"Money laundering is a financial transaction where criminals try to hide the source, nature, or proceeds of their illegal activities. This process is also known as converting "dirty money" into "clean money". Money laundering can lead to serious criminal offenses and threaten the integrity of the financial system. "
Idk. It kinda works in this case. The money would be illegally gotten if coming as donations from churches. But because churches have a legitimate reason to want to buy bulk bibles, this "hides" the illegality of the activity. So maybe not true textbook definition, but the spirit is there for sure.
It's not illegal to sell bibles. I'm sure there are loads of churches that will fill their pews with them, but they're not sending money to the campaign, they're sending it to Trump. Why would he make this harder for himself, he can just take the money and put it in his pocket, there's no reason to get the campaign involved.
The Bible’s website states the product “is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign.”
“GodBlessTheUSABible.com is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Ventures LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates,” it says.
Instead, it says, “GodBlessTheUSABible.com uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”
While the internal logic of the original post makes sense if you know nothing but the headline, this really is just more grift. It's like he's not even trying to campaign.
The problem is that's literally just money laundering?
They are using a shell corporation and bullshit liscencing fee to cover over the fact that this transaction is and should be illegal.
Like, the idea here is that the church is not allowed to donate to a political figure, so they've set up a shell corp in the middle. The church pays $60 to the shell corp, who sends back 30 cents worth of paper, and then passes on 59.70 to Trump as a "licencing fee", which is obviously just going to be spent on his campaign.
The Bibles have nothing to do with his campaign. In the context of the Bibles, he's just a dude selling bibles, he's not a representative of his campaign, the money isn't going to his campaign, and it's not being spent on his campaign.
To be specific, there's no law against a church giving money to a political figure; there are laws against donations to political causes -- and political campaigns are political causes. Trump the person can sell whatever he wants and use that money however he wants, or, in this case, license his name to whatever, etc.
There's no reason a person can't pay for their own campaign, and there's no reason someone with more money than sense can't just give another person free money with no strings. We don't tend to this because we don't tend to have candidates that could believably get money from people for reasons unrelated to their campaign -- with any career politician, it would be a transparent pretense. But not with Trump, he legitimately can get people to buy whatever, because it's him they like, not just him-as-president. The shoes, the Bible, the steaks -- they're proof of that fact.
The money he's getting from the Bibles is not political money and he's not spending it on his campaign. There's just no there there.
Trump's debts are not "political," especially the fraud verdict (the $400m one) which is his biggest problem rn. There's no reason a person can't sell a Bible and use it to pay for the judgement against him for fraud. Like, that's a weird sentence, but it's true.
His campaign is definitely short on money, but, financially, his main concern right now is the fraud judgement, and after that the rape/defamation judgement, then maybe the lawyers next? Tho he probably doesn't plan on paying them. So, yeah, Trump's going to need some money for his campaign, but he needs to keep the Trump in Trump Tower or he's completely fucked -- legally, financially, and even politically.
Look, I hate him too, but this is just not money laundering.
For real. Trump is an idiot, a grifter, and a piece of shit, but this isn't even sidestepping campaign donation law.
He's not a political candidate getting funds from churches, he's a parasite capitalist selling bibles to his fans, and he's a political candidate -- 2 separate things. The bible money isn't going to his campaign, it's just going to his pocket.
This take assumes that he's selling bibles, funneling the money from their sales to his campaign, then funneling it back out to pay for his disgorgements. This take thinks he's intentionally making is harder for himself, just to make it illegal.
No. But they are prohibited from political action including financial supoort of a governmental candidate. This is just a way for them to overpay on bibles in order to financially support him with some level of plausible deniability.
In so far as it's being used as described it would be a highly inefficient way to do that so I think the much simpler explanation (Trump just wants money so he put his name on some random garbage for a cut of the profits just like Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump Airlines, etc) makes more sense.
I would say we start the rumor that his Bible literally doesn't match any others and contains Satanic verses, but that would probably increase sales. I wonder whose Bible he plagiarized.
I wish he would die of sepsis from an infected hemorrhoid already.
Just quote some "woke" passages and claim it's not in the "real" bible and tell them that they should check themselves as that seems to make them believe basically anything.
..... ya know, this theory feels like it may actually hold water. In an ancient society, it seems very feasible that a starving vagrant would employ stories about an omnipotent being that rewards acts of kindness with eternal heavenly glory.
