Corruption in Trumpland has reached a level that would astound the most practiced of cynics – and make Edith Wharton blush
Early in Trump’s first presidential transition, there was quaint concern about conflicts of interest. More precisely, that this sheyster might try to profiteer off the presidency. But there remained a belief that the rules and norms of a developed democracy would limit personal enrichment from high public office.
So Trump was pressed to distance himself from his business empire and he offered vague assurances that operational control would pass to his sons. Many in politics and media accepted this — mainly, because there are things that we want to believe (for example, that the new Syrian lead al-Sharaa is no longer a jihadist). How naive they were. They failed to move with the times.
Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence portrayed a Gilded Age elite obsessed with propriety even as greed, ambition, and hypocrisy simmered beneath the surface. America’s current moment feels like its dark inversion. The hypocrisy remains, but all shame has disappeared. What earlier elites concealed behind etiquette is now displayed openly: buying influence, profiting from office, selling access, and patronage displayed for all to behold. Wharton’s aristocrats feared scandal since it threatened legitimacy. In Trump’s America, scandal has been normalized.
Of course, there were always problems with big business and money influencing politics — America is the least effective democracy in policing this (PACs, I’m talking to you). The United States has seen patronage machines, robber barons, strange lobbying empires, and revolving doors between industry and government. From Tammany Hall to Watergate to the influence industry surrounding Washington today, the mixing of money and politics and criminality is not new. What’s different now is the scale, visibility, and brazenness of all involved.
The latest convulsion is the plan to create a nearly $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded “Anti-Weaponization Fund” after Trump — while serving as president — sued the IRS, an agency he himself controls, over the earlier disclosure of his tax returns. The settlement uses taxpayer money to establish a massive compensation mechanism for individuals claiming they were unfairly targeted by prior investigations, and also reportedly bars the IRS from pursuing certain past tax claims involving Trump, his family, and affiliated businesses. This arrangement is astonishing. Legal scholars across the ideological spectrum have struggled to identify a modern precedent for a sitting president suing the executive branch he oversees and then effectively negotiating a settlement with himself.
Formally, the administration insists the fund will be open to anyone claiming government “weaponization,” regardless of ideology. In practice, however, the universe of likely beneficiaries overwhelmingly overlaps with Trump’s political movement: January 6 defendants, Trump associates caught up in investigations, MAGA activists, and allies claiming persecution by the so-called “deep state.” The proposed commission administering the money would reportedly be appointed by Trump’s attorney general and removable by the president, meaning the executive branch — or put another way, Trump — would effectively control who qualifies for compensation.
This looks very much like a presidential patronage machine — one in which loyalty and proximity to Trump potentially become pathways to public money. It might be termed The Trump Paradox — in which a person who does not generally come across as especially intelligent carries out the most diabolically clever scams.
And he’s getting away with it. What once would have triggered a constitutional crisis is now just another news cycle that triggers sniggering accusations of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” The fund is part of an obvious pattern.
Early in the term, the Trump–Elon Musk relationship offered the clearest modern example of how political backers can profit — directly and indirectly — from proximity. Musk remade himself into a woke-baiting MAGA cheerleader-multibillionnaire and poured enormous financial resources into helping return Trump to office while simultaneously controlling businesses deeply dependent on government policy, regulation, contracts, and public perception.
The White House Tesla showcase became the defining image of this new arrangement. Trump effectively turned the presidential grounds into a promotional stage for Musk’s company, praising Tesla vehicles alongside the billionaire entrepreneur while publicly pledging to buy one himself. The spectacle came as Musk’s empire — spanning Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, X/Twitter, artificial intelligence ventures, and government contracting — stood to benefit enormously from regulatory decisions, procurement priorities, and political favor flowing from Washington.
Musk had acquired Twitter, transforming one of the world’s largest communications platforms into a political weapon increasingly aligned with Trumpism and global right-wing populism, while his companies simultaneously occupied sensitive intersections of federal spending, defense infrastructure, satellite communications, AI development, transportation, and energy policy. As the cherry on top, Musk was handed the leading governmental role, with implausible deniability, for axing federal employees in the name of efficiency.
In Russia, under Putin perhaps, this kind of madness might occur.
No less Putinesque is the case of Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder and longtime Trump ally whose family’s expanding media empire has become entangled with the administration in plain sight. Ellison’s son David has pursued a sweeping merger strategy that would place Paramount, CBS, CNN, HBO, and other major media properties under a single corporate umbrella closely aligned with Trump-world interests. AQL’s lawyers asked me to phrase this very carefully: Critics might think that political loyalty and access are being leveraged to secure regulatory approval for deals that might otherwise face intense antitrust scrutiny.
Indeed, press freedom groups and shareholders have launched legal and corporate challenges against the proposed Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger, arguing that the deal appears deeply entangled with Trump-world political influence and regulatory favoritism. Using Delaware shareholder law, organizations including the Freedom of the Press Foundation and Reporters Without Borders are demanding internal records to determine whether executives breached fiduciary duties or traded political accommodations for merger approval. I wonder how this will go if it reaches the Supreme Court.
The broader concern is not simply media concentration, but the emergence of a system where political allegiance drives business opportunities, regulatory outcomes, and control of institutions that dominate public information.
And then, of course, there is Trump himself — the very embodiment of this culture of monetized access. His latest financial disclosures revealed more than 3,600 stock trades worth between roughly $220 million and $750 million in early 2026 alone, including major purchases during the market turbulence surrounding the Iran war — a conflict his own administration initiated and whose timing he necessarily knew before others. — and massive gains betting on tech companies whose fortunes the federal government can affect. While no illegality has been proven and the Trump Organization insists outside managers handled the trades, the spectacle is incredible.
But Hilary’s emails! But Hunter Biden’s laptop!
The stock trading is only one layer of a far broader ecosystem of transactional politics (let’s call it that, since using the c-word can get repetitive). Foreign dignitaries, business executives, lobbyists, and political allies have repeatedly patronized Trump-owned hotels, golf clubs, and properties while seeking favorable treatment from the administration. Trump-branded licensing projects have expanded in countries whose governments simultaneously pursued diplomatic or regulatory favor with Washington. Cryptocurrency ventures tied to the Trump brand have surged alongside his political fortunes, creating speculative financial ecosystems directly connected to presidential influence. Access itself increasingly appears monetized through private clubs, donor events, media ventures, and political fundraising networks orbiting the presidency.
Each individual transaction may occupy a legally defensible gray zone. Taken together, however, they create the unmistakable impression of a presidency functioning partly as a business platform — one where political authority, financial opportunity, and personal enrichment operate not as separate spheres, but as mutually reinforcing parts of the same system.
To my knowledge, no American leader has ever done it. In my assessment, disclosures like this would have wrecked any political career.
It is fascinating to comtemplate what the Democrats will do if they regain control of Congress in the November midterms. It is widely forseen that they will launch investigations of Trump. These may lead to impeachment, but that would be meaningless. I am old enough to remember how that word was widely assumed in the Nixon era to mean removal from office. We now know that it is merely a censure; the Senate must convict with a supermajority, and the GOP lemmings there would acquit Trump if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue.
In retrospect, the idea that Nixon had to resign becomes ridiculous: he was, by comparison, indeed not a crook.
In 1984, I was a student at the University of Pennsylvania taking courses at the Wharton School of business. An alumnus was invited to speak who was already notorious, and not in a good way. I remember quite an uproar of opposition, even by business students, because of his poor reputation. But Trump spoke anyway, and advised students that confidence is one of the things one learns at Wharton.
It’s such a fine line, between confidence and shamelessness.
