D-DAY – THE HEROIC ANTIFA HISTORY LESSON TOO MUCH OF AMERICA HAS FORGOTTEN

 

June is the month in which many of us from the US and across the world take time to think about, remember and commemorate the supreme sacrifice of the now nearly extinct generation that went to war in the worst conflagration in history in order to rid the world of the scourge of fascism. This year marks the eighty-second anniversary of the June 6^th D-Day Normandy invasion.

For the people of my own generation, D-Day commemorations are more than the mere marking of an historical milestone. They are real and personal and literally hit home, since it was our parents’ generation that made those supreme sacrifices to free Europe and the world from the nefarious, encroaching despotism of fascist ideology. Many of us went to grade school already knowing the gist of World War II history. We knew the names of American military leaders, of some of the key battles, of a lot of the weaponry used. We knew basically what the war had been about.

Hero dads - Sergeant Whitie,
antifa freedom-fighter

Above all, we knew who the good guys and who the bad guys were. Our dads were the good guys, the ones who had gone to war to fight for freedom and democracy. Our mothers were the ones who took up the posts in manufacturing factories and defense plants left vacant by our fathers who were off at war. No matter what sort of relationships we might have with them as we grew up, in that, in having been true freedom-fighters, they were our heroes. The bad guys were the fascists, the Nazis, the militarized far-right imperialists. And we knew the names of their leaders as well, and that the most diabolical one of all was Hitler. His insane, despotic, callously cruel figure was the manifest avatar for fascism and everything that rendered it deplorable enough to warrant the most destructive war in history.

It is worthwhile recalling what D-Day signified in the prosecution of World War II. It was, quite literally, the turning point at which the Allies began winning a definitive victory over the fascist forces of the Axis powers led by Nazi Germany.

On June 6^th, 1944, US, British, Canadian, and other Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy in the largest amphibious military operation in history. D-Day was not merely a military maneuver. It was the opening of the Western Front against Nazi Germany and a direct assault on history's most destructive fascist regimes.

More than 156,000 Allied troops crossed the English Channel to France in staging the invasion.  In the first twenty-four hours of the invasion alone, Allied troops suffered ten thousand casualties, 4,414 of them fatal. The US lost 2,501 troops that day, in the bloody fighting to rout the well-entrenched Axis forces. Fatal British casualties numbered 1,449, Canadians 391, and other Allies 73.

Most of the Axis troops defending the positions firing on the Allies at Normandy were German. But the Nazis were also joined by what were known as the Osttruppen, or Eastern Troops. These were volunteers from other countries, or draftees and prisoners of war from Nazi-occupied nations. The Osttruppen, then, were comprised of volunteers from occupied territories in the Soviet Union (such as Ukraine and Georgia), as well as forcibly conscripted men from countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia. In the months leading up to the invasion, the German Army integrated tens of thousands of these non-Germans into their coastal divisions. As many as nine thousand Axis troops were killed, wounded or went missing on that day.

German soldiers entrenched at Normandy

The American forces suffered their devastating casualties at Omaha Beach. Canadian forces stormed Juno Beach under heavy fire. British troops landed at Gold and Sword Beaches. Behind them stood entire societies mobilized against fascism, against white supremacists, against authoritarianism, militarism, and aggressive, imperialist nationalism.

The significance of D-Day cannot be separated from what the Western Allies were fighting against and the freedom-loving attitude of an entire generation in the West. I have underscored Western Allies, since Soviet Russia was an anti-fascist ally during World War II as well. But it was an ally of convenience rather than ideology. Indeed, the Russians paid the highest price of the war, with at least twenty-four million fatalities between civilian and military personnel. But the Soviets’ war with the Nazis was a war between two authoritarianisms—Communist totalitarianism and Nazi fascism—not a war between fascist authoritarianism and democratic freedom.

Nazi Germany was not just another authoritarian government. It was a fascist state built on an historic cult of personality surrounding a cunning if demented leader. The cult was built on contempt for democratic institutions and for the rule of law. It encouraged attacks on the independent press, political violence in support of fascist aims, racial hierarchy, the scapegoating of minorities, and the belief that national greatness justified the destruction of constitutional constraints and of entire ethnicities.

That generation, my parents’ generation,  which fought, and sacrificed,  and died on D-Day, understood that democracy is fragile. They comprehended and believed that democratic institutions can only survive when citizens reject and actively oppose authoritarian designs before these turn into politically backed movements and manage to consolidate power.

British troops deploying at Sword Beach

For decades after World War II, Americans commemorated D-Day as historical proof that the United States was the world's foremost opponent of fascism. The nation portrayed itself as a defender of constitutional government, of free elections, of independent courts, of a free press, of political pluralism and of the rule of law. It was, in short, a society of laws, not of rule by force and by decree.

This historical identity began to erode in small if significant ways as far back as Ronald Reagan. Restrictions on rights and freedoms increased notably in the post-Nine-Eleven Bush Era, as US presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, gained an ever more powerful role, to the detriment of the other two supposedly co-equal branches of government.

But the deterioration of American institutions, democratic government and the rule of law has burgeoned out of control as of 2016, with the appearance on the political scene of Donald Trump, and the start of the Era of Trump. Since then, even in the four years that Trump left office between one term and the next, his nefarious figure has loomed large, not only in American politics, but also in the pernicious “culture wars” that have accompanied his rise to power and bitterly divided Americans.

In view of the fact that the hijacked GOP, which seems oblivious to—or indeed, complicit with—the destruction of America’s democratic institutions, it is almost impossible not to view the Trump administration, based on the most obvious of evidence, as being, not an administration at all in the traditional sense of the word, but a fascist regime. Note that I am not using the word fascist ill-advisedly or as a mere political slur, but rather, in the truest sense of the word.

