Trump's Corruption is Different This Time. Will Americans Care?
The U.S. president is proposing to use taxpayer money to reward allies as the economic picture darkens
It has become conventional wisdom that Americans voters do not care about the self-dealing that U.S. President Donald Trump has undertaken in his second term. Cryptocurrency dealings, stock trades in companies influenced by his policies, and the emergence of a pay-to-play pardon system have failed to gain significant public attention. Since as Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg put it, “every day is a Watergate,” many of these scandals are treated as if they are old news. Moreover, these dealings are done largely openly and Trump thinks there is nothing wrong with them. Since at least the uncovering of the Watergate conspiracy by the Washington Post, American journalism has tended to value secret information, so self-dealing done without concealment tends to get less notice.
However, the Trump Administration’s May 18 announcement of a $1.8 billion (or $1.776 billion, to use the administration’s symbolic value) fund of taxpayer money to compensate people who claim they were wronged by the Biden Administration and Democrats, coupled with a provision “forever” banning audits of Trump and his family, is in a different league than past scandals. The Trump Administration is now proposing to take taxpayer money and give it to its allies. Behind the paywall, I will outline three reasons why I think that this instance of self-dealing may be unlike past ones:
It is simple
Material conditions are worsening
Trump has expressed indifference to worsening material conditions
