When politicians use the levers of government to enrich themselves, it damages democracy.
When politicians use the levers of government to enrich themselves, it damages democracy.
D onald Trump ran for president by arguing that the federal government was hopelessly corrupt. Once elected, he immediately began proving it.
Trump, we were told, was incorruptible because he was already rich. He wouldn’t need the minibar because he owned the hotel. He would forcibly evict the Biden Crime Family, who cashed in on the presidency (and, earlier, the vice presidency) by accepting money from foreign interests.
Yet today, the man who promised to put an end to influence-peddling has invited the people who once screamed about Clinton Foundation quid pro quos to dine at million-dollar-a-plate soirées where the party favors are presumably . . . favors.
As we have seen, Trump thinks if he enriches himself out in the open, it’s not corruption. He simply does what everyone thinks politicians always do, only he performs it openly and unashamedly.
Take, for example, the $200 million jet offered as a gift by Qatar, which Trump intends to use as Air Force One. (Accepting the gift was okayed by the U.S. attorney general, who just recently was a paid shill for . . . Qatar.) If a Democratic president accepted so much as a Gulfstream from an oil‑soaked monarchy known to support Hamas, right-wing TV and Republican lawmakers would melt from the heat of their own ire. Instead, we get shrugs.
Or consider the Trump cryptocurrency dinner held at his Virginia golf club. The entry cost was several million dollars in Trump‑branded tokens, an asset whose only value is in demonstrating the buyers’ devotion to setting money ablaze to warm the heart of their host, who pockets the gains. It’s Charles Ponzi if he sold golden basketball shoes.
A more blatant bit of corruption is on view in a recent presidential pardon. Paul Walczak, a former nursing home administrator, was convicted of stealing $10 million from nurses, doctors, and others who worked at his facilities. But after his mother wrote a seven‑figure check for one of Trump’s fundraising dinners, Walczak received a full pardon, saving him from paying restitution to his victims and going to prison. Salvation, it turns out, comes with bacon-wrapped chestnuts.
Trump’s defenders insist none of this is corruption because, well, he’s Trump. They have constructed a moral syllogism: Corruption is bad; Trump is good; therefore, whatever Trump does is not corruption.
Yet corruption doesn’t transmute simply because your team’s mascot is printed on the napkins. When officials trade public power for private gain, citizens pay an invisible tax — broken institutions, higher costs, and a cynicism that no election can bleach out. James Madison warned that men are not angels; that’s why we need constitutions. It’s up to the people to demand that their elected officials honor the rule of law.
Public corruption is dangerous because it silently redistributes wealth upward: every bribe is a private tax whose cost lands on consumers and taxpayers. It also repels talent; the honest retreat, leaving authority to the morally pliable. Finally, it shreds the very concept of equal justice, because dues paid to the boss buy immunity while the powerless navigate the system unaided.
History flashes in bright neon. In the 1880s the “Star Route” scandal saw Republican insiders siphon postal funds; the party lost the White House and spent years rebuilding trust. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich tried to sell a Senate seat like a used air fryer on Craigslist; today his name is shorthand for pompadoured hubris (naturally, Trump pardoned him).
Corruption, left unchecked, doesn’t just bankrupt treasuries — it hollows out faith. When citizens think the game is rigged, they stop playing, first in the marketplace, then at the polling place. The social contract can fray faster than Caitlin Clark can fire off a 30-footer.
Partisanship, predictably, extends to tolerating corruption on your side but not on the other. We can do better. If it bothered you when Hunter Biden sold finger paintings for half a million bucks, it should bother you when the Trump sons profit off their father’s crypto schemes. The Constitution doesn’t permit partisan exemptions; neither should we.
Donald Trump once promised to drain the swamp. Instead, he has waded into its murky waters. Corruption is corruption, whether cloaked in blue or red, and the republic would be much better off if we could all agree on that.