The Art of the Self-Deal
Thoughts on how Trump-era corruption is affecting
Americans as a people.
By
Aug.
20, 2026 6:19 pm ET
I’m thinking about the deeper effects
of governmental corruption in the Trump era, and why it leaves many not only
indignant but uneasy. I suspect it’s doing something to us as a people. The
thoughts were prompted by a poll this week from Reuters/Ipsos, which Reuters
headlined “Most Americans Believe Trump Has Inappropriately Profited Since
Returning to Power.” It reported that 69% of respondents see his personal
business interests as influencing presidential decisions. Two-thirds of
independents, half of Republicans and 9 in 10 Democrats shared that view.
Republicans, God bless them, were
split on whether graft under Mr. Trump has gotten worse or better or stayed the
same, which makes that polling question a case study in how bright people are
capable of not seeing what they don’t want to see.
We’ll quickly posit what we mean by
Trump-era corruption. I see two general areas, personal enrichment and the use
of government to satisfy private goals.
The personal-enrichment part is
suggested by recent and frequent reports showing that Mr. Trump’s net worth,
and that of his family, has surged dramatically in his second term. This isn’t
just wealthy folks seeing their stocks go up: Trump businesses have developed
positions in industries over which the administration exercises power.
Some were in cryptocurrency, and there
is the $Trump meme coin, some of the largest buyers of which have been given
access to the president, some at a dinner at one of his golf clubs. A
Washington Post analysis suggests roughly half may be foreign-based. The
Journal has reported that representatives of Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al
Nahyan of Abu Dhabi agreed to purchase 49% of a Trump crypto entity for $500
million. Sheikh Tahnoun is not only a businessman but a senior member of the
United Arab Emirates’ ruling family and its national-security adviser. This
newspaper also reports that Mr. Trump made many millions licensing his name to
overseas property developers, including developers in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the
U.A.E. and Oman.
These are items in a longer possible
list, but are representative of the administration’s general approach. The size
and means of this enrichment would seem . . . dubious? Careless
of appearances? Appalling?
As to the use of governmental power to
achieve not public but personal goals, including revenge and punishing enemies,
there have been numerous reports—it feels like a new one every day—of bending,
testing or getting around the law to make the administration’s friends happy
and enemies sad. This has included paying people in Mr. Trump’s orbit to lobby
for presidential pardons—this newspaper has done great work there—launching strange investigations, and
muscling law firms and media companies.
Republicans seem generally not to have
found the last alarming, which is alarming. You don’t like Jimmy Kimmel? I
don’t like Jimmy Kimmel; he’s boorish, crude, tinnily self-valorizing. But
defending speech when it’s muscled by government? Yes, of course. Governments
are worse than networks because the former have the power to crush you, and you
only get one at a time, and you can’t change the channel except every four
years. Be on the side of the information flow, even when it’s full of sludge.
Be on the side of the voice, not the big crushing thing. Conservatives used to
know to fear government, and beat it back.
An odd thing about all this is the
absence of furor. There is no broad public outcry. Why? Because corruption is a
constant and “the other side is dirty too.” Because the scandal threshold has
skyrocketed. President Trump walked into history dragging a long tail of
litigation, accusation and lawsuits behind him. He never sold himself as a man
of moral rectitude, and most supporters didn’t think that’s what they were
buying. Jimmy Carter’s shaking down the system to see what coins fall out would
have been news, Donald Trump’s doing the same is Tuesday.
And there’s the sheer scale: The
extraordinary becomes ordinary through repetition; scandals add up and become a
blur, not a call to action. But the country pays a cost for all this.
Institutionally, everything happening today sets a precedent. Every abuse we
accept widens the range of possible misbehavior for the next administration.
Corruption is more dangerous, has a
more deteriorating effect, than bad policy. Bad policy can be reversed.
Corruption works its way into a system and changes its nature.
Suppose a Republican president leaves
office having established that a president can use regulatory powers against
antagonistic institutions, exert pressures on companies needing government
approval, and demand personal loyalty throughout the executive branch, all with
no lasting repercussions. The next administration, disposed in other
ideological directions, inherits the precedents. It says turnabout is fair
play.
An Ocasio-Cortez administration
wouldn’t have meme coins and golf resorts, it would look much cleaner!
Progressives usually aren’t set on personal cash, they’re set on institutional
power. They would privately thank Mr. Trump for proving restraints on executive
power are weaker than previously thought, and publicly claim that finally we
have a president who advances the public interest.
But I suppose the larger threat of
governmental corruption is that it hurts the public’s morale, its sense of
seeing itself as a moral actor to whom politicians have to answer. Our entire
system of government assumes a citizenry that polices its politicians, that
says “You can’t do that, this office isn’t yours, your powers were lent to you
for public purposes.” If the public shrugs and looks away, Americans will lose
the habit of thinking of themselves as entitled to a clean government. And
they’ll have to admit they surrendered their own views to the views of the
tribe.
It is the public’s role to uphold
republican standards. In the past, a politician caught selling an office,
taking money from interested parties, using governmental machinery for personal
revenge was supposed to fear not only legal action but disgrace.
Citizens derive a certain dignity from
believing that we enforce the rules. It reminds them who’s in charge: them.
You’re giving up a lot when you give that up.
In times of corruption, good people
who might run for office, don’t. They think they can’t survive in that world.
Bad people, those with limited internal ethical and moral structures, are
encouraged: Politics is a way to get rich and famous, to push people around.
They are elected, govern badly, corruptly, and the cycle continues.
Unchecked corruption tells cynics not
that they have an uninteresting flaw but that they are realists. Never tell
cynics that. It gives them license.
As always, the whole world is
watching. What it has seen lowers the esteem in which it formally (if
grudgingly) held Americans. It embarrasses us before the world. It hurts our
heart a little. We were the morally rectitudinous Doughboy GI Marshall Planning
JFK and Ronnie People who made the wall come down. We did our best each
generation to be equal to our reputation, or at least to have some class. There
are foreign-policy implications to all this. Some day we’ll need friends and
see only the satisfied spite of the previously jealous.
Nothing good comes from this. When
corruption is allowed, it governs not today but tomorrow too.
