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Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | The Most Corrupt President in Modern History [Feat. Matthew Dallek]
00:47:30
Devil’s Cut | The Most Corrupt President In Modern History w Matthew Dallek On this very special Devil's Cut episode of Truth In The Barrel, Amy McGrath speaks with author and historian, Matthew Dallek about the many ways Donald Trump...
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- [00:01]
Host
Psst.
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Matthew Dallek
There are research firms, there are consulting firms, and then there's Forrester. Meet Today's forrester@forrester.com.
- [00:45]
Host
On this devil's Cut episode of Truth in the Barrel. We're diving deep on President Trump's corruption. It's a topic that is so sprawling and massive that we knew we needed to call in a top tier expert to help us cover it. With his blunt assessment that Trump is the, quote, most brazenly corrupt national politician in modern times, it was immediately clear that today's guest, Matthew Dallek, was exactly the right person to call to talk about this. Matthew Dallek is a political historian, a professor at George Washington University's Graduate School of Public Management. He's written several books, including most recently the book titled how the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. Matthew is also a frequent commentator on national news networks about history, politics and public affairs. Matthew, welcome to the show.
- [01:49]
Matthew Dallek
Thanks so much for having me.
- [01:50]
Host
Yeah, we're going to jump right into it. There's so much to talk about in this area here. I want to just take a step back to the very beginning of the Trump administration, the first Trump administration. And I feel like Donald Trump and his family, it's all kind of like, how much can we get away with? And from the very beginning, the very first inauguration, you see an example of a little bit of corruption right at the very beginning, right, because they had the official White House website when it had Melania, the first lady's bio, it was actually selling her jewelry at the same time it was sending a link there. And then later on in the administration, you had Kellyanne Conway promoting the first lady's or Ivanka's product line on tv. And of course, at the end of the administration, you see the president's son in law making this huge Saudi investment deal worth 2 billion. So I wanted to start there and just kind of build on your, quote that Donald Trump is the most corrupt politician in modern times.
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Matthew Dallek
Yeah well, and don't forget the Trump Hotel in Washington, where, you know, there's so much. Right. It's, it's easy to. It's hard, it's impossible to keep track of it all. But, yeah, during the first term, a lot of foreign entities and lobbyists and anyone trying to curry favor with the administration would put money in Trump's pocket by staying at their. And spending money at their hotel in Washington, D.C. which, you know, is small potatoes, I think, compared to Trump 2.0.
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Host
Right.
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Matthew Dallek
Yeah. I mean, arguably, I think, and I'm a historian, not a legal expert, but I think most legal and constitutional experts who look at the Trump Hotel, for example, in his first term, thought it violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which is one of the original fears of the Founders was that a president could be manipulated by foreign money or a foreign entity, that they would not be loyal to their oath or to the Constitution. And, and so that clause, which has rarely, if ever, been litigated or. But that seemed to be a pretty clear violation. Right. You have foreign governments spending money at the President's property. Well, the pattern obviously goes back. There's been so much reporting about this, but the pattern goes back to Trump's business practices. Right. Which, you know, he was convicted in a New York City court of fraud, committing widespread financial fraud, his Trump stakes, Trump University, some of his casinos. Right. He went bankrupt four times. I believe he has skirted all kinds of boundaries throughout, I think, his career.
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Host
And.
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Matthew Dallek
It was unusual to have a president come in who had so much wealth and also was such a prominent business.
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Host
Yeah.
- [05:32]
Matthew Dallek
You know, and, and that, I think, in a way, set the stage. Given his penchant for corruption and also just his vast holdings, I think it set the stage for term one, although arguably term two is absolutely unlike anything we saw in the first term or any other time.
- [05:53]
Host
Much worse. I mean, I feel like you're right in the sense that maybe voters and the American public maybe gave him a little bit of a pass in that first term because he was a businessman, and we hadn't had that kind of thing before. And I heard this from neighbors a lot. Well, he's a businessman. He makes money. It's kind of the American way. But I'm curious, when you talk about, and you say, hey, he is the most corrupt politician in modern times, how far back do you have to go? You're a historian. How far back do you have to go in order to find somebody comparable?
