Have You Heard Anything About Señor TACO Being Corrupt— Very, Very, Very Corrupt?

There Is No Analogy With Any Previous Action By Any Past President

"Distraction" by Nancy Ohanian

Is George Stephanopoulous trying to get fired? Yesterday, he opened his show This Week with George Stephanopoulos, by pulling the scab off the Trump family crime syndicate’s unparalleled corruption— something on a level with the Bourbon court under Louis XV, the late Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and Ottoman kleptocrats under Abdul Hamid II. We’re talking about a devotion to graft historically mind-boggling, but with fewer powdered wigs and more golden toilets. According to Stephanopoulous, the Trump clan didn’t just bend the rules— they bulldozed them, monetizing the presidency like it was a Mar-a-Lago time-share scheme. Hotels, trademarks, foreign bank accounts, shadowy loans, campaign finance violations... a whole ecosystem of grift that would be almost comical if it weren’t dragging American democracy through the mud. This wasn’t some deep-dive segment tucked away in the back half of the show. This was the lead— and just a few months after ABC agreed to a $16 million payment to settle a defamation lawsuit against the same host! You could almost hear the ABC legal department wincing or rending their Kiton and Zegna suits in the background.

It’s hard to imagine Trump not suing ABC again. Filing lawsuits is his version of posting a bad Yelp review— petty, public,  performative. Even if Stephanopoulos says nothing more and stops name-checking the Trump family crime syndicate with the kind of receipts that would make a RICO prosecutor blush, a retaliatory lawsuit is guaranteed. It won’t be about winning, of course— it rarely is. Trump’s legal threats are about chilling criticism, intimidating the press, and squeezing one more round of fundraising emails out of his list of gullible loyalists.

And ABC knows the playbook. They’ll brace for the usual bluster: accusations of defamation, a Truth Social meltdown, angry press releases, maybe even a haphazardly filed suit alleging damage to his “brand”— as if the Trump name still carries the kind of prestige you can wear to court without getting laughed out of the building. But the real question is whether other mainstream media outlets will follow Stephanopoulos’ lead or retreat back into bothsidesism and euphemism. Because when one network dares to call it what it is— organized, dynastic crime on a scale that would make the Romanovs or Habsburgs jealous— it starts to make the others look like enablers. Or worse: cowards.

Stephanopoulous certainly knew what he would be getting into when he wrote this and read it off the Tele-Promtr:

This unprecedented money-making by a sitting president and his family summarized by critics like The Atlantic's David Frum. “Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency,” he writes. “Throw away the history books, discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past. There is no analogy with any previous action by any past president. The brazenness of the self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is American corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a post-colonial African dictatorship.”

That’s where we begin this week. Here’s Jay O’Brien.

Jay O’Brien, ABC News Correspondent (voice over): From billion dollar real estate deals in the Middle East, to a flashy crypto investor dinner and the pardoning of political supporters, concerns Donald Trump's second term is blurring the lines between the personal and political like never before, as Trump tapped into his presidential pardon powers this week… One trend seemed to emerge— the president absolving the convictions of at least a dozen people with political and financial connections to him, like last month's full and unconditional pardon of Florida nursing home executive Paul Walczak. Days after the 2024 election, Walczak pleaded guilty to withholding more than $10 million from his employees' paychecks and spending some of it on luxury items for himself.

According to the New York Times, Walczak’s mother has raised millions for Trump's campaigns and recently attended a $1 million a person fundraiser at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, though it's unclear what, if anything, she donated to attend. Less than a month after that fundraiser, Walczak had his pardon.

Former Pennsylvania Congressman Charlie Dent (R): These pardons are rather arbitrary and they just seem to be granted to people who are friends or supporters of the president.

O’Brien: That example and others concerning for former Congressman Charlie Dent, a Republican, and former chair of the House Ethics Committee.

O’Brien: Have you seen more questionable behavior in the second Trump administration or the first one?

Dent: Oh, the second, by far.

O’Brien: Even some of the president’s allies question the recent gift of a $400 million jet from Qatar to the U.S. Department of Defense for future use as Air Force One. The president is exempt from conflict of interest statutes, but legal experts and Democrats charge the plane could violate the Constitution’s prohibition on federal officials taking gifts from foreign countries.

Sen. Chris Murphy, (D-CT): Donald Trump’s acceptance of the luxury plane from a foreign monarch is basically the corruption that our founding fathers were seeking to prevent.

O’Brien: The White House says that's not the case because the plane is a gift between governments and will eventually be transferred to Trump's Presidential Library Foundation and would not be for his personal use after he leaves office.

