America Has Never Seen Corruption Like This

Schwartzreport · one year ago · 64 views

Casey Michel,  Contributing Writer  -  The Atlantic Magazine \ Reader Supported NewsStephan: All fascist governments are corrupt; that's part of the purpose of fascism. The United States thanks to the Republican Party, and yes, let's face it, the people who voted Trump and these other monsters into office, is now a corrupt fascist state. Look at the map at the head of this report. The United States now ranks next to Argentina in terms of freedom. The White House has seen its share of shady deals. Ulysses S. Grant’s brother-in-law used his family ties to engineer an insider-trading scheme that tanked the gold market. Warren Harding’s secretary of the interior secretly leased land to oil barons, who paid a fortune for his troubles. To bankroll Richard Nixon’s reelection, corporate executives sneaked suitcases full of cash into the capital. But Americans have never witnessed anything like the corruption that President Donald Trump and his inner circle have perpetrated in recent months. Its brazenness, volume, and variety defy historical comparison, even in a country with a centuries-long history of graft—including, notably, Trump’s first four years in office. Indeed, his second term makes the financial scandals of his first—foreign regimes staying at Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C.; the (aborted) plan to host the G7 at Trump’s hotel in Florida—seem quaint. Trump 2.0 is just getting started, yet it already represents the high-water mark of American kleptocracy. There are good reasons to think it will get much worse. Virtually every week, the Trump family seems to find a new way to profit [...]