Is religion possibly the result of a diogenes persuading unemphatic peers into acting selflessly as a means of improving their quality of life?
Not a Diogenes for certain. He was a shit stirrer not a person trying to trick people into being good.
But we do have a fair amount of realistic stories about the founding of one major religion that don’t require miracles to explain: Buddhism. And from the sounds of it Siddhartha Gautama was a member of the familial elite born to a life of luxury who was still not happy, he attempted asceticism as a means to fill the hole in his heart but found it too to be unfulfilling. Then he began developing a philosophical framework and set of techniques which sought to resolve the issue as he came to understand it, and when it helped he spread it. I believe he knowingly used metaphor that would’ve been understood by many of the people of his time and place as well as placing it within the religious framework of the Hindu society in which he lived.
That doesn’t explain the earliest religions but for those I look to animism which just kinda makes a lot of sense to many people. It’s a natural consequence of applying empathy to all things. But Buddhism does explain how religion evolves from a framework with which to understand the world into a framework with which to understand oneself and to tell people how to act. We could also look at early Judaism which seems to be more rules for social harmony and for survival in a less than hospitable location.
Buddhism also explains animism. Things aren't separate from the mind that perceives them. The mind is alive. Thus, all perceived things are alive. This also explains non-violence and dana (selfless acts of giving). Being aggressive towards anything in our field of perception is to be aggressive to ourselves. To be giving to anything in our field of perception is to give to ourselves.
Took Buddhism plus DMT to actually grok that, though.
I'm pretty sure it was invented as a series of fairytales to get kids (and slaves) to shut up and obey their masters, with the threat that asking too many questions would get them tortured by a spooky ghost.
As an American, same. Except for the original reason behind freedom of speech and a few other things protecting the people, we need a lot of updates. A lot of updates.
And maybe that's not enough, probably it isn't, I can think of a few things I'd add. But it's hilarious to see so many people up voting actual ignorance because "USA bad". Like there's not plenty of accurate criticisms to be made.
Maybe it's just my lemmy app (jerboa ftw) but I like how your post got read as a markdown list item, like this is the 27th thing you had to say on the topic but the other 26 got deleted.
No, most non-progressive dems would qualify as being disingenuous. The progressive ones that still call themselves dems aren't right wing, they're naive.
All politicians have books.....a single person is free to buy 10,000 copies, book seller gets a cut and politicians get the rest..... 100% legal, clean profit. And the person that bought 10k copies gets access to said politicians
honestly surprised no one has tried this before? or have they?
like for once the man is selling an actual product with sort of mass appeal instead of weird niche stuff with low utility like sneakers or NFTs. and like $60 is expensive, but not orders of magnitude expensive? correct me where i’m wrong
$60 for a public domain bible, public domain constitution, public domain pledge of allegiance, and public domain declaration of independence? Sounds like an infinite order of magnitude expensive to me.
Yeah but not that much money. First run hardcover novels cost like 15-25 bucks and it's my understanding they earn the publisher the most money of any printing run and that's even with the cut going to the author. So unless they're producing these things with some high quality materials, which seeing who's hawking these I doubt it, I think it safe to assume these things are earning at least 40 bucks in profit per sale.
Which, even assuming a generously low run of 100k, is still $4 mil. That assumes that Evangelical churches won't buy these by the millions - and I assure you, many will.
You'll also get megachurches getting in on the action - there are a scary amount of mega pastors who are just waiting to be the new face of propaganda for a theocratic regime.
Like, seriously, this. "Vote for me and I'll help make laws that you like!"
This is literally what democracy is supposed to be doing. If this was what Trump was actually doing here, it might be the first time he's just followed regular principles of politics.
Let's be honest Trump has nothing to do with the making of this thing, someone somewhere figured they could make a quick buck off the evangelical right and got Trump to sign on for, probably, a revenue share.
I think the question here is how is this money laundering? I could sell Sherlock Holmes for $60, and that wouldn't be Arthur Conan Doyle giving me money under the table. How is this any different?
It's laundering because when someone is expressly forbidden to give you money and you start to sell them snow in the winter that's what is called giving you money. And the cheaper you get stuff to sell the less you pay to clean up the funds
Is there any evidence of churches buying these stupid bibles? If there is that's a pretty serious accusation. If it's just weirdo Trump cultists then that's not actually money laundering.
Hey I'm sure Trump will release the sales records right?
