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Coffee Break: Tawdry Trump Gang Corruption Wave Cresting?

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POTUS Trump’s second regime is setting records for graft while establishing a tawdry, tacky aesthetic that is not going over with the public at large.

This is happening even as the progressive Democratic party continues to purge its corrupt “let’s just get back to brunch” establishment (new progressive wins in Colorado just last night), but the one thing they got right was warning everyone that Trump has absolutely no class and no shame.

Let’s start with the aesthetics, get into the gossip, pass through the corrupt pardons, and then tally up the biggest financial scores and scams.

Drowning in Kitsch

Like his alleged favorite author, Trump has a taste for starting illegal wars and displaying tacky trash:

Simplicius summed it up in his latest piece “The Kitschification of America.”

Key quotes:

For those unfamiliar with the term, kitsch represents a kind of cheap, low effort aesthetic that is often a mishmash of pop-culture sediment scraped lazily together and popularized in the 50s and 60s for the sake of consumerist memorabilia in the form of little gewgaws and cheap souvenir shop trinkets.

Not to get too pedantic or pretentiously sciolistic, but kitsch is in some ways the embodiment of a culture of excess, a culture that has reached its zenith, its peak flowering phase, and has begun to wilt, shedding its invasive spores haphazardly over the once-virgin garden. It is the exaltation of “memeified” cultural tokens to the point of parody, which had come long before the invention of internet ‘memes’. It purposely calls attention to itself, to become a kind of self-mockery in the way “irony” had become a modus vivendi under the thankfully-brief ‘hipster rule’ of the aughts. It resonates even in the chosen names: Golden Dome, Golden Age, Make America Great Again, a strange kind of spiritually inert alchemy in reverse—turning what was once real gold, into fool’s gold and other debased byproducts.

Considering these facts forces you into an understanding of how Trump’s aesthetic vision for America reimagines the nation as a kind of Potemkin village of kitsch memetics long unbound from the core cultural groundings that had actually once given these ideas life.

The reflecting pool and Freedom 250 state fair debacles are the most obvious expressions of the Trump aesthetic of attempted spectacle so choked by graft it only results in obvious, embarrassing failure.

A Reflecting Pool Even Narcissus Can’t Love

Let’s start with 4,000 words worth of pictures:

Joe Conason sums up the slimy situation elegantly for Alternet:

Having failed to consult scientists — whose wisdom he always disdains — the president made the pool’s problems worse by increasing the impact of climate change. Turning the pool dark heated it up and made it even more hospitable to algae growth.As the Cultural Landscape Foundation noted in a lawsuit filed to stop the painting of the pool, it is an “aesthetic injury” — like so many Trump projects — that will “fundamentally alter the existing harmony, solemnity and dignity of the current memorial landscape.

Although Trump and his minions have lied repeatedly about the Reflecting Pool, claiming it is crystal clear when everyone can gaze upon the murky results, he now needs someone to blame. Having botched this entire process with embarrassing stupidity and venality, he insists that the renovation scheme failed because of “vandalism.” Indeed, he has claimed that numerous vandals have been apprehended.

MS Now has reported that only one of the six arrests Trump claimed actually occurred.

The WaPo reports that the one person arrested is a former Olympic cyclist “David Hearn said he touched the pool’s detached liner but “didn’t destroy or break or peel anything.”

One of the contractors in question is also worth a look:

Things are going so great for the classy gentleman above that CNN reports he’s hired a crisis communications firm to help tell his story.

We should also join the throngs lonely curiosity seekers attending Trump’s Great American State Fair State Fair intended to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Is There Anybody Out There?

Fast Company titled their piece “The unbearable emptiness of the Great American State Fair” and subtitled it “A celebration in the nation’s capital looks more like a liminal space.”

The article is mostly quotes from social media, so let’s close this pathetic section with more pics, this time from TMZ:

Now let’s get back to that notorious Truth social account and the eyebrow-raisingly attractive young woman reported to be behind it.

Eva Braun Much?

Gossip like this is best served with video, let’s get salacious, y’all.

Daily Beast has some allegedly Freudian deets (or what they call “The Twisted Truth”) for those in a hurry or limited to text:

The brother of White House aide Natalie Harp claims that her “infatuation” with President Donald Trump stems from her difficult relationship with their father.
…
“While much of the media has focused on questioning whether her relationship is something scandalous, that is not where my mind goes personally. Maybe it is because I just can’t imagine something like that, but to me this is 100 percent an infatuation based on an unfortunate shared ideology of U.S. exceptionalism,” Preston told the Daily Beast.

