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Documents reveal a web of financial ties between Donald Trump officials and the US industries they help regulate
Link information
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- Authors
- Corey G. Johnson, Brandon Roberts, and Al Shaw
- Published
- Mar 5 2026
- Word count
- 2530 words
No doubt this will be a shock to no one. Cheers to ProPublica for continuing to propublica.
The article goes on to detail some of the most glaring examples.
At the end of the day, unfortunately, none of this matters whatsoever.
I don't have a solution or any ideas at all.
The level of corruption is actually stunning. I can hardly remember a day in the last 10 years where there wasn't a story of something evil or corrupt or criminal associated with him.
Trump appears to be a lazy person who isn't very smart.
But somehow he's one of the most successful criminals of all time. That sounds like a lot of work to have a scandal in the news 200 days a year and yet apparently most of his day is watching TV or tweeting. Obviously there is an endless stream of other greedy and corrupt people in his orbit that make this all possible.
There was a comedian years ago who talked about how overweight people should probably occasionally say no to having extra nuts on an ice cream sundae. (Maybe this was Seinfeld. I'm not sure). Anyway, I wonder if Trump EVER says no when asked if he wants to partake in a crime. Apparently not.
Made more stunning by the fact that many of the crimes/scandals would have been administration ending at any other point in American history.
How did it happen? Part of it is the investment the right wing has made in misinformation and manipulation for the last 10 years. A non-negliglible number of people don't trust, or even see, reputable sources of information these days.
Another part is organization. For example, it takes a lot of effort, over a lot of time, to corrupt and co-opt the supreme court.
And of course part is oligarchy.
Trump is possible because the groundwork has been laid over time.
And still it's mind blowing. It would be a lot easier to comprehend if he was just a little bit less... Trump.
Robin Hood was also a criminal, but because he had public support he was able to get away with his band's numerous crimes. Trump is obviously no dark hero (and more importantly is real), but he has the popular support to do all of his crimes. People know about all of the shitty things he has done and among his supporters the responses range from ennui to implicit approval.
It would probably help if impeachment was a matter of justice instead of politics, and if it, uh, actually had any effect.
I honestly don't know why people still talk about impeachment like it means anything at all. Trump was impeached twice. Nothing happened. He was not removed from office. Two other presidents were impeached before him, and nothing happened to them either. Impeachment sounds like a useful tool on paper, but in practice it's completely toothless. After 250 years it still has yet to do the thing it's intended to do, even once.
Well, this isn't quite true. The House has impeached 21 federal officers throughout its history, of which 8 were convicted and removed (all federal judges), the most recent being Thomas Porteous in 2010 for corruption.
Not that I disagree with your larger point. Obviously the impeachment process is broken.
Sorry for being pedantic... it's not exactly toothless just because the full house then senate process has never panned out. It likely would have in the case of Nixon, leaving him little choice but to resign.
Which is to say that it can happen, even if it's essentially impossible in this moment.
That's why I mentioned that impeachment has no effect.
If it's one thing that we should take away from his presidency, it's that committed, popular support is literally the only thing that matters in politics. Rule of law, norms, watchdog organizations, the three branches of government, none of that matters if you have a fanatical, committed base. They're all just powerless words on paper. If you can win elections, and more importantly, if people think you can win and influence elections, you can do literally whatever you want.
I'm not sure what that says about (big R) Republicanism as a governance concept, but it feels like there are a lot of assumptions about how a Republic operates under duress that we've been taking for granted up until they were proven wrong over these last few years.
Maybe there's a silver lining to all of this: because anyone associated with trump is a corrupt, likely incompetent goon, you can safely distrust and disregard anything they say. Makes it pretty easy to write off candidates and ideas in the future that stem from this cloud of corruption.
I don't know where America goes from here.
The corruption, the lies, the idiocy and pandering -- it's been out in the open for so long now that I'm legitimately scared that there's no coming back.
I've been reading up on the 1880s/1890s since there are so many glaring similarities to the present. Obviously, there are some major differences that add to the anxiety (e.g. climate change, nuclear weapons, AI, etc.), but politically, we've had our feet in these waters before.
I'm slightly more optimistic, and also I agree that America will never be the same. It's a lot to process.