The Unprecedented Corruption of Trump 2.0
America Has Never Seen Anything Like this Before
Before we dive into the laundry list of Donald Trump’s scams, grifts, bribes, conflicts of interest, self-dealings, emoluments violations, general criminality, and all-around corruption since taking the White House, let’s briefly recap the full extent of the previous administration’s corruption since MAGA spent four years insisting to anyone with half a brain that Biden deserved to be impeached over it (“half” being the maximum allowable amount of gray material one could house in their skull and still be persuaded).
The “Biden Crime Family”
Let’s get this out of the way right up front: Hunter Biden was a problem child. He was a drug addict, a tax cheat, had a thing for hookers, illegally purchased a handgun, and appears to have engaged in a significant amount influence-peddling off his family’s last name.
In 2023, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, not because they had any evidence of a crime, but because Donald Trump and the MAGA faction of the GOP kept demanding one in retaliation for Trump being investigated his entire time in office (for, you know, committing actual crimes.) “If they’re gonna investigate our guy, we’re gonna investigate their guy!” seemed to be the full extent of their reasoning. The dead giveaway that it was all a baseless fishing expedition was that nobody involved could even say what the alleged crime was they were investigating.
With Trump, the investigations were always about why, how, and to what extent was Trump culpable in what were very clearly and very public crimes. With Biden, the investigation was to determine if a crime had been committed.
The House Oversight Committee (HOC) identified over $20 million from foreign sources that “benefited the Biden family and their business associates," the bulk of which went to Hunter Biden’s business associates. Just under $5 million went to Hunter and other members of the Biden family.
The first problem the HOC ran into was that it was never clear what the payments were for and that simply “receiving payments” isn’t a crime, even when they’re from foreign sources. Hunter and his business associates did lots of international dealings.
So, that angle was a strikeout.
The next best thing they could do was try to pin down Joe for a lie since he’d told the public on multiple occasions he had no knowledge of his son’s business dealings and certainly didn’t benefit from them. If HOC could somehow show a benefit, it would at least prove Joe was fibbing. That still wasn’t a crime, but it was better than nothing.
The “smoking gun” was a series of three monthly payments of $1,380 from an affiliate of Hunter to Joe Biden, plus an additional check for $40,000 made out to Joe from his sister-in-law for a “loan repayment.”
It didn’t take much more digging to find out what Joe was being reimbursed for: he had lent his son money to pay off a Raptor truck Hunter had financed.
That was it.
It mattered not a whit to MAGA that all of this took place during 2017-2018 when Joe Biden was a private citizen, not the president. An “evil Democrat” receiving a shade over $44K from his ne’er-do-well son as a car loan repayment while NOT IN OFFICE was still justifiable ground for an impeachment.
Forty-four thousand dollars. As a loan repayment. From his son. For a car. While out of office.
Even HOC had the wherewithal to recognize they had precisely diddlysquat on Sleepy Joe, and nothing ever came of the impeachment inquiry.
While the whole thing was nothing but a wild goose chase, it at least served to inform us that, yes, MAGAland was capable of pretending to be concerned with “corruption” when they felt like it—even if they weren’t particularly adept at locating or identifying it—making their current silence on the torrential downpour of corruption emanating from the White House in broad daylight all the more striking.
Unprecedented in American History
“We have never seen anything like this!” - Mark 2:12
The thing about Trump’s most recent string of corruption is the sheer audacity of it. He’s not even bothering to hide it at this point, which almost throws you off the scent. Most people who do crimes have the good sense to hide what they’re doing—in fact, it’s often the attempted cover-up that clues everyone in that something criminal was afoot in the first place. We truly have never seen anything like this before.
Doing crimes right out in the open is borderline genius in its brazenness. It makes us second-guess ourselves: He seems so genuinely unconcerned that everyone can clearly see what he’s doing…maybe we’re the ones misjudging the whole thing?
It’s borderline self-induced gaslighting.
