Have you heard about the president who received money from China and other foreign countries? No, not the current president. The former one.
House Republicans recently launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, premised on the claim that he is hiding, in the words of Speaker Mike Johnson, “millions of dollars in payments from America’s foreign adversaries.” As yet, they have produced no evidence to back up the idea that Biden profited. (The payments they have flagged involve the business interests of his son Hunter Biden, who is facing two separate federal indictments at the moment, and his brother James.)
Meanwhile, House Democrats on Thursday released a report detailing how former President Donald Trump received, and then tried to hide, millions in payments from America’s foreign adversaries. Unlike in the impeachment inquiry, which is premised on a suspicion that Republicans hope will turn up evidence, the receipts are here.
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The saga of the foreign payments is a good case study in how Trump has taught Americans to tolerate brazen corruption—so long as it’s his. To do this, Trump relies on two tactics. First, he does much of it out in the open, recognizing that voters tend to assume that only hidden deeds are nefarious. Second, he finds ways to slow-walk the release of the most damaging information, so that by the time the full picture is clear, the public has become almost inoculated—as though it had been out in the open all along.
This is not true. I’m not denying widespread corruption and in Congress (much of it even legal) , but Trump’s corruption was more widespread and more brazenly public than any US politician in living memory.
Every single he went golfing at a golf course he owns and forced the secret service to rent out dozens of rooms at the attached hotel he owns, it was an act of corruption. He did it so many times that people just forget it. It slipped into the background of his other schemes. But it was nonetheless corruption every single time. He openly used the office to enrich himself. Not with deals, not by subtly having favourable classes added to legislation. He did it directly and openly.
there have been numerous rulings by SCOTUS going back before the 80s each making it harder to prosecute politicians for corruption, with citizens united being one of the largest barriers between corporations and state removed.
Realistically trump isn’t some anomoly - He’s just a donor class person entering in the building from the back door the politicians leave from. The fact that door exists between politicians and donors is the problem here. Trump just did it much more blatantly but its still the same problem that Manchin or whoever have where they favor their own companies with legislative carvouts or cushy appointments.