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Matthew Dallek
Yeah.
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Host
Well, Donald Trump.
- [06:29]
Matthew Dallek
The reason I say modern is that I'M thinking post the post Watergate period, because after Watergate, Congress, presidents, the country as a whole, made a pretty sweeping effort to reform the political system, campaign finance reform, ethics in government reforms, special and independent councils, right to investigate. And I think that after Nixon resigned office in disgrace, there was a general sense, a rough consensus really, that presidents in particular need to be more transparent, needed to show that they did not have conflicts of interest, that they were loyal to their oath of office and not to their bottom line, their own personal financial dealings. And so it created a set of norms and laws and ethics and rules that while not all presidents of course, followed it to a T. There have been other scandals. I think that's the most helpful kind of historical time period. But even going back pre Watergate, where Lyndon Johnson, for example, enriched himself as a member of Congress through television and radio holdings, or the Teapot Dome scandal where members of the cabinet committed corrupt acts lining their own pockets. Reagan administration, right. There are cabinet members who also were convicted later in court of various financial misdeeds. Nothing even pre Watergate that I'm aware of can remotely compare to what I think we're especially seeing now. And Trump 1.0. I think your point is really important because Trump's business background was a huge strength. Right. It was a real asset to him. And a lot of people, I think, voted for him because they said the economy's not been great, the recovery from the Great Recession is slow, give the business mogul a chance. And so it was a real strength. And the corruption, the financial corruption, such as existed in the first term was also, you know, somewhat circumscribed. It wasn't as if he seemed to be getting, you know, a billion dollars off something. Right. I mean, it was so I'm not excusing it. I'm just saying that, you know, now I think he really, in his second term, he really has, you know, taking the clear mantle as being the most corrupt president certainly in modern times, but again in American political history. But the real app comparison is presence since Nixon.
- [09:41]
Host
Yeah, well, so I want to give our listeners kind of a rundown because Donald Trump in his second term sort of has like knocked this thing out of the park in terms of doubling, tripling down on corruption, in my belief. We know that Donald Trump has more than doubled his wealth since the starting the 2024 campaign. The list of things is staggering. I'm just going to go through a few of them here. Matthew. This new hotel deals, 80 floor hotels built in Dubai now, $5 billion golf course in the Middle East. Towers in Saudi Arabia, new airplane from the government of Qatar, a new private Washington D.C. club where the price of entry is a half a million dollars. And if you can get in there, you can have access to influencers that have access to the president. New documentary about Melania Trump that's created by am, where the Trump family is getting millions of dollars for that. We have Donald Trump working with Elon Musk when the Tesla stocks were low to buy a Tesla, bring it into the White House lawn and basically have an infomercial about Tesla. Right. And so he could do a commercial for them. So Tesla stocks could go up as they did. Elon Musk then turns around and gives another $100 million to the Trump packs. And so that's just like a short list of that. And we're going to get into, like the meme coins later on in this conversation, too. But all of this is, to me, you know, it's like, it's almost the question I think about is why is Trump the exception to almost every rule in politics prior to that? Meaning, like, how did he manage to stumble his way into this protected status that would would basically nobody else has been able to do?
- [11:47]
Matthew Dallek
Yeah, that's a great question. I think a couple reasons at least. So one is I think we should go back and think about Trump's mindset, which is that he, from his vantage point, he survived two assassination attempts, four criminal. Multiple criminal indictments in four different courts, including 32 or 34 felony convictions.
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Host
Yeah.
