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Comment by wang_li | Hacker News Reader

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Do you really not see the difference here? It's amazing how hard people will try to bOtH sIdEs this administration.

1) Obama was not in office when this advance was given. What favors could Penguin Random House have been trying to bribe him for?

2) The Obamas were paid a $65M advance on their books, which while a huge sum it was actually seen as a reasonable investment at the time given the expected popularity of those books[1]. Both books were insane hits and sold like crazy. "A Promised Land" sold ~900k copies _on the first day_[2]. They almost certainly earned out on advance and are probably continuing to rake in more from sales.

3) This Melania movie is widely expected to have very poor sales. While making unpopular movies isn't in itself a crime, the amount paid in royalties to her does not look to any reasonable person like a sound investment. At least, not if you expect your return to be in ticket sales or streaming fees.

[1] https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/3/2/14779892/barack-michell... [2] https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/526599-bar...

Michelle's Becoming sold 14 million copies. I don't see any recent figures for Barack's A Promised Land, but the initial 3.3 million print run sold within a month, and there is another volume in progress.

Big difference is being out of office. I expect Trump to get a ton of money after leaving office, because people like proximity to fame, but I don't like the stench when he's in office and has direct political influence.

That said, Trump also investigated Obama for the Netflix deal. Will he investigate Melania now?

Being out of office is irrelevant. "Do this for me now, I'll make sure you're taken care of when you retire." This is so common the revolving door in government is a well worn trope.

As far as I can tell no executive branch agency investigated the Netflix deal.

> This is so common the revolving door in government is a well worn trope

On TV and Reddit. In the real world you’re not getting policy outcomes today for a handshake of a payout tomorrow without someone in office to guarantee your end.

Exactly. Anyone willing to bribe you is more than willing to rescind when you have no real power.

Except if they back out of the deal after getting what they want, they'll never be able to make this kind of deal ever again.

Regardless, the revolving door is well known. It's been talked about since the 1800s. There's a wikipedia page for it. Pretending it doesn't happen doesn't change the fact that it happens and is quite common.

> if they back out of the deal after getting what they want, they'll never be able to make this kind of deal ever again

If someone is stupid enough to go running their mouth on a bribery gone bad, or one willing to give on policy in exchange for promises, you either didn't need to bribe them or are wasting your time and money.

These deals don't happen that way because they can't. It's why e.g. Bob Menendez winds up with gold bars, Melania is being paid now and Trump's crypto is being purchased and sold.

> the revolving door is well known. It's been talked about since the 1800s

Sure. But not in the way you describe. You hire the ex politician not to pay them back for a favour earlier but to curry favour with the folks still in power.

> Pretending it doesn't happen doesn't change the fact that it happens and is quite common

Straw man. Nobody said it doesn't happen. Just that the way you're describig it is wrong.

you don't seem to understand the difference between public officials and private citizens

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