As we approach the year and a half mark of the Trump presidency the evidence points towards his administration being the most corrupt in U.S. history. USA Today reported that the use of shell companies to buy Trump real estate jumped from 4% before he was nominated to 70% through 2017. The Treasury Department tells us that the main reason shell companies are used is to launder money or hide transactions from public view.
The Daily Beast reported recently that Trump charities, recently relabeled “Curetivity” advertise that fundraising activities can be held free at Trump properties, but then report that part of the tax-deductible contributions from the events go into Trump’s business bank account.
And as Public Citizen reports, customers like the government of Saudi Arabia and the American Petroleum Institute frequent Trump hotels as “gestures of good will.” Really?
We can add to these kinds of actions the payments to porn stars and hiring ethically challenged Department heads for Justice (separating kids from their parents at the border ???) and the EPA (to destroy environmental regulations and subsidize coal energy ???).
But wait, perhaps the most concerning behaviors are the constant stream of documented lies and name calling we wouldn’t put up with if our kids did it at school. These Trump promptly denies, even when presented with the evidence proving he was wrong. Why? Because the core Trump supporters utter their go-to line that "all politicians are corrupt." At least “their corrupt leader” does their bidding. In other words, they resort to the base rationale that the ends justify the corruption. The history of societies throughout the world have proven time and again, especially in democracies, that collapse is near when corruption is not corrected.
Because Trump doesn’t seem capable of knowing right from wrong, it is up to all of us to restore the democracy envisioned in our Constitution and hold our politicians accountable for corruption.