And that is the beautiful derangement of Trump 2.0—it’s so blatantly, unimaginably, unapologetically corrupt that we’re almost inclined to overlook it because it’s hiding in plain sight.
Allow me to count the ways…
1. $TRUMP Meme Coin
On January 17, three days before taking office, Donald Trump launched a crypto “meme coin”—a digital token that has no practical application or utility and thus no intrinsic value. The only reason you’d ever purchase a meme coin is with the expectation that it will eventually go up in value, which it can only do if more people continue to buy it, driving up the price.
How Do You Convince More People to Buy It?
You hype the public with a gimmicky sales pitch about how the price is destined to skyrocket and hope enough suckers FOMO into the buying frenzy to drive up the price.
Once the artificially inflated price is sufficiently high, you “rug pull” the market—selling off your holdings for maximum profit while leaving all the suckers and marks holding the bag (also called a “pump-and-dump”)—which is exactly what Trump and his cronies did.
(To be fair, not every meme coin is a scam—the crypto market is replete with meme coins that are genuinely traded like any other coin, with no discernible monkey business attached. So, the issue isn’t meme coins in and of themselves, it’s that Donald Trump is physically incapable of not running a grift on someone.)
The $Trump coin launched at just under $8.59 a token, then Trump began hyping it on Truth* Social at 8pm, and by the morning of the 19th, the price had shot up to nearly $75 from all the MAGAts diving in hoping to get rich.
Then came the rug pull.
On paper, this pump-and-dump scheme ballooned Trump’s net worth from an estimated $6 billion to nearly $63 billion, vaulting him into the Top 25 richest people on earth, with 89% of his wealth tied up in his own crypto, according to Axios.
The scam worked so well that they immediately launched a MELANIA coin and repeated the same trick.
As of Feb 11, more than 810,000 crypto traders had lost a combined $2 billion on the $TRUMP and MELANIA coins, while Trump and his partners banked more than $100 million in trading fees alone.
But you’re right, we should really be going over this Joe Biden $44K loan repayment from his son with a fine-tooth comb.
The Bigger Problem with Crypto
If you’re not familiar with cryptocurrency and how blockchain technology works, here’s all you need to understand about it for this article: it’s a decentralized currency in which transactions are virtually untraceable. Each crypto wallet is publicly available on the blockchain—allowing anyone who’s interested to see which wallet address sent funds to another address—but there’s no way of discerning who the wallet address belongs to. That part stays anonymous.
What this means is that crypto provides the perfect medium for someone wishing to, say, “curry favor” with someone politically prohibited from taking bribes. Without crypto, there is absolutely no way for a megadonor or foreign government to make a donation to a person without leaving a paper trail. With crypto, a Russian oligarch or Saudi prince or Chinese businessman wishing to whisper in the president’s ear has merely to buy up some $TRUMP coins—completely anonymously—and no one would have any way of knowing who made the «ahem» donation.
An American president entering the White House with their own personal meme coin on the crypto market is an open invitation for any bad actor from any foreign government on earth to funnel undetectable funds directly into the president’s pocket.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
2. Legalizing Bribery
After Trump took office in 2017, making brash promises to “drain the swamp,” he introduced approximately 478 moves to make DC more swampy…and one move to make it less.
That would be his Executive Order 13770, requiring Executive Branch appointees to sign a pledge that they’d never work as registered foreign lobbyists and banning them from lobbying the federal agencies where they worked for five years after leaving the government.
It was exactly the kind of anti-swamp measure folks on both sides of the political aisle could get behind.
Which is why it made it all the more perplexing when, without explanation, Trump rescinded the order hours before leaving office. (The explanation being that he’s a spiteful cretin who enjoyed flipping the bird at the anti-corruption populace who’d just voted him out while making sure his appointees could go indulge themselves in whatever swamp creature activities they saw fit.)
