In his first term, Donald Trump appeared to be gunning for the title of most corrupt president in U.S. history. But after taking advantage of four years on the sidelines to ruminate about how to do better, he’s blown all competition completely out of the water in the nine months since retaking the Oval Office.

Trump set off a media firestorm in 2017 by breaking from tradition and not placing his assets in a blind trust, instead choosing to entrust them to his children. The conflicts of interest invited by this farce were met with lawsuits, and #Resistance activists spoke about the emoluments clause of the Constitution as though they were constitutional law professors. Some reporting called this a “halfway blind” trust, which is sort of like a halfway-cooked chicken in that, for practical purposes, it’s a nonstarter. But after Trump left office in 2021, the Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuits, and Merrick Garland, Biden’s spineless attorney general, slow-rolled any investigations into the former president.

Faced with few consequences for this first round of graft, Trump and company have flouted even the appearance of adhering to ethical guidelines since his reelection in November. The presidential transition process was delayed by the Trump campaign not filing internal ethics guidance for the transition team, and the inauguration fund’s coffers were filled with many millions of dollars from donors eager to get on the president’s good side. That panhandling set the tone for the administration.

In October, a Trump benefactor gave $130 million to stave off what would have been a major political liability and cover the paychecks for service members during the government shutdown. The office space Eleanor Roosevelt once occupied has been unceremoniously bulldozed to make way for a gargantuan ballroom, also being funded by corporate “donations” from the likes of BlackRock, Booz Allen Hamilton, and tech giants like Apple and Amazon. The sticker price of the project has soared from $200 million to $350 million. To add insult to injury, the donors will likely write off their bribes to the latest Trump event venue as charitable contributions, as economist Dean Baker

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