Trump Corruption Inc., Part 3
Corruption concerns about individual elected officials often require time to resonate with the American people. 
In the case of President Nixon, it took some two years between the Watergate burglary and the Nixon resignation. And then he was gone from public life.
Trump’s corruption in recent months has been resonating big time with the American people. A YouGov poll in March found that a majority of Americans believe Trump is corrupt and dishonest.
His corruption is closer to the conduct of dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping than to anything we have ever seen before in the American presidency.
Perhaps nothing has driven home Trump’s corruption to the American people more than his proposed slush fund for convicted criminals, along with the extraordinary agreement he arranged for himself, his family and the Trump Organization to prevent any audits of past tax years.
It has been estimated that this free pass from IRS audits, which Trump negotiated with his former personal defense lawyer and now his Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, could save Trump as much as $100 million in taxes.
Trump’s corruption is hitting taxpayers twice.
He wants to use taxpayer money to reward convicted criminals who attacked the Capitol after he inspired them to help carry out his failed coup attempt. At the same time, he effectively negotiated with himself to secure an unprecedented free pass from potentially massive tax payments.
All of this has happened while the American people are struggling with rising costs for daily living. In Trump’s version of “let them eat cake,” Trump said in discussing Iran “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”
The national reaction to this may not have reached the level of reaction to the Watergate Saturday Night Massacre. But it has been so explosive nationally that even some of the normally supine Republicans in Congress refused to support the slush fund.
Trump’s Acting Attorney General finally said the slush fund is dead – but Trump made no such statement and continued to praise it. As Senator John Cornyn said, “The way to ensure the Trump retribution fund is more than mostly dead would be for Congress to put a stake through it.”
Meanwhile, the agreement Trump reached with his own Justice Department, which ensured there would be no audits of his past tax returns, was likely the most important part of the deal he essentially made with himself.
Trump and his family ripped off the presidency for $4 billion in new wealth in the first year of his second term. Then, in the first quarter of 2026, Trump engaged in more than 3,600 stock trades, another unprecedented act by a president to monetize his office. Many of Trump’s stock trades involved companies “whose profits have been directly impacted by his decisions as head of the government.”
For example, Trump invested in February somewhere between $1 and $5 million in Dell stock. He proceeded to promote the company, reportedly going so far as to urge people to buy a Dell computer nine days after he purchased the stock. Then in late May, Dell received a $9.7 billion contract from the Pentagon.
Trump’s corruption also shows up in the way he treats Washington, DC, like he personally owns the city. He turned the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army into a military parade that happened to fall on his birthday, scheduled a UFC event on his birthday this year, and threatened to make permanent the bizarrely placed UFC arena built on the White House South Lawn for the occasion.
He tore down the East Wing, ripped up the White House Rose Garden, plastered gold tchotchkes all over the People’s House, repainted the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool an ugly blue, and threatened to build an “atrocious” 250-foot triumphal arch, facetiously known as the Arc de Trump, on sacred grounds.
He created a White House “Presidential Walk of Fame” modeled after something he saw at a Hilton Hotel and used plaques to attack his predecessors; shut down the Kennedy Center for two years; illegally added his own name before John F. Kennedy’s on the Kennedy Center; added huge pictures of himself to government buildings; added his picture to passports; proposed putting his picture on a new $250 bill; created 24-karat commemorative government gold coins featuring his picture; threatened to rebuild DC’s public golf courses to his liking; and so it goes.
It’s a wonder he has any time left to win a war or bring down the ever-rising cost of living.
Oh, that’s right, Trump’s not doing any of that.
The next president will have a lot of immediate work to do to get rid of the Trump junk and restore the nation’s capital to its previous state.
Only two years and seven months to go. We can make it.
This too shall pass.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s newsletter, and other recent editions, here. And subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