Five days after taking office, Biden signed an executive order reinstating the anti-corruption policy Trump had done and then undone. Biden’s version went a little further than Trump’s:
It required members of the Executive Branch to sign an ethics pledge stating they would not receive gifts from lobbyists or lobbying organizations.
It prohibited new government employees from working with regulations and contracts related to their former employer or clients, or working on matters they had personally lobbied for or engaged in, for a period of two years from their appointment.
It included a “golden parachute” agreement, where employees had to agree not to accept payment from their former employer to join the administration.
All admirable moves that everyone should be able to agree are commendable anti-corruption/anti-swamp measures.
So what did Trump do?
Upon taking office, he immediately issued a new executive order rescinding the Biden EO, making it once again legal to bribe politicians in the United States..
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
3. Trump’s Back-Door Energy Dealing
In April 2024, Donald Trump asked a group of oil and gas executives dining at Mar-a-Lago for $1 billion to aid his campaign in exchange for new tax breaks and reversing a number of Biden green energy initiatives that were cutting into fossil fuel profits.
This isn’t the place to debate the pros and cons of green energy initiatives, it’s to take a look at the request itself, which was so brazen that the executives themselves were reportedly stunned that Trump had actually said it on the record. This was exactly the kind of “back-door-dealing” that we all understand happens in Washington all the time, but it was the first time, to anyone’s knowledge, that a politician had come right out and said the secret part out loud.
Whatever private deals were made after the public sales pitch are not a matter of public record. The only thing that may clue us in to whatever secret arrangements were cooked up is that on January 20, shortly after being sworn in, Trump unveiled his new energy strategy, which preferenced oil and gas industries while punishing all their competitors. He immediately froze all permits for wind projects—both land and sea—circumventing the entire permit process.
One executive order froze new outer continental shelf offshore wind leases. Another ordered the Department of the Interior to stop construction of a wind farm in Idaho that had been approved under Biden. Yet another instructed the EPA to revisit its 2009 finding that global warming is both (1) real and (2) dangerous, prompting former EPA #2 during Obama’s administration, Stan Meiburd, to say that overturning those findings would mean that greenhouse gases “would no longer be recognized as pollutants.”
Again, the point is not whether certain environmental policies are good or bad, it’s that Trump and the oil industries worked out a pay-to-play deal and got exactly what they wanted out of it.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
4. Firing Inspectors General
The sole purpose of Inspectors General is to—say it with me now—look for corruption. That’s the entirety of their job. The only reason under the sun for firing an inspector general—whose job performance didn’t merit getting axed—was if you were intending to do some corruption and very much didn’t want anyone generally inspecting it.
On Jan 24, Trump fired 17 of them without warning, which was itself illegal. The president is fully within his right to fire an IG, but it requires two very specific things:
Federal law mandates a 30-day notice to Congress ahead of the firing.
The firing must be accompanied by "the substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons" for doing so.
Trump provided neither.
With no notice and no explanations, he axed the IGs of the Department of Defense, State Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, Department of Agriculture, Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), Department of the Interior, HUD, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Health and Human Services, and USAID.
All the work that Elon Musk’s DOGE is supposedly doing—weeding out “waste, fraud, and abuse”—we actually had people in government that actually found the stuff Elon is pretending to have found. They were called Inspectors General.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
5. Trump Fires Head of National Labor Relations Board
On Jan 27, Trump fired Gwyn Wilcox, head of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The NLRB’s primary job is enforcing U.S. labor laws pertaining to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. Without a head of the board, the board can’t function. Any cases that were already before the board would have to be put on hold indefinitely until the board can begin functioning again.
Guess who had a slew of cases before the NLRB for a smorgasbord of unfair labor practices, safety issues, union violations, and other complaints? Elon Musk. According to Public Citizen tracker, Tesla had 8 cases before the NLRB, and SpaceX had another 4. Right behind Musk was Jeff Bezos’ Amazon (7), Pfizer (5), Wells Fargo (4), and United Health Care (4). Other people/companies making the NLRB’s Naughty List were Mark Zuckerberg Meta (Facebook) and Sundar Pichai’s Google.
