney General.

This is nakedly corrupt and a strong signal that you can get away with all manner of financial fuckery if you are on Trumps "good list".

Every democratic country deserves the government they get.

At least we don't have to worry about trans kids swimming on the girls swim team.

/s

Just say you hate women bro. If you're campaigning to have men in women's sports you're just campaigning to have women's sports banned.

And if you're campaigning to have women's sports banned you are NOT THE GOOD GUYS.

Women's rights matter and are worth caring about. You can care about two things.

Men shouldn't be in women's sports. EVER. If you think they should you're evil.

For how big of an advantage trans women supposedly have, they don't seem to win very often. People have been discussing this issue for decades but all of a sudden people are freaking out about it without doing any research or having any level of nuance.

Same can be said about Trump government

More often than you might think: https://www.shewon.org

>Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

Comments like these are wildly off the original topic and practically invite the dead replies. As a rule of thumb, if you're about to put "/s" at the bottom of a post on an even remotely political topic, please reconsider. Especially if your sarcasm is already quite obvious, and obviously being used to bash a political outgroup.

Good and hard.

And now there's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43509169

Is it corruption if it's done publicly and no one gives a fuck? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Absolutely..and people care.

"But that guy George Soros surely is up to no good!"

It's probably being spoken by some podcast that helped get Trump elected.

When they have an actual conspiracy, with actual billionaires paying the president and getting full access to the government, while getting public contracts... all of this being live streamed... they're still stuck in George Soros and the Deep State lizard people fantasy.

Musk gets away with a lot because he does deliver sometimes - the cars and the rockets have done well. The investors and lenders are not totally dumb.

Would anyone say the same about Cathie Wood? Also, Starship "done well?"

Good luck trying to get a bank to underwrite that loan, smells a bit risky.

Then he buys the bank. DOGE is in the SEC now. Elon Musk is the regulator. If he decides that a bank is doing “fraud” and wants to shut it down, is there anyone to stop him? Serious question.

"Nice bank you've got there. Would be a shame if ________" (Insert any number of orders that Musk can have his friends in the executive branch issue to make life miserable for the bank principals.)

It's good to be the king. Even better to own him.

That makes me think of Jakob Fugger. He was so rich the pope borrowed money from him to build St. Peter's Basilica. And they got so desperate to pay it back they started selling indulgences, pissing off one Martin Luther and creating Protestantism: https://theconversation.com/the-man-who-gave-us-the-reformat...

And that makes me think of the Knights Templar. They were so rich that everybody borrowed money from them. The one day, the King of France decided he didn't want to repay the loan. The story doesn't end well for the Templars.

Case in point: https://apnews.com/article/trump-law-firm-mueller-fc64fcda09...

> A prominent international law firm reached a deal with President Donald Trump on Friday to dedicate at least $100 million in free legal services and to review its hiring practices, averting a punishing executive order like the ones directed at nearly a half-dozen other major legal institutions in recent weeks.

This isn't theoretical. It's happening.

Wow, I thought the sum was $40 million, but that's what the other law firm paid that showed a lack of principles and caved...

And another law firm is being blackmailed because it used to employ someone who worked for Robert Mueller (of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation)... Geez Trump's team is actually busy, but busy settling old scores.

They’re busy making sure the firms with the money and bench to try to fight the authoritarian take-over in court are all sidelined.

Exactly, that was the case I had in mind.

You realize the current administration is shutting down law firms that criticize Trump, right? They'll have zero problems going "do this deal if you know what's good for you".

It's the new normal

https://apnews.com/article/nikola-trevor-milton-fraud-trump-...