Trump has used the U.S. presidency mainly for his own personal gain.MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP/Getty Images
There are few days now when I don’t think to myself: what has happened to the America I once knew and loved? What has happened to the people who once made their country the greatest republic on Earth?
It now seems impossible to imagine that this same nation, not that long ago, elected a highly educated, progressive and deeply principled Black man to become their president. Barack Obama may not have been everyone’s grande chai latte, but he had a strong moral foundation upon which he governed.
This same country, only nine years later, is now ruled by a white nativist who will go down as the most corrupt President to ever hold office in the United States. Donald Trump came to power in 2016 promising to drain the swamp in Washington. In 2025, he is the swamp, and happy to wallow in it while personally enriching himself and using the seal of the presidency to do it.
And yet there has been barely a peep about it. It’s like people have decided there are bigger things to worry about than a President who has added hundreds of millions (at least) to his own bottom line, all while sitting in the Oval Office.
There almost seems to be a method to the madness with which he operates, too. The near-daily chaos he creates acts like a perfect foil, a distraction to keep Americans looking one way as he stuffs more and more money into his pockets. More often, however, the brazenness with which he defiles the presidency, and his naked efforts to build his personal bank account, are beyond belief. Often, he doesn’t even try to hide what he’s doing, so confident is he that he can lead his country with impunity. And immunity.
People protest as a guest arrives to a private dinner with Trump and buyers of his cryptocurrency tokens.ELIZABETH FRANTZ/The New York Times News Service
Recently, 220 people who were the top purchasers of the President’s $TRUMP cryptocurrency meme coin were invited to dinner at Mr. Trump’s Virginia golf club, where he spoke behind a lectern bearing the presidential seal. Mr. Trump refused to release the names of those who attended – many were reportedly foreign nationals – and gave him money in exchange for his insights.
“The President is attending [the dinner] in his personal time,” Mr. Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the time. “It is not a White House dinner.”
A spokesperson for the Kremlin would have nothing on her.
Mr. Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East also paid off for him, with a US$2-billion investment from a United Arab Emirates state-owned enterprise in the Binance crypto exchange, which uses the Trump family’s stablecoin asset. Trump Media & Technology Group, meantime, has announced it is going to raise US$2.5-billion from institutional investors in bitcoin, continuing the company’s transformation from a media company to a crypto play. Is there any wonder Mr. Trump promotes bitcoin every chance he gets? His marketing is making him (and his family) money.
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy is one of the few politicians ringing the alarm about the President’s rogue activities.
“[Mr.] Trump’s meme coin is designed to facilitate corruption,” he said on X. In a separate post he added: “All of this money is going straight into his pocket. He is trading U.S. policy to get paid.”
Lest we forget the President also received, as a gift from Qatar, a US$200-million 747 luxury jet for his personal use while in office, and for when he leaves in four years’ time. There is graft and then there is GRAFT! After a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Mr. Trump, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about First Lady Melania Trump that will reportedly put US$28-million directly in her pocket. Still, something as overtly shady as that barely registers on the corruption Richter scale in America. The Trump family has created a new club called the Executive Branch which, for half a million dollars, gives members access to officials in the administration, including the President himself. Elon Musk, of course, has learned the bitter truth about where all this loyalty gets you eventually – nowhere. After the former head of DOGE critiqued the President’s new budget bill this week, Mr. Trump threatened to end all government subsidies and contracts for Mr. Musk’s companies.
Somehow, Mr. Trump has convinced a broad swath of the American public that he is the one ferreting out corruption in Washington by getting rid of public servants working for the “deep state.” In fact, the only thing he has been successful in removing are the government inspectors and ethics watchdogs who might look into some of his activities. Partisan loyalists have now been installed in places like the FBI and Justice Department to take the place of those once entrusted to make sure officeholders were held accountable for their actions.
Mr. Trump hasn’t just bent ethical boundaries to his will; he has smashed them to smithereens. And the anger over what he is doing? It’s nowhere to be found. The America of today is barely recognizable. It gets uglier with each passing day.