And if you’re suddenly thinking, Elon, Zuck, Bezos, and Sundar…where have I seen those four horsemen of the apocalypse together recently? It was at Trump’s inauguration.
They were standing behind Trump to remind him that they’d all thrown tens—or hundreds—or millions of dollars at him to make their NLRB issues go away, which he did.
Go try that as a small business with $300,000 in annual revenue.
Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
6. $800K Stock Giveaway
On Jan 30, Donald Trump awarded 26,000 shares, worth nearly $800,000 at the time, to all six board members of the Trump Media & Technology Group—the publicly traded company behind his Truth* Social platform—two of whom happen to be in his new cabinet: FBI Director Kash Patel and Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
Is that in itself a corrupt act? No. Does it set the table for potential corruption? Abso-freaking-lutely!
How so?
Well, suppose you had a case before the FBI or the Department of Education that you thought you could maybe bribe your way out of—you know, slide the wrestling promoter or Captain Wonky Eyes a quarter mil to make your troubles “disappear?” Sorry, but that ain’t legal. You can’t offer the government money to ease up on you. That’s called “bribery,” and it’s very, very illegal.
But you know what isn’t illegal?
Buying a quarter-mil-worth of someone’s stock shares that they didn’t spend a dime on, greasing their pockets with exactly the same amount as that bribe would’ve netted them, only without all the pesky “legal issues” that come with doing crimes.
Even if neither ever went through with any definitely-not-bribery shenanigans, the conflicts of interest from making board members of your private company department heads of your own government shouldn’t set off warning bells. It should set off freaking air raid sirens.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
7. The Weaponization of the DOJ
Jan 30 – The DOJ drops a case against former Republican Congressman Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska on charges of lying to the FBI.
Feb 19 – DOJ announces “Operation Whirlwind,” which seeks to target anyone who attempts to obstruct or criticize Elon Musk and DOGE.
Feb 23 – A DOJ civil case that had been pending against SpaceX for discriminatory hiring practices is dropped.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
8. Trump Fires Director of Consumer Financial Protection Board
The Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB) is responsible for protecting consumers from unscrupulous practices by banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, mortgage-servicing operations, foreclosure relief services, debt collectors, for-profit colleges, and other financial companies.
Since launching in 2011, the CFPL has recovered and distributed more than $3.3 billion to consumers harmed by a range of illegal practices, such as student loan and mortgage relief scams and predatory lending. Most recently, they recouped and distributed $1.3 billion to more than 4 million Americans gouged by credit repair companies, including Lexington Law and CreditRepair.com.
They are genuinely one of the most pro-citizen agencies in the entire government. Unfortunately, a number of the corporations they were pursuing complaints against, 42 of them to be exact, were businesses that donated a total of $34 million to Trump’s campaign festivities.
On Feb 1, Trump fired CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, then moved to dismiss all 42 cases against corporations they were investigating, including Bank of America, Capital One, Comerica, Experian, JP Morgan, Meta, National Credit Systems, Rocket Homes, TransUnion, Walmart, and Wells Fargo.
According to Rick Claypool, research director for the watchdog Public Citizen, Trump is “handing out ‘get out of jail free’ cards to corporate lawbreakers” and" “inviting a corporate crime spree.”
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
9. Personal Business in the White House
Whereas every president in American history prior to Trump had divested themselves of their business interests to remove any semblance of conflicts of interest, Donald Trump has brazenly used the office of the presidency to further his interests.
On Feb 4, Trump convened a meeting at the White House between the PGA and his business partners, the Saudi LIV golf league, to settle a long-running dispute that I’m not even going to attempt to recount here because the only thing more insufferable than watching golf is writing about it.
