THE STATE IS CORRUPT, NOT DEEP
Donald Trump is ramping up his “Deep State” rhetoric again. He’s back to blaming a cabal of bureaucrats, FBI and CIA agents, Democrats and “enemies of the people” in the mainstream media for conspiring to remove him from office in order to allow the denizens of foreign “s***holes” to overrun America.
But with each passing day it’s becoming clearer that the real threat to America isn’t Trump’s Deep State. It’s Trump’s own corrupt state.
Not since Warren G. Harding’s sordid administration have as many grifters, crooks and cronies occupied high positions in Washington.
Trump has installed a Star Wars Mos Eisley cantina of former lobbyists and con artists, including several whose exploits have already forced them to resign, such as Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, Tom Price and Michael Flynn. Many others remain.
When he was in Congress, the current White House acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, pocketed tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from payday lenders, then proposed loosening regulations on them. Trump also made Mulvaney acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
When he was Trump’s special adviser on regulatory reform,
Wall Street billionaire Carl Icahn sought to gut EPA’s rule on ethanol credits, which was harming his oil refinery investments.
Last week, it was reported that a real estate company partly owned by Trump’s son-in-law and foreign policy adviser Jared Kushner has raked in $90 million from foreign investors since Kushner entered the White House through a secret tax haven run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands. Kushner’s stake is worth up to $50 million.
All this takes conflict of interest to a new level of shamelessness.
What are Republicans doing about it? Joining in.
Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, who also happens to be the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has approved $78 million in grants for her husband’s home state of Kentucky, including a highway-improvement project that had been twice rejected in the past. Chao has even appointed a special liaison to coordinate grants with McConnell’s office. Oh, did I mention that McConnell is up for re-election next year?
News that a Cabinet secretary is streamlining federal funding for her husband’s pet projects would be a giant scandal under normal circumstances. But in the age of Trump, ethics have gone out the window.
Rep. Greg Pence (R-Ind.), who just happens to be the brother of Vice President Mike Pence, has spent more than $7,600 of his campaign funds on lodging at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., since he was elected in November, although federal election law forbids politicians from using campaigns dollars to cover housing costs.
The corrupt state starts with Trump himself — giving new meaning to the old adage about a fish rotting from the head down.
When foreign governments aren’t currying favor with Trump by staying at his Washington hotel, they’re using state-owned companies to finance projects that will line Trump’s pocket, like China’s $500 million entertainment complex in Indonesia that includes a Trump-branded hotel.
Trump claims the Deep State allows foreigners to take advantage of America. The reality is that Trump’s Corrupt State allows Russian President Vladimir Putin and his goon squad to continue undermining American democracy.
Trump and his Republican enablers are playing magicians who distract us by shouting
“Look here!” at the paranoid fantasy of a Deep State while creating a corrupt one under our noses.
It’s the dirtiest trick of our time, enabled by the most corrupt party in living memory.