The corruption scandals emanating from the White House are coming faster than even news junkies can process, much less the general public. Worse, it’s not even hidden. It’s all right out in the open.
Let’s take a quick look. First, Trump has committed to protect a Chinese firm, ZTE, that has been deemed a potential security threat. He is doing this against a fierce bipartisan backlash. Why? Trump and the White House literally won’t say. But the recent Chinese investment of $500 million into a Trump hotel in Indonesia right before Trump’s decision might have something to do with it:
Trump’s tweets, in other words, aren’t picking a side in an internal disagreement about trade policy. At least, they aren’t just doing that. They appear to involve overruling his whole national security team’s assessment of ZTE’s role in the world. And it happened with no explanation, no background briefing, and seemingly no consultation with the relevant officials.
But it also happened the same week a Chinese state-owned company came through with hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, some of which will go to facilitate the construction of Trump-branded properties in Indonesia.
The White House has no other credible explanation. It’s just out in the open.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency led by oil lobbyist Scott Pruitt has been actively colluding with climate science deniers, even going so far as to speculate internally about whether to simply ignore all climate data in making decisions on behalf of Republican-connected coal and oil firms. Scott Pruitt himself, of course, is a one-man personal corruption racket as well.
Trump’s daughter and son-in-law have inexplicably been granted top-level security clearances despite an open-and-shut case of influence-peddling, bribes and obstruction of justice by Qatari officials on the Trump Organzation’s behalf.
The president’s blatant lies about an FBI informant used to counter Russian meddling and protect the Trump campaign from Putin’s incursions led to no less than two meetings between the Justice Department and various officials yesterday, only for it to be confirmed that nothing untoward took place. Even GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell admitted as much. Nonetheless, Trump continues to pretend he was vindicated, and his TV lawyer Rudy Giuliani is trying to obstruct justice using a ridiculous “fruit of the rotten tree” defense.
None of this even gets into multiple rounds of breaking news about openly corrupt dealings between various Russian, Israeli and other officials subverting democracy on Trump’s behalf with various members of his campaign team during the election in exchange for future policy concessions. Or the ongoing mess with Stormy Daniels, about whom Trump and his own attorneys continue to give contradictory statements, or the ongoing controversy over whether GOP donor Elliott Broidy took the fall for Trump in an abortion hush money payout to a Playboy model in exchange for government contract kickbacks. Or the fact that various diplomatic groups continue to hold meetings at Trump hotels in the hope of administration considerations, and no one even bothers to bat an eye anymore.