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Matthew Dallek
Survived two impeachments, the January 6th riots, insurrection at the Capitol. Right. The beating of police officers, survived politically, I mean, having dinner with white supremacist Nick Fuentes and anti Semitic rapper Yee. I think that was in late 2022. The list could go on. So I think Trump, on one level, he feels untouchable and that there is almost a kind of, as with many other presidents, but I think with him in particular, a zeal that he can, you know, he can do no wrong and nobody, again, no one can lay a glove on him. Right. Because he's done the unthinkable. So that's the mindset. Second is that I think the edifice, this kind of post Watergate reform edifice that was supposed to keep presidents in check, Trump has demonstrated the inadequacies of those reforms. Those reforms were really, in part dependent on presidents adhering to certain standards and norms, expectations. And, you know, so, for example, George W. Bush, whatever you think of him, you know, as president, he had a belief that you walk into the Oval Office, you had to wear a coat and tie. Right. And I'm not saying that, you know, there wasn't corruption in the Bush or any other administration, but the sense that presidents would take the office and their oath of office seriously and that they would follow the law, follow the norms, release maybe their health records, disclose their financial, and really dissolve any conflicts of interest. Right. So that it was no. There was no appearance of impropriety. Trump demonstrated that shamelessness could be a superpower. And the third factor I think I would mention is that for decades, Americans have grown more disgusted with politics and have believed that the whole system is rigged. So Trump in part. I mean, this is the great paradox, right? Trump in part one, because he promised to clean, drain the swamp, he knew how corrupt the system was, so only he could fix it. But at the same time, to fix it, he also had to kind of destroy it and to bust through every norm. And by busting through those norms, you know, he said, I can shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, not lose any votes. A lot of Americans like that, right? I mean, shooting someone, but they like the idea that someone was going to have no limits. He was going to be a strong man, he was going to kind of do whatever it took, and he was going to destroy this rig system. So in that kind of narrative, his own norm busting, including crypto schemes and hotel deals as president, is a real strength of his, according to a lot of, I think, his voters. Right. It's an asset. It shows that he is willing to disrupt, if not destroy the system, blow it up, and no one can stop it. And so I think that those three kind of, at least those three factors have helped make this moment in our culture possible.
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Host
Yeah. You know, and if he does and is blowing things up, you have to think, okay, are we going to build something that's better when Trump is done or gone, or is this going to be the new norm of corruption? And the other question I want to throw out at you is if Trump is the exception, because I tend to believe that there's probably. And you outlined it so well, with all the things that he has been able to survive, both physically and legally, if he is the exception that all these other politicians would not have been able to get away with this stuff, does that mean that our institutions are largely still holding, I mean, except for this one guy? What do you think about that?
- [17:10]
Matthew Dallek
Yeah, well, that's. So there's a real. A big debate, I think, happening now about America's institutions and Also just democracy. Right. How much has Trump eroded democracy? Because the global context is that we see a lot of strong men, a lot of aspiring autocrats who to some extent, as their consolidating power, enrich themselves and other billionaires or multimillionaires. And I think, in a way, Trump has eroded a lot of those institutions. He does not, in the second term, really seem to have. There are very few effective constraints on him. You know, the fact that he could make. I read this recently, he is estimated, according to Forbes, to have made a billion dollars on his crypto empire or schemes alone since I think it was September of 2024. So within a year. And the fact that there are no. There's no one to stop that. Right. There's no entity, there's no court. And I don't want to be totally bleak. I think that there are ways in which individuals, movements, the courts are pushing back. But it is obviously disturbing that someone can come to the office and make a billion, billion dollars by selling access to the White House to his. And. And, you know, basically use the office as a kind of, you know, ebay, almost.
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Host
Yeah.
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Matthew Dallek
So it's, It's. But having said that, just to kind of get back to the premise of your question, I think, look, the country tends to react often to what they see and what they don't like about what they're seeing. So it is conceivable that, not that we'd have a set of post Watergate reforms again, but that the country 10, 20 years from now will look back, or at least most Americans will look back and say, that was really dangerous. Right. That was really. That is not the kind of democracy that we want to have and that we could see a more reversion to the. To the meat. Because Trump does seem to be sui generis, and it's unclear if anybody else could get away with this in the future.
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Host
Yeah. You know, the meme coins is such an interesting thing. I think there's a lot of viewers and listeners that may not fully understand crypto. I mean, honestly, before the last few months, I didn't really get into crypt. I didn't know much about it. I've started to learn a lot more about it. But these meme coins, this is. This is where foreign and domestic investors or anyone really can buy these things. They're not something you hold in your hand. Right. It's something online. You just buy it. And every time one of these coins, these sort of crypto coins is traded, bought or sold, guess what? Donald Trump gets A cut of that. And if you buy enough of these things, you can get prizes like a private dinner with the President of the United States. So I think what's important here is, and this is the leap where there's always been corruption to some degree, money that goes into your campaign or your PACs or things like that. But that money sort of has some guardrails in this case and in so many of these other things that Donald Trump's doing in a second term. But in this case, the money is not going to even a pac. It's not going to the US Treasury. So the American people aren't getting anything from this. It is going literally to Trump's pocket.
