I keep a rather horribly written personal diary. During the first Trump reign, I would usually put up a paragraph or two about his most recent crime. A few years ago I began reading the “On This Day” entries to my wife, though I always skip reading the Trump parts, though I skim them be myself. It always amazes me how unbelievably dishonest, corrupt or incompetent acts by the genius have slipped down the memory hole, something that would never have happened had he been a Democrat. Today we hear about a corrupt act that will possibly be mentioned in the New York Times tomorrow, and then forgotten.
It occurred to me to keep a running tally of the corruption of Trump and his compatriots. My intention is to simply update this post on what will probably be a daily basis. So, here’s the first, undoubtedly the most corrupt action any president has ever taken, and all out in the open because he’s certain there will be no meaningful pushback, like, for instance the impeachment that should certainly follow. I will add more instances as they occur. I should have started this 100 days ago, so by now there’d be at least 100 examples. So, let’s start with today’s corruption:
- Trump has taken a $400 million dollar bribe in the form of a free airplane from the royal family of Qatar, which will supposedly be used as Air Force One but will then be transferred to the Trump Library once Trump’s term in over. In other words, they’re giving him a $400 million dollar plane in return for which they expect and will get something in return. As an aside, isn’t it sort of weird that a guy who has never read a book intends to have a library named after him.
- (May 14th) This is one of many, yet another bribe in the form of giant crypto purchases meant to line the geniuses pockets and assure favorable treatment to the buyer. A struggling tech firm with connections to China and a reliance on the Chinese social platform TikTok has reportedly secured funding to purchase up to $300 million worth of President Donald Trump’s memecoin.
- (May 15th) Kristi Noem wants a $50 million dollar airplane for herself, even though she already has one. So that makes Pam Bondi’s grift look like small potatoes. All she did was sell between one and five million dollars worth of Trump Media shares just before Trump sent the market, particularly the market for his stock, tumbling. I’m sure she’d say it was all coincidence, if anyone could get a direct answer out of her.
- (May 18th) Okay, this isn’t exactly an example of corruption, but it’s illustrative of the Republican tolerance for corruption so long as the corruption is Republican corruption. Mike Johnson says that the Trump corruption, as opposed to the (non-existent) Biden corruption is okay, because “Whatever President Trump is doing is out in the open. They’re not trying to conceal anything.”, which is quite true since they risk nothing by concealing nothing.
- A bit of a repeat, but now we know who’s openly bribing Trump through his crypto scheme.
- The Trump family is using its political clout to force the Vietnamese to let it build a golf course in Vietnam, despite the fact that doing so means Vietnam must violate its own laws. Once again, all out in the open, though the White House “said, in an emailed statement, ‘All of the president’s trade discussions are totally unrelated to the Trump Organization.’ It argued that there are no ethical issues as the president’s family develops about 20 Trump-branded properties worldwide, because the president’s sons run the businesses.” Give the New York Times some credit, but not much, on this one. They sort of push the idea that it’s corrupt, though they would never say that out loud.
- From Crooks & Liars: Donald J. Trump pardoned tax cheat Paul Walczak after his mother, Elizabeth Fago, attended a Mar-a-Lago dinner that cost her $1 million to attend. His mother’s support for Trump, including raising millions of dollars and a connection to a plot to publicize Ashley Biden’s diary, was cited in Walczak’s pardon application, The New York Times reports.
- Trump is looking to take advantage of the suckers yet again, by marketing a mobile phone about which he and his offspring are making promises they, of course, won’t keep. The phone itself is a rebranded Chinese T-Mobile, the price jacked up from $172 to $499. They’re claiming it will be made in the USA, but those with knowledge universally agree that’s pretty much impossible. They’re also claiming that the alleged $47.00 monthly fee will include 24/7 telemedicine, which is also a con.
- This one’s a bit different in that the corruption is of a different sort. Not selling out for money, but for a judicial appointment. Full story here. A Florida state judge who ruled in Trump’s favor in his bogus claim against the Pulitzer Prize Board angled for, and got, a nomination to be a federal district court judge in Florida, clearly in return for his vote. If he’s looking to step up to the Supreme Court he’s probably going to be disappointed, because Eileen Cannon probably has a lock on that.
- Okay, technically this doesn’t count, as the corruption took place before the election, but I’ll include it anyway. I’m sure this is going on behind the scenes today, because, after all, it’s not like the DOJ will ever prosecute any of this stuff. Pro Publica Reports that “[I]n 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.” The nonprofit is a dark money group, yet another bribery conduit for which we have to thank John Roberts, so we don’t know who the bribers were, but rest assured she knew where the money was coming from.
- I don’t think there has ever been a bribe paid to a president in such an obvious fashion as this, and that includes anything in items 1 to 10 above. Paramount’s owners are looking to make a couple of billion dollars by selling their business, but they need governmental approval and they know they won’t get it without paying for it. So they agreed to pay $12 million dollars to settle what must be one of the most meritless lawsuits ever filed in the United States, that being Trump’s suit claiming that CBS (a Paramount subsidiary) edited an interview of Kamala Harris in a way that hurt Trump’s fee-fees. Bernie Sanders’ statement on the
bribe“settlement” puts things well. - A bit late on this. Trump used at least $10 million dollars of taxpayer’s dollars to market a golf course in Scotland.
- You can’t get more corrupt than this. Trump has demanded $230 million from the DOJ as compensation for the investigation into his obviously actual ties to Russia. The DOJ is now run by the lawyers who represented him. The article to which I’ve linked claims he is under fire for making the demand, but my guess is that won’t stop him from pressing for the money nor his lickspittles from giving it to him.
- Remember when Google’s motto was something to the effect: “First, do no evil”. Something like that, I’m too lazy to google it. I guess they’ve left that behind, as they’ve contributed about 10% of the open bribe to Trump for his White House destruction project. Oh, some of the above was a bit misleading. I don’t google things, I DuckDuckGo them, and so far as I know the DuckDuckGo folks have not signed on to the Let’s All Bribe Trump team.
- Someone else is doing a better job of this. Check it out.
- Okay, I realize that this could easily be updated with a new bit of corruption every day, but there’s only so much I can do. I did run across [this](https://truthout.org/articles/kristi-noem-linked-firm-secretly-got-money-from-220-million-dhs-ad-contracts/) today. Kristie Noem used a bullshit excuse to avoid competitive bidding for an equally bullshit advertising campaign she initiated, so she could steer the money to a “Republican consulting firm with long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS”. Well, of course she did.
- I freely admit that the quid pro quo is not totally out in the open on this one, but I think we can agree that given Trump’s modus operandi, it is unlikely that he would have pardoned the former president of Honduras, currently serving time for “facilitating the import of some 400 tons of cocaine into the United States,”facilitating the import of some 400 tons of cocaine into the United States,”facilitating the import of some 400 tons of cocaine into the United States” if there weren’t something in it for him. After all, this is the guy who is ultimately responsible for the murder of people in the Caribbean who he sees fit to convict without trial.