The gist of it is that Trump’s courses have hosted PGA events in the past, and now he hosts LIV events since he’s a partner with the Saudis, so there’s a massive financial incentive for him to get them to work out a settlement. And what better place to do that than in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk on taxpayers’ dime!
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
10. Legalizing Foreign Corruption
On Feb 6, the “law and order” president’s “law and order” Attorney General, Pam Bondi, took her oath in the Oval Office. Her first order of business after swearing in was…legalizing corruption?
Wait, that can’t be right.
Unfortunately, it’s right. Bondi ordered a halt to a federal law enforcement effort to combat secret influence campaigns by China, Russia, and other adversaries. It also scaled back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which required people to register when lobbying on behalf of foreign nations.
A separate directive from Bondi also disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, including Task Force Klepto Capture and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, units tasked with seizing assets from meddling Russian oligarchs.
Basically, the entire move was a giant, shining open invitation for any foreign nation who felt like meddling in American politics to have at it.
If you’re wondering, Why in the everloving HELL would anyone in the American government want to make it EASIER for foreign actors to meddle in our government, or for Americans to lobby on behalf of foreign entities without divulging their interests?!? The answer is very simple: last time he was president, a couple Trump associates got in big trouble for lobbying on behalf of Qatar—regarding the war in Yemen—and failing to disclose it to the United States.
Trump does not like it when his friends and associates get in trouble. But rather than taking a cue from his wife’s playbook and telling his pals to Be Best and not do illegal stuff anymore, he thought it would be more convenient to just make the illegal stuff legal from now on.
Because America First.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
11. Quid Pro Quo
On Feb 10, Donald Trump’s DOJ ordered the Manhattan prosecutors to drop all charges against New York’s embattled Democratic mayor Eric Adams. Adams had been indicted in Sep 2024 on numerous charges, including bribery, wire fraud, campaign finance violations, and conspiracy.
The letter sent to the Manhattan DA’s office explaining why they wanted the charges dropped said it wasn’t because any of the charges were improper or that there were problems with the case. They were just interested in using Adams to facilitate Trump’s immigration policies in New York and were willing to overlook all his criminality in exchange for his political loyalty.
In legal circles, this is what’s known as a quid pro quo and is the exact thing that got Trump impeached the first time.
The Manhattan prosecutor and two DOJ officials resigned in protest over the request, with prosecutor Hagen Scotten penning a blistering letter on his way out the door that closed with:
But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.
After Scotten resigned rather than drop the charges, Trump’s DOJ attempted to get the case moved to DC so they could pressure a different group, but those people refused and resigned as well. All told, 7 DOJ officials resigned in protest rather than drop the charges against Adams before Trump’s team found someone willing to capitulate.
Now, Mayor Adams is a free man whose copious criminality has been overlooked in exchange for political allegiance to the president.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
12. More Legalized Bribery
On Feb 10, Trump directed the DOJ to pause enforcement of U.S. laws that prohibit American companies from paying bribes overseas.
I know you’re thinking that sounds like a sarcastic straw-man summary of something that isn’t nearly as corrupt as I just made it sound. You’d be wrong, though. It’s exactly what I just said.
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was a law that made it illegal for both U.S. firms and foreign companies with a U.S. connection to bribe foreign officials.
Seriously, that’s it.
Trump signed an executive order that straight up said, “I’m preserving the Presidential authority to conduct foreign affairs and advance American economic and national security by eliminating excessive barriers to American commerce abroad.”
Basically, “Not being able to bribe foreigners impedes mine and my cronies’ ability to do unethical economic stuff overseas; ergo, bribery is no longer illegal.”
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
13. Corrupt Tesla Self-Dealing
On Feb 12, it was announced that the State Department had plans to purchase $400 million worth of armored Teslas from Elon Musk. This raised eyebrows for a couple of reasons, namely 1) Trump famously hated electric vehicles almost as much as he hated windmills until the guy who makes electric vehicles bought him a shiny presidency, and 2) the guy who makes said electric vehicles does not make armored electric vehicles.
