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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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NYT has a primer on all the corruption that Trump has been engaging in:

  • There's a film about Melania that will pay $28 million directly to her. Did you know about this? I certainly didn't. This could have been a major scandal in past administrations, but at this point it barely registers at all.
  • The Trump meme coin has collected $320 million in fees. Noah smith has written about the coin a while ago, and since then Trump has invited coinholders to private events as a reward.
  • Justin Sun was accused of fraud by the SEC, but Trump put the investigation on hold after Sun bought $40 million in Trump coin
  • The luxury jumbo jet from Qatar that has been heavily featured in the news. In what I'm sure was a total coincidence, Trump announced a big AI deal with Qatar, KSA, and UAE that's almost certainly a big net-negative for the USA according to Zvi.
  • Trump's family are raking in cash head-over-heels by monetizing perceived access to the president, with Kushner, Trump Jr., and Eric Trump each individually dwarfing the amount that Hunter Biden ever received from doing similar activities, but basically nobody cares about that at this point.
  • Previous presidents have divested their business holdings prior to coming into office to head off allegations of corruption, and of course Trump never did, and basically nobody cares about that at this point.

Beyond this article, you could probably add a bunch more, like how White House aides are buying and selling stocks suspiciously timed around tariff announcements to make big profits.

The response to all of this from MAGA has been next to nonexistent. A handful of people have implied that maaaaaaaybe Trump shouldn't be doing this, but none of them remotely push the issue. When the left try to criticize this, most of MAGA either retorts with the broken record of Shellenberger arguments, or otherwise claims something Biden did was somehow worse, and Trump's corruption is implied to be good, actually. Isn't it wonderful living in an era when negative partisanship is the only political force that matters? Scandals and corruption used to be a thing that allowed the other party to come in and try to do better, but now they're used as a justification for the other side becoming even worse.

or otherwise claims something Biden did was somehow worse

(...)

Scandals and corruption used to be a thing that allowed the other party to come in and try to do better, but now they're used as a justification for the other side becoming even worse.

How can you dismiss the argument that he's doing better, just before complaining that people don't care enough about him doing better?

What? My position is that Trump is far worse in terms of corruption, and that nobody really cares at this point -- MAGA will never care about Trump doing bad things (they'll just rationalize it afterwards no matter what it is), and the left sort of cares but doesn't see it as a particularly potent attack vector. The result is that this could easily become the new baseline of corruption that any President engages in if they want to, and that's a bad thing.

What? My position is that Trump is far worse in terms of corruption

I think you need something to back that argument, rather than assuming everyone agrees with you, and that anyone who doesn't is obviously wrong.

MAGA will never care about Trump doing bad things

Is MAGA worse than you in that regard? I don't recall you criticizing Biden (or his family / administration) much. Even about obvious things like hiding his cognitive decline.

I think you need something to back that argument

That's... what the NYT article was about?

Is MAGA worse than you in that regard? I don't recall you criticizing Biden

I personally criticized Biden plenty, from his free pass to many levels of wokeness, to his defacto open-borders immigration policy, to his pardoning of Hunter Biden. I'm reading Original Sin right now, and plan on doing a book review at some point.

I'm reading Original Sin right now,

Just so you are aware. This indicates to anyone right of center that you are basically a bot or an idiot. That Biden was infirm and incapable of the job was evident throughout the campaign and his presidency. In fact, both of the authors of that book were active co-conspirators in the cover up.

All the indications I have of are the book is not that it is a mea culpa by Tapper et al, rather it is portrayed as some heroic work of journalism, which it is not. He simply has a new set of power brokers he is transcribing for.

People who have actually read the book will understand that it gives a fairly scathing account overall. Collecting all the anecdotes along with the storyline of how it happened very much is good journalism.

A scathing account of someone who the Democrat Party is currently scapegoating for their loss of power by transcribing for those doing the scapegoating is not "good journalism".

The book really isn't the excuse that you think it is. There's some degree of scapegoating, although it's not really of Biden himself moreso than his closest advisors (the so-called "Politburo"). I'd recommend reading the book yourself if you still disagree. Even a person who just hates the Democrats ought to read the book, as they'd find tons of ammo in it.

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