There’s Always a Price— A Strongman’s Shadow And Accomplices To Autocracy

Democracy Dies One Deal at a Time

Trump’s example has corrupted his administration, his political party and in more ways that are comfortable, the whole country. Just yesterday, Eric Katz reported that Trump’s crooked Budget Director, Russ Vought, has already billed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which he is working to defund, almost $5 million for his security detail. Trump’s party is crawling with opportunists who’ve taken his lead and turned public office into a racket. In Alabama, Tommy Tuberville has been quietly snapping up land near new federal infrastructure projects— projects he publicly opposed— through shell companies tied to his family. Former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem— now Secretary of Homeland Security— funneled millions in COVID relief funds to political donors through no-bid contracts, calling it “streamlining” while lining her friends’ pockets. Elise Stefanik scored a $1.2 million book advance from a publishing house tied to an oil baron, then tucked a favor into a defense bill that boosted his pipeline investments. Meanwhile, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders used the state plane like her personal Uber, jetting to out-of-state donor retreats under the guise of “official business.” J.D. Vance, who poses as a populist warrior, pocketed nearly $3 million from Big Pharma before championing a deregulation bill ghostwritten by Pfizer lobbyists. And in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton— barely surviving impeachment— was immediately back at it, using a shady “consulting” firm to collect payments from people under investigation by his office. As we’ve been saying for… well, forever, this isn’t just a conservative political party, it’s a protection racket. And that’s without Clarence Thomas and Sammy Alito, two of the most corrupt Supreme Court Justices in history, right up there with Samuel Chase, who was impeached.

Yesterday, Thom Hartmann accused Señor TACO of being the most dangerous criminal in U.S. history. And he wasn’t just talking about Nixon and Albert Fall… He’s including the likes of Jesse James, Al Capone, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, John Gotti… Hartmann wrote that “When historians look back on this era, they’ll inevitably ask how a nation built on principles of democracy, justice and equality allowed one man to commit such a broad range of crimes and abuses, and whether Trump is indeed the most dangerous criminal in American history.”

First, there’s the relentless financial corruption. Trump has long played fast and loose with the law when it came to his finances. In New York, his company was convicted of tax fraud and financial manipulation designed to deceive lenders and inflate his wealth. Trump University was shuttered after a $25 million fraud settlement, its “students” left feeling defrauded.

His charitable organization, the Trump Foundation, was dissolved following revelations that funds intended for charity were instead used to benefit Trump personally and politically, and to pay off Pam Bondi in Florida where he and Epstein were living (she was AG for almost a decade and never went after Epstein).

But Trump’s shady financial dealings didn’t begin or end with these public scandals. For decades, he was closely associated with New York’s organized crime families. Trump Tower itself was built using concrete provided by mob-linked companies.

Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor and attorney… was a notorious fixer and lawyer for mob figures such as Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano.

Trump’s casinos also regularly skirted the law, drawing scrutiny from federal investigators for potential money laundering linked to organized crime, and his former casino manager recently revealed to CNN that Trump and Jeffrey Epstein once even showed up together with underage girls in tow… Trump’s long relationship with Epstein further exposes his moral bankruptcy and possible criminality. The two were close associates and owned residences near each other in New York and Palm Beach, socializing together frequently.

Trump famously described Epstein as a “terrific guy” who enjoyed the company of beautiful women, some “on the younger side.” Multiple reports suggest Trump knew about Epstein’s exploitation of minors, yet Trump continued their association until public scandal made it inconvenient.

Then there are Trump’s questionable international relationships, with none more alarming than his mysterious affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s first administration consistently favored Russian interests, dismissing election interference findings from American intelligence agencies, undermining NATO, and, in his second administration even withholding military aid from Ukraine, thus benefiting Putin’s geopolitical ambitions.

While the full nature of Trump’s entanglement with Putin remains hidden, Trump’s obsequious behavior toward the Russian dictator raises serious questions about financial leverage or compromised loyalties. For example, the only major country in the world Trump chose not to impose tariffs on this year was Russia.