(Not sure how much protection an armored vehicle can actually offer when it’s most notorious feature is regularly exploding from the inside.)
Hell, he can’t even make them shatterproof when they’re supposed to be:
Ugh, that’s still embarrassing to watch.
Anyway, back to our story. There was so much public backlash from this patently obvious self-dealing that the Trump administration made a series of careless mistakes in their scramble to do damage control that somehow ended up making the whole thing even more corrupt than it already was. If that’s even possible.
This may get confusing, so bear with me.
Feb 12 – It’s first reported that Trump’s State Department is planning to buy $400 million worth of armored Teslas from Elon Musk.
Feb 13 – Following public backlash, the State Department announces that it is abandoning plans to buy $400 million of armored Teslas. NPR notices that the original procurement document had been edited at 9:12 pm to remove the word “Tesla” and replace it with the generic “armored electric vehicle.” A third version is later published that removes all references to “armored electric vehicles” and “$400 million.”
The State Department then claimed it was actually the Biden Administration that had awarded Elon the Tesla contract back in Dec 2024, on their fiscal year 2025 procurement list. The State Department website shows the 2025 Procurement List, which is marked as “Revised 12/23/2024.” However, that link doesn’t work. Clicking on it, this is what you get:
Trump, Elon Musk, and the State Department all publicly denied any knowledge of a $400 million contract to Tesla and reiterated that any contract Tesla was receiving had been implemented by Biden (which, conveniently, could only be verified via that link that doesn’t work. Furthermore, there is no record of it in the Internet Archives for that month.)
Feb 24 – NPR reports that they obtained an authentic version of Biden’s 2025 procurement order—before the Trump administration started doctoring it—which shows Biden’s State Department planning to spend just $483,000 on electric vehicles (no mention of Tesla) and $3 million for supporting equipment, like charging stations.
To recap: Biden’s State Department had plans to procure nearly $4.5 million in electric vehicles and equipment. The Trump administration went in and edited the order to a $400 million contract for armored Teslas, backdating the edit to make it appear Biden had awarded the contract. When they got called out for the Tesla self-dealing, they edited the order again to remove Tesla’s name and replace it with “armored electric vehicles.” When that also got called out, they removed it altogether.
Thankfully, America is still full of rigorous journalists who save archives of things and don’t mind poring over minutia to untangle the bureaucratic Gordian knots of corruption. This OCD-level attention to detail saved $400 million of “waste, fraud, and abuse” to the very guy tasked with uncovering it. All of which Trump was content to blame on Biden.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
14. Elon Musk Infiltrates Department of Labor
On Feb 12, Elon and DOGE gain access to the Department of Labor, which is responsible for enforcing federal laws concerning occupational safety. Reporting suggests DOGE also gained access to OSHA’s records, which was investigating a litany of safety violations against Elon’s companies.
SpaceX has an employee injury rate that is nine times higher than the industry average (not hard to fathom at a plant whose owner’s personal mantra is “move fast and break stuff”). With supervisory access to the very agency tasked with supervising him, Musk was now free to “cancel” all investigation into his own companies while documenting all investigations against his competitors, which I’m sure he’ll no doubt put to use for altruistic purposes.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
15. Elon Musk Infiltrates the FDA
On Feb 15, Elon gains access to the Food & Drug Administration and begins a string of suspicious firings.
Why would Elon have any interest in the FDA, you ask?
Because Elon owns a medical device company called Neuralink that embeds microchips in people’s brains and the FDA had been hounding him for all sorts of failures to comply with various regulations, and had rejected his bid to test brain chips in humans.
Once again in a position to supervise the agency tasked with supervising himself, Elon fired 20 members of the FDA’s Office of Neurological and Physical Medicine Devices that were investigating Neuralink.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
16. More Questionable FDA Firings
The same day Elon was firing the people looking into his Neuralink company, DOGE announced the FDA cuts were going to be even deeper—as much as 50%. That meant that hundreds of drugs and devices would be unable to get FDA approval, which benefits absolutely no one at all…except for the charlatans and quacks out there hawking snake oil remedies for bogus maladies that don’t exist.
