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- [00:00]
A
I don't want to go around saying you're going to lose the election if you promise these things, because a lot of these things are popular, but what you can't do is try to implement them.
- [00:08]
B
Oh, God. Welcome to the Mona Charon Show. So glad you could join me today. I am delighted to welcome back Jonathan Chait, who is a contributing writer at the Atlantic. We're going to talk corruption today, something both he and I have been focused on a bit. But I also just want to very strongly recommend a new piece that he has that just came out today. And if I had known about this in advance, maybe this would have been our topic, because it's a good one. But maybe we'll have you back. But here's it's called A Sweeping Theory of Everything Is Revolutionizing the Democratic Party. And the subhead is Democrats are enthralled to the idea that corporate consolidation is America's biggest and maybe only problem. So as you can probably guess, John doesn't think that's quite right. So it's a great piece and we will perhaps return to that another time. In the meantime, go read it. But let us turn to the topic of the day, which is corruption. The Trump family has increased its net worth by about 4 billion billion since January of 2025. And there are many different kinds of corruption. We are fortunate enough to have as our president somebody who excels in every category. I'm going to cite three and we'll go through them, if you don't mind. So I'm going to cite three. First is just cash, just, you know, straight up. I'm going to enrich myself and my own pockets and my family. The second kind of corruption is perverting justice, and the third kind is inverting reality. So we have all three. There are probably many, many other kinds of corruption. Maybe you want to touch on some of those. Let's start with the cash, because as I mentioned, he has increased his net value by billions.
- [02:19]
A
You know, Mona, Republicans used to appreciate job creators and now you sound like a Democrat.
- [02:27]
B
Well, he is creating jobs for critics. That's, you know, we need more people to just track all of the layers of grossness in this administration. So maybe that's a job creation thing. It's funny. Voters used to tell focus groups that they thought Trump was incorruptible. They thought he was too rich to really care about money. And they thought that they would credulously say, oh, but, you know, he doesn't take a salary. You know, people would often say, I'm so impressed that he doesn't take a salary.
- [03:09]
A
Larry Kudlow said the same thing. I think it was during the first Trump term that. Not just talking about Trump, but saying wealthy people in general have no need of corruption, so we're better off having them. Larry Kudlow is the supply side economist, an influential voice in conservative and Republican economic policymaking for decades, including in the first Trump administration. So that was really the theory of action. Put a rich guy in charge and he won't need to steal anything.
- [03:41]
B
Yeah, well. And as we can see with people like Elon Musk, the richer you are, the better a person you are.
- [03:51]
A
Family values across the board. Yeah. Every domain of human morality is improved by being wealthy.
- [03:57]
B
Okay, so what is your sense? Is it that people really believe this stuff about how he's really incorruptible and he's too rich to take, you know, take bribes? Or, or is it that they don't care, that they sort of know, but they figure, look, I knew he was corrupt. I voted for him in 2024 and maybe also in previous elections, knowing that he didn't have good character, but he was going to return the economy of, you know, pre Covid days, and therefore it was not really that important. Do you think both of those are true? Do you think either of them? What's your reaction to that?
- [04:39]
A
So, first of all, if you want to peer inside the mind of the swing voter, Sarah Longwell is really the authority. You should be, you should be asking all these questions too, at the Bulwark. You've got one of the great experts there.
- [04:51]
B
We do.
- [04:52]
A
It's mostly beyond me. So that caveat, aside from listening to Sarah and from other sources, I think there are two basic justifications, and if you notice, they are somewhat intentional with each other. But I don't think that stops people from sometimes believing both of them. The first is, the one you said is that a rich person doesn't need to take any money from office, so they, they have better. They have a purer motive. The second is that all politicians are corrupt and Trump. And Trump is just, is just revealing the, the artifice that they all have to have to follow. So he may be corrupt, but he's just, he's just admitting what the rest of them deny. And I think that between those two, you've got most of it.