Let me just clarify what I said above. Historians who specialize in the study of fascism and authoritarianism define some of the hallmarks of these phenomena as follows:

Fascism/authoritarianism is usually a cultist movement that elevates personal loyalty to a leader (cult of personality) or autocratic movement over and above the nation’s institutions. Fascism/authoritarianism is always marked by constant attacks on the independent media as “enemies of the people,” and by enormous efforts to convince the public that the only truth is disseminated by the State, and the propaganda media that support it. In its latest iteration, it also appeals to rich supporters of the movement to buy recalcitrant media and break them into a shadow of their former self—a model favored by former Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán, who was greatly admired by the current US president.

Modern-day fascist and
Trump hero Viktor Orbán

Fascist/authoritarian regimes seek to garner the impression of legitimacy by de-legitimizing constitutional elections and election outcomes through false claims of election fraud. They also demonize political opponents as “traitors against the nation” rather than viewing them simply as rivals. As these claims get a foothold, fascist and other authoritarian regimes also often trump up charges against their rivals and seek to use the courts to jail them, and thus take them out of circulation. Alternatively, they seek to trash the reputations of their opponents, and to convince their followers that these individuals are dishonest or perverted.

These regimes always celebrate “strongman” leadership as the solution to the nation’s problems, plugging into the narrative that representative democracy is weak, inefficient and ineffective. They employ stark nationalist rhetoric that centers on the grievances and victimhood of their constituencies, casting themselves as having come to power to put right those “discriminations” perpetrated against their supporters and to punish those who “slighted them.”  Along these lines, they eschew legal processes and use the power of State to go after their perceived enemies.

Normalizing violence - J-6 Insurrection - blanket pardon

Fascist/authoritarian regimes seek to reward uniformity and to punish diversity. They are usually misogynist, racist, tribal and rooted in a single religious dogma.

And finally, these regimes seek to normalize violence and threats of violence against “enemies of the State” and of its leader. They encourage violent acts to weed out or overthrow what they tout as “rigged systems” so that the authoritarian leader can put things to rights and “restore the rights of the people.”

If we were to place a checkmark by the items above that apply to the current Trump regime, objectively speaking, they would all be checked. And to the chagrin of those who get a throbbing vein in their forehead every time they hear me use the word fascist to describe MAGA ideology, sorry, but if it walks like a fascist and talks like a fascist, and acts like a fascist…

But don’t take my word for it. Numerous noted scholars specializing in fascism and authoritarianism—including, but not limited to, Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiát, Jason Stanley, and Madeleine Albright—have argued that these patterns in the Trump regime and MAGA closely resemble warning signs historically associated with fascist and authoritarian movements. And this argument has become significantly stronger since Trump returned to office last year. Trump 2.0 is looking more and more like fascism on steroids—the forming of a State paramilitary commanded by the president to violently repress dissent in entire communities, almost daily violations of the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, encroachment on congressional powers, the reshaping of the military that answers to one man rather than to the tenets of the Constitution, and so on.

During Trump’s first presidency (2016-2020), opponents often argued that, despite his attempt to usurp exclusive power, the  institutional checks and balances remained intact. While this is somewhat debatable, let’s agree that, for the sake of argument, it’s true. Indeed, courts blocked executive actions. Career civil servants resisted political pressure. Senior military officers publicly emphasized constitutional obligations. Elections remained competitive, and power was ultimately transferred after the 2020 election—even despite Trump’s historic first as the only president not to accept the peaceful transfer of power, and despite his mounting a bloody insurrection at the Capitol to try and overturn the election results by force in 2020.

But the second Trump presidency has been, to date, stunningly different, because many of those institutional restraints have been purposely weakened and attacked by the regime. Efforts to centralize executive authority, to purge perceived opponents from the career State bureaucracy, to weaken or remove completely independent oversight, to politicize federal statistics, and to redefine loyalty to the state as loyalty to a central political leader represent a grimly advancing stage of democratic erosion.

Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower with
 Screaming Eagle 101st Airborne troops in Normandy

The contrast between this state of affairs and the antifa ideals that inspired D-Day are increasingly stark. The soldiers who landed in Normandy fought a war against a system that concentrated power in a single leader and that demanded ideological conformity, and cultural and ethnic uniformity. Those who fought and spilled their blood on the beaches of Normandy and turned the sea red were, in the truest sense of the word, antifa freedom-fighters, and the US was the exemplary champion of antifa ideals.

Today, as a result of a GOP leadership that is either all-in for fascist-style, one-party rule, or too politically weak or cowardly to resist, contemporary American politics increasingly rewards precisely the fascist tendencies enumerated above. The more than two thousand American heroes of Omaha Beach—or, indeed, the more than four hundred thousand Americans killed in the course of the entire war—didn’t die to establish a political climate in the US in which loyalty to one individual outweighs loyalty to constitutional principles. Indeed, they fought and died to cut the cancer of that fascist model out of the world order.

Canada provides a particularly revealing comparison to what is happening under the Trump regime in the US today. Canadians fought fascism alongside Americans at Normandy in June 1944. Canadian forces suffered more than a thousand casualties on D-Day alone.

Canadian troops disembarking at Juno Beach in
  Normandy, 1,000 casualties, 391 dead in a day.

As a result, for generations, the two countries, which were somewhat wary of each other until that time, have maintained one of the closest alliances in modern history, sharing defense commitments, intelligence partnerships, economic integration, and democratic values. But in recent years, Canadian leaders, policymakers, commentators, and much of the Canadian public at large have expressed growing concern about political developments in the United States. Concerns have included attacks on democratic institutions, threats against electoral legitimacy, political polarization, hostility toward allies, trade disputes, and increasingly hardcore nationalistic rhetoric.

