How Trump’s 2nd Term Will Take Corruption And Cronyism To New Extremes
All evidence indicates the incoming Trump Administration will be a kleptocracy rampant with self-enrichment, cronyism, and foreign influence-peddling.
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In April of this year, I wrote an article headlined “Trump Re-Election Risks American Kleptocracy.” I warned how Donald Trump's plans to surround himself with loyalists in his Cabinet and his planned Viktor Orbán-style purge of civil servants would create a recipe for self-enrichment, cronyism, and foreign influence-peddling.
Early moves from Trump’s Transition team indicate the incoming Trump Administration will, in fact, be kleptocratic and far more corrupt than Trump’s first term - and just to be clear, it was incredibly corrupt.
This doesn’t get talked about enough, but Trump’s first administration was a walking constitutional Emoluments Clause violation, with foreign governments seeking to fill Trump’s pockets to garner favorable treatment, no matter the foreign policy implications. Trump made $160 million from foreign countries while in office, according to a CREW investigation.
But this time, there are additional factors that will exacerbate the corruption. Trump is surrounding himself with a coalition of grifters, and there are more vehicles through which Trump can peddle influence and enrich himself and his allies.
Trump’s Transition team is taking on unlimited secret money, making it unclear who Trump could be seeking to give a return on their investment when in office. His Truth Social stock (Trump Media & Technology Group) and crypto project add more mechanisms through which Trump can unethically enrich himself.
Also, Trump’s picks for key leadership roles in his administration signal that he’ll green-light billions in new subsidies to allies like Elon Musk, who Trump also appointed to advise on regulations that impact Musk’s own companies. There’s also the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, which has essentially enabled bribery.
Although objectively terrible for the country, this classic form of corruption will provide an opening for Democrats to position themselves as anti-corruption reformers, communicating to Americans that Trump is focused on enriching himself and his cronies, not everyday Americans.
If Americans really voted for Trump because they think their needs are being ignored and others are getting the benefits they deserve, then their outrage needs to be properly directed. Not at undocumented immigrants, who pay billions in taxes and are being falsely scapegoated for America’s problems, but to people who are actually grifting them in the Republican Party.
Let’s dive in.
Trump’s Vehicles For Self-Enrichment Have Expanded
Let’s start with Trump’s Transition team, which is essentially set up as a “dark money nonprofit” and has taken secret, unlimited donor money, according to The New York Times. Trump has refused to sign an agreement with the General Services Administration, which would require the Trump Transition to limit donations to $5,000 and disclose the names of donors. This creates a situation where anyone, including foreign nationals, can pump undisclosed money into Trump’s Transition in an effort to exert influence over the incoming Trump Administration.
The transactional nature of Trump’s worldview makes him ripe for exploitation by those seeking to gain favorable government action from his incoming administration. In April of this year, Trump made a direct appeal to Big Oil executives asking for $1 billion, claiming it would be a “deal” for them to do so. Although Trump never publicly received $1 billion from the oil industry, he certainly received millions, and his plans to gut environmental regulations will give them a return on their investment.
Trump’s Truth Social stock, now a publicly traded company with no indications Trump will divest, is a new mechanism through which anyone can pump money directly into Trump’s pockets. Billionaires seeking to curry favor are also already investing in Trump’s new crypto project.
I know what you might be thinking: Wouldn’t it be textbook bribery if Trump took beneficial government action toward an entity that gave him a direct financial transaction? Well, the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling implicitly enabled bribery schemes by the president. What if a president used an official act to fulfill their end of a bribery scheme? According to the Supreme Court, they have immunity.
Trump won’t be the only one to be enriched by his administration.
The DOGE Commission & Government Cronyism
Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to oversee the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) - an organization so efficient it's named after a meme cryptocurrency, and it has two leaders. Of course, this isn’t an official government department at all; it’s more of an independent commission that serves as an advisory consultancy for the federal government. Its mission is to identify trillions in funding cuts and to erode the regulatory and administrative state.
The DOGE commission is essentially trying to target funding it deems wasteful, help identify federal employees for Trump to fire, and target regulations that the commission deems to be overly burdensome. When it comes to the funding side of this, they’ll basically try to call for the cutting of funds to compensate for the deficit spending in the tax cuts Trump plans to renew - which benefit the rich like Musk and Ramaswamy.
Whether it’s seeking to roll back regulations that impact SpaceX and Tesla or pharmaceutical companies like Ramaswamy’s, DOGE’s deregulation mission also provides ample opportunity for the self-enrichment of Trump allies and their corporations.
