No presidential administration is entirely exempt from dubious ethical practices, but Donald Trump pushed us to a new hollow. He has accomplished this by breaking all the standards of the good government, often while enriching, whether by forgiving a condemned criminal who, with his wife, donated $ 1.8 million to the Trump countryside; Promote Teslas on the alley of the White House; Or hold a private dinner for speculators who buy its new cryptocurrency.
Mr. Trump’s blatant transgressions overwhelmed those of any modern president and even those of his first mandate. Remember the indignation when he refused to give in his financial assets or when he used a Washington hotel which he owned as a kind of waiting room of the White House? These movements seem picturesque in comparison.
In his storage of historically appropriate behavior, Trump seems to continue several agendas. Personal enrichment stands out: imagine any other president who collects a reduction in sales of a cryptocurrency marketed to his likeness. There is the way he extends his powers: he ignored or eliminated large bands of rules that would have inhibited his freedom of action and his ability to put acolytes of trust in key roles. And then there are enriching donors, whether by pards or favors for their customers.
I worked in the Washington office at the time when Richard Nixon resigned, and even him – kidnapped by his efforts to cover his misdeeds – did not engage in such a range of sordid practices.
Trump 2.0’s corruption did not draw the attention it deserves in the middle of the Trump’s pricing wars’s pricing wars, his attack on scientific research and the signal text chains for his elderly. But the self-educating is a determining theme of this administration that it must be called. Like many that Mr. Trump has done in other fields, he announces to the world that American leaders can no longer trust to follow his laws and that influence is on sale.
As in the post-nixon era, when railings have been created to prevent transgressions, the next president could decide to restore some of the solid government practices on which Trump has trampled. But the damage he inflicted, say, forgive his donors or line his own pockets is irreversible.