These concerns have morphed into full-blown opposition since Trump began his second term and, unable to corrupt Canada’s democratic ethics and ideas, started attacking Canada outright, levying outrageous trade tariffs on it, and going as far as to suggest he planned to turn Canada into the fifty-first US state. This has obviously infuriated Canadians as a whole, and soured the alliance between the neighboring nations to the point of near dissolution.

Beyond the diplomatic meltdown with Trump, however, Canadians are entertaining more deep-reaching concerns regarding their mammoth neighbor. Indeed, many—perhaps most—Canadians view these developments, not as ordinary policy disagreements, but as evidence that the United States is moving away from the liberal democratic consensus that united North America as well as Western Europe following World War II.

As a result, Canada is  increasingly exploring ways to reduce strategic dependence on American political stability and to strengthen its relationships with other democratic partners. There has even been some talk of Canada’s becoming a member of the European Union, even as it is already reaching out to like-minded Nordic nations in Scandinavia.

It speaks loud and clear of the democratic crisis in the United States that this stunning development in bilateral relations between Canada and the US is historically remarkable. The country that once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the US on the beaches of Normandy is now, in truly significant respects, attempting to insulate itself from the aggressive instability emanating from Washington.

It is noteworthy that, historically, fascism/authoritarianism succeeds, not because democratic societies consciously choose dictatorship, but because democratic norms are gradually eroded by bad actors. And as this takes place, citizens become accustomed to attacks on institutions, with many people coming to believe the narrative that “the system is rigged,” or that “the system is broken.” And, in the minds of these members of society—usually not a majority, but a critical-mass minority—it stands to reason that the leader and the regime denouncing that supposedly rigged system are “the only ones who can fix it.”

In my own experience, this was true of the military regime that took power in 1976, in Argentina, where I was working for an opposition newspaper that consistently defended the rule of law, and civil and human rights. There was a widespread belief at the time of the coup that the democratic system, rather than the weak and corrupt elected administration, was broken. And a far too extensive proportion of the population was willing to stand behind the dictatorial regime and let it act, “to make the country safe for a clean-slate constitutional democracy.”  Indeed, that was the initial promise of the regime. Instead, that regime ended up staying in power for nearly eight years by means of a bloody reign of terror.

Argentina 1976 - Arrests without charges,
disappearances and summary executions

In such systems, political opponents become enemies. And if the regime becomes powerful enough, it is no longer necessary for it to ostensibly bring charges, false though they may be, to get rid of its rivals and opponents. They are simply and summarily eliminated. In the case of Argentina, from the mid-seventies through the early eighties, thirty thousand were eliminated.

As authoritarianism gradually advances, loyalty to a movement and its leader replaces loyalty to constitutional principles. Exceptional measures become normal. What once seemed unthinkable becomes routine. And people all too often become numb to it until they themselves or their loved ones are caught in the gnashing teeth of the repressive monster.

The lesson of D-Day is that democracy is not self-executing. It survives only when citizens do everything in their power to defend it, no matter how disillusioned they might become with occasional outcomes in a functioning democratic system.

The soldiers who landed in Normandy confronted fascism in its most visible, highly developed and violent form. The challenge facing modern democracies is to recognize authoritarian tendencies before they become irreversible, and to stop them in their tracks.

It is a profoundly cruel reality that the generation that crossed the English Channel on D-Day fought and, in huge numbers, gave their lives to defeat fascism abroad, while many people among today’s generations in the US have embraced fascism. Meanwhile, the rest of Americans may eventually be forced to decide just how far we are willing to go and what we are willing to do to resist and hopefully defeat authoritarianism at home.

That is why today, D-Day and what it signifies is more relevant than ever. It is not merely a commemoration of a massive military victory. It is, additionally, a reminder that democracy can be lost, that fascism can emerge in unexpected places, and that the preservation of free societies requires constant vigilance and participation.

The central debate facing many in the United States today is whether current political developments represent ordinary democratic conflict or the early stages of the very authoritarian traditions that Americans once crossed an ocean to defeat. In my own mind, this debate is moot. Fascism is already upon us. It is here, and steps must be taken to put an immediate halt to its pernicious advancement. Either that, or we must resign ourselves to the death of American democracy.

How we respond to this issue—whether embracing the “new order”, being submersed in apathy about it, or fighting it tooth and nail—will shape not only the future of American democracy but also the future of what generations have, until now, called the Free World.

 

PRESIDENCY FOR PROFIT — A LIMITED EXPOSÉ

Perhaps the most spurious of hardcore MAGA arguments in defense of Donald Trump since his first term in office is the fantasy that Trump is a patriot who loves the country more than any leader before him and that proof of this is that he gains nothing from being president. On the contrary, dyed-in-the-wool MAGA folks argue, Trump has had to make great sacrifices to be president. Not only, they say, does he not collect the four hundred thousand-dollar-a-year salary granted to presidents (getting instead a token one-dollar-a-year check since presidents must be compensated under the law), but has also—in MAGA mythology—taken huge hits on business deals he could have conducted were he not a presidential office-holder.

That would, of course, be the case if Trump were to adhere to the ethical standards that his presidential predecessors have. But he doesn’t.

To anyone with an even passing knowledge of the Trump empire—in other words, anyone who is willing to dig deeper in their research than MAGA social media, Fox News and far-right influencers—it is clear that not only Donald Trump, but also members of his family and many of his associates have profited richly from his two presidencies to date. The facts tend to show that the PR value of not accepting his pay as president is well worth it, because it makes for good press, and compared with increases in his net worth since taking office, the four hundred grand presidential salary—a fortune for most Americans—is a mere drop in the bucket.

