Corruption is a Trump family affair
BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY
Back in January, Donald Trump made a stunning admission, one that threatens to haunt him come November 3.
During a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, the reporters asked him about his business dealings during his second term versus his first. “And so why now are you doing the deals?” asked Tyler Pager. Rather than deny that he is doing business deals while also running the country, he answered, “Because I found out that nobody cared.”
Ten months later, it appears people do care. A lot.
According to a recent Gallup Poll, 89% of respondents believe government corruption is widespread. No surprise that it is a record high. Couple it with the Economist/YouGov survey that asked what words best describe Trump. The top answer was “corrupt,” followed by “dangerous,” and “out-of-touch.”
Trump’s corruption has been an open secret for years, but he is doing it with far more frequency than he attempted during his first term. Why does he think no one cares? For one, his fire hose strategy is working. People are exhausted by the deluge of self-dealing and are simply too tired to complain. What good has complaining done when Republicans in Congress have been the number one enablers of Trump’s unprecedented level of corruption?
Trump has created the perfect environment to do corrupt things without getting penalized. He has stacked the Supreme Court with sympathetic jurists. He has purged the Republican Party of naysayers by backing primary candidates against less pliant incumbents. This has also served as a deterrent for those remaining in Congress.
The governmental guardrails that once existed to thwart officeholders’ worst tendencies have been dismantled by Trump. Inspectors general have been dismissed. The Office of Government Ethics and the Department of Justice’s public integrity section have been gutted. He’s also surrounded himself with a Cabinet of doormats who wouldn’t dare challenge him.
The standards of what is acceptable have been rearranged. Peter Baker of The Times highlighted a perfect example of the paradigm shift. During his first term, Trump wanted to host the G7 at his private Miami golf resort. Democrats and Republicans in Congress reacted with outrage, and the plans were changed. Fast-forward seven years, Trump has decided to host the Group of 20 at the same resort, with nary a peep from anyone in Congress.
“Let’s be honest — in the world of all the bad things he’s done, this is pretty small. But it is a really good, easily understood example of how he has defined deviancy down,” said Paul Rosenzweig, who was a senior counsel to Ken Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton.
Trump’s corruption is so pervasive that many have become inured to it. His grifts can be divided into two camps: corruption that lines his pockets and corruption that anchors his power. So let’s run down some of his more brazen schemes.
According to Forbes, Trump made more than $2 billion during his first term. That is a staggering and unequaled sum for an American president, but nothing compared to what he is raking in the second time around.
We know that Trump made $2.24 billion in 2025 alone because he had to submit an annual financial disclosure report. His 2025 report was 197 pages long. By comparison, Biden’s last report was 11 pages.
We’ve come a long way from Harry Truman, who received only his presidential pay while in office. He received a $113 a month army pension after leaving the White House in January 1953. He said it was wrong to “commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency.”
We passed “commercialize” long ago. Today, there is no line separating Trump businesses and the Trump presidency. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) purchased half of the Trump family cryptocurrency firm, World Liberty Financial. Two weeks later, Trump allowed the UAE access to highly valuable and rare computer chips.
Who can forget the gift of a luxury jet from the Qatari royal family, or the pay-for-pardons venture, or the immunity deal with the IRS worth more than $100 million, or the $80 million he has received in settlements for largely bogus suits of media companies?
Remember when Trump banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House? He is even trying to make money off of that illegal move.
Because of the ban, the White House Press Pool, which provides a video feed of Trump’s speeches and events, refused to provide coverage until the media organizations were allowed back on the grounds. In the meantime, the White House suddenly debuted “Trump TV,” a livestream of Trump events, paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. Just days after the service hit the digital airwaves, the Trump organization filed a trademark application for “Trump TV,” in the hopes of monetizing it in the future.
The corruption is not limited to the president. It extends deep into the first family. Mrs. Trump is personally benefiting — to the tune of tens of millions of dollars — from her poorly reviewed and little-seen Amazon Prime documentary, “Melania.” One critic called it, “packaging a $75 million bribe from Jeff Bezos as a vapid, content-challenged biopic.”
To hear Trump now, he’s trying to rationalize that it’s unreasonable for his family not to be getting rich(er) by gaming the system.
“But I let my kids, you know, do business. I prohibited them from doing business in my first term, and I got absolutely no credit for it. I didn’t have to do that. And it’s really unfair to them,” Trump told The Times. They have clearly gotten the message from Dad.
Trump’s sons are signing real estate deals all over the Middle East, Vietnam, Romania, and the Maldives that include those respective governments’ involvement. While Eric and Don Jr. are also buying hefty shares in defense companies that are then getting sweetheart contracts with the Pentagon.
Speaking of Don Jr., he recently had a lavish, multimillion-dollar wedding party celebration in the Bahamas, much of it paid for by a Russian oligarch with close ties to his president, Vladimir Putin.
What good is finding ways to manipulate the system if you can’t keep using it? So Trump is working diligently to stay in power, worrying that he could soon be a limping duck. Whether it’s undermining Americans’ trust in our free and fair elections, weaponizing the federal government against his perceived enemies, or inciting an insurrection, to name but a few.
Trump isn’t using his own money to keep Republicans in power. Most gallingly, he’s using our tax dollars to produce pro-Trump political ads, which the White House calls public service announcements. According to ABC News, the $20 million for the spots came from money allocated for the Department of Homeland Security.
Journalists have been ringing alarm bells about normalizing Trump’s illegal behavior for years. During that time, he has either gotten a pass or simply ignored court orders and well-established norms. But for much of that time the economy was doing ok, gas prices were reasonable, and food and health insurance were affordable for most people. Now that those things are no longer true, Trump’s corruption is coming under as much scrutiny as his unpopular policies, and voters may be unwilling to look the other way. We’ll find out in four weeks.
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Stay Steady,
Dan
NYA Thanks Dan Rather and Team Steady!