As much as Trump’s lecherous buffoonery might be great for clicks, his policies and the package they’re wrapped aren’t popular with the American people.

With Polls Like This Trump Might Lose the GOP Senate Majority

The NYT/Siena Polls have the numbers for those who still believe these things reflect consensus reality:

Republicans are hampered by the unpopularity of President Trump and his diminished standing on the economy, while most of the Democratic candidates are so far running ahead of their party’s own struggling brand, the polls show.
…
In the polls, the average of the Senate races in those six states was a tie, with 47 percent for both Republicans and Democrats. The shift shows how far the political environment has tilted in the Democrats’ direction ahead of the midterm elections.
…
Voters across all six battlegrounds were thoroughly frustrated by rising prices — and many blamed Mr. Trump. Only 36 percent of voters approved of his handling of cost-of-living issues, including an abysmal 24 percent among independent voters.

Now that we’ve had some titillating fun and maybe raised some hopes, lets dive deep into the muck, because that’s where the money Trump and his gang are making is.

The Very Big Picture: Yo, Trump Is Banking, Fool!

The NYT sums it up, and Trump’s accomplishment as King Grifter is staggering. In fact one has to hope he’s going to be the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) when it comes to Presidential corruption. He has certainly blown past any predecessor:

Never before in American history has there been anything like Donald J. Trump…

Overall, Mr. Trump’s revenue in 2025 jumped to at least $2.2 billion, compared with a minimum of $622 million in 2024 before he returned to office.

Let’s get into some of the specific scores, they’re pretty sweet, if you’re criminally minded.

Savvy Stock Trader

Sludge details some incredible Trump trade timing:

The day before President Trump announced a 90-day pause on his sweeping tariffs, sending markets exploding higher, his investment accounts quietly purchased hundreds of stocks near the market low…

Trump’s accounts were actively trading stocks throughout 2025 while he was making policy decisions that moved markets, and the public had no idea.

On April 8, 2025, the day before Trump announced the tariff pause, the disclosure shows 327 individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million, one of the largest single-day stock buying sprees disclosed in the filing. The purchases included Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and Alphabet, each valued as much as $250,000, along with scores of other companies. The S&P 500 jumped nearly 10% the following day when Trump announced the pause, one of the largest single-day gains in the index’s history.

AI isn’t the only “innovative” types of finance Trump has profited from.

Crypto Been Berry Berry Good to the Trumps

The New York Times found much to make hay with in the POTUS’ 2025 mandatory financial disclosure and focused on his crypto windfalls:

President Trump reaped a stunning windfall in his first year back in the White House, including about $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses…

All told, the president pulled in at least $2.2 billion, a figure that includes other parts of his vast holdings, such as his real estate assets. That compares to a minimum of $622 million his enterprises pulled in for all of 2024, before he returned to the presidency.

One of his biggest hauls in 2025 came when an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates bought nearly half of the Trump family’s main crypto company, World Liberty Financial, a transaction that blurred the line between foreign policy and private enterprise.
…
The president’s family business, the Trump Organization, has also capitalized on Mr. Trump’s popularity in certain parts of the world, licensing the Trump name to properties in countries that are crucial to U.S. foreign policy interests, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Those two deals alone generated more than $14 million for Mr. Trump last year, the filing shows.

Note the flagrant violations of the Emoluments Clause bolded above.

Reuters dived into how the Trump crypto profits were scored:

The $TRUMP meme coin is one of four Trump family crypto projects that have turned into a financial jackpot for the Trumps and a very bad bet for buyers…

While they vary in size and structure, each of these ventures has followed the same playbook. The Trumps risked little up front. Trump family members – notably, the president’s oldest sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. – hyped the venture. The Trumps raked in money as investors piled in. And those buyers lost big when, for various reasons, the prices of their Trump-related crypto assets later tanked.

…the Trump family has used this template to generate at least $2.3 billion in profit from investors since Trump retook the presidency. On the other side of that cash bonanza for America’s first family: the more than a million investors whose net losses totaled $2.3 billion at the end of April…

They also had a chart:

Not sure who couldn’t have seen that one coming, but Voidzilla (aka Coffeezilla) tried to warn the gullible a year ago.

And to put the size of the score into context:

But the Trump gang isn’t a one trick pony, although they are serial violators of the Emoluments Clause.

C’mon Don, Jr. & Eric Let’s All Go to Kazahkstan!