- [21:32]
Matthew Dallek
Well, that's really this incredible irony, which is that the campaign finance system has a lot more laws and regulations so that individuals or corporations donating somehow to, say, support Trump or any political, Any candidate for office. There are a lot of rules around that and how much you can give.
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Host
What, like who you are? You have to disclose who you are, who you are.
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Matthew Dallek
Yeah. I mean, they're dark money. Right? There's dark money that King Coda was super pac. But even still, there are a lot more regulations and ways to enforce those regulations in a world, in a political world, swimming awash in money. Whereas in terms of going into the president's own pocket, there really is nothing. Right. As far as I know, there's really nothing that, you know, president cannot be indicted while in office. The Supreme Court immunized a president in 2024 from anything related to an official act, which, you know, you could argue many things are related to an official act. They're, you know, the Justice Department. In past administrations, the attorney general, seen as independent from the president and the White House, could and has appointed special counsels, as we saw in Trump's first term with the Russia Robert Mueller investigation. Well, that's not even thinkable under the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and Cash Patel, the director of the FBI. So the kind of mechanisms, and look, Trump, Remember in Trump 2.0, one of the lessons he famously learned in Trump his first term is that he's going to appoint people who are loyal to him no matter what. And that in part means that there is no one within the executive branch, even the inspectors general, right. Who serve as watchdogs in House Watchdogs or the Government Accountability Office, which, you know, most Americans probably have never heard of, but is also a kind of government watchdog. These things have these enemies. These individuals have been eviscerated. Yeah. So, you know, it's it's, it's incredible. Right. It's this incredible irony that the President can get filthy rich while there are a lot more guardrails around, donations to political PACs and campaigns.
- [24:18]
Host
Yeah. The other thing that strikes me that's not talked about enough, and I'm hoping you can, can touch on this a little bit, is these tariffs that Donald Trump has enacted, he says that he's enacted for numerous reasons, bring manufacturing back to the United States, you know, make these other countries pay their fair share, whatever. What, all the, all these, all these, he's saying he's enacting them for the nation. Okay. But these tariffs give the President a lot of personal power, the authority to move markets to bypass Congress. And I think it's a really big step toward corruption. Can you touch on that? You know, how wild swings of the markets can, people can make millions off of that.
- [25:08]
Matthew Dallek
So this is actually, I think, a really important point. It's like, why do we even care about whether Trump is making money? Like what? So what? Right. Well, one reason is that, you know, the President has probably more power than any other individual in the country or maybe the world to shape global markets, individual companies, you know, the fortunes of, you know, any global trading partner. And so the fact that the President helps to oversee the regulation of cryptocurrency, for example, or has hotels in, is building hotels in the Middle east or has maybe wealthy foreign investors, that could well affect his policies. So in the tariff realm, it would be very easy for him to say that, you know, let's say Saudi Arabia or the uae, they're going to get a lower rate, or, you know, we're, we're just going to do 10%. That's it. No reciprocal tariffs. Or maybe we'll lift tariffs. Right. And, or Qatar, who, you know, gave him a 400 million dollar plane, a luxury jet, and there's nothing really to stop him from making policies favorable to those countries in exchange for these gifts. Right. And, or making it easy for his family to build hotels or golf courses in their country so that they can widen their empire. So it's, that is really the quintessential kind of definition of corruption, this idea of a quid pro quo. Now it's of course, very hard to establish a quid pro quo, but one rule of thumb is that most politicians want to avoid the appearance of self dealing and it makes it the hotel. All of Trump's business ventures make it impossible for him to avoid that appearance. So whether it's tariffs or dropping an investigation into Justin sun, who I think is the largest investor in his crypto, Trump's crypto empire. And then the. The securities and Exchange Commission dropped the investigation after Justin sun donated, like, tens of millions of dollars to, or gave, invested tens of million dollars in Trump's crypto schemes. You know, Trump can. You can play favorites, and he seems to have done that. And so it just entangles, like, really important areas of American policy both in the world and also at home with his own financial. In his family's future.