- [05:35]
B
Yeah. So a belief in the corruption of public officials is a very old American tradition. You know, Mark Twain supposedly said, America has no native criminal class except Congress. And, you know, I mean, this running against Washington Corruption has been a thing for my whole life, and certainly even before. And yet it seems to me, and I'd be curious what you think of this, that compared to many places on the globe, this country, despite obvious problems, was fairly low on the corruption index. We had our share, but compared to other places, things are pretty clean. The fact is, the kinds of corruption that people think characterizes politicians and the deep state in Washington is not at all what people think. The kinds of corruption where people are just buying private yachts and, you know, living it up on the taxpayer dime, that's really not the kind of that. I mean, there's a little bit of that, but not very much. What we had instead is the kind of corruption where politicians, in order to stay in power, would gerrymander. There's that kind. And they would. They would vote for lower taxes and higher spending despite the consequences for future generations. There's that kind of corruption which we are awash in, but not the good old fashioned skimming off the top. What do you think?
- [07:16]
A
Yeah, I think there's definitely been a change in the nature of American government at the federal level over a period of time that this was a country that used to rank fairly high across the world spectrum in terms of corruption in good government and the kind of expectation you could get that there would be some kind of separation between the policy outcomes you get from the government and your connection to the government. You didn't have to pay somebody off in order to get regulatory approval or to take some action. But I also think it's worth thinking about how that came to be in the historical sweep of things. The Mark Twain quote you just gave is instructive. Mark Twain was a figure from the Progressive Era, and fighting corruption was the highest priority of the Progressive era movement. And that was a movement that had ties to both the Republican and the Democratic Party. They ended the spoils system of the 19th century by which the winning party would just put all their people into all the jobs. And. And basically the reason you wanted to win office was so that you could hand out jobs to your buddies and steer the contracts of government to your buddies. And they created a civil service system that basically formed the basis of the 20th century rise to what we grew up with the system of government where things were on the level. But I think it's worth understanding as well that while the Progressive movement was a bipartisan project in its time, it's not really anymore. I think the values of the Progressive movement have become much more associated with the Democratic Party now than the Republican Party that I think to the extent that anyone is looking back in that era and questioning what they did, those people are on the political right, and those people are more associated with the Republican Party. And I think you could even see that backsliding in the. In the George W. Bush administration. There was a wave of corruption scandals in the second Bush term that really became maybe the biggest liability for the Bush administration. And I think you. You had people around that administration that were questioning the progressive ethos of good government and separating the interests of the public from those of the people who are. Who are running the state. And I think those instincts and impulses have just blossoms times a thousand under the. Under the. Maybe. So maybe it was 100x during the first Trump administration. Now it's a thousandx in the second Trump administration. You can see the little green shoots under Bush became shrubs under Trump 1, and they're now a forest in Trump. Trump 2. But I think if you're just trying to trace the history of this idea, I think that's where you go back to.
- [10:17]
B
Yeah. I do remember Republicans, though, also making hay with corruption allegations. I remember Newt Gingrich got a lot of mileage out of going after Jim Wright, who was the speaker of the House at the time and a Democrat. He had this scheme where he would have. Instead of. You weren't supposed to accept honoraria as a sitting member, but he would have people buy copies of his book, which was, you know, that wasn't on the up and up. And Gingrich was able.
- [10:54]
A
And two notes is that when this came out, he was forced to resign. It was like no one thought that that was acceptable. He had to lose his job. And then Newt Gingrich ended up doing the same thing with his own book.
- [11:05]
B
Yes, exactly. I was gonna get to that. Yeah, I know. It's just. Oh, you can't write this stuff. It's too.
- [11:12]
A
Right. Newt's conclusion was, wow, what a great trick. I should do that. Yeah. Yes.
- [11:19]
B
Okay, so let's get into some of the gory details about Trump's cash grabs. And you've said this is just like a thousand X, which is maybe an understatement.
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A
Right.
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B
Considering where. Where we are now.
- [11:35]
A
And by the way, so. So the audience knows you wrote the piece on this. You wrote the piece that. That went through all the search. So just. We're not. I mean, I don't want anyone to think that I'm the expert on this subject here. You. You're the expert on this, and I can add some commentary to it, but I just think the audience needs to know that.
- [11:50]
B
Well, you also wrote about this recently. So, anyway, okay, so he did something like 3600 or 3700 separate stock trades just since January of this year. Now, it used to be the case that presidents would put their assets in a blind trust when they became president, even though they aren't required to by law.
- [12:17]
A
Right.
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B
But they would do it just, you know, to. To be Caesar's wife. Right, right.
