Corruption

The Swamp King

Plus: The internet nearly crashed, the White House keeps threatening media outlets for doing their jobs, and more...

Eric Boehm | 10.22.2026 9:30 AM

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President Donald Trump and Alina Habba, his former personal defense attorney, at the White House in 2025. (Bonnie Cash - Pool via CNP / MEGA / Newscom/RSSIL/Newscom)

An uncanny strength of the second Trump administration has been its ability to be involved in so many scandals that no single one seems to become a dominant story.

Take the most recent allegations about Alina Habba, Trump's former personal defense attorney, who recently landed a plush gig working for Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan banker. Habba will get $50 million over five years to do unspecified work for a company that barely exists, according to The New York Times, while Herrera got a presidential pardon for a 2025 campaign finance charge.

That's just a typical day for the current White House, where the mingling of personal and public business has become routine. Some days, the story is President Donald Trump trying to help himself to taxpayer funds by suing the government he runs, or shipping billions of taxpayer dollars to a foreign mining company partially owned by his sons. Other times, it is Trump selling political influence in the form of digital coins, or his appointees getting caught in naked pay-to-play schemes. If you have a hard time keeping track of it all, I get it. The corruption is so deep and wide that focusing on any singular item becomes difficult.

But that constellation of corruption might finally be breaking through to voters ahead of next month's midterm elections.

The Reason Roundup Newsletter by Liz Wolfe Liz and Reason help you make sense of the day's news every morning.

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A recent Fox News poll found that "government corruption" was the top issue for voters, ranking ahead of inflation and gas prices. Conservative commentators are taking notice.

"What they're saying is, 'Look, we're tired of you getting rich and us getting poor,'" former White House........

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