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President "What's in it for me?" The Village 7-16-25 [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-16
What have you done for me lately?
Don’t count on the double-standard MSM to lead this fight.
Trump voters do not watch, hear, or read any media that mentions Trump’s corruption.
It is up to us to call, protest, write, confront, and inform the Trump lovers in our own lives.
How the Trumps Turned an Election Victory Into a Cash Bonanza— Feb 13, 2025
First lady’s documentary deal with Amazon, president’s legal settlements and other transactions near $80 million so far; Trump library a major beneficiary
When Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos dined with Donald Trump and his wife Melania at Mar-a-Lago in December, there was a lot at stake for both men: Bezos, a titan of industry whose company is crucial to the U.S. economy, was rebuilding his relationship with a resurgent and powerful soon-to-be president. A lot was at stake for Melania, too: She was looking for a buyer for a documentary about her transition back to first lady. Her agent had pitched the film, which she would executive produce, to a number of studios, including the one owned by Amazon. As the meeting approached, Melania consulted with director Brett Ratner on how to sell her idea to the world’s third-richest man. Melania regaled Bezos and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, with the project’s details at dinner. Just over two weeks later, Amazon, a company that prides itself on frugality and sharp negotiating, agreed to pay $40 million to license the film—the most Amazon had ever spent on a documentary and nearly three times the next-closest offer. www.wsj.com/...
As Trumps Monetize Presidency, Profits Outstrip Protests — May 25, 2025
The president and his family have monetized the White House more than any other occupant, normalizing activities that once would have provoked heavy blowback and official investigations.
When Hillary Clinton was first lady, a furor erupted over reports that she had once made $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures. Even though it had happened a dozen years before her husband became president, it became a scandal that lasted weeks and forced the White House to initiate a review. Thirty-one years later, after dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket — 280 times the Clinton lucre and in this case from a person with a vested interest in policies set by her husband’s government. Scandal? Furor? Washington moved on while barely taking notice. The Trumps are hardly the first presidential family to profit from their time in power, but they have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House. The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking. The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone… “He’s not trying to give the appearance that he’s doing the right thing anymore,” said Fred Wertheimer, founder of Democracy 21 and a longtime advocate for government ethics. “There’s nothing in the history of America that approaches the use of the presidency for massive personal gain. Nothing.”...Mr. Wertheimer said the accumulation of so many conflicts puts Mr. Trump on the all-time list of presidential graft. “He’s got the first 10 places on that,” he said. “He’s in the hall of fame of ripping off the presidency for personal gain.”
www.nytimes.com/...
How Trump is using his power to profit and why no one will stop him— May 30, 2025
PBS Washington Week— Most presidents wait until they leave the White House to cash in, but President Trump takes a different approach. Crypto deals, hotels, golf courses, 747s, everything is on the table. The panel discusses the ways Trump is treating the White House, and Mar-a-Lago, as a place to make sure his children are even richer than he is.
Jeffrey Goldberg: So, here's a partial list of deals and moves Donald Trump has done that would have sunk any other president. He's accepted a $400 million plane as a gift from a Middle East autocracy that hosts both Hamas and the Taliban, and also may be the home of a new Trump hotel. He's dined with top investors in one of his cryptocurrency projects and reportedly promised to promote the crypto industry from the White House. He's pardoned prominent Republicans and reality T.V. stars, including a man convicted of securities fraud, who, with his wife, donated $1.8 million to Trump's reelection campaign, for good measure. By the way, he commuted the sentence of the leader of the murder of Chicago criminal and organization, the Gangster Disciples, Trump's family is charging half a million dollars to join a private club in Washington, D.C. He's building a golf resort in Vietnam, a country seeking tariff relief for $1.5 billion, and a Trump skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City, a fact, ho Chi Minh himself would've undoubtedly found darkly amusing… I guess one of the things I'm surprised at, Steve, is, throughout American history, there have been consequences for this kind of self-dealing, right, whether it's Ulysses Grant whose reputation suffered because of a corruption in the cabinet, Warren Harding, the Teapot Dome scandal, up to Watergate, obviously, and more minor incident. This seems completely novel in American history. How do you explain the fact that no one seems to care? Stephen Hayes, Editor, The Dispatch: ... I think one of the reasons that there's not more outrage [is] there's a general sense, certainly on the Republican side, rank and file Republican voters believe that everybody does this. This is what's been going on in Washington. Remember, Donald Trump ran and he was going to drain the swamp. This is the way that people perceive Washington working. And Trump just does it with a little -- he's a little bigger, does it with a little more flare. He's a little more aggressive, right, right. And I think that's how you get Republican voters who can rationalize this, having talked to some of them about it. www.pbs.org/…
Power, Profit, and Washington’s Paradox— June 12, 2025 Corruption and the Trump Administration
Gutting the ability of government to contain corruption The president’s efforts to enrich himself and his family, despite claims to the contrary, represent only the most obviously unethical activities undertaken by his administration. More lasting and consequential are policy initiatives that gut the ability of government to investigate and contain corruption throughout the US and in international business. These policies are occurring with no changes in the statutory framework but, instead, with executive orders, memoranda, and off-the-cuff statements. At the same time, anti-corruption laws could be weaponized against political foes or as threats to bring critics into line. If the mid-term elections in 2026 reaffirm Republican control of Congress, we can expect more aggressive legislative moves, for example, repeal the FCPA or a rewrite of the federal bribery statute to entrench the permissive interpretation of bribery embedded in the Supreme Court’s McDonnell v. United States, 18 U. S. C. §201 (2016). The bribery statute makes it a crime for a public official to accept anything of value in exchange for performing an “official act.”… In short, there is a deep tension between two groups now wielding power in Washington. One seeks to limit the role of government in society, in part, because of their fear that corruption and self-dealing will undermine any affirmative government policy efforts. These people, however, have tied themselves to a highly personalistic administration peopled by a second group that views public sector involvement as an opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers, competitors, interest groups, and others seeking personal gain. Neither group is interested in constructive public policy reforms that improve social welfare, but, at the same time, the situation seems ripe for conflicts in particular programmatic areas such as public construction projects, tax policy, or national defense. verfassungsblog.de/...
CREW is tracking Trump’s unprecedented corruption (again)— Updated 7-1-25
[CREW = Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington]
When Donald Trump took the oath of office for the second time, CREW immediately began tracking his conflicts of interest. Once again, President Trump has defied all norms of the presidency and created untold numbers of conflicts of interest by failing to divest from his business interests before taking office. [See site for the full chart: www.citizensforethics.org/… ]
Trump is insatiably greedy. He cannot stop himself.
The GOP will not stop him. The DOJ, FBI, and SCOTUS will not stop him.
We the people, we the voters, must stop him with our actions and public protests.
We the people, we the voters, must stop him by empowering Democrats with our votes in 2026, 2028, and in every election to come, so they have the numbers to take control and right the ship of state.
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