Kazahkstan may be a fairly remote and foreign country, but that hasn’t stopped the Trump family from making themselves right at home, per the NYT:

When Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Kazakhstan’s president at the St. Regis Hotel last September in New York, President Trump jumped in by phone as the men sealed a deal on a top priority for Washington.

During the call, Mr. Trump and his team won an agreement from the Kazakh leader to give a little-known American company access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten, a metal that the United States desperately needs for the production of missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips and other critical goods.

Ahead of the deal, the Trump administration approved preliminary applications for as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing for the American company, now called Kaz Resources, which plans to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan.

It was not only Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick who saw an opportunity.

Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history.

Within weeks of the St. Regis negotiations, investors with a firm called Dominari Securities, which is housed at Trump Tower in New York and partly owned by the president’s two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, joined with other partners to take a 20 percent stake in a corporate entity related to the Kazakhstan project.

Around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment company controlled by Mr. Lutnick’s family and overseen by his sons Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, helped one of the lead investors working with Dominari on the Kazakh deal raise $210 million in new capital for a related entity. Such rounds of fund-raising typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees.

Now, let’s take our international tour with the Trump family, to Albania.

Off to Albania With Jared and Ivanka

Mother Jones has a summary of another Trump family caper that may or may not violate the Emoluments Clause, but it’s endangered the Albanian government.

The AP zeroes in on how the protests now threaten the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

In an interview with U.S. podcaster David Senra, Ivanka Trump said they discovered the site by accident.

“We were on a friend’s boat, and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that’s how we found it,” she said. “We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated.”

The AP also profiles three of the leaders of the “Flamingo Revolution”, readers with time to pore over it (and those close to the scene) are encouraged to chime in with insights as to whether or not the whole thing is yet another CIA-style Gene Sharp inspired color revolution or something more organic.

Before we scrape Jared off the soles of our waders, Casey Michel’s in-depth profile for Mother Jones on Mr. Kushner and his various scams is highly recommended.

As is this TruthOut piece on Kushner’s diplomatic double dipping.

Pardon me for the pun, but there’s one more topic to survey before this epic is over.

Pardons Pardons Everywhere and Not a Crook in the Clink

Trump has also aggressively monetized his presidential pardon powers. It was reported last year by the NYT, Bloomberg, and the WSJ that $1 million can allegedly buy a pardon from POTUS Trump.

This might (or might not) explain some of his most random-seeming pardons of celebrity rappers and Obama-influenced wannabe new media titans or it may not. Maybe he’s a Lil’ Wayne fan and a big Ozy.com reader. Who knows.

Regardless there is talk of a big 250 pardons for the 250th anniversary sale, per The Atlantic:

Advocates for the plan say that it would both underscore the president’s singular authority and reinforce an image he has long sought to cultivate: “Trump the merciful,” as a person close to the White House described it to us recently. Meanwhile, the prospect of a mass pardon has set off an international frenzy of lobbying and dealmaking, in which even slight proximity to the president can be monetized.

Five current and former administration officials and nine private-sector lawyers, lobbyists, and other individuals with ties to Trump’s orbit told us that the jockeying among those seeking clemency for past crimes has been intense. One criminal-defense attorney called it “a three-ring circus,” and a former administration official said that it was “batshit crazy.” One lobbyist told us that he had started turning off his cellphone as the ”“aggressive” requests from clients intensified in recent weeks. All spoke with us on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters with high stakes in the days ahead.

Most recently the fraud conviction of Guo Wengui, a purported Chinese exile and Steve Bannon associate, has speculation churning that the pardon pen is about to be exercised again.

From Mother Jones:

Guo—a supposed billionaire Chinese dissident who claimed to know secrets of corruption among China’s leaders—had amassed a large, ardent following among that country’s diaspora.

…
The new organization was wildly ambitious. Guo and (Steve) Bannon called it a “government-in-waiting,” prepared to step in and run China following what they claimed was the imminent collapse of ruling Chinese Communist Party, or CCP. At the same time, Guo was also seeking investments in GTV, an online streaming site he claimed would compete with companies like Amazon and TikTok, make investors rich, and air reporting that would fulfill his oft-stated goal: “Take down CCP.”

On the boat, Guo joined Bannon in reading a declaration of principles, told the former Donald Trump aide he loved him, and kissed him. Then Guo bit his own index finger and signed the declaration with his blood.
…
(Now) federal prosecutors are asking Judge Analisa Torres to sentence Guo to more than 30 years in prison for overseeing one of “this nation’s worst and most rampant frauds.” (In an order dated April 23, Torres delayed Guo’s sentencing, previously scheduled for Monday, until June 29.)

