The Art of the Steal: For Trump’s underlings, too much is never enough | Editorial
A rogues’ gallery of billionaires, incompetents, and self-dealers crowds insatiably around the public trough.
For Donald Trump’s underlings, public service has become a bacchanal.
A rogues’ gallery of billionaires, incompetents, and self-dealers crowds insatiably around the public trough.
Trump’s return to the White House has set an unprecedented bar for corruption, pocket lining, and abuse of power.
But beyond the one-man profligacy, many of Trump’s underlings have joined in on the self-dealing as the rot spreads across the government.
The upshot: Trump’s own Art of the Steal has morphed into a rampant smash-and-grab.
Consider FBI Director Kash Patel’s abuse of a taxpayer-funded jet to visit his girlfriend, fly buddies to Scotland, and attend the Winter Olympics, where he chugged beer in the locker room with the U.S. men’s ice hockey team.
Patel reportedly flew to Pearl Harbor and received a VIP snorkeling adventure near the sacred underwater tomb of the USS Arizona that contains the remains of more than 900 Navy sailors and Marines who died in the attack.
He and his girlfriend used the FBI’s Gulfstream V to fly to Philadelphia to watch a concert from a $35,000 luxury suite at Lincoln Financial Field.
Patel also used the $60 million jet to go hunting at an exclusive resort in Texas named the Boondoggle Ranch that is owned by a Republican donor.
An article in the Atlantic claimed Patel drank excessively, and that his unexplained absences and carousing put national security at risk. Patel denied the report and sued the magazine for defamation. Drinks aside, Patel is abusing his office.
Many of Trump’s underlings have joined in on the self-dealing as the rot spreads across the government.
Patel’s air travel should not be confused with that of former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who spent $300 million in taxpayers’ money for a fleet of planes, including two Gulfstreams and a luxury Boeing 737 Max 8 jet that included a private cabin with a queen bed, full kitchen, bar, seating area, and four flat-screen TVs — supposedly for deportation missions.
Noem’s office wasted $220 million on a taxpayer-funded ad campaign that depicted her on a horse near Mount Rushmore. A no-bid contract divvied up the funds between a company created eight days before they were awarded and another company that played a role in Noem’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign.
Noem is gone, but taxpayers are stuck with her bill.
Former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned amid allegations of using her office for personal gain, including personal travel and allegations of drinking on the job and an alleged affair with a member of her security detail.
One staffer accused Chavez-DeRemer of ginning up “official trips” funded by taxpayers in order to see friends and family. Her husband was banned from the Labor Department headquarters after at least two staffers said he sexually assaulted them. Another brief tenure of taxpayer waste and debauchery that contributed scant value to the country.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has used his office to dangle policy favors in return for investments and deals that benefit his family, according to a report in the New York Times.
Lutnick’s sons oversee a network of companies, including their father’s Wall Street investment firm, that are involved in a wide range of businesses, among them data centers and cryptocurrency, which overlap with the Commerce Department’s efforts to attract new entrepreneurs.
U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean (D., Pa.) accused Lutnick’s investment firm of profiting off the failure of Trump’s tariff policy, which the U.S. Supreme Court found was unconstitutional.
Trump’s Art of the Steal has morphed into a rampant smash-and-grab.
“Your sons figured out how to profit from the high tariffs by buying up refund rights, pennies on the dollar, just as you were out there cheerleading the tariffs,” Dean said at a hearing in April. “As a result, federal taxpayers like my constituents may now owe your family tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Lutnick denied the charge, though his firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, now run by his sons, reportedly posted record revenue last year.
Despite running on a message of reducing prices and helping the working class, Trump’s administration includes 12 billionaires and is the wealthiest ever, if not the most out of touch.
The billionaire club does not include the brief and destructive DOGE stint of Elon Musk, who recently became the first trillionaire.
Other Trump administration officials have also found ways to cash in. Several have profited from well-timed investments in the stock market.
Former Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares in Trump Media the same day the president announced new tariffs that caused the price to drop. While her tenure was a train wreck, Bondi’s successor has already demonstrated he will be even worse.
Todd Blanche, Trump’s former defense attorney who replaced Bondi at the Justice Department, owned cryptocurrency investments valued between $159,000 and $485,000 at the same time he shut down investigations into crypto companies, dealers, and exchanges launched during the Biden administration.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy filmed a reality TV show bankrolled by firms he regulates, and sold stock in nearly three dozen companies two days before Trump announced a number of “reciprocal” tariffs.
In all, more than a dozen Trump administration officials sold stocks before the president implemented tariffs that caused stock prices to plummet, ProPublica reported.
The White House routinely defends the actions of Trump’s inner circle, stating recently, “President Trump has assembled the most talented Cabinet in American history who work every day to implement his common sense, America First agenda.”
But Trump’s broker may be one of the busiest traders around. Trump disclosed making 3,500 stock trades valued at hundreds of millions of dollars in just the first quarter of this year, but said his accounts are independently managed. However, the amount of trading raised eyebrows among ethics experts.
“We’ve never seen a president trading actively in the stock market before,” said Richard Painter, the ethics counsel under former President George W. Bush.
Democratic lawmakers called for an investigation into whether Trump or others around him have engaged in insider trading. But nothing will change as long as Trump and the Republicans control all the levers of government.
As millions of Americans struggle with rising gas, food, rent, and healthcare costs, Trump and his cronies have turned public service into a private jackpot.
A series of editorials exploring how Donald Trump has been lining his pockets — and mixing personal profits with public policy — since he returned to the White House.
There’s gold in that thar swamp!
From crypto to cologne, Bibles to blanket pardons, Donald Trump has turned the White House into a cash cow for himself, his cronies, and his kin.
Pardon me, Mr. President!
Once sparingly used to temper justice with mercy, the presidential pardon has become a get-out-of-jail-free card for Trump supporters, no matter how corrupt or violent.
For Trump’s underlings, too much is never enough
A rogue’s gallery of billionaires, incompetents, and self-dealers crowds insatiably around the public trough.
Bitcoin memes and Ponzi schemes
Having once dismissed it as a “scam,” the president has embraced cryptocurrency — to the tune of $1.4 billion.
The family that grifts together
When it comes to plundering the presidency, the thief-in-chief brings the wife and kids.
It’s all about him
The president continues to plumb the depths of narcissism with a breathtaking array of self-aggrandizing vanity projects.
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