Yes, they could get the Kochs (and anyone else coughing up the cash) on bribery–and they could get Trump on extortion.
“Nice little party you have here, Republicans…be a shame if anything were to happen to it…”
I don’t know why this always irritates me, but: what Graydon Carter (of Spy Magazine) was talking about was NOT the size of Trump’s hands, nor was it the implied size of Trump’s penis.
Carter was calling Trump a peasant. (Who proverbially had short fingers; the aristocrats had long fingers.)
Of course that particular insult resonates more with those who believe that coming from old money is An Important Thing, than it does with the general population. But that’s what it’s about. It’s not about hand size or penis size.
The funniest part of the whole thing, of course, is that Trump both misunderstood Carter’s insult, and didn’t recognize “vulgarian” as an insult. At all.
Yes. Though it’s certainly true that “short-fingered vulgarian” is the quintessential “linguistic kill shot” as defined by the aforementioned-in-this-thread Scott Adams.
Adams might dispute this, but: none of Trump’s own efforts can match it.
There’s something nagging at the back of my head about this:
There’s a difference between not recognizing an insult because the word is outside of your vocabulary, and not recognizing an insult because it doesn’t occur to you to think of that descriptor as insulting.
Now, don’t get me wrong. With Trump, I’m pretty sure it was the former, that he honestly didn’t understand the word “vulgarian” and he didn’t want to spend the five minutes with a dictionary it would have taken him to figure it out.
However, the latter is a bit nasty, don’t you think? You’re saying that some aspect of someone should cause them shame, and the fact it doesn’t is another point of shame. For me, the concept of being a “vulgarian” is just about at that level: It’s saying “You’re bad for being common, or giving the common people what they want, and you should feel bad for focusing your attentions on the middle income and lower income as opposed to us, your betters.” It’s just a rather nasty kind of preening classism I’d expect from a Bush in one of that clan’s more unguarded moments, or from a Romney when the help has mostly been shooed away.
The way Trump responded to the insult negates this, of course, and I’m sure Bulgaria has the greatest people. The best people.
What sort of bribery? Trump is not an elected official and he is not a government employee who would be accepting money to break the law. Bowing out of an election is not a crime, so being paid to do so is hardly a crime involving bribery.
Similarly, it would be extremely difficult to prove in a court of law that Trump deliberately spent the effort to become the Republican nominee for the purpose of threatening to tear apart that party if he was not paid to go away.
I actually agree with both your points. I was typing a bit facetiously with the “they could get” construction I used in that post. But at the same time, the public reaction to a (hypothetical) large check handed to Trump by the Kochs (or such) would be that something underhanded has occurred. There would be outrage, and it wouldn’t matter to those howling that there’s nothing illegal in either paying a candidate to go away, or behaving so atrociously that people will pay you to go away.
The GOP’s chances for holding on to seats in Congress (and other offices) would not be enhanced by such public outrage.
As I recall, Carter used “short-fingered vulgarian” largely on aesthetic grounds. He wasn’t thinking in terms of politics.
At the time Trump was always getting into the news by demolishing landmark building elements ‘accidentally’;* then, of course, there was Trump’s taste as revealed in all the solid-gold commodes and such-like to be found in his properties.
We may transfer the “vulgarian” label to his expressed political views now, or refrain from doing so on the grounds of avoiding classism—but apparently that wasn’t the original application of the term. It was simply a reference to Trump’s kitschy instincts about décor, dress, etc…
Like a lot of New Yorkers out on the town, late at night, too many cocktails under our belts, Trump will order his limousine down to the Lower East Side restaurant row to sop up the booze with bowls of <I>shopka, shekembe chorba, guvech</I>, and <I>turshiya.
This still equates having bad taste to being of the lower, or common, classes, which is still classist. “Vulgar” in all of its forms is inherently classist.
Now, we can say that, since Trump’s American, we have no hereditary classes, as the British do, so Trump is whatever class he acts like, as are we all. But that’s rather redolent of the backpedal, and, worse, outmoded, given that folk art (inclusive of folk music) has been valued by high society for decades now. What gets the side-eye is when poor people buy the stuff rich people sell them, which is a post (or a book, or a whole field of academia…) all on its own. (See: The term “kitsch” and what it implies.)
Anyway, all this is a hijack. Trump’s a terrible human being for reasons which have little to do with any of the historic notions of class, and everything to do with failings you find at every stratum of society.
That is a rather peculiar way to think of bribery. An official doesn’t have to do something illegal to be guilty of bribery. Hiring a garbage collector is perfectly legal but an official could still have been bribed when he made the decision.
Furthermore, a majority of States have commercial bribery laws that do not require a public officials involvement.
Lastly, there are definitely elections laws about getting an opponent to drop out of a race in exchange for jobs or money. Not sure if they could easily be applied to a third party doing the offer though.
And the person accepting the bribe and selecting the service provider would be a government official–elected or hired. Neither the Koch brothers nor Trump are government officials. While one might engage in bribery to cause one person to take a particular action, in order to be a crime it would have to violate a government rule or a legally entered contract.
They do, however, require the involvement, in some way, of a contract. What contract has Trump siggned to run for president?
Can you provide a reference to such a law to see whether it has any bearing on the hypothetical presented?
There is in fact someone currently someone under arrest awaiting trial specifically on the charge of taking money in return for dropping out of a race.
So, uh, no, bribery does not require an already elected official nor that the action would otherwise be breaking the law if not done as a result of a bribe.
It sure seems to me that offering Trump money to drop out, or his soliciting such, let alone that money changing hands, would fit those molds and be considered illegal, even if structured with the facade of a business deal.
Look, there really is a personal quality called “class,” which is admirable and worth having. Vulgarity is lack of class. Persons of practically any social background can have some class if they really try, and The Donald has never in his life tried. We all know people like him, people who are the exact opposite of what you think when you hear the word “classy.”
While you may be correct, I note that the second of the cases you cite were related to persons who already held office.
ETA: Are there such laws applicable to Federal offices?