- [12:23]
A
And Trump's favorite phrase in the English language is aren't required to by law. When he hears that, it's like his eyes light by chance. Right? Yeah, exactly. Yes.
- [12:34]
B
Actually, that reminds me, just the other day, I was doing a little research on this, and something similar came along because they were saying, but what about all of the transactions that your sons did when you were in office? And they weren't supposed to be making deals and all that either. Right. And he said, it turned out nobody cared, so you can do it. Okay. So that's the other thing about Trump, is that he's always looking for, what can I get away with? How far can I push it? And there is no internal ethical standard whatsoever in the man's makeup. He's about the most immoral, unethical person that I've ever heard of in American life, far less been chief executive.
- [13:23]
A
Yep.
- [13:23]
B
All right, so why do we not want presidents and other officials to put their assets in a blind trust? Because public officials are in a position to affect the private interests and enrich people, including themselves. And Trump has bought stock in Palantir, which got lucrative government contracts. He bought stock in a company that makes Tasers right before the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was going to spend 200 million on buying Tasers. He bought stock in Nvidia right before that company was allowed to sell chips to China. I just. I do wonder whether there's something that broke in our civic culture when you have someone. So look at what the American people have absorbed before we move on.
- [14:21]
A
I just want. I think there's a point worth adding here.
- [14:23]
B
Sure.
- [14:24]
A
We're comparing Trump to previous presidents. Not only has he violated this norm by not putting his assets into a blind trust, but he's conducted policy in an unusually personalist fashion compared to any president in American history. Right. So if you imagine any previous president would have financial interests at stake, they would have much more limited opportunities to exploit them. Right. Because they'd say, like, well, I know this big bill is working its way through Congress, and if it passes, this industry will benefit at the expense of the others. Or there's a big regulatory change that the commissioner of this or that agency is working on. And in six months, you know, the rule is going to come out. These are much more slower moving changes than ones over which you have less personal control. But he's consolidated so much authority in him personally, him just making these moves and him declaring this is the way it's going to be, we're changing this overnight that the opportunities are, you know, tenfold increased.
- [15:23]
B
Yeah, yes, yes, that's an excellent point. Point. And also he has filled his administration with factotums and lick spittles and yes, men who will, at, you know, the flick of his finger, change regulations, change, you know, rulings from various very important departments of government to either punish or reward people that Trump identifies. And so, yes, that's a very big piece of this. So the American people sat still for Qatar, giving him a $400 million debt, which is, by the way, going to cost about a billion dollars. Taxpayers to refit to be Air Force One.
- [16:09]
A
No, no, no, no. The Trump library is going to control it. And I'm sure the people who run this Trump library will be very independent and would never let Donald Trump's personal needs dictate how they allocate the use of this airplane.
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B
Of course. Yes, yes, that will be the control
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A
of the Trump library. Yeah.
- [16:31]
B
Yes. Then, you know, we learned, I don't know what month it was, we learned that four days before the inauguration, the United Arab Emirates, which, interesting footnote, when you look on the Transparency International, ratings for corruption ranks higher than we do now. But anyway, we are more corrupt than the UAE. But anyway, the UAE, which is a principality, I believe, four days before the inauguration, purchased $500 million of world liberty Financial coins, which Trump set up with Howard Lutnick, which. Well, great. I mean, there's no conflict there anyway, so people sat still for that. They sat still for the ballroom. They did all of this. And you have to think that, I guess so you said a minute ago that when Jim Wright was discovered to have had this corrupt arrangement where he was getting remuneration in a way he shouldn't, he had to resign. And we've, I have lived through many a scandal over the years where when something like that comes out, you know, people are. But I have the sense that this kind of false cynicism that people have, and I've seen it in people that I know where if you point out the corruption, the unbelievable corruption, they'll say, and I'm not talking about right now, I'm talking about in the past, because we're going to come to whether maybe this is all too much at this point. But, you know, they would just, they would respond with this whataboutism, you know, well, the Democrats do it too. Everybody does it. They believe that that's being smart, is that you shouldn't ever believe that anybody's honest. And that proves that you're kind of a sophisticate. Can you comment on that?
