
T-Mobile admits it spent $195000 on Trump hotel while lobbying for Sprint merger - rbanffy
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/5/18251722/t-mobile-trump-hotel-washington-sprint-merger-lobbying
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burfog
This is getting crazy.

If we had elected Larry Page, would it be a scandal that T-Mobile supports
Android phones?

If we had elected Jeff Bezos, would it be a scandal for T-Mobile to use AWS?

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torpfactory
Yes I think we ought to view it as a scandal.

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tropo
It seems you think that the president and his family must not engage in any
sort of business. Are there any exceptions to that?

I don't see anywhere in the US Constitution where a vow of poverty is
required. If this were the case, then we could only elect professional
politicians at best... or maybe just the homeless. They'd have to be orphaned
and single of course, to ensure that family members can't pursue any economic
activity either.

Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer and Ronald Reagan was an actor. Government
workers sometimes flew on Pan Am, an airline which served peanuts and played
movies starring Ronald Reagan. Do you think we ought to view it as a scandal?
Both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan stood to profit from this.

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BubRoss
195,000 USD on a hotel bill while lobbying the person that owns the hotel.

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tropo
Adjusted for inflation, that is probably just a day worth of peanuts for Pan
Am.

It's also far less than the cost of having Bill Clinton give a speech in
Moscow to bankers who are lobbying his wife in the State Department. That
happened.

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BubRoss
That's just pure whataboutism

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tropo
Your claim of "whataboutism" is a tired old attempt to dismiss your own
hypocrisy. It's not fooling anybody. The moment you mention it, you have
confirmed what is obvious: you don't actually care about the issue, except to
get in a dig at the president, and would not hold other presidents to the same
standard.

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BubRoss
This is textbook whataboutism, no one is saying the other is not corruption,
no one is saying other instances are ok. I don't know why you think the
discussion is a scale with weight on two sides, with one side being a
'winner'. Crime and bribery are wrong, period.

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torpfactory
This is outright bribery. We've become so inured to this kind of thing lately
that it doesn't seem to register anymore.

From T-Mobile's perspective: I pay (inflated prices) for hotel stays in a very
visible way (bright magenta suits!), you help secure a desired policy outcome.

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jdsully
Seems to be a pattern of those claiming they will "drain the swamp" being even
more corrupt than their predecessors. Trudeau's attempt up here in Canada is
even more disheartening because we actually believed him.

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mugwort13
Waaay at the bottom of the article is the truth. "The spending is only 14
percent of T-Mobile’s total spending on DC-area hotels — half of which went to
Hilton hotels...."