And when I say “quacks out there,” I’m referring to people like Trump’s FBI director Kash Patel (who hawks “vaccine reversal pills”), Trump’s Attorney General Dr. Janette Nesheiwat (who sells her own brand of dietary supplements), and Trump’s head of Medicare and Medicaid, television’s own Dr. Oz (who’s hawked every specious medical supplement under the sun).
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
17. Firing IRS Auditors
On Feb 19, it’s announced that the IRS is going to be cutting 7,000 auditors, right before the start of tax season.
While the IRS is arguably the most despised department in the entire federal government, it’s also responsible for bringing in the most revenue, a necessary evil. You know who doesn’t like paying taxes? Everyone. You know who really doesn’t like paying taxes? The ultra-wealthy.
Unfortunately (depending on who you’re asking), auditing lower and middle-class earners is fairly simple since those folks tend to have fairly simple tax filings. The biggest tax dodgers are the wealthiest, with the top 1% managing to dodge $163 billion annually. According to a 2021 study by the IRS, the top 1% fail to report around 21% of their income. That figure doubles when you’re talking about the top .1%.
This ultra-wealthy tax evasion contributes to a nearly $696 billion annual “tax gap”—the difference between what’s owed and what’s actually collected by the IRS.
The solution to the tax gap problem? More IRS agents to handle the complex tax audits that would recover the missing funds. A 2023 paper from the Department of the Treasury, Harvard University, and the University of Sydney showed that auditing the top 1% yielded $4.25 for every dollar spent, while auditing the top .1% yielded $6.29 per dollar. The study further found that if you look at the top 10%, as much as $12 could be recouped per dollar spent. (the study has since been removed, though multiple media outlets reported on it when it came out)
The bottom line is that funding the IRS is one of—if not the—most cost-effective means of funding the government. So why would anyone slash their funding along with their workforce?
Easy. So the ultra-wealthy can continue not paying their fair share of taxes that all the rest of us plebes have to pay.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
18. The CDC and RKF Jr.’s Conflict of Interest
On Feb 20, the CDC indefinitely postponed their first public meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices under new Health Secretary RFK Jr.
This isn’t the place to get into an anti-vax debate, but let’s just say that RFK’s appointment was particularly alarming—not because of his personal stance on vaccines, but because much of his personal fortune was built crusading against them. Telling people not to vaccinate their kids against the measles makes you an idiot. Telling people not to vaccinate their kids against the measles because you make millions in 10% kickbacks from law firms representing vaccine-related cases makes you a special kind of Despicable Me.
Once again, Trump had installed someone with a deep financial interest in how the agency he’s tasked with overseeing conducts itself.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
19. Merchandising in the Oval Office
On Feb 26, Trump unveiled a brand new, bright red piece of MAGA headgear: a ball cap that read “Trump Was Right About Everything!” (on sale for $34.99!)
Did he announce his new merchandising endeavor on social media? Hell no. He started hawking them from behind the freaking Resolute Desk!
If you’re in the market for “unprecedented,” it’s hard to top shilling your own personally branded merch from the Oval Office.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
20. Elon Musk Does More Self-Dealing
Outside of Trump’s meme coin scam, this one has to be in top contention for Most Corrupt Move in American political history. (maybe #3 after you read the next one)
On Feb 26, news broke that Elon Musk was planning to break a $2.4 billion contract the FAA had awarded to Verizon in 2023 and award it instead to his own Starlink.
Verizon’s contract was to design, build, integrate, and operate a new communications system across the National Airspace System (NAS), including providing Air Traffic Management across the 29 million+ square miles that make up the U.S. national airspace.
