Trump's Corruption

Including What I Told the New York Times

Today’s New York Times column by Tom Edsall, titled Shamelessness is Trump’s Superpower, focuses on his corruption. Edsall reached out to me over the weekend for comment specifically on a 2024 poll that asked partisans what negative attributes they would ascribe to the other party. “Corrupt” was the most common choice for both, with 65% of Republicans using that term to describe Democrats and 55% of Democrats using that word to describe Republicans.

Here’s what I wrote (some of which is in the column, some of which isn’t):

How is it that Republicans are more likely to define Democrats as corrupt than vice versa, despite the cartoonish levels of corruption under Trump, who has made such a mockery of the emoluments clause in both of his presidential terms as well as any pretense of concern about conflicts of interest (the Qatari government's offer on Sunday to give Trump personally a plane is just the latest example)?

I don't think differing conceptions of corruption among Republicans and Democrats explains that, at least not primarily. I think the very widespread belief among Republicans that Democrats are so corrupt, despite there being no major Democratic leader who can hold a candle to Trumpian corruption, is to a significant degree a product of media diets.

To take one example, Congressional Republicans, not to mention a special prosecutor, spent years investigating Hunter Biden for alleged misconduct while Joe Biden was Vice President. $1300 car payments became one among numerous "smoking guns" that VP Biden was abusing his office and engaging in impeachable conduct. And it would be impossible to overstate how ceaselessly rightwing media, including FOX News, pounded on this story hour after hour and day after day of "Biden family corruption." Critically, they do so as a fully engaged arm of the GOP in propounding those narratives unceasingly. That is simply not as true of the relationship of the Democratic Party to even liberal media, like MSNBC, let alone mainstream media like CNN, the major broadcast networks and the New York Times.

The specific focus on elite corruption, whether Hilary's emails, or Hunter Biden certainly reinforces a larger attack on government, especially all of the allegedly rife abuse of our welfare system and the mistrust such narratives are meant to sow. And with the ground so seeded, it's easier to rationalize Trump's endless and brazen misconduct. Survey data published last year by the Washington Post showed that, from 2007 through 2024, about 70% of Democrats have consistently said that honesty is an "extremely important" quality in a presidential candidate. The same percentage of Republicans agreed in 2007, but by 2018, during Trump's first term, under 50% agreed. Then, for Republicans, that number rebounded into the 60s after 2021. In other words, Republicans know on some level how dishonest Trump is, but many have and will continue to make their peace with it. And to square the circle, they will do so because they've become convinced both that Democrats, specifically, are guilty of corruption, and generally that, since *everyone* is on the make, attacking Trump just amounts to picking on him simply because he's not trying to hide anything. And that supposedly selective attack on Trump only reinforces the narrative that corrupt elites (a focus of the ire of populism) are the real culprits in degrading our system of government.

Of course, I could have added more (so much more!), including the multi *billion* dollar deals Trump’s family is inking with foreign governments in his name, compared to which even the most fevered Hunter Biden conspiracies amount to a pittance.

More soon.