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Notes -
Is presidential corruption still culture war?
You may or may not remember that back in January of this year President Trump, in his personal capacity, sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion in damages related to leaks of his tax returns by a contractor back in 2018-2020. I don't want to dig into the merits of the case as such, except I'll note the legal discussion I've read seems to have a consensus that the case is very weak. It is also very unusual for a sitting President to be suing the government he is in charge of. There are obvious conflicts of interest involved. So much so the judge in that case issued an order for the parties to explain how they are actually adverse to each other, how they disagree, so that the cases and controversies requirement of the constitution is satisfied.
As of today, it seems we may never find out how good the claims are or aren't, how adverse the parties are or aren't. Trump filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss his lawsuit, pursuant to the establishment of a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund". It's not even clear to me the fund is going to be administered by the United States government, as paragraph C provides:
Is this going to be the new normal? If you're President and Congress won't give you the money you want to pay your friends and allies you can get however much you want with this one weird trick!
ETA:
ABC reports that the fund will be overseen by a five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General, but the members will all be removable at-will by the President.
The snarky remark would be that presidential corruption is not culture war, but Tuesday.
I have seen precious few people arguing here against the proposition that Trump is obviously leveraging the opportunities of office to enrich himself, his family, his legacy as a president and close allies. I think his apologists here would rather argue that prior politicians were not less corrupt, but only less obviously corrupt (for the most part, excepting Biden's pardons here), or that he is entitled to loot the treasury after his opponents tried to go after his money through lawfare, or that he is still better than a non-corrupt leftist for unrelated reasons.
Let’s accept for the sake of argument that Donald Trump was targeted by the federal government or agents within the federal government. (This is my position.) What does a “non-corrupt” settlement look like? Money is typically what’s awarded to victims in such cases. This is not a hypothetical or meant in a sarcastic spirit: I believe that Trump and conservatives have been targeted by the federal government over the last decade, so what’s the alternative mechanism here that would make them whole that would not be labeled corrupt? Is there one? If you can imagine one I’d like to hear it. Because to me it seems that to believe that Trump was targeted makes this settlement a priori not corrupt. Unless you can envision some other settlement that threads this needle.
I actually don't mind this result. As far as Trump's corruption goes, this is more or less justifiable.
What I cannot accept is his behavior to enrich himself and his family through crypto scams and pay to play, even going so far as to pardon clear-cut criminals because they donated to his campaign. That stuff boils my blood. He used to say 'drain the swamp' but seems to have pivoted to 'become the swamp'.
Dude’s a billionaire reality TV real estate agent. How did he ever convince people that he wasn’t the swamp?
Because he talks like common sense grandpa ("crime is bad, kill our enemies, etc) instead of like a focus-grouped actor wearing a Normal Human skinsuit.
Plus the swamp went on a 10 year long unhinged berserker rage about him, which is great for credibility in that regard.
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He doesn't look, act or talk like swamp, and the swamp hates him with an open and visceral hatred. It's a fair deduction. It's also the reason nobody else could compete - any potential contender gets hailed by pundits and immediately it taints them in the eyes of the anti-swamp crowd.
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