Donald Trump and his cronies left his first administration with a playbook for self-enrichment in a second term, Franklin Foer writes.
CORRUPTION UNBOUND
Donald Trump and his cronies left his first administration with a playbook for self-enrichment in a second term.
This article is part of “If Trump Wins,” a project considering what Donald Trump might do if reelected in 2024.
CORRUPTION UNBOUND
Donald Trump and his cronies left his first administration with a playbook for self-enrichment in a second term.
In the annals of government ethics, the year 2017 exists in a bygone era. That September, Donald Trump’s secretary of health and human services, Tom Price, resigned in disgrace. His unforgivable sin was chartering private jets funded by taxpayers, when he just as easily could have flown commercial. Compared with the abuses of power in the years that followed, the transgression was relatively picayune. But at that early moment, even Trump felt obliged to join the criticism of Price.
During Trump’s first months as president, it wasn’t yet clear how much concentrated corruption the nation, or his own party, would tolerate, which is why Trump was compelled to dispose of the occasional Cabinet secretary. Yet nearly everything about Trump’s history in real estate, where he greased palms and bullied officials, suggested that he regarded the government as a lucrative instrument for his own gain.
A week and a half before taking office, he held a press conference in front of towering piles of file folders, theatrically positioned to suggest rigorous legal analysis, and announced that he would not divest himself of his commercial interests. Instead, he became the first modern commander in chief to profit from a global network of businesses, branded in gilded letters blaring his own name.
It didn’t happen all at once. Trump spent the early days of his presidency testing boundaries. He used his bully pulpit to unabashedly promote his real-estate portfolio. His properties charged the Secret Service “exorbitant rates”—as much as $1,185 a night, per a House Oversight Committee report—for ....
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/trump-second-term-mafia-state/676128/
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