Donald Trump

Republicans Shrug at Trump's Outrageous Corruption

Any self-styled advocate for limited government should be furious about Trump's $1.8 billion slush fund, but few Republicans are willing to denounce it.

Steven Greenhut | 5.29.2026 10:30 AM

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In a normal, pre-Donald-Trump political world—you know, when pastors didn't pray around golden statues of political leaders and presidents didn't plaster their names and faces on public buildings, passports, and currency like in a tin-pot dictatorship—lawmakers could agree on some basic parameters of decent behavior. Democrats and Republicans may fight about everything, but they could unite in their opposition to self-dealing outrages.

That's no longer true. There is seemingly nothing Donald Trump or his family could do that would spark denunciations from the GOP. That's especially obvious after Trump exacted vengeance in Tuesday's primaries on the handful of Republicans who would sometimes raise concerns about the administration's threats to the Constitution. I still remember when sucking up was a loathsome character trait, but now it's a Republican art form.

In pre-Trump days, Republicans would laugh at Bagdad Bob-style third-world toadyism. Yet this week, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry went to Greenland as Trump's special envoy. "Greenland was not on a map,........

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