AMERICAN KLEPTOCRACY

FOCUS CORRUPTION

- Janine R. Wedel

Corruption may simply be a way of life for US President Donald Trump, but it is the defining issue of his presidency.

From doling out pardons and policies in exchange for cash donations or favors to encouraging foreign governments and non-state actors to invest in his family’s crypto product, Trump’s corruption schemes have reached heights of novelty and scale unseen in American history. The significance of this corruption cannot be appreciated without recognizing the role it plays in Trump's effort to dismantle “the system.” That mission is being pursued through methods reminiscent not only of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s kleptocratic Kremlin, but also of Soviet-era communist power structures. Trump reigns through capricious, personalized power and indifference to the law. Blatant nepotism, petty graft, and pay-to-play lobbying and influence schemes are all on the table.

Trump'ssecondadministration makes what we saw under his first seem mild. The president and his appointees are restructuring the government to make corruption easy, lucrative, and unpunishable, and to destroy impartial, accountable government. Selfenrichment and anti-system goals go hand in hand. Trump's meme coin is a case in point, since it allows anyone in the world to pay him under the table in exchange for personal favors. The Trump family has already generated as much as $1 billion from their crypto ventures, exhibiting the kind of rapaciousness that we saw from the oligarch-kleptocrats who “grabitized” (prikhvatizatsiya) Russian state resources after the collapse of the Soviet Union.