Trump critics, including this one, have long argued that, contrary to MAGA legend, Trump and his crime family have created an illicit association in the White House from which they use the levers of power for profit, and in which—in frank violation of the Constitution and anti-corruption laws and rules—the headquarters of the Executive have become the center of a vast and shady commercial enterprise that Trump heads. From this enterprise—presidency for profit—that includes blatant insider trading and foreign and domestic conflicts of interest, Trump profits beyond all imagining, in complete conflict with his duties and obligations as president of the United States.

But in strictly debatable terms, the fact is that, in order to justly revile Donald Trump’s behavior in office, there is no real need to prove criminality on his part—despite the fact that where there’s smoke, it stands to reason that there is also fire. In a dark time for democracy and the rule of law, in which the president violates federal law and the Constitution daily and in which his hijacked governing party and far-right-packed Supreme Court let him get away with everything short of public murder—indeed, a time in which any federal court action against Trump’s abuse of power is seen by the media as akin to an act of heroism—suffice it to say that Donald Trump has provably abused the powers, visibility, and influence of the presidency in ways that have substantially increased his wealth and that of his family and close associates, and in ways that are completely and historically unethical. And this pattern of abuse of power has been well documented by mainstream reporting, ethics watchdogs, and legal scholars alike.

In short, Donald Trump has transformed the presidency into a vehicle for personal and family enrichment on a scale unprecedented in modern American history. From the outset, he has thumbed his nose at the Emoluments Clauses under constitutional law. The main purpose of these clauses is to keep elected officials of the US government honest. They are contained in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8; Article I, Section 6, Clause 2; and Article II, Section 1, Clause 7. The second one of these is specifically designed to prevent members of Congress from accepting gifts and bribes, and to keep that branch independent from the Executive (good luck with that in today’s climate). But the other two affect, both directly and indirectly, the presidency.

Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 prohibits any person holding an "Office of Profit or Trust" under the US government from accepting any present, emolument, office, or title from any king, prince, or foreign state without the consent of Congress. Emolument is a general term that refers to any sort of salary or profit. The purpose of this clause is to protect the Nation against foreign corruption, bribery, and undue influence. (The undue influence of Putin’s Russia in the politics of the Trump Era was already made clear, for anyone who actually read it, in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s controversial report during Trump’s first presidency). And a blatant example of an improper gift from a foreign power is the four hundred million-dollar plane that Donald Trump received from the reigning emir of Qatar. Although the Trump regime bent over backwards to pass off the plane—originally designed as a flying luxury palace for Qatari royalty—as belonging to the Department of Defense (which still wouldn’t explain why Qatar would make such an expensive gift to the US government) Trump has made it clear that he considers the plane his and plans to take it with him, one way or another, when he leaves office.  This is a plainly clear abuse of presidential power and a glaring act of corruption.

As far as emoluments go, one has to dig deeper beneath the surface to discover how Trump and his family are profiting from the presidency. But it’s not as if that takes a great deal of research either, since one of the latest hallmarks of Trump Era 2.0 is that corruption and unethical behavior are even more in-your-face in this second term than they were during the first one, in which there was still some pretense of correctitude.     

Unlike previous presidents who divested assets, placed holdings in blind trusts, or avoided any perception of active commercial expansion while in office, Trump has maintained extensive financial interests that continue to benefit from government policy, foreign relationships, regulatory decisions, political branding, and public office itself.

The point, then, is not merely that Trump has remained wealthy while president. No one would argue that he should have to take a vow of poverty in order to hold his office. The real point is that Trump has turned the presidency into a wealth-generating plant for his worldwide businesses, investments, licensing ventures, and cryptocurrency projects, and has done so for his politically connected associates as well.

Earlier this year, ethics experts at the Brennan Center for Justice wrote that, "The scale of President Trump's self-enrichment is unprecedented." The center estimated that, "Since taking office in January 2025, President Trump has pocketed an estimated three billion dollars," while his family accumulated billions more. How many billions more? Latest independent estimates indicate that the Trumps have been making hay while the sun shines—in other words, before the midterms. So much so that while Donald Trump’s personal fortune has burgeoned threefold to 6.5 billion dollars just since 2024, the Trump family empire as a whole is estimated to have grown to more than ten billion dollars. Wall Street Journal investigative reporter David Uberti claims that since the start of Trump’s second term fifteen months ago, Trump’s family has added four billion to their net worth, and that, Uberti says, is a conservative estimate. Even young Barron has accumulated an estimated one hundred fifty million by joining in on his stepbrothers’ World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency venture.

The Brennan Center also claims that foreign governments and other foreign agents have been one of the major sources of the Trump empire’s recent windfalls. All of this matters because the central concern to democracy regarding these issues is not whether the transactions are illegal as such, but rather, whether political power can be converted into private wealth.

The Brennan Center also claims that foreign governments and other foreign agents have been one of the major sources of the Trump empire’s recent windfalls. All of this matters because the central concern to democracy regarding these issues is not whether the transactions are illegal as such, but rather, whether political power can be converted into private wealth.

From the get-go, Trump rejected the modern presidential norm of divestment. For decades, presidents from both parties generally separated themselves from business operations to avoid conflicts of interest. Trump, instead, has  placed assets in a family-controlled trust overseen by his children rather than a traditional blind trust. Anybody who knows anything about the Trump family business knows that Donald is the CEO and calls the shots.