Of course, it’s important to note that this commission has no real power, and their recommendations will run into pushback from Congress, which constitutionally controls the federal government’s power of the purse. But judging by how Trump’s Project 2025 allies speak about the use of impoundment to refuse to issue congressionally approved funds, the executive branch under President Trump may try to unilaterally cut costs - although this is illegal under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
DOGE’s recommendations will likely only help billionaires like Elon Musk’s companies. Musk has grown increasingly frustrated with regulations and oversight from agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration and the Interior Department, according to The New York Times. In a stunning conflict of interest, Musk will now be making recommendations to target oversight measures and costs of a federal government that is both his customer and the regulator of his own companies. The Times writes:
“SpaceX, Tesla and other companies Mr. Musk created, such as Neuralink, which is manufacturing computer chips that are implanted in the brain, have also been targeted recently in at least 20 different investigations or lawsuits by federal agencies. That means Mr. Musk will somehow be watching over agencies that police his companies.”
In another move that could benefit Musk, Donald Trump appointed Brendan Carr to be Chairman of the FCC. Carr is backed by Elon Musk and has signaled opposition to an FCC move that revoked an $885 million grant to Musk’s satellite company Starlink. Carr could clear the way for that grant to be reissued.
Now look, Musk’s central claim that government can be inefficient and bureaucratic isn’t incorrect. The way government is constructed can lead to process paralysis and make it incredibly difficult to get things done. Government inefficiency in the digital age is a problem that Jennifer Pahlka, who worked in the Obama Administration as Deputy Chief Technology Officer, has written about extensively in her book. It’s a concern I share, but the solution isn’t an oligarchic self-enrichment scheme.
Trump’s Team Of Loyalists And Planned Purge
As I’ve written about extensively and warned about on MSNBC, Donald Trump plans to implement Schedule F, an executive order that reclassifies tens of thousands of federal workers as “at-will” employees, making them easier to fire for no cause. The plan, as outlined in Trump’s official Agenda 47 and Project 2025, is to immediately purge and replace as many as 54,000 civil servants with Republican loyalists.
Project 2025 spent the past year recruiting, training, and creating a database of thousands of those loyalists so they’ll be ready to begin implementing Trump’s extremist agenda. The Trump Transition team is already reportedly recruiting from that Project 2025 database. President Biden has taken steps to protect civil servants, but that action will likely only delay a potential Trump purge.
A civil service filled with Trump loyalists could prioritize government contracts with Trump allies and reorient the federal bureaucracy to benefit the far-right. Unfortunately, this isn’t an unfamiliar proposition.
In a December 2023 piece in The Atlantic, Franklin Foer expertly drew parallels between Trump’s plans for his second term and Hungary’s far-right authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s regime. Orbán replaced civil servants with loyalists, creating a kleptocratic “Mafia state.” This system was made to reward Orbán’s allies and punish his enemies. From Foer’s incisive article:
“When he finally won consolidated control of the government in 2010, he purged the nation’s civil service—a ‘bloodless liquidation’… In place of professionals and experts, Orbán installed party loyalists. This wasn’t a superficial shuffling of his cabinet, but a comprehensive remaking of the nation’s public sphere…
The party loyalists Orbán appointed became the capos of his crime family. Their job was to reward its friends (by sharing the spoils of government contracts) and to punish its vocal critics (with tax audits and denial of employment).”
It’s pretty clear Trump and his allies are emulating Orbán, and they’re not being subtle about it.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts explicitly claimed that Orbán is “the model” for “conservative statecraft.” Donald Trump has also repeatedly praised Orbán. In a January rally, Trump told a crowd of rallygoers: “There’s a great man, a great leader, in Europe. Viktor Orbán. He’s the prime minister of Hungary. He’s a very great leader, very strong man. Some people don’t like him because he’s too strong. It’s nice to have a strongman running your country.”
Trump primed his supporters for an Orbán-style administration, and now they might get one.
An Opportunity For Democrats
This is where Democrats have an opening. As I wrote in my last article, Americans voted under the false impression Republicans would lower prices, not that they would pursue an extremist, corrupt, self-serving agenda. These corrupt moves from Trump could backfire on the Trump Administration and Republicans more broadly.
This classic self-dealing style of corruption is much easier to understand for voters than broad and esoteric claims of threats to “democracy.” Trump’s authoritarianism forced Democrats into a position of defending institutions that many Americans have lost faith in. Now, in the opposition once more, Donald Trump and Republicans will have the liability of incumbency and will own what they unleash.
Democrats will need to make a lot of noise about Trump and his cronies’ corruption every step of the way and tie it to the broader Republican Party. They’ll need to point out the fact while Trump is pursuing his extreme agenda and enriching himself and his friends, his tariff policies are actually increasing prices for everyday Americans.
If Democrats move properly, they’ll sweep the midterms in 2026 or, at the very least, win the House back. Then, they can hold public hearings focused on this corruption with the central message that Trump and the GOP are only looking out for themselves.
The message should be simple: Americans voted for lower prices—not for Trump and his rich buddies to enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.
There is also, of course, a responsibility among those of us in the media to forcefully and honestly inform voters about this corruption.
Americans will soon see what happens when you re-elect a self-interested, emboldened con man into office. Let’s hope the lesson sticks this time.