- [28:16]
Host
I mean, it seems, Matthew, that any one of these things, and there's so many, we can't even go over all of them during our time here on this podcast, but it seems like any one of these things would be in front page, in news, in any. I mean, the selling of the pardons. I mean, there's kind of a clear line that he's pardoned people that, you know, somehow either they're members of their family, have given money or bought the meme coin. On the foreign policy level, Ben Rhodes just wrote about the fact that imposing the tariffs, pausing them for a while, a country like Vietnam then quickly approves a $1.5 billion deal for a Trump golf complex there. And on the scene to, like, cut the ribbon is Donald Trump's son, Eric. And no, you can't prove that it's a quid pro quo, but maybe that's the point, right? These governments are going to try to anything to do anything to appease Trump and get a lower rate on tariffs. And that is a power that he has given him to himself that's on the foreign policy level. And then the tariffs, the ability to tweet something out and change the markets, and everybody that's on your inner circle buys and sells these stocks. And so your cronies can make money just based off of your tweets. I mean, it's just, like, unprecedented.
- [29:49]
Matthew Dallek
And yes, I think that's all that is unprecedented. That's all right. You know, in past administrations, including in the Biden administration, I think the more familiar pattern of corruption, of financial corruption has been for a family member, not the president, but a family member hire a Biden or maybe a sibling of a relative of the Clintons, or I think Jimmy Carter's brother would trade on the family's name to enrich themselves. So Burisma, Hunter Biden or Hunter Biden selling his paintings. Right. For tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right. Which, you know, wouldn't have happened otherwise. And that is not necessarily illegal, but that has created a kind of those have been scandals in the past, received a lot of attention. What I think really distinguishes Trump in the second term especially is one, how much money is at stake. I mean, we're not talking a few million dollars to the president's son. Right. We're talking a billion or more dollars to the president himself and his family around areas that, as you said, directly affect global trade, American policy making, the U.S. economy. And then the extent to which at least a lot of the people around him seem to be able to, you know, take Elon Musk, I mean, Elon Musk had, when he was in charge of doge, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, he had, and he still has tens of billions of dollars in contracts before the federal government. So you're putting in charge, basically, you know, the second, maybe. Are you the second most powerful person in government, in charge with reforming and cutting the entire federal government? All of his companies, almost all of his companies have huge financial interests in the government from the contracts That I think is a kind of blatant. And the amount of money as well, I think it does surpass any of these other scandals where, you know, again, a cabinet secretary or a, or a son or daughter of a president may have, you know, parlayed their name into making money. So it, it just is. It's. It's sort of suffused, I think, the, the Trump, the second Trump administration especially, and it's become endemic. And there's also, last thing I'll say about this is that there's a debate, I think now about, well, voters don't seem to really care, doesn't seem really to hurt Trump. And the debate really is about, well, okay, that may be true now. Right. To some extent. You know, his poll numbers are, let's say, 44% approval, 45%. But that doesn't mean that over time it will not seep into, you know, a lot of voters, how a lot of voters feel it will not affect how they view Trump's presidency. And so I think a lot of it depends on how, you know, if people feel like Trump is better for their lives, and, and if not, then the corruption, I think, can become probably a, a more infuriating issue because if people are not themselves better off under Trump, and yet Trump is much better off under Trump, that's a problem politically.