Trump’s disturbing Russian connections also include his 2016 campaign manager and close confidant, Paul Manafort, whose career was dedicated to installing pro-Putin autocrats and corrupt oligarchs across Eastern Europe, including Ukraine and Albania…

Manafort was convicted of multiple felonies, including tax and bank fraud, stemming from his shady dealings overseas, actions intimately connected with Putin’s broader geopolitical ambitions, for which Trump pardoned him.

Trump’s choice of Manafort to lead his 2016 campaign wasn’t coincidental; it signaled to Moscow an openness to influence, further raising troubling questions about Trump’s susceptibility to foreign manipulation and complicity in Manafort’s criminal schemes.

Trump’s election interference is equally alarming. It began with hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to manipulate public perception during the 2016 campaign, for which he was convicted of felony election manipulation charges in Manhattan last year.

More brazenly, Trump attempted to subvert democracy in Georgia when he lost the 2020 election by demanding of Georgia’s secretary of state, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”

His attempts to cling to power by any means necessary reached a terrifying crescendo with the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election, ultimately joined by over 100 Republican members of Congress. This led to a federal indictment, making him the first former president charged with seeking to destroy the very democratic system that put him into power.

Trump’s abuse of presidential authority is chillingly unprecedented. Robert Mueller’s investigation laid out multiple instances where Trump criminally obstructed justice, brazenly interfering with federal investigations. He solicited foreign interference from Ukraine in the 2020 election, a move that led to his first impeachment.

Trump’s presidency was also marred by repeated violations of the Emoluments Clause as he profited directly from foreign governments funneling money through his hotels and golf clubs. He pitched Teslas from the White House in flagrant violation of the Hatch Act (penalty: five years in prison). Even after leaving office in 2021, Trump illegally retained classified documents and obstructed federal efforts to retrieve them, leading to further federal charges.

One of the most grotesque and morally bankrupt chapters of the Trump presidency unfolded in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, when Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly made the political calculation that the virus was “only hitting blue states” and disproportionately killing Black Americans so it could be weaponized.

According to reporting at the time, Kushner convened a secretive White House task force of mostly male, white, preppy private-sector advisors who concluded that a robust federal response to minimize deaths would be politically disadvantageous. Their analysis was clear: Since it was primarily Democratic governors and Black communities suffering the early brunt of the pandemic (New York, New Jersey, Washington), Trump could politically benefit by blaming local leadership and withholding meaningful federal aid.

It was a cynical— and deadly— strategy to let the virus burn through the opposition’s voter base that ultimately led to an estimated 500,000 unnecessary American deaths and gave us as the second-most Covid-19 deaths per person in the world.

This approach not only explains the administration’s chaotic and insufficient response to testing, supplies, and coordination, it exposes a level of callous— morally, if not legally criminal— political calculus rarely seen in modern American history since the days of the Trail of Tears.

Leaked documents and internal communications at the time confirmed that federal resources were distributed unevenly, often favoring Republican-led states.

… This wasn’t just negligence: It was targeted neglect driven by racism and partisanship, carried out in the middle of a once-in-a-century public health emergency.

Beyond these abuses of power, Trump openly incited political violence. His rhetoric fueled vigilantism and violent confrontations at rallies.

Most infamously, on January 6, 2021, he incited an insurrection designed to halt the peaceful transition of power in a stunning betrayal without precedent in American history. He encouraged extremist and white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers, effectively endorsing domestic terrorism.

Right up until he took office and corruptly shut them down, investigations continued into potential wire fraud and misuse of funds from Trump’s “Save America” PAC, alongside scrutiny into financial irregularities involving his Truth Social platform.

Investigations into obstruction, witness intimidation, and potential bribery— now blocked as the Supreme Court has put him above the law, or shut down by his toadies— further compound his record of potential crimes.

