Dem
47
GOP
53
We have mentioned this before, but the infamous Gilded Age political boss George Washington Plunkitt is most remembered today for a speech he gave that came to be known by the title "Honest Graft." Here is the opening passage of the speech:
EVERYBODY is talkin' these days about Tammany men growin' rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin' the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. There's all the difference in the world between the two. Yes, many of our men have grown rich in politics. I have myself. I've made a big fortune out of the game, and I'm gettin' richer every day, but I've not gone in for dishonest graft--blackmailin' gamblers, saloonkeepers, disorderly people, etc.--and neither has any of the men who have made big fortunes in politics.
There's an honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin': I seen my opportunities and I took "em."
Just let me explain by examples. My party's in power in the city, and it's goin' to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I'm tipped off, say, that they're going to lay out a new park at a certain place.
I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. The board of this or that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before.
Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that's honest graft.
In other words, if you're a politician and you engage in Mafia-style racketeering, that's "dishonest." But if you merely take advantage of insider information, to the benefit of yourself, your friends and your party, that's "honest" graft and is fine and dandy.
This is relevant, of course, because the White House is currently occupied by far and away the most grifty (or grafty) politician the nation has seen since the Gilded Age. In fact, Donald Trump might be the most grifty politician America has ever seen, regardless of time period. We had an item yesterday where we shared the evidence that Trump's Iran policy (and that of his minions Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff) is being driven primarily (or even entirely) by their desire to enrich themselves. We got a number of e-mails from readers that expressed their disbelief. But the e-mails weren't suggesting that we're wrong. They were suggesting that, until it happened, a president that puts his own bank account ahead of politics, the good of the country, the lives of soldiers, etc. was inconceivable.
Recall that the claim that Kushner and Witkoff (and, by extension, Trump) are mostly interested in making a quick buck comes from an anonymous Iranian source. So, far from ironclad. However, one cannot help but recall that Dwight D. Eisenhower, who knew a thing or two about the subject, warned us 65 years ago about the potential evils of mixing warmaking, civilian leadership and capitalism. On top of that, one cannot help but notice that Donald Trump seems to have no particular interest in ending the Iran War. Just yesterday, he said again that the midterms will not have any impact on how he manages the war. And the fact is that while it might mildly annoy him to be investigated six ways to Sunday, and to be unable to get judges approved, he's otherwise not going to be punished by voters who are unhappy with the GOP. Trump's job is safe, even if the jobs of half a dozen Republican senators and a few dozen Republican representatives are not.
Perhaps most importantly, one cannot help but notice that Trump and his friends and family are grifting left, right and sideways, every chance they get. Do Trump and his cronies tell themselves pleasant things about how their scams are OK, and aren't the "bad" kind of grift? We don't know, but we suspect that if George Washington Plunkitt could see what is going on right now, he would smile and nod approvingly.
Over the weekend, news broke of what is, perhaps, the griftiest grift in American history. The company that owns Truth Social, a company that is basically just Donald Trump, announced that it was planning to introduce a new service called Truth PSI. For a fee, subscribers would get priority access to posts from "top Truth Social contributors." In other words, subscribers would get to see posts made to Truth Social some number of hours before everyone else got to see them.
Other social media platforms offer this sort of "premium" option. However, there are two rather large differences between Truth PSI and, say, X Premium. The first is that the only real "top contributor" on Truth Social is Donald Trump. As he uses the platform to make announcements of official policy, federal law means the new service is somewhere between "legally dubious" and "flat-out illegal" (and, quite probably, the latter).
The second problem is the price. X Premium costs between $3 and $40 a month, depending on what level you pay for. But Truth PSI is not priced at a level that would allow MAGA fanatics to feel like "insiders." And it is not priced at a level that would be appropriate for big media outlets like The New York Times or CNN. No, the price for Truth PSI is $100,000. That's per month. Well, unless you sign a 3-year contract, in which case you can lock in the low, low price of $60,000 a month (or $2.16 million over the life of the contract).
There are only two ways in which that "investment" makes any sense whatsoever. The first is the "honest grift" scenario, wherein a person or entity pays for the premium access, and then uses that information to engage in insider trading, or to otherwise benefit by knowing what's about to happen with the stock market (for example, nearly any Trump announcement about the Iran War will have predictable effects on oil futures, and you can monetize that insight, just as surely as if you know for sure what's going to happen with frozen concentrated orange juice).
The other possible way that the $60K/month - $100K/month makes sense (and this is not incompatible with the first motive) is the "money laundering" scenario, where the fee is just a "clean" way to pay a bribe to Trump.
Trump already has a well-established history with versions of both of these types of grift. To take one example of the former, among many, he bought between $1 million and $5 million of Axon stock back in February. Two weeks later, ICE signed a contract for $220 million worth of tasers and the stock price shot up. Trump could very easily buy some stock in a company he knows is about to get some business from the government, then share some inside information with Truth PSI subscribers. The subscribers would make money, and Trump would make even more money because he would be the one who got in first.
Similarly, Trump has already used access to himself to "legally" market his e-businesses. The most notable example of this, among several, involves his shady cryptocurrencies. Recall, back in May, that Trump held a dinner for the 25 biggest owners of $TRUMP meme coins. The majority of the attendees, including #1 $TRUMP "investor" Justin Sun, were either foreign nationals or were people with close ties to an unfriendly government. Similarly, the United Arab Emirates bought $500 million in stock in the company that oversees Trump's crypto ventures. It is improbable they did that because they simply could not find a more promising investment opportunity.
There is probably not a single reader of this site that, if given the honor and privilege of serving as President of the United States, would put their own financial bottom line ahead of ending a senseless war, or suffering a huge defeat in the midterms, or protecting their reputation as an honest leader. That requires a degree of corruptness and immorality that is truly special.
Our point here is that Trump and a few of his minions have a mindset, one focused on money above all else, that most of us simply cannot properly grasp. But that does not mean the mindset does not exist, because clearly it does. And once you combine that mindset with the awesome powers of the presidency and the belief that the president is beyond the reach of the law, the sky's the limit—as Trump himself is demonstrating at this very moment. In theory, the founders foresaw something like this and provided a mechanism for dealing with it: impeachment and conviction. What the founders, who were men of honor, could not conceive of is a Congress so cowardly that it could see this corruption in broad daylight and be afraid to do anything about it. (Z)