- [33:43]
Host
Yeah. And I think that you, you alluded to something that, that I've found among sort of neighbors and relatives, even when it comes to the idea of presidential corruption and money. You hear, I hear this. I've heard this all the time in the last few years. Oh, well, both sides do it. So, you know, look at Hunter Biden and you're looking at. And you hit it. It's like it's the molehill versus the mountain. You know, a few, a few million dollars here from a relatively inconsequential company in Eastern Europe or whatever, versus this just incredible mountain of corruption. And you think about foreign policy, the Biden administration had restrictions on advanced AI and semiconductors. And why, why did they do, why did they have these restrictions on exporting these things? Because this, the AI that is, we're looking at, that is being produced right now is sort of the, it can be the weapon of the future. It's kind of like nuclear technology when it comes to national security stuff. And so the Biden administration said, hey, we need to have some restrictions on where we're sending this stuff to. And they had these restrictions going to UAE and Saudi Arabia and a bunch of other countries. And guess what? When Trump came into office, he got rid of all those restrictions for exports of this really sensitive new technology to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. And, you know, it's like he gets this personal 2 billion dollar Emirati investment in Trump crypto as in response. And it's really, it's bigger than just money into his pocket because it affects our national security. But a lot of people don't put two and two together there.
- [35:49]
Matthew Dallek
Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. And it's, it is sometimes hard again to draw one to one. You know, they're rarely smoking guns in this kind of situation, which is why most presidents have wanted to avoid the appearance of impropriety. The other point too, that I want to mention briefly is that, you know, the Supreme Court in recent years has diluted, made it easier for presidents and politicians to do things that maybe 20 years ago would have been understood as a corrupt act. And I think that my understanding is that the bar has been raised to show a quid pro quo and that, you know, it's arguably decisions like in the former Virginia Governor McDonnell who the Supreme Court overturned his corruption convictions. I think it was him and his wife, or in the immunity decision from 2024, the Supreme Court has sent a signal that you can get away with more. Now, that's not to say that every elected official can get away with everything, but certainly, you know, politicians are paying attention. And I think that that forms a kind of important backdrop to just the kind of rampant corruption we're seeing now. And then briefly, I mean, it's Hard to compare what's happening in Trump 2.0 with, again, any other past a scandal, because just the, the amount of kind of areas that affect American life, that affect, affect global policy or national security. And, you know, there's been a complete merger basically between Trump's vast business interests and much of government, much of the activity of government. So it just is. There's no real distinction there, as far as I can tell, anymore. And so that makes it very hard to know what is now being influenced by Trump's own personal financial stake in one venture or another.
- [38:27]
Host
Well, it strikes me, and I have two more questions for you. It strikes me that the rule of law in this country, at least with regards to presidential corruption, has really been diminished. We don't have, as you just stated, that the Supreme Court isn't gonna save us. Congress clearly is not gonna save us here. So the two other branches of government that we might look to in previous years to be like, okay, this is going on. If it was really important, these other branches of government would take care of it, that they're not going to save us now. And it's really, I think probably the will of the people are going to have to come forth here and understand this stuff a little bit more and demand change somehow. I mean, do you, do you agree with that? I mean, that's where we're at, I think.
- [39:22]
Matthew Dallek
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, the courts have, obviously, there's a ton of litigation going on, and not primarily even around Trump's financial doings, although there may be some court cases around that, too. But the courts, the lower courts, some of them have pushed back. Right? They have stopped, put halts on various decisions that Trump has made. There are likely to be cases that will end up at the Supreme Court and, and the court may rule against the administration on some, like the birthright citizenship case. But, you know, the courts are really imperfect, if that's the only bulwark. And it's, you know, you have a 6, 3 conservative Supreme Court. It seems unlikely that it's going to be enough of a bulwark to kind of hold the line on institutions and democratic norms. So. But we have seen with the no kings protest, the hands off protest prior to that, certainly the special elections like the one for the Supreme Court in Wisconsin, you do see signs of people, of voters pushing back, and Trump won. Important difference, I think, between, say, Trump today and Viktor Orban in Hungary or Erdogan, I think in Turkey or other people we consider autocrats or competitive authoritarian regimes. My understanding is that they were much popular, much more popular. And like Maduro in Venezuela, they were able to establish almost total control because they were popular among 60, 70, 80%. And they had the latitude. Trump has never really had that. You know, despite winning the, the popular vote for the first time in three tries in 2024, he still had pretty historically low approval ratings for his first six months in office. So, you know, that is another constraint and I think it speaks to the good point you're making about the people as saying that we don't like a lot of these things. You said you were going to lower the cost of living and we're seeing everything but that right now.
