No proof was offered

Paul Krugman is an accomplished economist; thus, we would expect to benefit from his economic insights, but he almost invariably prefers to write hostilely about the president, accusing him of all manner of vice. The initial sentence of his June 9 column is, “Of course Donald Trump is corrupt.”

Now that claim is somewhat reminiscent of a geometry book’s authoritative style: First state a theorem, then prove it. An important difference between a geometric theorem and Krugman’s is that the rest of the column does not offer any proof or even example of the president’s own “corruption.” An equivalent geometrical proof would be to prove that the angles of a plane triangle sum to 180 degrees by discussing only squares and circles, etc. Krugman similarly refers only to the crimes of other people: even a Cabinet member way back in the time of President Warren Harding when the Cabinet member received money for his illegal acts. Bribery admittedly does qualify as serious corruption.

On the other hand, Krugman cites how some members of Trump’s administration exceeded the normal constraints on government officials by overspending on their budgets with expensive travel, purchasing expensive office appurtenances, and in having their subordinates perform personal services for their bosses. We note that, however unscrupulous these actions may be, none involves transfer of money or ownership of goods to the dissolute officials, let alone to Trump.

Krugman apparently wishes to leave us with the unjustified inference that Trump not only creates the climate for, but is responsible for and personally condones any and all misfeasance by members of his administration. We are led to believe this, even though Trump did fire his secretary of Health and Human Services. Perhaps the missteps of the others were not sufficiently serious to warrant dismissal.

WILLIAM H. FRIEDMAN Conway