Ethics scholars have repeatedly noted that a trust run by family members is fundamentally different from a blind trust because the president continues to know what assets he owns, and can potentially benefit from policy decisions affecting them. Trump, then, did not merely keep his existing wealth. He preserved an architecture through which government decisions could and did affect his family's fortunes.

Furthermore, foreign governments and foreign investors continue to do business with Trump-linked enterprises. According to reporting from PBS,  Trump took his 2025 Middle East trip at a time when his family maintained substantial business interests there. As a result, PBS reported, "billions of dollars have poured into Trump-owned companies."

This creates an obvious conflict of interests and is a potential threat to national security. More specifically, foreign governments seeking favorable treatment from the US under the Trump regime have a clear incentive to direct money toward businesses linked to the Trump family. The quid pro quo involved is obvious—and for the Trumps, highly profitable.

And it is blatantly unconstitutional—and thus, illegal—since this sort of situation is precisely why the US Constitution includes the Foreign Emoluments Clause, as a means of preventing foreign powers from gaining leverage over American leaders.

But perhaps the most significant development in corruption since Trump began his second term involves cryptocurrency. There is  ample evidence to demonstrate that crypto has created an entirely new channel for Trump’s corrupt profiteering through the presidency.  The obvious collusion of the hijacked GOP’s paper-thin majority in Congress (which keeps him momentarily unimpeachable), and that of the Supreme Court in rendering Trump basically unindictable as long as he holds office, are clearly the only reasons that the president is being allowed to get away with this sort of overt corruption.    

Despite the dereliction of duty of the Trump-decimated Republican Party as a whole, the president’s shady crypto business has not gone unnoticed in Congress. Thanks to the efforts of Democratic bulldogs like Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland—former ranking member of the House Oversight Committee and now Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee—there have been probes into the Trump family's cryptocurrency ventures. A report released by the House Oversight Committee's Democratic staff alleges that Trump and his family have generated nearly 2.25 billion dollars in realized profits connected with digital ventures. When  paper valuations are included in Trump crypto assets, the total climbs to just shy of ten billion.

According to that report, "The Trump Family's corruption is deeply disturbing." But beyond partisan rhetoric, the underlying facts on which the report is based are undeniably noteworthy. Reporting cited by the committee shows that Trump-linked crypto projects generated hundreds of millions of dollars in fees. Foreign investors participated in the Trump crypto ecosystem. And at the same time that the Trumps were richly profiting from their crypto ventures, the administration moved to take control of cryptocurrency regulation, further rigging the system to favor Trump and company.

If anyone should need to have this spelled out, the main ethical concern is straightforward and unquestionable. Namely, that in his presidency-for-profit maneuvers, Trump has positioned himself to directly influence the regulatory environment that affects enterprises from which he and his family and friends stand to reap enormous financial benefits.

A flagrantly egregious illustration of this conflict of interest has been provided by the Trump meme-coin controversy. This was basically a grift by which purchasers of a type of crypto better known as a “token” bearing Trump’s image spent millions to acquire the coins at their launch in order to gain access to an exclusive dinner with the president. Trump’s use of the presidency as a hook for profit couldn’t have been more clear.

The token soared in market value by some three hundred percent to seventy-five dollars. The scam was basically a bidding war in which Trump voters were led to believe they could win a place at the presidential table and there were different levels of participation according to the value of each participant’s investment—an exclusive, formal cocktail with the president for the top twenty-five, a gala black-tie dinner for the two-hundred highest investors, and so on.

Obviously the crypto launch dinner was attended by major investors and wealthy foreign dignitaries, not the MAGA rank and file. According to investigative reporting in The Washington Post, Trump-affiliated businesses generated millions of dollars out of this grift, which, ethics experts agree, completely blurred the lines between public office and private profit. It is an even more grave act of corruption of the presidential office if  you consider that those who bought in on the meteoric rise in the $Trump token suffered multi-million-dollar cumulative losses, considering that, from its peak of seventy-five dollars, the Trump bitcoin is today trading at about two dollars. Trump and his family, however, made out like bandits.

Even if one sees Trump’s dubious use of personal access of supporters to the president as a political campaign chip, there is a huge ethical difference between offering that access in exchange for campaign contributions—like the ten-thousand-dollar-a-plate gala dinners (the ethics of which are questionable enough) that other politicians have indulged in—and the purchasing of access by acquiring a financial asset by which the president and his family hugely and directly profit.      

It has also become crystal clear, especially during the current Trump administration, that where traditional ethical constraints are unceremoniously tossed out of the Oval Office window, the power of the State can and will be used to benefit not only the president, but also his donors, allies and relatives as well.

Make no mistake, many of the seemingly insane actions taken by Trump’s regime since he took office again at the beginning of last year have tended over time to demonstrate that there may often be method in his madness. The mistake is to look at these actions from a conventional and sincere standpoint—in other words, from the standpoint of an honest upstanding citizen. Seen from that rather naïve—or, more to the point, authentic—standpoint, the things Trump does appear irrational and utterly crazy. Why? Because the questions we ask ourselves are the wrong ones. Someone honest asks: How can Trump think this is good for America and Americans? The reason that’s the wrong question is the answer is: He doesn’t, and moreover, he couldn’t care less how the measures he takes affect Americans or US interests.

Indeed, he has said as much publicly. When asked if he thought about the financial strain Americans have been placed under because of his tariffs and his personal war with Iran, Trump admitted, “Not even a little bit. I don’t think about anybody.” Perhaps in the back of his mind he was thinking about the true and effective end to that sentence, “I don’t think about anybody,” except myself.