- [42:01]
Host
Yeah, well, the last question I had for you is more for the listeners out there who maybe are talking to their neighbors and family about this issue, and you are a historian, so you've looked at lots of presidents throughout history. Way more of an expert than most of us. If you could name the top three presidents that flirted with real corruption, what would they they be? Who would they be? And then additionally, if you can give us like maybe an analogy, I, I tend to think of like Donald Trump as, in terms of corruption, as a marathon, like the length of a marathon versus another president, maybe Nixon in your mind? I don't know. I'll let you answer. But you know, that would be like the hundred yard dash. You know, these other presidents have flirted with corruption. It's there potentially, but nowhere near the what we're seeing right now. How do you, what do you think?
- [43:10]
Matthew Dallek
Yeah, it's. So certainly Nixon would be the first one to come to mind. You know, it depends also how we define corruption. I mean, you know, I think in if we go beyond the financial piece, you know, there was not the Watergate was not really about Nixon trying to get himself rich. Watergate was much more about him ensuring that he would win re election, break in right to the Democratic National Committee, get dirt on his opponents. And then abuse of power, using government agencies, FBI, CIA, irs to stop the investigation. Right, right. Firing the Attorney General. Right.
- [44:01]
Host
The Saturday Night Massacre seems small potatoes now.
- [44:05]
Matthew Dallek
Yeah. So it's all relative. But, you know, so his. Now arguably, you know, if we go beyond Trump's financial, the financial corruption, there are other forms of abuses of power that arguably are even more concerning, like the punishing of law firms who have crossed him. Pardoning January 6th rioters, rewarding friends, punishing enemies in very explicit ways. Stripping some of his former aides of Secret Service protection because they upset him somehow. Targeting people and then sending them without any due process to El Salvador, to a terrorism jail in El Salvador. So on that scale, if we kind of expand the definition of corruption, I think Nixon is certainly up there for Watergate.
- [45:11]
Host
On.
- [45:12]
Matthew Dallek
Although Trump seems to have been far more explicit about his abuses of power and his belief that he can do anything he wants, that there are no constraints in terms of others. Well, you know, Teapot Dome scandal ensnared, not necessarily the president, and it was Harding, but, you know, a number of Cabinet secretaries. You know, Ronald Reagan, surprisingly, had a lot of scandals, a lot of, you know, kind of corrupt acts. Not him per se, but just in the administration. People had to resign for various reasons.
- [45:53]
Host
Iran Contra.
- [45:54]
Matthew Dallek
Iran Contra, of course, was a huge scandal that damaged him and, you know, arguably it violated the law. Although, you know, Reagan, there was debate about whether, you know, how much he knew. Right. About. Yeah. What his A's were doing. So those are certainly some of them. But, you know, for critics of Trump, I think that they would go back to the 19th century to someone like James Buchanan, who, as president, did, you know, very little, really, to stop the Civil War and if anything, accelerated it through his policies. And I think that even though the issues are, of course, totally different, I think a lot of people, a lot of critics look at Trump and say he has no real commitment to his oath of office, to upholding the Constitution and enforcing the law. So it is, in that sense, the living through historic times and a historic presidency. And, you know, how this shakes out is. We'll have to wait for that.
- [47:10]
Host
Well, I really appreciate you coming on the show and talking about this. I want to make a plug for your book. Right. It's the Birchers, the How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. And you've written a couple of books, right?
- [47:23]
Matthew Dallek
Yeah, yeah. So I wrote a book about Ronald Reagan's first campaign for California governor in the 1960s, wrote a book about, basically, homeland security during World War II called defenseless under the Night. And I'm actually working on a book now with my dad about failed presidential assassination attempts and 20th century political violence.
- [47:48]
Host
Wow. Okay. Well, there's a lot there.
- [47:51]
Matthew Dallek
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.
- [47:53]
Host
Well, it's awesome that you spent some time with me this morning. I really appreciate this is such an important issue, and I really wanted to dig deep into this with somebody that studies it. So thank you, Matthew.
- [48:06]
Matthew Dallek
That was my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
- [48:09]
Host
All right.
- [48:15]
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Matthew Dallek
Let's go.
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Matthew Dallek
The numbers look good.
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- [48:38]
Host
You're on mute.
- [48:39]
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