US presidency for sale, offers from 300 million?

[paxmao]

I was curious about what is the official figure (more on that below) of money that have been given to Trump for his campaign. It turns out that in 2020 the biggest donors, above 1 million or so summed 208 million. Let's say, for the shake of simplicity, that all the rest of donors combined are another 92 million or so and all sums 300 Million.

https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/donald-trump/contributors?id=N00023864

This leads me to think: (a) there must be much more dirty money being moved under the radar and (b) It would be relatively simple for a foreign Ruzzian, Chinese, government to put forward that kind of money (peanuts really - it is the cost of a modern Radar / antiair system) to influence the elections.

What are your thoughts of this? Would it be easy for a foreign government to get a candidate that, lets say, would be keen on given then ample preferential treatment and let them go wild on a neighbour country for example?

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[Hispo]

I was curious about what is the official figure (more on that below) of money that have been given to Trump for his campaign. It turns out that in 2020 the biggest donors, above 1 million or so summed 208 million. Let's say, for the shake of simplicity, that all the rest of donors combined are another 92 million or so and all sums 300 Million.

https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/donald-trump/contributors?id=N00023864

This leads me to think: (a) there must be much more dirty money being moved under the radar and (b) It would be relatively simple for a foreign Ruzzian, Chinese, government to put forward that kind of money (peanuts really - it is the cost of a modern Radar / antiair system) to influence the elections.

What are your thoughts of this? Would it be easy for a foreign government to get a candidate that, lets say, would be keen on given then ample preferential treatment and let them go wild on a neighbour country for example?

I believe they foreign governments seeking to intervene and mess with American elections are more likely to use other unregulated channels and not try to directly donate to their prefered candidate, in my opinion. Because in theory, it would be way easier to Authorities in the United States to realize there has been fool play with the origin of the money the candidate received.
As it stands for now, the government of Russia prefers to mess with the public perception the average citizen has on candidates by their classical troll farms and also carrying out hacks onto those candidate who are considered to be hostile against them, in order to publish damaging information during the presidential campaign.

After all, those attacks are not as blatant as some Russian entity trying to donate to a Republican candidate in the USA by a third party in the country, in the end, the registers of those donations are supposed to function in such a way, so the donations are not completely anonymous.

If Trump for some strange reasons started to accept donations in Bitcoin and Monero, there would be indeed interesting transactions from foreign entities, though that won't happen obviouly. Not even sure whether it is legal or not.

[tsaroz]

I was curious about what is the official figure (more on that below) of money that have been given to Trump for his campaign. It turns out that in 2020 the biggest donors, above 1 million or so summed 208 million. Let's say, for the shake of simplicity, that all the rest of donors combined are another 92 million or so and all sums 300 Million.

https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/donald-trump/contributors?id=N00023864

This leads me to think: (a) there must be much more dirty money being moved under the radar and (b) It would be relatively simple for a foreign Ruzzian, Chinese, government to put forward that kind of money (peanuts really - it is the cost of a modern Radar / antiair system) to influence the elections.

What are your thoughts of this? Would it be easy for a foreign government to get a candidate that, lets say, would be keen on given then ample preferential treatment and let them go wild on a neighbour country for example?

It's no surprise that when it comes to elections, there are always insider and outsider powers with their vested interest invested on a side.
If we are talking about countries like Russia and China trying to interfere with US election/results, they would be more involved through misinformation and voters manipulation than directly sending money to the candidates as US itself has no shortage of money. And it's not easy to buy votes just through money.
Control over media, social media and being able to initiate viral trends and viral pieces of misinformation and propaganda are worth more than a billion. And a few of them are mastered by the said nations.

[Ucy]

I would advice people to be careful underestimating someone like Trump and his capacity to anticipate any future investigation concerning his sources of campaign (and other) funds and make sure he only accept clean donations. He's actually way smarter than most people think, even in his current state. If he is let loose lots of people would be in trouble.
Imagine subjecting them to abit of the scrutiny he is subjected to. They better be sure their hands are clean because they will be investigated too. (don't judge or you will be judged. If you do, make sure your hands are clean. The judge will be judged with higher law)

Currently the chickens, lizards, tortoises, baboons etc are on top of sleeping/injured lion their king who they thought they defeated. When he wakes up, they will flee in different directions while many will pledge total allegiance in order to be spared from his wrath.

[Natsuu]

Well campagin finance rules are supposed to keep foreign meddling out of U.S. elections, but let's face it, there are always loopholes. Even though there are regulations in place, there's still worry about shady money slipping through. People are talking about reform to tighten things up and keep our elections on the up-and-up, but it's an ongoing challenge.

[hZti]

Even if you have 300 million that you can use to fake the elections, you would still need a way to launder them into the campaign of your favorite candidate. This would probably be very difficult and expensive and would probably make 1,5 billion out of your 300 million. After that your candidate would need to be elected which means that he needs a good support from the voters. To get your candidate a good support from the voters you would probably need to rig some elections before you could bring your candidate to the presidential election. This would make thinks even more expensive.
In the end you would have a very huge chunk of money that you would probably not be able to find easily even as a government. And you would have a candidate that can either fail in the election or simply would cut all ties to you when he becomes president. He could then simply be president and do whatever he wants.
I think its not worth the risk.

[Gyfts]

Michael Bloomberg tried to buy his way towards the democratic nominee in 2020. It doesn't work.

You spend 50 million, you get maybe 10% in the polls to qualify for a debate or two, get humiliated on a debate stage, and then that money goes up in flames.

[Hispo]

Michael Bloomberg tried to buy his way towards the democratic nominee in 2020. It doesn't work.

You spend 50 million, you get maybe 10% in the polls to qualify for a debate or two, get humiliated on a debate stage, and then that money goes up in flames.

Well, it seems I forgot about that case, then.
It only shows that in order to get the nomination of the party, in both the Republican party and the Democrat party, the politicians need more than just financial support. De Santis is actually a very good example of it, as soon as he entered the race to try to take over Trump's lead on the polls, he received a lot of financial aid and donations to his campaign and yet, that was not enough for him to increase the support from the base that was already seeking for an alternative away from Trump and MAGA.
He did not have the personality and the ideas which are necessary to keep people interested and invested in him. After he started to see his support plumbing, his donators and benefactors also started to withdraw support from him and moved onto Nikki Haley.

In this Trump Reblican Era, the establishment does not have a chance of all the have is money and no personality/charisma to attack Trump.

[bluebit25]

(...)What are your thoughts of this? Would it be easy for a foreign government to get a candidate that, lets say, would be keen on given then ample preferential treatment and let them go wild on a neighbour country for example?

It's not strange because in some areas political manipulation through money, I don't want to talk about dominated countries, but with big countries/underworld forces they still do it to be able to influence them. enjoy and obtain their rights and goals. It was difficult for me to understand the victories of some wars on some territories, and there were compromises, and the governments that were built behind them always had support from some source.

Not only the story about Trump, last season I also saw a lot of controversies and truths/news being spread like media manipulation, like the choice was pre-arranged and the actors were forced to act properly.