Trump, the most corrupt President in U.S. history, will likely be the new norm.

28 August 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

On August 11th, the New Yorker issued their David K. Kirpatrick’s detailed analysis — the first one ever anywhere — of how much the Trump family have, thus far, personally profited from Trump’s second term as the U.S. President, and the sum total came to $3.4 billion. It’s titled “How much is Trump pocketing off the Presidency?” and describes the legal loopholes that they are exploiting in order to achieve legally a blatant influence-peddling scheme as an auctioning-off of, mainly, U.S. foreign policies.

Kirkpatrick’s opening includes

During Trump’s first term, they pledged to abstain from any new deals overseas. That’s out the window. The Trumps are now cashing in on five major deals in the Persian Gulf alone. Donald, Jr., on a recent visit to Qatar, said that the family’s restraint during the first Trump Administration had not stopped his father’s critics from constantly accusing the family of “profiteering.” So the Trumps would no longer lock themselves in “a proverbial padded room, because it almost doesn’t matter—they’re going to hit you no matter what.” (A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization told me that it employs an outside ethics adviser—currently, Karina Lynch, a lawyer and a lobbyist who previously worked as a Republican Senate staffer and has represented Donald, Jr.—to “avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”)

Many payments now flowing to Trump, his wife, and his children and their spouses would be unimaginable without his Presidencies: a two-billion-dollar investment from a fund controlled by the Saudi crown prince; a luxury jet from the Emir of Qatar; profits from at least five different ventures peddling crypto; fees from an exclusive club stocked with Cabinet officials and named Executive Branch. Fred Wertheimer, the dean of ethics-reform advocates, told me that, “when it comes to using his public office to amass personal profits, Trump is a unicorn—no one else even comes close.”

The next day, Rolling Stone headlined a fine summary of that lengthy (15,000-word) news-report, “New Analysis Finds Trump Family Has Raked in $3.4 Billion Off the Presidency”; and, in it, closed by adding, “As previously reported by Rolling Stone, the president has complained to his inner circle that it was ‘stupid’ of him to leave so much money on the table during his first term, and that he planned to rectify his mistake the second time around.” The link there is to an earlier RS article, which documented that the $400 million gift of a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar was being done in such a way that after Trump leaves office he will keep that plane as being the plane of the Trump Presidential Library, which he will control. However, on 13 May 2025, NBC News had headlined “Turning Qatari 747 into Air Force One could cost $1 billion and take years, experts say. Taxpayers would likely foot the bill to retrofit President Trump's new jet, which could be more than twice the plane's $400 million value.” Consequently, Trump actually won’t be able to use that plane until well after he leaves office — if ever. But what is important here is that Trump is so much of a psychopath as to be TRYING to further enrich himself at taxpayers’ expense while he is in the White House.

Back on 14 June 2024, I had headlined and documented that “Biden Is the Most Corrupt President in U.S. History”, but now it has become clear that this was merely the warm-up, and that Trump makes a piker out of even Biden.

Both Presidents do it usually by using their offspring in order to front the criminal family enterprise to prospective foreign billionaires — presumably for U.S. favors to them. Consequently, U.S. foreign policy is being auctioned off by the U.S.President.

Libertarianism/neoliberalism is the ideology that favors privatization of Governmental assets and services (selling them off); and the United States is now carrying this ideology to a rather extreme extent. On 29 January 2024, Thom Hartmann headlined “How Reagan's Embrace of ‘Greed is Good’ Brought Us Broken Airplane Doors & Being on Hold for Hours. Yes, prior to the Reagan Revolution American companies actually invested in their workers, their communities, and their business. They attended to the needs of their customers, by in large.” Previously, Barry Goldwater had espoused the libertarian ideology. But Ronald Reagan brought it into the White House. Unfortunately, however, that article praised Joe Biden, oblivious to Biden’s having been the most corrupt President till that time. Elections can’t solve this problem. After all, elections brought Hitler to power, and he was one of the pioneers of privatizing the Government. There is a solution to the problem, but it would require replacing elections by lotteries in which all adults will be lotteried in order to determine whom the legislators will be, and the President will be selected by the legislators. Short of doing that, our Governments will continue to be basically auctioned off to the political megadonors, because the political megadonors will continue to control not only the political campaigns but also the ‘news’-media and all of the ‘experts’ the media hire as journalists to sway voters. The only way to prevent the billionaires from controlling the Government would replace elections with lotteries, as I have recommended.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.