Since Elon and DOGE were “auditing” the FAA along with everyone else, Elon took the opportunity to post to Twitter/X:
“To be clear here, the Verizon communication system to air traffic control is breaking down very rapidly. The FAA assessment is single digit months to catastrophic failure, putting air traveler safety at serious risk.”
As I outlined in Elon Musk’s $2.4 Billion Starlink Coup, the communication system that was "breaking down" and "on the verge of catastrophic failure" was the old L3Harris system that Verizon was set to replace, not the new Verizon system, which wasn't even operational yet.
Elon was lying to the public about who was responsible for failing systems (that were indeed failing), blaming them on his direct competitor—who had nothing to do with it—and using the confusion to steal their contract out from under their nose.
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
21. Trump Sells Direct Access to Himself
And finally, in perhaps the second most blatantly corrupt scheme in the history of American politics, as of March 6, you can pay to have a private dinner with Donald Trump for the low, low price of $5 million.
Who do you make the check out to?
Donald Trump.
Forget “lobbying,” "insider trading," "backdoor deals," and "shell corp shenanigans." Those are so 2016. It's 2025 now. If you want to influence the President of the United States, all you need to do is show up at his house, write him a check for $5 million, and he will "have dinner with you," and you two can discuss whatever totally-normal-and-definitely-innocent topics necessitate a $5 million brib– I mean dinner charge. (don’t forget to tip 20%)
Or if $5 million is a bit too steep and the 20% tip is all you can afford, you can book a small group "candlelight dinner" for a measly $1 million.
Bon appétit!
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
22. Trump & Elon Hawk Teslas From the White House
With Elon Musk and the rogue DOGE agency that he may or may not be running tanking in popularity by the day, it was only a matter of time before consumers let their mounting displeasure with the billionaire be known by way of their pocketbooks.
After hitting $480 a share on Dec 17 before dipping to $424 the day after the inauguration, Tesla closed at just $249 on March 14, losing nearly half of its value in under three months. On March 10, Tesla stock fell a whopping 15%, losing $16 billion in a single day and making it the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 this year.
In light of his new BFF’s recent financial misfortunes, Trump did what any American president would do as leader of the world’s greatest free market economy: he declared consumer boycotts of Tesla “illegal,” blamed Elon’s tanking stock on the “radical left lunatics,” and then held a half-hour infomercial for Tesla in the White House driveway.
Under normal conditions, ethical constraints would preclude any senior government official, never mind the sitting president, from endorsing a particular consumer product. However, a president that has no compunction about hawking his own branded merchandise from the Oval Office is obviously not about to start burdening himself with the ethics of shilling cars out in the driveway.
On March 11, Trump allowed Elon Musk to roll three brand new Teslas up to the doors of the White House, turning America’s house into a Tesla showroom floor. He announced that he was buying one, then the two of them gave a 35-minute infomercial on the three different models while the whole event was live-streamed on Twitter/X.
If there is a more shameless act of crony corporatism in the history of the American, I’d love to hear it.
What’s that?
Immediately after Trump used the White House to do a Tesla ad, Elon announced he was giving Trump another $100 million?
« sigh »
I’m at a total loss for words. The only thing I can do at this point is…
Imagine what they’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
It is truly difficult to put into words this level of third-world country banana republic corruption because we, as Americans, have no frame of reference for it. Trump and his administration don’t make Nixon look like a Boy Scout, they make him look like the neighbor’s toddler the Girl Scouts babysit to earn their Friendly & Helpful badge.
But that’s not even the most frustrating aspect of it all.
The most frustrating aspect of this Putin-level self-dealing, self-regulating, self-promoting, and self-enriching is that Trump’s most ardent and dog-loyal MAGA supporters simply do not care.
The only thing that would make them care is a simple thought exercise requiring more intellectual honesty and internal fortitude than anyone in a red hat has ever demonstrated the slightest capacity or chutzpah for:
Imagine what you’d say if Biden had pulled something like that.
And then say it about Trump.