Now I’m starting to wonder whether that Times story was a figment of my imagination. If Samuel Johnson could refute, by kicking a large stone, Bishop George Berkeley’s claim that matter doesn’t exist outside our perception of it, can I refute the nonexistence of a Times story by clicking onto it? Or would the immaterialists just answer that for every other browser it’s a dead link?
A word here about my use of the term “bribery.” The Supreme Court has so thoroughly eviscerated enforcement of the nation’s bribery statutes that unless the quid pro quo is recited like a catechism (“I’m doing X, and in exchange you shall do Y”), the courts won’t recognize that any crime was committed. On top of that, the Supreme Court, in its harebrained 2024 presidential immunity decision, invited presidents to conduct whatever illegal activities they like in the course of their official duties. So when I state that the UAE bribed Trump with a $2 billion investment in World Liberty Financial, I’m not suggesting that it was an illegal bribe. Do any still even exist? I’m merely saying that in a better-governed nation, such activities would be illegal and punished to the full extent of the law.
The Berkeleyan immaterialist position that the Times article does not exist is not confined to the Journal. Reuters, which on October 28 ran a superb investigative piece about the Trump family making a fortune off crypto, reported the Microsoft deal without mentioning the UAE’s $2 billion stablecoin purchase. So did CNBC, Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance, the Associated Press, and the Financial Times, which ran an excellent piece last month that explained why experts worry UAE will share advanced AI chips with China—but did not explain how the UAE quieted those worries with a $2 billion investment in stablecoin. Not a lot of stone kicking on this story!