Trump’s unprecedented corruption is actively destroying America: report

President Donald Trump is breaking precedent in an important way, according to two experts — he is unprecedented in his corruption. “Past presidents of both parties have recognized that the Oval Office is a public trust, not a business opportunity,” wrote The Hill’s David Wippman and Glenn C. Altschuler on Sunday . “President Trump has shattered that norm. Since returning to office, he and his family have raked in more than $4 billion. Much of that comes from investments in cryptocurrency, real estate, and licensing ventures that benefit directly from President Trump’s policies.” He added, “Although the federal conflict of interest statute does not cover the president, every occupant of the White House since Watergate has recognized an ethical obligation to separate public office from personal financial interests. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush used blind trusts. Barack Obama and Joe Biden didn’t need to, because their assets consisted largely of diversified investments, pensions and book royalties.” Wippman and Altschuler described how Trump has weakened regulations to prevent conflicts of interest, heavily profited from cryptocurrency, used his power to enrich his hotels and golf courses and accepted deals which personally benefit him from the governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They even described him from profiting by major media and technology companies settling frivolous litigation he filed instead of contesting them. “Last month, in what critics called ‘the most blatant example of presidential corruption in modern times,’ Trump settled his own suit against the IRS,” Wippman and Altschuler wrote. “The settlement included a $1.776 billion ‘anti-weaponization fund’ Trump could use to reward supporters and immunity for him and other family members from any claims the IRS might make against them. Political blowback forced Trump to abandon the fund, perhaps permanently, but not the exemption from prosecution. It’s impossible to know whether any specific policy decision reflects greed rather than the public interest. But that is precisely the problem. When citizens cannot be confident the government is acting on their behalf, they lose faith in the political process.” Trump’s personal profiting from the presidency was evident as recently as Sunday. The New York Times reported Trump and his sons are profiting from the administration striking a deal with Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in November over tungsten mine access. “Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history,” wrote The New York Times’ Paul Sonne and Eric Lipton on Sunday. They later added that “around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment company controlled by Mr. Lutnick’s family and overseen by his sons Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, helped one of the lead investors working with Dominari on the Kazakh deal raise $210 million in new capital for a related entity. Such rounds of fund-raising typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees.” Paul Krugman , who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008 for his work on trade theory, said in a new video on his Substack that the report the New York Times published on Sunday about an agreement struck between the U.S. and a mining company in Kazakhstan where his sons, Don Jr. and Eric , as well as the family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stand to financially benefit was "horrifying." He also noted that it revealed how "departed" the Trump administration is from American history. "I’m not a political expert — sometimes I think nobody is — but my God, again, this corruption is so blatant," Krugman said. "And it does resonate with people. It’s really clear that corruption at the top and the sense that ordinary people are paying the price while people with power enrich themselves is an effective popular issue." Krugman added that the kind of corruption detailed in the Times' report has brought down Trump allies such as Viktor Orban, the former dictator of Hungary. He described that comparison as one of the "hopeful signs for what may happen to America." "So here we are, just to remind you that this scandal, it’s a huge thing. It’s page one in the New York Times, but in a way it’s actually kind of ordinary, since even this size of scandal is happening every few weeks these days," Krugman continued. "Do not make the mistake of treating what’s going on as in any sense normal," he added. "This is hugely abnormal, and I believe that the American people will understand that it’s abnormal even if pundits get bored of talking about the corruption. So drive it home, maybe for make benefit American people instead of the Trump family."