I will never forget the moment when I realized that President Trump had transformed the way we think about political scandals.
It was in September 2019, right after Trump released the
memorandum of his July 25, 2019, call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. There, in black and white, was one of the clearest examples of an improper quid pro quo in foreign affairs that I’d ever seen.
Zelensky told Trump that he would like to purchase Javelin anti-tank missiles for Ukraine. Trump responded with his own request. “I would like you to do us a favor,” he said, and proceeded to demand that Ukraine investigate a bizarre conspiracy theory prevalent in MAGA circles that Ukraine was
actually responsible for election interference in 2016, and Russia had been wrongly blamed. Trump also demanded that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
But it’s what happened next that convinced me that Trump was transforming politics. He called a clearly corrupt call “perfect” and kept calling it perfect until virtually every Republican rallied to his side or remained silent.
It’s as if he had reversed the old saying “It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up” into something entirely new. If there is no cover-up, then there must not have been a crime.
If there is a word that describes the second Trump administration, it’s brazen. While I certainly hold open the possibility that dark deeds are being done in secret, one thing that is remarkable is how open and obvious he is with his self-dealing.
He accepted the
gift of a plane to serve as a new Air Force One (later to be handed over to the Trump presidential library) from Qatar — a nation that has
supported Hamas for years and that is actively working to influence American politics through
lavish expenditure — and then provided the country with an
American security guarantee by executive order.
Trump
pardoned a convicted crypto billionaire, Changpeng Zhao, after Zhao’s company, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, “took steps that catapulted the Trump family venture’s new stablecoin product, enhancing its credibility and pushing its market capitalization up from $127 million to over $2.1 billion.”
In September, The Times
published a report describing in great detail how the United Arab Emirates entered into a multibillion-dollar crypto deal with the Trump family and the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy. “Two weeks later,” my colleagues reported, “the White House agreed
to allow the U.A.E. access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips.”
In August, The New Yorker’s David D. Kirkpatrick published a
comprehensive accounting of how much Trump has profited from the presidency and concluded that so far he and his family made $3.4 billion during his terms in the White House.
Trump’s corruption isn’t just financial. Trump is granting legal favors to his political friends while prosecuting his political enemies, and it is all out in the open. He freed even the most violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 and then forced out a U.S. attorney who refused to prosecute James Comey or Letitia James. The acting prosecutor he appointed quickly filed dubious criminal charges against both Comey and James.
For good measure, Trump then
commuted the remaining prison sentence of the former Republican representative George Santos, writing in a Truth Social post that Santos “had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”
Trump’s defenders have a different — and telling — term for his misconduct. He’s not brazen, he’s “transparent.” In a CNN interview about Trump’s message to Pam Bondi directing her to prosecute Trump’s enemies, Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma
said: “I think what we know is, President Trump is very open and transparent with the American people, and he speaks his mind. And that’s what his supporters love about him, and that’s what America loves about him.”
In May, Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House,
was even more explicit. When questioned about Trump’s crypto dealings during a news conference, Johnson said, “The reason many people refer to the Bidens as the Biden crime family is because they were doing all this stuff behind curtains.”
“They were trying to conceal it,” Johnson continued, “and they repeatedly lied about it. Whatever President Trump is doing is out in the open. They’re not trying to conceal anything.”
That’s a remarkable statement, and it’s assuredly not a real defense of Trump’s conduct. It’s as if Johnson is arguing that a bank robbery is only a crime if the assailant wears a mask. But if the robber walks in and smiles for the security cameras? Well, that’s out in the open. He’s not trying to conceal anything.
Whether it’s by instinct or intention, Trump seems to have stumbled onto two key truths about his partisan supporters: They are desperate to rationalize, excuse and justify anything that he does, and they do not know much of anything about the law.
In that circumstance, when Trump acts out, openly and proudly, they don’t just rally to his side because they believe him and admire him, although many do, but because they can’t quite believe that deeds done in the open can be just as corrupt as deeds done in secret.
In normal politics the cover-up works as a form of concession. Outside of the occasional anonymous donor, who covers up good deeds? If your conduct is legal and moral, then why conceal it? But denial and evasion send a clear, contrary message — even I know that what I’m accused of is serious. I don’t want people to know the truth.
The average American doesn’t know how foreign affairs are conducted, how the Department of Justice is run or the ethical lines around foreign business dealings. They’re almost always going to grant their partisan allies the benefit of the doubt. In fact, they often don’t even allow for the possibility of doubt.
What if their favorite politician seems actually proud of what he’s done — if he boasts about it and can’t stop talking about it? Well, then they’re proud also. How can you impeach a man for a perfect phone call? Or for a shrewd business deal? Or for loyalty to his friends and allies?
Last month, I attended the No Kings protest in Chicago as an observer. The city was tense as a result of aggressive ICE actions and attempts to deploy the National Guard. Republican politicians were warning that the protests were likely to be violent. So I had to go see the protests for myself.
What I found was completely peaceful. The atmosphere — at least in the little corner that I observed — was even somewhat festive. The signs were creative, but one stood out. On a plain white poster board, a protester had written in big, black letters, “
You try to fit it all on a sign.”
I knew exactly how that protester felt. When you survey Trump’s second term, there is so much corruption, corruption that is open and obvious, that it’s actually difficult to summarize.
But it’s worse than that. The very fact that it’s open and obvious is making it impossible, for now at least, to stop. In fact, his corruption only escalates. We are watching Trump execute supposed drug traffickers without due process and
amass military assets outside of Venezuela without even the pretense of seeking congressional approval.
But who needs Congress — or the law for that matter — when the president is in command? Even when it comes to matters of war and peace, MAGA defers to the man who tells them exactly what they want to hear.