In 2024, a jury convicted Guo of stealing hundreds of millions from his followers. The New Federal State of China, the harbor ceremony, the nonprofits, and the media companies were all part of an elaborate con Guo used to “lock in” those supporters before hitting them up for investments, prosecutors said a sentencing memo last week.

Guo, who has been jailed as a perceived flight risk since his March 2023 arrest, continues to deny guilt. His lawyers argue, in their own sentencing memo, that his conviction was the result of the Chinese government’s “relentless and overwhelmingly powerful targeting of him.” The memo also suggests, without evidence, that Guo’s support for Trump, in particular his role in the publication of explicit pictures of Hunter Biden prior to the 2020 election, contributed to his prosecution.

Yes, this has Hunter Biden tweeting that he’s actually innocent, the laptop pictures were all fake and by all means subscribe to his Substack for updates.

Gotta take the bad with the awful, I guess.

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20 comments

  1. Tom Stone

    I keep in mind that the Dems threw the election in 2024 by first keeping Biden on the ticket when his dementia was so advanced he couldn’t remember which office he was running for and then shoving Harris to the front of the line.
    No convention…
    Harris was so unpopular in her home State that she dropped out of the race because she polled at less than 2% and when the votes were counted she ended up getting fewer black votes than any Democratic candidate except John Kerry.
    Add being a horrible candidate to running the most tone deaf campaign since Hillary Clinton and it becomes clear that Trump was the choice of the Donors.
    If the Dems had held a convention and chosen a Candidate who was not both clearly incompetent and despised by most Americans they would have whipped Trump like a redheaded stepchild.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      That would have entailed allowing the hated progressive wing to have a say in candidate selection — blocking Sanders was why they had to fix the 2016 and 2020 primaries.

      Reply ↓
      1. herman_sampson

        If memory serves, the only one who tried to primary Biden was Marianne Willianson, who was vocally against genocide, it my mind a more legitimate candidate than Harris, and on that basis alone, more electable.

        Reply ↓
          1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

            He got dissed and screwed so hard. American progressives owe Rep a collective apology

            Reply ↓
    2. Timbuktoo

      The fix was in. The Democrats were the Washington Generals to the Republicans Harlem Globetrotters. Both of these money grubbing parties should be destroyed.

      Reply ↓
  2. motorslug

    Great stuff again Nat!
    I wish I could find or remember who said it, but a writer compared trump with the Gilded Age/robber barons, this was even before 2016. I think it was around the time trump tower opened in NYC.
    Talking about the interior design aspects they basically said that, for example, aesthetically the Waldorf Astoria is a reflection of elegance and refinement to rival old European royalty. Whereas trump is a crass reflection of gaudy almost sickening self-indulgence very few would even gaze upon as wealth.

    Reply ↓
    1. motorslug

      BTW, being a gentleman, I won’t even comment on the similar aesthetic appeal of the Mar-a-Lago women;)

      Reply ↓
  3. Hepativore

    I think that Trump and company are of the opinion that they can largely do whatever they like whenever they like as there is nobody who is going to conceivably stop them as public opinion does not matter to those who hold office and has not for quite some time. This is because our political and financial elites largely consider themselves to have total legal and political immunity from the rules that govern the lower classes, and they sadly might be right.

    The Democrats will still hold on to the veneer of civility and harp about “decorum” while doing absolutely nothing about Trump and refusing to acknowledge the systemic problems in our leadership and the country itself if and when they control the presidency or Congress again. They will also continue to fight tooth and nail behind the scenes to make sure that the actual left- of the party as represented by Mamdani and pals is either utterly destroyed or become corrupted by the DNC machine like AOC has been. It has been evident for quite awhile that the Democratic Party leadership would rather go down with the sinking ship that is the DNC rather than let the true left have any say in setting the party’s direction or agenda.

    Reply ↓
  4. In Cold Chud

    According to the libslop cesspool known as Reddit, the eagle has 11 stars–not 13–to represent the 11 states of the Confederacy. While this is entirely plausible, other possible explanations include:

    -Trump is a huge fan of Spinal Tap, which he thinks is real.

    -Two of the original thirteen states at some point earned his sworn enmity. If this were the case, my guess would be that they’re both in New England. (“The cashier at the McDonald’s in Nashua treated me very badly. I was treated very unfairly by her. But then they lost the Old Man of the Mountain. They lost the Old Man of the Mountain, and now they’re nothing.”)