Yet Trump’s ultimate crime goes beyond mere lawbreaking. He has methodically eroded democratic institutions, weaponized disinformation to undermine public trust, and attacked the traditionally nonpartisan independence of the judiciary, intelligence agencies, military, and law enforcement. His assaults on the press are right out of Putin’s playbook. Trump’s relentless assault on truth and democracy normalizes authoritarianism and political violence.

Thus, his most dangerous crime is not simply corruption or obstruction, nor even incitement of insurrection: It’s the deliberate attempted destruction of American democracy itself. This crime, far more profound than any individual act, threatens the survival of the republic itself.

If America is to survive as a free nation, we must confront the reality of Trump’s actions. He isn’t merely a criminal; he’s become the most dangerous criminal in American history precisely because his actions imperil the very foundations of our democracy.

Allowing such crimes to go unpunished risks setting a precedent that future would-be autocrats may follow, forever tarnishing the promise of American democracy. Once he’s out of power, our nation’s new mantra must become, “Never forget, never forgive, never again.”

David Pressman, former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, opined yesterday that “After years watching Hungary suffocate under the weight of its democratic collapse, I came to understand that the real danger of a strongman isn’t his tactics; it’s how others, especially those with power, justify their acquiescence… [T]ake the private sector. Since Orban became prime minister in 2010, the state has awarded billions in public contracts to his son-in-law and childhood friend, a former plumber named Lorinc Meszaros. What have Hungarian business leaders said? Nothing. Last year, when Orban’s close associates reportedly told a multinational retailer to give the prime minister’s family a cut of its business, did other multinational companies speak up? They did not.”

Hungarians with little power or privilege to lose would occasionally protest. But those with power remained reliably, pliably silent.

The American officials and academics who, like me, lived in Hungary during this period would often tell ourselves stories to explain this submissiveness: that docility is rooted in Hungary’s oppressive communist past, that its democracy was simply too young to withstand a strongman.

Then I returned to the United States, and what I’ve witnessed over these past months at home has exposed those stories as wishful thinking.

Here, too, powerful people are responding to authoritarian advances just as their Hungarian counterparts have— not with defiance, but with capitulation, convinced that they can maintain their independence and stay above the fray.

Major corporations whose logos were once plastered on Pride floats parading down Fifth Avenue now choose to remain on the sidelines. Institutions and professions that have long acted as bastions of critical inquiry, civilized contestation and government accountability have fallen silent.

Many law firms have opted to become instruments of a strongman rather than custodians of the rule of law. Former self-identified defenders of our democracy (back when it cost nothing to support democratic principles), including some who served in Democratic administrations, remain partners at captured institutions, earning millions while skirting their moral and civic responsibility to take a stand.

They cling to the illusion that they can preserve their independence and integrity while making deals with a strongman, just as Hungary’s elite believed they, too, could emerge unscathed.

… Believing you can outfox a fox is how you become its prey. And American elites, confident in their cleverness, have welcomed a fox into the henhouse.

… The lesson of Hungary is this: We cannot claim to care about democracy only when it costs nothing. President Trump, like Orban, no doubt believes that everyone can be bought. America’s elites are proving him right. There is a Hungarian phrase I heard often: “Van az a penz”— “There’s always a price.”

If we’re serious about defending democracy, it’s not enough to hold our government accountable in court. Lawsuits against the Trump administration are fine, but they seem almost anachronistic in this increasingly extralegal moment, and they do little to counter our own elites’ very Hungarian acquiescence.

The lesson from Hungary is not just about what strongmen do. As Pressman intimated, it’s about what the rest of us allow them to do. Trump didn’t corrupt American democracy alone. He was enabled by the cowardice of elites, the silence of institutions and the media and the greed of those who believed they could profit from proximity to power without being stained by it. They were wrong. We’ll all pay the price now.

If there’s any hope left, it lies not with those who’ve already sold their souls, but with the people willing to draw a line. Forget the Washington Post, but democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies in boardrooms, in law firms, in universities, and in the Senate cloakroom, where people who knew better said and did nothing. We still have a choice: to become Hungary… or to remember who we were supposed to be. Because once democracy slips fully into autocracy, coming back is very, very hard.