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This is the most corrupt thing a US president has ever done [1]

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Date: 2025-04-25

Some very bad men have held the office of President of the United States. Andrew Jackson was a slaveholder, genocide advocate, and was well-known for a pay-to-play method of hiring government officials based on what they had done for the administration, regardless of their qualifications. Ronald Reagan had more administration officials investigated, indicted, or convicted (138) than any other president. The biggest of his scandals, however, was the Iran-Contra scheme, which violated not only the arms embargo against Iran but also the amendment prohibiting funding Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Richard “Tricky Dicky” Nixon had set the corruption bar so high (or is it low?) that nearly every presidential scandal echoed back to his most infamous, career ending scandal — Watergate, by tagging the “gate” suffix to subsequent scandals.

And then there is Donald J. Trump. A man who reset the corruption bar for unscrupulous behavior during his first term to a level that seemed like it would be humanly impossible for anyone to exceed. I would submit to you that this week, Trump not only reset the bar, he smashed it into oblivion. He set a measure of corruption by which all future US presidents, nay, all future world leaders, will find difficult to match. It isn’t solely a matter of what he did, but the way that he did it. Let me explain.

On January 17, 2025, three days before Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States, the Trump meme coin was launched. The lack of a public announcement by Trump initially led to concerns that the cryptocurrency was a scam and might have no association with the president-elect. How wrong, and right (!), those concerns would prove to be. Hours after its launch, Trump announced that he was launching the Trump meme coin. Initially, the value of the crypto coin spiked to $74, but as Trump’s popularity has floundered during his failing presidency, the coin has fallen to an all-time low of around $8. Until today.

Here’s the part where the out-in-the-open, blatant corruption comes into play. Trump announced that the top 220 “investors” in Trump coin would receive special access to the White House at an “intimate private” dinner. The price of the Trump meme coin doubled almost immediately. Of course, the White House had no comment on the ethical implications of such an openly crooked pay-for-presidential-access scheme.

The memecoin is just one of several ways in which Trump and his family are positioning themselves to cash in on crypto. Trump’s sons launched a separate crypto company last year called World Liberty Financial, which is launching a digital token known as a stablecoin that is pegged to the value of the dollar. Trump has also been pushing forcefully for deregulating cryptocurrency and creating a strategic reserve of cryptocurrency (tacitly from currency confiscated from criminal enterprises).

The clear and present danger of the nation’s top executive selling access to the office of the president is nauseating in itself, but the fact that he doesn't even try to hide the corruption is mind-boggling. There is, in fact, a leaderboard that shows who the top buyers are. This president is telling the world that access to the president is available to anyone who wants to line his pockets. In another time, this would have been the end of not only his presidency, but probably his life eating with sharp utensils and wearing anything but a standard issue orange jumpsuit.

This isn’t normal. We shouldn’t let his blizzard of lawless, immoral, and shocking actions overshadow his selling access to the office of the president. I’d love to wake up on Monday and find that the outrage by the citizens of this country had forced Trump to divest himself of his scam cryptocurrency or that the House of Representatives found a spine and initiated impeachment proceedings. But it seems like we’ve reached a point where corruption is now considered to be an intrinsic part of the inner workings of our government. I refuse to accept that and will be calling my representatives and posting this corruption scheme wherever I can.

I hope you will join me.

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