    -It didn’t occur to anyone involved in the process that the number of stars should mean anything.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      That last one is my bet — they used Nano Banana or some other AI slop machine to generate it OR Stephen Miller did it on purpose.

      Reply ↓
    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      Interestingly, this 2017 Univ of Georgia paper was withdrawn:

      Three pending lawsuits challenge President Trump’s practice of accepting payments and other benefits from foreign governments through his businesses as violative of the Foreign Emoluments Clause. They also allege that the President’s practice of accepting payments and benefits from state or federal governmental units violates the Domestic Emoluments Clause. These actions raise interesting questions about the meaning of two little-discussed provisions of the Constitution. But before reaching the merits the courts will first have to grapple with issues of justiciability – in particular, with the question whether plaintiffs have “standing” to bring their claims in federal court. This article explains why, under the Supreme Court’s Article III standing case law, the plaintiffs in the three pending actions do have standing to sue, and to demand most, if not all, of the relief that they seek.

      From 2021:

      The Federal–State Standing Gap: How to Enforce Federal Law in Federal Court Without Article III Standing
      Abstract
      You, too, can sue Donald Trump under the Emoluments Clause!

      Since Inauguration Day, several lawsuits have been filed against President Trump because of his refusal to divest certain assets. They assert that Trump’s business interests conflict with the Emoluments Clause of Article I. That arcane provision forbids certain federal officials from accepting any perquisite or gain from a foreign monarch or state. The suits contend, for example, that a foreign dignitary’s booking of a room at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. would constitute an unlawful emolument.

      Most commentators quickly threw cold water on the prospect of any plaintiff prevailing. The trouble, they argued, is that plaintiffs cannot demonstrate a concrete and particularized injury from any putative violation of the Emoluments Clause. In legalese, they lack Article III standing. This skepticism was vindicated in December 2017, when a federal court dismissed one of the lawsuits for lack of Article III standing.

      What no one has suggested is that plaintiffs do not need Article III standing to enforce the Emoluments Clause against Trump. Everyone assumes that these suits must live or die under federal standing doctrine. But, as we argue, Article III standing is essentially never a barrier to enforcing federal law. Indeed, plaintiffs may even win a merits ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court without ever possessing the elements of Article III standing.

      This Feb 2021 piece argues that congressional action is necessary:

      Amidst the turmoil that began 2021 — insurrection, impeachment, inauguration, and acquittal — some consequential Supreme Court news fell under the radar. In January, the justices dismissed two cases about then-President Trump’s alleged violations of the Emoluments Clauses, which are the Constitution’s guardrails against presidential corruption. In doing so, the Court forfeited a golden opportunity to clarify just what these mandates mean for future presidents. And its refusal to rule one way or another may inadvertently encourage another president to brazenly leverage his or her power for profit.

      Reply ↓
      1. vao

        So the answer seems to be “it is unclear” — a situation that will most probably tend to encourage that sort of behaviour, since a feeling of impunity will derive from the overly long duration it will take for the legal doctrine to settle (this has been going on since 2017!)

        Reply ↓
        1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

          It was Pelosi’s decision to impeach Trump initially only over the Ukraine BS rather than a broader corruption sweep. She personally loved taking foreign money herself, per Mother Jones:

          (Pelosi) directed the House committees overseeing the process to solely investigate matters under their jurisdiction that relate to Ukraine. The Sunday after her announcement, she huddled with House Democratic leadership to map out a messaging strategy that emphasized making a case around the president abusing his office when he pressured Zelensky to look into the Bidens—and nothing else.

          Reply ↓
  6. Victor Sciamarelli

    I guess Hillary Clinton was right after all. With the obvious grifting, corruption, lies, failed foreign policies, and mental instability, and on, if you’re still supporting Trump today, you must indeed be deplorable.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      At this point, yes she’s closer to right. It’s still never smart or ethical for a politician to blame or slander voters.

      Reply ↓
  7. Michael Fiorillo

    Early in his career, Trump jackhammered the famous Bonwit Teller relief sculptures when he tore the building down to build his eponymous tower, in spite of (and presumably to spite) preservationists imploring that they be saved. He then employed low-wage immigrant laborers for asbestos removal on the site (no doubt maintaining the highest standards of industrial hygiene).

    Nothing but class, baby, nothing but class.

    Reply ↓
  8. ThirtyOne

    Look at the bright side. Trump has established a new standard for presidential hopefuls to aspire to.

    Reply ↓

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