'Name your price': Trump TikTok flip-flop shows he’s ‘for sale’

but as you watch this legislation voted in today and the debate uh about what's going to happen to it it also highlights an essential question about how democracy functions how legislation is made and fundamentally what we want our political representatives to do essentially want them to evaluate arguments and assess costs and benefits listen to different interests and constituents and ultimately make good faith judgments about what they think is best for the country and for the people they repr

esent what we don't want our Representatives doing is what happens too much in Washington frankly which is siding with the folks who write the biggest checks and that is particularly true if the politician in question is in Desperate Financial Straits and willing to do anything including selling off their own political platform to any person willing to Pony up the most cash which brings us to the most prominent Republican opponent of today's Bill won Donald Trump now the ex-president we should n

ote is a bit of a late convert to the pro Tik Tock cause here he is as president four years ago threatening to ban the app outright we're looking at Tik Tock we may be banning Tik Tock we may be doing some other things or a couple of options but a lot of things are happening so we'll see what happens but we are looking at a lot of Alternatives with respect to Tik Tok in fact Trump tried to go through with that ban although ultimately it fell apart it was thrown out by the courts but here he is t

wo days ago in the run up to to this vote two days ago on CNBC announcing opposing a b frankly there are a lot of people on Tik Tok that love it there are a lot of young kids on Tik Tok who who will go crazy without it there are a lot of uh users there's you know a lot of good and there's a lot of bad with Tik Tock but the thing I don't like is that without Tik Tok you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people right you may remember Facebook banned him Trump h

as a vendetta against Mark Zuckerberg who he calls Zucker schmuck um so the Tik Tock flip-flop that you just saw from trump it didn't come out of nowhere it wasn't like he was sitting there like oh let's look at the pros and cons articles someone get this all together to me no get this it was just like two weeks ago when this vote was scheduled everyone knew it was going to happen that a republican Mega donor that guy named Jeff yass made the pilgrimage down to Mara Lago to kiss Trump's ring and

it was particularly notable because yes has previously been something of a trump skeptic it's also notable because Yas co-founded a trading firm that owns 15% of Tik tok's parent company and reportedly has a personal stake in the company worth tens of billions of dollars Jeff Yas who's an enormous Republican donor the leading donor in 2024 so so far has a lot riding on this decision okay well you don't have to be a genius to put two and two together here Yas visits Trump announces he now poses

the ban in fact even Steve Bannon figured it out taking to a fringe right-wing social platform to share an article about Trump's flip-flop with a caption quote simply gascoin and thanks to Mitch McConnell and the John Robert Supreme Court we effectively have no real actual meaningful campaign Finance regulations left in this country which means that someone like Jeff Yas again who who has like billions of dollars on the line can write a billion dollar check to Donald Trump's Super PAC if he's so

inclined might get good return on that investment so it should come as no surprise that the ex-president left that meeting with yes with a new found appreciation for Tik Tock and here's the thing ladies and gentlemen this is not a oneoff I am telling you right now this is now the way policy is going to get formed in this campaign and in a possible second Trump term especially when the man is in acute financial distress and does not have the liquidity to Pony up the $600 million he owes in legal

penalties he is also way behind in fundraising partly because he and his operation have already cannibalized huge amounts of small dollar donations already in order to pay off tens of millions of dollars in legal fees legal fees I should add that aren't going anywhere are are probably going to get worse a core part of Trump's appeal back in 2016 was this lie was a shtick uh that that his personal wealth I'm a big billionaire would allow him to sell fund his campaign and make him immune to outsi

de influence Hillary Clinton's campaign is funded by Wall Street and hedge fund managers my campaign is powered by my money I'm self-funding so I'm not controlled by all these people that control Crews that control Hillary crooked crooked crooked Hillary I have tens and tens of millions of dollars nobody else does I put my own money into this okay that was always a lie he raised huge sums of money from donors uh in that campaign but right now he is more beholden to donors and the donor class tha

n ever before he owes hundreds of millions dollars of of dollars the small donations that they've been just cranking right are showing signs of running dry there's only so many $10 donations you can get out of people and so name your price billionaires Donald Trump's political positions are for sale we've seen it with Tik Tock and he flip-flopping on cutting things like Medicare and Social Security another unpopular position he once opposed but now seems open to because again it is what extremel

y wealthy donors want to see the ex-president is strapped for cash and the Republican platform and America's governing agenda perhaps is up for auction to the highest bidder