Many of his most controversial actions are clearly designed to increase his bottom line, or those of his family and friends, even when they cause direct harm to working Americans, and, indeed, to many hard-working people in other parts of the world as well. For instance, I am an American expat living in Argentina. Here, since the start of Trump’s unilateral war in Iran two months ago, our gasoline prices have risen by twenty-three percent in dollars, adding as much as a couple of hundred dollars a month to average Argentine families’ monthly expenses  But it doesn’t end there. Diesel fuel in Argentina has seen peak rises in the past two months of as much as thirty-percent in dollars, and since just about everything in the far-flung reaches of Argentina travels by truck, this increased expense is fueling inflation, particularly in supermarkets and grocery stores, where the government was already struggling to bring rampant inflation in dollars under control, and where shoppers were struggling to pay for their daily food needs. This is then, a problem we are having five thousand miles away that has Trump’s fingerprints all over it, and it’s just one example of multiple effects worldwide.     

 As the Brennan Center had already predicted last year, the Trump regime, since retaking office, has manipulated tariffs, regulations, contracts, tax money and executive orders in ways that have hurt the majority of Americans while tending to benefit not only Trump-linked businesses, but the president’s major donors and allies.  

This broadens the corruption issue beyond Trump personally. The presidency is not merely enriching Trump. It is also creating opportunities for an entire network of family members, investors, business partners, and political allies.

Even in Trump’s personal war with Iran, which has not only cost billions in taxpayer money, but also caused further suffering to Americans through inflation tied to skyrocketing fuel prices, there have been clear winners. Big Oil is reaping enormous profits from the war’s effect on petroleum prices, and arms manufacturers are scrambling to keep up with increased demand due to Trump’s dilapidation of American weapons stockpiles, which have left the US far more vulnerable should some other foreign conflict break out or if the US should come under attack.

More specifically, among the biggest winners resulting from the war have been Trump’s own sons, Don Jr. and Eric. Don and Eric Trump are significant investors and stakeholders in several domestic drone and defense technology firms that have—surprise, surprise!—very recently secured lucrative Pentagon contracts and government funding. These investments focus on capitalizing on the US defense market, amidst heightened geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East. These contracts have been bolstered (just a coincidence, I’m sure) as a result of the Trump regime’s ban on foreign-made drones.

But this isn’t just something that, thanks to nepotism, they are dabbling in. Key defense contracts and defense ventures in which the Trump boys are involved are numerous.

For instance, there is the Powerus Corporation, a West Palm Beach-based drone manufacturer backed by the Trump brothers. The company—which went public via a reverse merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings—landed an agreement with the US Air Force to supply interceptor drones, which, thanks to Trump’s private war with Iran, are in increasingly short supply. The Trump kids are  also actively pitching weapons systems deals to Gulf states, which, thanks to Trump and his war, suddenly find themselves lethally vulnerable to attack from Iran, which sees them as indispensable allies to Trump in his devastating assault on that country.

Eric Trump has, meanwhile, been amusing himself with some Terminator stuff, and was recently bragging about landing a twenty-four-million-dollar Pentagon R&D contract for Foundation Future Industries, a robotics firm to which he is linked and which is researching advanced military and humanoid AI systems.

Don Jr. is a partner in 1789 Capital, a company that is actively investing in defense contractors. Both Trump brothers form part of Vulcan Elements (which is backed by 1789 Capital). Vulcan specializes in rare-earth magnets.  

A rare earth magnet is the strongest type of permanent magnet available. Crafted from alloys of rare-earth elements, they are crucial for modern technology because their immense magnetic strength allows for highly compact, lightweight designs in everything from smartphones and headphones to electric vehicle motors. The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital recently granted Vulcan a six hundred twenty million-dollar loan.

This area of investment by the Trump boys seems noteworthy considering that acquiring rare earth resources is a strategic priority of the Trump regime’s foreign investment platform. China has long had a monopoly on key minerals and Trump has pursued a global and domestic strategy to build a secure "mine-to-magnet" supply chain.

This has involved massive funding deals like a 1.6 billion-dollar package in funding and loan capacity granted by the Trump regime to a firm called USA Rare Earth. It just so happens that, among their  heavy involvement and financial stakes in the critical minerals and mining industry, Don Jr. and Eric are linked to USA Rare Earth through substantial financial and federal contracting ties.  

Additionally, Don Jr. is now on the advisory board of drone-maker Unusual Machines (UMAC). That firm has, coincidentally (?) recently secured a US Army contract for the supply of drone motors and components. 

These growing business ties to the military-industrial complex have drawn significant public and political scrutiny. Government ethics experts and congressional Democrats have raised concerns regarding potential conflicts of interest, prompting opposition inquiries into whether the White House is directly influencing the Pentagon's procurement process to benefit the president's family. (Ya think)?  

But it doesn’t end there. The Trump family trust (perhaps a better term would be crime syndicate), in which the president is very obviously still involved, has been actively trading stocks while Trump has been president.

Let’s stop a second and define the term “insider trading”. Insider trading is when someone with access to confidential information about factors affecting publicly traded companies (better known as “material information”) buys and/or sells pertinent shares. What is meant by “material information”, is any data that constitute an undisclosed fact that could substantially impact the stock's price or an investor's decision to trade.

The grift here, then, is obvious: The president controls policy, tariffs, regulatory announcements, and public statements that can move markets. No one in history has used and abused these presidential powers the way Trump has. He and his trust’s   personal participation in stock trading clearly creates the appearance—or reality—of financial self-interest influencing government action.

