Trump's corruption

Enough time has passed since Donald Trump’s inauguration to begin to understand that the president lacks a decent political project for the United States, and even less a coherent vision of his country’s role in the world. Trump’s political project began, firstly, with avoiding prison and, once in power, focused on enriching himself and his family as much as possible by shamelessly exploiting the system’s gray areas, using the exceptional platform afforded him by the head-of-state role in the planet’s superpower. His is a project of systematized corruption and of extractive subjugation of institutions to his will.

From accepting a luxury plane gifted by Qatar to trading his own company shares while making decisions from the White House, examples of corruption will fill future history books. The most recent example is stark and illustrative of his method as U.S. president. As part of a revenge strategy through lawsuits, Trump sued his own Treasury Department earlier this year over the leak of his tax return in September 2020, two months before the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. The lawsuit led to an unusual negotiation in which the president’s interests were represented on both sides of the table, as if he were simultaneously plaintiff and defendant. As a result, Trump reached an agreement with himself under which the Treasury commits never to investigate his or his family’s tax returns. The coup de grâce is the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate those he considers to have been targeted by the Biden administration. Among them are those convicted over the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, some of whom Trump had already pardoned.

The president’s fiscal self-serving maneuvers and his attempt to create a slush fund for his political allies using public money are so scandalous that they have even embarrassed some Senate Republicans — who are usually docile and subservient — and sparked a stir of dissent within their ranks.

But Trump now sees himself as the master of the federal government. It is the checks and balances — such as Congress and the Supreme Court — that have convinced him he can exploit any constitutional ambiguity to his advantage. The fact that something has never been done before is no deterrent to him, but rather an incentive. Absolute power has clearly revealed its true nature. Trump is unfamiliar with the meaning of words like responsibility, restraint, or prudence. Only the November elections can rein in the president and restore some balance to American democracy before the aberrant becomes the norm.

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