Right after he tells us who's buying up all the shares of Trump Media & Technology Group that just went public but just BEFORE he releases his taxes.
I'm all for giving the benefit of the doubt inititally but those days are long long past. He's definitely using this to funnel money into his campaign.
Holy crap, you're making accusations that the guy who's out of money is illegally recieving tons of money and I'm the unreasonable one? From everything I'm seeing and hearing outside of Lemmy churches are actually pissed off at how tacky this is, but sure, baseless accusations make you the reasonable one.
Serious accusation? Please. Trump does six financial crimes worse than this one every morning before his breakfast burger. All we're saying is we can see the grift.
Just because he does worse things all the time doesn't mean this isn't serious. Don't let him move the goalpost like that. But also maybe have some actual evidence instead of just paranoid conspiracy theories. That's their thing. We need to be better than them.
I am saying: look, he's selling bibles, which will allow terrible churches to support his cause without falling foul of campaign finance law.
There's no evidence because technically there's no crime. He's just found a new way to rip the system off.
Also: I don't have access to Trump's Bible sale records. Never will. Nor will you Does that mean we shouldn't say anything about the fact that he's cheating the electoral system? That right-wing churches can advance their power grabs without fear of prosecution? Even if it's not illegal it's unjust and dangerous.
Look, campaign finance in the United States is absolute bullshit. Chances are that anyone dumb enough to buy an overpriced Trump branded bible could already legally just give him the money though.
Yes. He is a con-man and a grifter. We all know that here. Trying to pretend this is money laundering when the money doesn't even need to be laundered just makes you seem like a crazy person though. I would like for us to all stay in touch with reality. Election finance reform would be great. Wild criminal accusations based on nothing but vibes won't help that happen though.
Ugghhhh. "It's a form of money laundering" does not mean "We can accuse Trump of formal criminal money laundering as defined by the law." We're saying the cunt is making it easy for bad churches to funnel him money. That is still bad, criminal or not.
Wild criminal accusations based on nothing but vibes
Do you read my replies? Again, we are not making criminal accusations. And it's not "vibes": We can see the man hawking bibles to free up his own money for campaign funds. It's so obvious what he's doing, that he's put out a phoney disclaimer not-quite saying he isn't.
Cool. Guess you won't be able to reply when I tell you that I'm sorry I mistakenly believed you might be reasoned with. The idea that somehow "money laundering" actually means openly selling things to suckers totally legally is just an obvious lie because you don't want to admit you were wrong. You'll never get to hear that though.
This is like buying merch from a YouTuber. It's not about buying a product for what it's worth, it's about donating to a "cause" with something to show off that you did. (Not hating on supporting YouTubers, just a comparison)
I hate how the Bible is being used as a nationalist prop. Nationalism was a theme of the old testament and Jesus called his followers to move beyond national identity. But that's how fascism works, it apropariates instead of actually creating something new.
"No true Scotsman" is when you modify the initial claim to conveniently skirt evidence to the contrary. Saying "I'm ashamed these people are allowed to call themselves Scotsmen/Christians" is another matter
I mean partaking in the American civil religion does seem to violate one of the first rules of Christianity. They’re supposed to be kinda monotheistic from what I hear
Usually, when various Christian denominations call some writings (which other denominations consider canonical) apocryphal, they at least recognise that those writings are roughly as old as the canonical writings and the subject matter concerns the same topics (i.e. accounts on lives of Biblical figures, and doctrinal material). Just that they don't agree it's valid teaching or doctrine. Apocryphal, as said.
I mean, American Evangelicals wouldn't just randomly slap demonstrably modern material that is explicitly not religious doctrine, not even worded as such, in the book and call it Biblical canon, right? ...right? ...that'd be patently stupid, right? ...nobody would do that? ...people would have at least some problem with that?
(Me, I'm not American, and an ex-Christian. I actually liked the Deck of Cards better. These days, I just do the same thing with Tarot deck I guess. ...confuse myself endlessly with esoteric imagery.)
Well, they really seem to be in a hurry to bring on the events in Revelations. Sadly, since most of them have never read it, I think most would be surprised to find that this now puts them squarely on the side they think they are against!
Its def a way around church funding. But a legal one. So the use of laundering weakens the complaint.
The only potential legal question. Is are churches buying the bible or openly encouraging memembers to. And let's be honest. That tax dodge is totally ignored by the IRS for so long. I can see it getting challenged as unequal application of law. Unless the IRS dose some major attack on most churches.
