Trump, the ‘Scammer-in-Chief,’ has Turned the Presidency into a Nonstop Grift
Trump 2.0's guiding rule: ensure financial gains for the president and his rich friends at the expense of millions of ordinary Americans.
As seemed inevitable from his first term, Donald Trump’s second term so far has been a whirlwind of lawlessness and chaos. But if you peel back the layer of distractions, you’ll see one consistent reality and guiding rule: financial gain for the president and his billionaire and corporate sponsors at the expense of ordinary Americans.
The $400 million luxury jet that Trump recently accepted from Qatar is only the latest act in a seemingly endless stream of gifts, grifts, and corporate favors that have become central to his presidency.
The corruption started before Trump even assumed office, when he announced that billionaire Elon Musk, who dished out a quarter of a billion dollars to help Trump take the White House, would be placed in charge of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk, in his role as a “special government employee,” has spent the last four months as a walking, talking conflict of interest – undercutting and attempting to dissolve the very agencies that are tasked with regulating his own businesses. Trump even rewarded Musk by turning the White House into a showroom for Musk’s Tesla cars.
But the cronyism doesn’t end with Musk. Trump has had no qualms about nominating and appointing a slew of characters with glaring corporate conflicts of interest to lead key government positions, effectively putting policymaking in the service of special interests and kicking the public good to the curb. This process included putting corporate lobbyist Pam Bondi in charge of the Justice Department, where she opened the door to bribery by freezing enforcement under the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that bars bribes by US businesses to win overseas deals.
Trump’s administration has dropped, withdrawn, or halted investigations and enforcement actions against well over 100 corporations. These include cases of investigations and lawsuits against alleged financial rip-offs, crypto violations, foreign bribery, environmental harms, civil rights violations, and workplace discrimination. Corporations facing federal enforcement actions donated at least $50 million to Trump’s inauguration. It’s not difficult to see the culture of open bribery this administration aims to create.
And then there are the instances of overt financial benefit to Trump and his family, like letting Amazon pay $40 million to license a documentary and a limited series on First Lady Melania Trump. Or how Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, currently the second richest man alive and a front-row attendee at Trump’s inauguration, infamously prevented the Washington Post from issuing an endorsement of Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris. Since then, Amazon Prime has also begun to exclusively stream Trump’s old show ‘The Apprentice,’ with the president likely directly benefiting financially.
Beyond these blatant instances of corruption, Trump has also engaged in a highly lucrative crypto venture by selling and promoting a personally-branded memecoin. My organization, Public Citizen, has called for an investigation into whether Trump violated federal law barring the president from soliciting gifts by encouraging the purchase of his coin. Worse yet, the memecoin can be purchased anonymously, allowing unknown actors, including potentially foreign governments, to direct cash into the president’s pockets. Trump even held an auction where the top buyers of his coin would be invited to a private dinner, with the highest buyer being rewarded with a tour of the White House. Is this what we want for our country, a system where anyone with enough money can buy access to the president?
Of course, none of this behavior is surprising from the Scammer-in-Chief who attempted to steal the 2020 election through fraud. Before Trump, “pay for play” was mostly a hidden feature of how we govern that was quietly exploited by special interests; now, he has normalized it as the declared standard operating procedure for how this country will be run during his presidency.
But we can fight back.
We at Public Citizen will not accept this wholesale destruction of government ethics and accountability. We have filed more than a dozen lawsuits against the administration for all sorts of wrongdoing, and we will continue to challenge this administration and bring its crimes to light.
Lisa Gilbert is co-president of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that defends democracy, resists corporate power, and fights to ensure that government works for the people – not big corporations. Follow her on Bluesky.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo
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Thanks to you and your colleagues at Public Citizen. The problem is that Agent Orange and his fascist coterie are flooding the zone, literally, while the court system moves at near glacial pace once things move beyond Federal District Courts.
You could add all the known and probably unknown pardons Trump has given to wealthy donors or grifters. Amounting to likely one billion dollars in money not collected because of the pardons. The corruption has infected everything.