Although the far-right-dominated Supreme Court has basically handed the president a get-out-of-jail-free card—ostensibly permitting Trump, for as long as he is in office, to get away with murder—insider trading is a felony. You go to prison for it. I mean, you and I do. Not Trump. Ironclad ethics have kept other presidents from engaging in it. But Trump has no ethics, and whatever he can get away with, he will do.

Some other very powerful people have, in the past, not been so lucky. Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund was convicted of heading up a massive insider-trading ring and was handed an eleven-year federal prison sentence in 2011. Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was convicted on multiple felony  counts, including insider trading, for selling tens of millions of dollars in stock based on non-public knowledge of the company's impending collapse. He ended up serving twelve years of a twenty-four-year federal prison sentence. Jordan Belfort, better known as the "Wolf of Wall Street",  served twenty-two months in federal prison after being convicted of securities fraud and money laundering tied to his pump-and-dump and insider trading schemes at Stratton Oakmont. Former ImClone Systems CEO Samuel Waksal, got an eighty-seven-month federal prison sentence for securities fraud and insider trading after attempting to sell off his company stock prior to an FDA rejection of their new cancer drug. This also got TV personality and lifestyle mogul Martha Stewart into trouble when she was riding the crest of her fame. Investigators initially charged her with insider trading for the suspicious unloading of her ImClone stock, but couldn’t make the charge stick. She refused a plea bargain and maintained her innocence, but still ended up spending five months in federal prison and another five months under house arrest on obstruction and perjury charges. And infamous, if iconic 1980s Wall Street arbitrageur Ivan Boesky, whose slogan was “greed is good,” ended up pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy and spent twenty months in prison before turning State’s evidence and serving as a key government confidential informant.

But the way things stand now, that will never happen to Trump as long as the GOP is in power. Nor will it happen to any of his friends or family, whom he will almost surely pardon before leaving office for anything they have, might or could have done, since pardoning “friendly” felons has been a perverted constant throughout his two presidencies.

Speaking of which, the most glaring case of Trump’s pardon power as president being used to the advantage (and enrichment) of his own business interests is that of Changpeng Zhao—a.k.a. CZ—the billionaire founder and ex-CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange known as Binance. In late 2023, Zhao and Binance pled guilty to federal charges of failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. Prosecutors noted that their lack of prevention had allowed funds to flow through them to cybercriminals and terrorist organizations. CZ ultimately stepped down as CEO and spent four months in a US federal prison. That doesn’t seem like much for a guy who, wittingly or unwittingly, was channeling money to terrorists, but we should have learned by now that, if you’re rich, you get a pass, and CZ also ended up paying a 4.3-billion-dollar fine.

A.K.A. CZ

So why, then, did Trump, as president, feel it necessary to grant CZ a full and unconditional pardon in October of last year? Well, it’s not hard to imagine that the fact that the pardon came after a massive investment deal between Binance and the Trump family’s crypto business had something to do with it.  

And we’re not talking about chickenfeed here. This was a two-billion-dollar investment deal. The connection to Binance involves the Trump (crime) family trust and  Trump and sons’ crypto firm, World Liberty Finance (WLF).

So, pay attention now, because this gets a little complicated. The Trumps launched a dollar-pegged crypto stablecoin known as USD1. That crypto coin was created using technology and software that Binance provided. Mid-year last year, an Abu Dhabi state-backed investment fund called MGX agreed to execute a two billion-dollar investment in Binance. At Binance's direction, the two billion-dollar purchase price was paid using—you guessed it—World Liberty's USD1 stablecoin.

By routing the transaction through the Trump family's proprietary token, the deal functioned as a massive injection of liquidity for World Liberty Financial. Binance left the two billion dollars deposited in the Trump family platform. This deposit generates tens of millions of dollars in annual interest for the Trumps and their business partners.

Now, the part of this that is raising eyebrows—and the ire of Democrats and some Republicans in Congress—is that it was only on the completion of the two billion-dollar deal with the company that CZ founded, a deal which dramatically augmented the Trump family’s crypto business, that Trump signed Zhao’s pardon. The DOJ has tried to characterize the pardon as simple justice, a correction of “overreach” by the Biden administration that was part of what the Trump regime depicts as “a war on crypto.”

But that argument isn’t flying. In separate instances in which Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was answering questions in Congress, he was grilled twice about the CZ pardon. Maryland Democratic Representative Glenn Ivey pressed Blanche on the pardon, pointing out that there was an obvious potential for quid pro quo involved. Blanche replied that the Constitution gave the president the power to pardon whomever he pleased. But Ivey pushed him again, asking if a pardon in exchange for direct payment wouldn’t violate bribery laws. Blanche admitted that it would, if that were the case. Ivey asked him if, as attorney general, he shouldn’t perhaps be investigating if that indeed was the case.

Blanche

In a later session, this time in the Senate last month, Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen again raked Blanche over the coals about Zhao’s suspicious pardon, specifically mentioning the two-billion-dollar deal that preceded it. In a heated argument, Blanche again said that Trump could pardon whomever he wanted. When Van Hollen questioned that statement, Blanche said unrestricted pardon power was a right granted to the president under the authority of the Constitution. Van Hollen said that while that might be true, the Constitution did not give the president the right to sell pardons for personal profit.  

Criticism is not confined to Democrats. Concerns have been raised by former Republican and conservative ethics officials with regard to Trump's shady crypto ventures and other questionable business arrangements. Many traditional conservatives who favor limited government also argue that public office should not be used for private enrichment. The issue, then, is not one of left versus right but one of proper democratic-republican government. In short, in a democratic republic, should public power serve the public interest, or should it serve private financial interests?