And critics also pointing to another venture that didn't exist in the first Trump term, an emerging family cryptocurrency empire on full display at this gala last week, an event where the top 220 buyers of his personal crypto meme coin were given exclusive access to Trump, seen standing next to a podium with the seal of the president. The White House saying that Trump was only there in a personal capacity on his own time.

… O’Brien: The top 25 meme coin investors even getting a tour of the White House, like Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto mogul who was previously under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud. That probe halted by the Trump administration in February. Both Trump and the first lady have a meme coin.

Molly White, cryptocurrency researcher: I think the— the initial meme coin launch was some of the most anger I've seen out of the crypto world towards Donald Trump.

I think a lot of people in the crypto world view meme coins as a cash grab, which is, frankly, fairly accurate.

O’Brien: A company associated with the Trump family also owns a 60 percent stake in another crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. Trump's image is all over the firm's website, dubbing him “chief crypto advocate.” But in a statement to ABC News, World Liberty Financial claimed they are “a private company with no ties to the U.S. government.”

Once a crypto skeptic who said bitcoin seemed like a scam, Trump has now fully embraced digital currency.

Trumpanzee: I promise to make America the bitcoin superpower of the world, and the crypto capital of the planet, and we're taking historic action to deliver on that promise.

O’Brien: As the president has pushed for new policies that could directly impact his family's cryptocurrency ventures, the Justice Department has simultaneously rolled back crypto enforcement. On Thursday, the SEC dropped a two-year lawsuit against Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, which federal regulators accused of mishandling customer money. The case was dropped just weeks after that Trump-connected crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, announced a $2 billion deal where a United Arab Emirates-backed fund would use the firm's token to invest in Binance, a transaction that could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family.

But the concerns of critics go far beyond the world of crypto. From First Lady Melania Trump's reported record-breaking $40 million deal for her new Amazon documentary, to the multiple Trump family real estate deals in the Middle East, some of which closed in the weeks right before the president's swing through those very same countries. At least one prominent Trump ally expressing concern.

… Tucker Carlson: Well, it seems like corruption, yes.

O’Brien: That isn't turning some Trump family members away from their own ventures. ABC News has learned plans are now in the works for a new private club in Washington, D.C., co-founded by Donald Trump Jr. and Trump’s crypto czar, investor David Sachs. The club's official name, Executive Branch, intended as a haven for the Trump family and top MAGA allies.

David Sachs: We're creating something that didn't exist before in D.C., which, again, is younger, hipper Trump aligned Republican.

O’Brien: The initial price tag for membership, $500,000… George, the White House points to the fact that President Trump's assets are now in a trust managed by his children and that the entire Trump family are following all applicable ethics rules. A White House spokesperson telling us, quote, “everything President Trump does is to benefit the American people.”

Stephanopoulous: Let's talk about this more with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, now an ABC contributor, and New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos, author of the new book The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich. Welcome to you both. And, Chris, you know, we’ve talked about how in the second term on governing Trump is ungoverned. He's just full speed ahead. We're seeing the same thing on the business side.

Chris Christie: Well, sure. I mean, look, I think his view of this, George, is that the biggest mistake he made in the first term was not to go further, was to have any type of guard rails placed upon him by either the people he puts around him or by recognition of the law and norms and customs for the position of the presidency.

And so, you see it in a whole bunch of different ways that we just looked at, but you see it in pardons, in particular. You know, he's got categories of pardons. You know, you got the pay-to-play pardons. You've got the reality-TV-stars-turned-supporters. And then you've got the folks out there who are just victims of what he calls weaponization of the Justice Department.

But all of them have one thing in common, which is you've got to be whole hog for Donald Trump. Never before have we seen a president who makes it a gate to getting to a pardon to be a political supporter of his, a vocal current political supporter.

Stephanopoulous: He even suggested this week that he could look at possibly pardoning Sean “Diddy” Combs.

Christie: Right. While the trial is still going on and he has no idea what the nature and quality of the evidence is and what the jury verdict. What— if he’s— if he's found not guilty, he won't need a pardon. So, this is just about him trying to be more and more outrageous.

And also, by saying something about Diddy, he deflects from a guy like Paul Walczak, whose mother was a million-dollar donor/fundraiser for Trump. And this guy stole, George, million dollars in payroll taxes. The money that his employees give to him to pay their payroll taxes, he stole that money.

The other thing he's doing here, George, is eliminating white collar crime in America. He's saying it doesn't exist, anything goes.

