Shyster in chief? How Trump is making a mockery of good governance

Donald Trump pitched a deal to the bosses of America’s Big Oil firms last year. Over a dinner of chopped steak at Mar-a-Lago in April, he told his guests: “You all are wealthy enough,” The Washington Post reported him as saying, “that you should raise $US1 billion to return me to the White House.”

He promised to reverse dozens of environmental rules and prevent any new ones should he win the election. He said that giving $US1 billion would be a “deal”, according to the masthead, because of the tax and regulation they would avoid.

Illustration by Dionne GainCredit:

The pitch was not denied by the Trump campaign. It exposed the feebleness of US laws against corruption. While outraged Democrats assailed Trump for offering such a blatant exchange of favours, some legal experts said it probably wasn’t illegal because it was too general.

“Isn’t that what campaigning is?” was the reaction of Bradley Smith, a former chair of the US Federal Election Commission, the official body responsible for overseeing elections, as Politico reported.

But why leave any room for doubt? Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has acted against a range of anti-corruption protections. For example, last month Trump issued an executive order suspending enforcement of the law that bans US companies from bribing foreign governments, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Why? Because, he said, it “actively harms American economic competitiveness”. With companies free to bribe foreign officials, “it’s going to mean a lot more business for America”.

It was “just one part of a blitzkrieg on US efforts against corruption that the White House has launched over the past three weeks”, says British journalist Oliver Bullough, who’s written books on financial crime.

Among the measures and agencies that have been hit, he cites the White House’s Task Force KleptoCapture and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative that led Western efforts to find wealth owned by the Kremlin or its allies.

A cousin of US Vice President J.D. Vance, Nate Vance, a former US Marine and ex fighter for Ukraine against Russia, added a touch of colour at the weekend by saying Trump and his deputy were “useful idiots” for Vladimir Putin, France’s Le Figaro reported.

Also, the Foreign Agents Registration Act that required disclosure of money flows to US lobbyists. And the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force that investigated infiltration by Moscow and other foreign governments. Finally, the agency USAID supported anti-corruption groups in dozens of countries until Trump abolished the body.

So if you could have driven a truck through US anti-corruption laws before, now you could tow an oil rig through them. Or even something as tall as a 47-metre Kremlin and as broad as a 600-hectare Zhongnanhai, as the Beijing leadership compound is known.

US Democratic senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut detailed to the US Senate last week what he called “more than 20 examples of blatant corruption from just the first six weeks of the Trump presidency”.

So, did Trump – famous for his campaign mantra of “drill, baby, drill” – get his $US1 billion from Big Oil? The industry gave at least $US96 million to his campaign and affiliated political action committees, and nearly half a billion US dollars to the broader political system in total during the last political cycle, according to a report by environmental activists Climate Power.

But, because of the “dark money” avenues in US politics, we cannot know the total that the fossil fuel lobby gave the Trump political-industrial complex.

But we do know that corruption opportunities are in fashion in Trump 2.0, and growing fast. For instance, there’s the Trump meme coin known as $TRUMP, launched two days before he resumed power in January. A meme coin is just a meme; it’s a speculative object with no intrinsic worth and no practical value. But it’s become very valuable to some people.

“Donald Trump’s crypto project made at least $US350 million from the launch of his memecoin, a windfall that is likely to fuel concerns over conflicts of interest arising from the token,” reported the London Financial Times in an investigation published last week.

The people running the Trump scheme put 200 million of the meme coins up for sale. Buyers paid money into a “liquidity pool” connected to the “coin”. Such pools are designed to provide a secondary market for the object. Within 18 days, Trump-connected digital wallets had taken $US350 million from the pool, the FT reported.

“Investors and ethics experts have said the sale of crypto tokens would in effect allow a way to channel anonymous donations to the president while also exploiting retail investors,” the newspaper explained. “The president’s personal profit is unclear.”

Trump-linked accounts still hold another 831 million of the meme coins that have yet to be offered for sale. They have a notional market value, at today’s prices, of some $US10 billion.

Beyond Trump himself, his donor and crony Elon Musk also has some promising avenues for covert financial inflows.

Once again, we are indebted to the Financial Times for its reporting. It ran a piece at the weekend with the headline: “Chinese investors privately take stakes in Elon Musk’s companies”.

It began: “Wealthy Chinese investors are quietly funnelling tens of millions of dollars into private companies controlled by Elon Musk using an arrangement that shields their identities from public view, according to asset managers and investors involved in the transactions.”

According to the FT, Chinese investors are channelling money into xAI, Neuralink and SpaceX, concealed by use of special purpose vehicles, widely used entities often used to contain a specific financial or corporate risk.

“How can someone in Musk’s position have so many connections to China but still be a good person to reform the US government?” poses Derek Scissors, a senior fellow of the think tank American Enterprise Institute. An excellent question.

With so many potential vehicles for venality, the American people will simply have to trust in the personal honesty and integrity of Donald Trump. Surely unimpeachable.

Peter Hartcher is international editor.