Whatever your response to that question might be, it is clear by now that the Trump regime is serving private interests almost exclusively, starting with those of the president, his family and his friends. And lately, Trump is making no bones about it. He has more than once recently said openly that he simply doesn’t care about anyone’s interests but those of the regime, going as far as to say publicly, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial interests. I don’t think about anyone.”

There is no precedent in US history for such vile and all-pervasive levels of corruption in the executive—including Trump’s latest attempt to create a 1.8-billion-dollar slush fund by playing both prosecutor and defendant in a suit he filed through the DOJ against the IRS, which he controls. He basically sued himself for ten billion dollars and then settled with himself out of court for 1.8 billion in tax-payer money. The DOJ has since said that it will no longer seek to create the slush fund—which would have ostensibly been used in part to pay compensation to the January Sixth Insurrection ex-convicts, who Trump himself pardoned. Putting that grift on hold is clearly in response to a federal court decision to investigate the maneuver as a possible fraud perpetrated by the Trump regime on the courts.

But the “settlement” slush fund was created under a written DOJ mandate, and no similar order has been drafted to rescind it, so Congress and American taxpayers only have Todd Blanche’s (dubious) word that the idea is dead in the water, and won’t crop up again once the furor has died down.

There are other pet projects of Trump's that appear stunningly improper but "more harmless" than the other sustained cases of corruption described here. But are they? For instance, that ballroom that nobody but Trump seems to want (the one for which he engaged in the horrifying and unauthorized destruction of the historic East Wing of the White House to build). Trump had originally said that the "fabulous ballroom" that he wanted to construct wouldn't cost the taxpayers a cent. That the four hundred million dollars required for the project would be paid for by private donors he already had lined up. But the watchdog group Public Citizen has uncovered the pay-to-play scheme behind those donations. The fact is that the twenty-seven corporate donors who signed on for the deal will be getting a total of some fifty billion dollars in government contracts in exchange for those "generous" donations.

Oh, and by the way, media reports suggest the ballroom, if it goes ahead, will end up costing the taxpayers as much as a billion dollars anyway. 

And then there's the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. Trump heard the word  "pool" and ran with it. Nobody, he claimed, knew more about pools than he did, since he'd included so many in his real estate projects. Never mind that those were swimming pools, not reflecting pools. The reflecting pool was apparently in real need of repair, but it would stand to reason that the job  should be done by a firm whose métier was monuments and the pools that reflect them, not some "pool guy".

From the ballroom to the reflecting pool...

Trump, however, said he could get his "pool guy" to do the job for a song. He originally indicated that it would cost between 1.5 and two million dollars. Then he handed a direct public contract to his "pool guy", thus avoiding pesky competitive bidding. And just like that, the price of the job has suddenly swelled to between 13.5 and fifteen million dollars. With that sort of "inflation", the potential for a little pocket change in the awarding process is far too apparent, and again, the taxpayers will foot the bill. 

There is ample evidence to believe that all of the shockingly flagrant corruption that I’ve mentioned above is no more than  the tip of the iceberg. I could easily write an entire book describing each and every known grift to which the Trump regime has given birth. But the data is far too vast to be framed within the confines of this essay. Suffice it to say that—from the presidential ballroom and Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool projects to Trump birthday celebration cage fights on the White House lawn—there is practically no presidential action taken by Donald Trump from which he does not personally benefit.
 The shop-worn MAGA arguments in defense of Trump, no matter how blatant his dishonesty becomes, have grown pathetic and ludicrous. One of the most naïve is the MAGA contention that, "Trump was already rich before he took office so it’s no surprise or proof of wrong-doing that he is growing richer."

But just being wealthy (and a great deal less wealthy) before taking office doesn’t address whether the office itself is generating additional wealth. On the contrary, all evidence points to Trump’s becoming much wealthier because of the presidency. Bottom line, Trump’s holding the presidency has substantially increased the value of his family's enterprises by the use of policy at the service of  new revenue streams that would not otherwise exist.

Another MAGA argument that requires an incredible level of naïveté and suspension of disbelief is the one that claims, "Nothing Trump has done has been proven illegal.” Ethics experts argue that there are gaps in federal ethics law—something which needs to be corrected in view of the unprecedented Trump Era—which depend on the correct behavior and ethical integrity of those who hold the country’s most powerful post. Ethics have not taken into account the rise of an extraordinary bad actor, a sociopath who is accustomed to doing everything he can get away with, and to never proceeding in accordance with the law, except where absolutely unavoidable. This is someone who has operated with an unprecedented level of ethical wrongdoing over the course of his entire business career, and who is a thirty-four count convicted felon—not counting all of the wrongdoing for which he has never been caught. There are, then, clearly loopholes that have permitted the president to get away with incredible wrongdoing—not the least of which is the get-out-jail-free card handed to him by the Supreme Court—but which has been deeply damaging to democratic accountability.

The other MAGA argument is that “the president’s assets are in a trust.” But as we have seen, a trust managed by his family members and in which he is still obviously active is not the same as a blind trust. Trump still knows what he owns and can benefit from increases in value, which can, in turn, be triggered by manipulating policy, executive actions and the law.

In all fairness, Donald Trump obviously didn’t personally invent the concept of political corruption. And some of his business dealings might clearly be legitimate. But Trump has, indeed, normalized a model of presidential power in which the boundaries between public office, family business, political influence, foreign investment, and personal enrichment have become blurred beyond all recognition.

As the Brennan Center has concluded:

"The scale of President Trump's self-enrichment is unprecedented."

And this is not an opinion or interpretation, but a cold hard fact for which there is a plethora of proof. The question is whether he will ever be held accountable, as long as he remains in office. And unless Democrats take both houses of Congress in the November midterms, the answer to that question remains dubious.

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