- [18:34]
A
I think you have to separate out who's having these responses. You know, you have justifications by conservative Republican loyalists and their ability to rationalize whatever Trump does is, has been the subject of analysis of the bulwark and the work of a lot of people like me, because it's so, it's important and it's fascinating. But that's just what they do. That's how their brain works. I think among people who are more independent, more cross pressured, some of them are rationalizing. But I also think that this is costing them. I think all the bad stuff that Trump is doing is costing him here and there. No one thing has been dispositive in terms of breaking his coalition, but he's just slicing off little bits of the coalition here and there, just slowly working his way down into the mid-30s in approval from a relatively high point when he started in office. So, you know, I think you can despair and say none of it matters, but it all, it all matters. It all just adds up, you know, bit by bit by bit by bit, it all, it all, it all matters.
- [19:45]
B
So I, so I do agree with that. I think there does come a point where it's all just too much. You know, the much over quoted line about, you know, how did you go bankrupt, you know, slowly and then all at once, but it is the slow accumulation of all of this stuff. And, but the important part, I guess, for our purposes is that it would be one thing if the economy were roaring, if people's wages were up, if things were great economically, people might be a lot more willing to overlook these obvious, he's grabbing fistfuls of money, but, but things aren't good. And he has reneged on his promise that voters, however ill advised it may be, they believed him, that he was going to be able to bring prices down and that he was able, gonna be able to help them have the economy back that they wanted. And that hasn't happened. And worse, they know exactly why it hasn't happened. It wasn't some exogenous event, it was his own decisions on tariffs and on the war. It's not hard to draw those causal lines for why things are bad right now.
- [21:09]
A
He normally has quite a talent for blaming his problems on other people.
- [21:14]
B
Yes, he does.
- [21:15]
A
He's. He's more focused on that than. Than almost anything else. Not everything else, but it's high on his list of things. And that. And that really bore fruit for him during COVID Right. He really kind of, like, all he cared about during COVID was making sure he didn't get the blame for what happened, not making sure that it wasn't a big problem. And it worked. I mean, it really did. It really did work. Like, people kind of gave him a pass in a significant way. Now, he lost reelection, so it didn't work enough, but, I mean, the scale of the disaster we had would have probably led to a complete wipeout, but. And then subsequently, I think people really did talk about everything that happened in 2020 as if Trump was not the President of the United States. So escaping blame is normally his mode. However, when he took power this time, he was so, I think, flush with his sense of vindication, that he was just sending out these signals of being in charge. Right. It's like I'm changing everything. Everything that happens from Alberta.
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B
The Gulf of America.
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A
The Gulf of America. You know, I'm crushing my enemies. I'm building giant palaces and arches and renaming everything after me, and every day there's new executive actions. And he was so big and so large and so loud about the fact that he was in charge of everything. Now, I think he actually cut off his own normal route of escape where he could be saying, like, oh, this is all sleepy Joe Biden's fault of these terrible economic conditions. I think it's much harder for him to make that case now.
- [22:46]
B
That is so true. Yeah. He's. He has decided that everything is Trump, and therefore he has to own everything. Yeah. Okay. All right. So that's the first kind of. Of corruption. The second kind of corruption is the perverting justice. So people who donated to him had their SEC enforcement actions dropped. People who said they would cooperate with his immigration agenda, like the former mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, had their prosecution, their worthy prosecution, dropped. And then, of course, you've written this. I also went on about this kind of at length in a piece that's out today about, you know, the notion that he is. So now he's got this. Supposedly, we'll see if it actually comes to fruition. But this 1.776. Get it billion dollar slush fund to pay out people who've, you know, been victims of weaponization of government. No one has ever weaponized government the way this crowd has, the way he has.
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A
No one in the United States.
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B
No one. Indeed.
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A
Stalin is still ahead of us. Yeah.
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B
And plenty of others, but, you know, not in the U.S. and yet, you know, the list of people that he has, you know, tried to prosecute, investigate, fired, all weaponizing the powers of the state, perverting justice. How many members of the Department of Justice have resigned under this administration rather than, you know, agree to this corrupt bargain? Lots. Dozens.
- [24:47]
A
A lot.
- [24:49]
B
And I really respect those people because some of them, you know, were recently hired by Trump himself and then immediately, immediately resigned when they were asked to do these things anyway. So that's the third. And then the, the third kind is just inverting reality, where people who assaulted police officers, caused five deaths and hundreds of grave injuries, who tried to steal an election and subvert our democracy, become patriots. And the people who simply hope that this administration.