The Atlantic’s David Frum [gift link] had an insight about Trump’s corruption I hadn’t thought of. He lays out the full scope of them, in both the first term and so far in the second but notes that he gets away with it largely because of a rhetorical sleight of hand he developed back in the first campaign:
In August 2015, Fox News hosted the first of the 2016 Republican-primary debates. Trump then led the polls, but he was still generally dismissed as a novelty candidate, certain to fade as summer turned to autumn and the contest became more serious. After all, Trump had briefly led the polls of prospective candidates in 2011 too, but never entered the race. Trump was asked a question that must have looked deadly when it was drafted by the Fox hosts:
Mr. Trump, it’s not just your past support for single-payer health care. You’ve also supported a host of other liberal policies; you’ve also donated to several Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton included, Nancy Pelosi. You explained away those donations, saying you did that to get business-related favors. And you said recently, quote, “When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.”
The trap set for Trump in this seemingly damning choice is either to justify his support for liberal causes or to condemn himself as a crook who paid bribes for corrupt favors. Trump answered:
I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.
The moderator tried to close the trap: “So what did you get from Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi?”
Trump nimbly pivoted and thrust the likely Democratic Party nominee into the trap instead: “I’ll tell you what. With Hillary Clinton, I said, ‘Be at my wedding,’ and she came to my wedding. You know why? She had no choice! Because I gave.”
Suddenly, a potentially damning image—of Trump grinning for the cameras alongside Bill and Hillary Clinton—was converted from a vulnerability into a weapon. Trump did not care if listeners thought ill of him, so long as they thought equally badly of everyone else. If all were crooked, then the most shameless crook might present himself instead as a brave truth-teller.
I actually think the Republicans pioneered this even before Trump. By harassing Clinton during the 90s over penny ante, gothic, Arkansas politics they helped build a full blown media machine dedicated to portraying Democrats as crooks and it worked as a way of inoculating them from the consequences of their own graft. Trump, with his feral instinct for projection, innately understood this and took advantage of it.
The beauty of it is that Democrats don’t play by their rules so when they are in power the Republicans go crazy with trumped up charges (Biden Crime family, Clinton cash etc) and actually give normal people who don’t pay close attention the idea that not only does everybody do it — the Democrats are worse than the Republicans, even Donald Trump!
Frum goes on to survey previous presidents’ brushes with corruption, starting with Nixon and going back. There has been plenty of pay to play and nepotism, But there is something very different about this president:
One difference is scale. James Roosevelt made a lot of money by Depression standards, but he did not score dynastic wealth. The Grant relations got government jobs—very cozy, but again, not dynastic wealth. Billy Carter was paid $220,000, which, even adjusting for half a century of inflation, seems hardly worth the brouhaha. The Trumps, by contrast, are using the second-term presidency to accumulate billions of dollars.
The second difference is the degree of separation from the president himself. Hunter Biden traded on his father’s name, but the Republican-chaired committee that went looking into the matter found no link either to President Biden’s decisions or to his personal bank account. But President Trump remains the beneficial owner of the Trump enterprises nominally run by his sons. The ill-gotten gains flow directly to him.
The third difference is the utter lack of conscience in this presidential family. When George H. W. Bush ran for president in 1988, he wrote a letter to his sons warning, “You’ll find you’ve got a lot of new friends.” Those friends, the elder Bush predicted, would ask for favors. “My plea is this: please do not contact any federal agency or department on anything.” Franklin D. Roosevelt was not so strict. Yet when James’s business affairs blew up into a scandal, James published his income-tax returns, submitted to press interviews, and resigned from his role as a White House adviser. He moved to California, volunteered for active duty in the Marine Corps in 1940, and was decorated with the Navy Cross for valor in battle. As for Harding, he came to feel ashamed of his own presidency. According to Nicholas Murray Butler, the then-president of Columbia University and an important figure in Republican politics in the early 20th century, Harding confessed to him: “I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.” This is even more true of Trump, but Trump would never have the self-knowledge or grace to admit it.
He concludes:
The Trump story, by contrast, is almost too big to see, too upsetting to confront. If we faced it, we’d have to do something—something proportional to the scandal of the most flagrant self-enrichment by a politician that this country, or any other, has seen in modern times.
As Trump always says, there’s never been anything like this. In this case it happens to be true.