Stephanopoulous: One of the things you write about in your book, Evan, is kind of the ostentation of the ultra-rich right now. And there's an analogy here to what we're seeing on the business side, it's all wide open, no attempt to cover it up in any way.

Evan Osnos: Yeah. Well, look, you just heard about the case of Paul Walczak a moment ago. It's worth remembering, the judge in that case actually said before sentencing him to prison, there is no get-out-of-jail-free card in America for the rich.

Well, I think the feeling that a lot of people are getting right now is that there is. You know, in a sense— and you see this in survey after survey— Americans say, I want to get rich. I want to prosper, but I feel now like I have to be a member of the club. I mean, maybe almost literally a member of the club set up by the president's son that you heard about in that report.

I think that the new economy of influence in Washington that Donald Trump has encouraged and generated is beyond even anything that people have seen. Even seasoned practitioners of lobbying in Washington will say this is— this is staggering.

Stephanopoulous: Well, you know, I, of course, lived through the Clinton White House and the whole controversy over whether or not people who contributed to the Clinton campaign could sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. Now, the Trump team is very open about, if you want to see the president, here's the price tag.

Osnos: Absolutely. Look, it is about as naked a transaction as you can get. Elon Musk, after all, the largest donor in the last campaign, he, too, used the Lincoln bedroom during his periods in Washington. I think it's worth noticing that the American public ultimately did not like the look of the world's richest man not only getting access to the Lincoln bedroom but being given essentially a department of government that he could use to fire tens of thousands of federal workers, including at agencies that do business with his own…

Stephanopoulous: But, Chris, the Trump team seems to be banking on the idea that the American people will not care about this.

Christie: Yeah. I mean, he’s— he is a numbing agent is what he is. He does so much that he just makes you numb. And so, like look in the political corruption area, George, and I think he's particularly focused on this to try to make people think any allegation of political corruption is partisan no matter what and therefore invalid. Whether it's the sheriff, Scott Jenkins, who was convicted of accepting $75,000 in bribes and he's now been pardoned, or whether you look at Devon Archer who clearly engaged in political corruption with the Bidens.

But that's a twofer for Trump. If you could have been a corrupt Biden person and then flip over to become a Trump supporter, that guy was convicted of $16 million in fraud, he's now been pardoned by Donald Trump. So, what he's doing is saying in the white-collar crime area, both in business and in politics, there are— there is no corruption. It's all weaponization. It's all depending upon which party you're in. And he's going to pardon all of these folks because they support him and it helps to obfuscate, George, what else is going on. I mean, what the hell could be wrong with taking $75,000 in bribes? To Trump, he would say, why did you take that little? That would be what would offend him.

Stephanopoulous: Forbes estimates that the president's net worth increased by at least a billion dollars. I think it was between his first and his second term. You talk about in your book how the whole billionaire class has seen that kind of rise over the last four years. And I guess the big question is, what does that mean for the country?

Osnos: Yes, it is an astonishing fact that the billionaires in this country between Donald Trump’s first inauguration and second inauguration doubled their net worth. And that is part of a larger trend. In 1990, there were 66 billionaires in this country. George, today there are more than 800, which might be a sign of prosperity except that the median hourly wage in this country in that same period has only gone up 20 percent.

Americans feel it. They know it. On some level, they can detect in their daily lives the fact that ten years ago there was no such thing as a centibillionaire. We didn't have people with $100 billion. Today there are 15 of them. We're on track to ultimately get to trillionaires. And the question is, and Donald Trump’s presidency has driven this home is, how do we make sure our law, our institutions, our culture can adapt.

And yet, even as Stephanopoulos dragged the festering rot back into the light, what’s almost more astonishing than the corruption itself is how completely the Republican Party has normalized it. Congressional Republicans— far from acting as a check on this runaway criminal enterprise— have served as enablers, bag men, and co-conspirators. They watched Trump treat the presidency like a mob front and responded not with oversight, but with aggressive obsequiousness. When the House had subpoena power, they buried investigations. When Trump was impeached— twice— the vast majority of GOP lawmakers chose party over country, acquittal over accountability. And now, as Trump is back in the White House, worse than ever, they’re not sounding the alarm; they’re celebrating with him. It’s collaboration even more than just complicity. They echoed his lies about the election. They tried to sabotage the January 6th Committee. They stood by as he funneled taxpayer money into his own properties and looked the other way while foreign governments paid tribute through hotel bills and sweetheart deals. If Trumpism is a crime syndicate, then the congressional GOP is its political wing— less a legislative body than a protection racket in matching flag pins.