What Happens When Midterm Voters Meet Trump's Over-The-Top Corruption And The MAGA Plundering?

"Congress surrenders" by Nancy Ohanian

I doubt it surprises any DWT readers that Trump’s most successful business venture was the presidency. Before Trump there were no presidents who enriched themselves while serving as president— not even Warren Harding or Nixon. Some ex-presidents monetized their presidencies after they left office, like Reagan, Clinton and Obama. Trump is a unique case, an outlier of massive personal corruption. He’s the first president to treat the presidency as a revenue stream. Other presidents may have had financial interests, but they at least paid lip service to the idea that public service meant putting private profit aside. Trump flipped that norm on its head— and lined his pockets daily. And don’t forget, he wasn’t an especially successful businessman between the time he inherited his father’s fortune and becoming a reality TV star.

Today, there is virtually nothing he does that he doesn’t see through a prism of self-enrichment. Yesterday, David Graham, examined the parameters of Trump’s White House corruption. Noting David’s Frum’s declaration that “Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency— throw away the history books; discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past,” he wrote about how Trump sells pardons and how he sold himself to the crypto-cartel.

In fact, Señor TACO is “eager to create the impression that he is for sale. And for good reason: What’s bad for the integrity of American rule of law has been very good for Trump’s bottom line. After a career of high-profile mediocrity, punctuated by flamboyant failures, the selling of the presidency is the most successful business venture of his career.”

Business prowess is at the center of Trump’s renown and political appeal, but the impression that he is a titan of industry is more a creation of The Art of the Deal [which he didn’t write] and The Apprentice [which he didn’t create] than his actual CV. By the time he ran for president for the first time, he’d largely given up on the real-estate development  that made him famous, instead concentrating on licensing his name to products and buildings. That was mostly a concession to reality: At that point, Trump was struggling to find lenders because he’d stiffed so many banks.

Trump’s businesses declared bankruptcy six times, and although he has consistently defended these filings as savvy business moves, an even savvier business move is not needing to declare bankruptcy. Trump managed the impressive task of losing money as a casino owner. Although Atlantic City was in decline as a whole during Trump’s time there, a Temple University legal scholar found that Trump underperformed competitors: “His casinos were not the ‘best’ and not even average. They were the worst.”

The president’s lofty net worth was less a product of success than a product of coming into his father’s fortune. In 2021, Forbes calculated that he would have made more money if he’d just put his inheritance in an S&P 500 index fund. (And the money that he did make might have been less if he hadn’t been committing extensive fraud.)

During Trump’s first term, he began finding ways to profit from the presidency. He charged the Secret Service big bills to stay at his properties while protecting him (even though son Eric claimed that they stayed at a discount), and had officials like Vice President Mike Pence unnecessarily rack up charges there too. Moreover, the hotel he owned near the White House became an essential location for any officials looking to influence him. There was, it seemed, a benefit to being seen—  and probably more importantly, to spending some dosh. Although this seemed like a clear violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, attempts to enforce it were stymied in court.

But in his second term, Trump has far surpassed these relatively petty hustles. The profits started rolling in even before he won reelection, as speculators poured cash into Trump Media and Technology Group— a business with wretched numbers but high upside for anyone wishing to influence the president. Since November, the flow has increased. “Few if any legitimate investors entrusted their money to Trump’s businesses when he was out of office,” Frum noted, but now Middle Eastern governments, Chinese crypto investors and American corporations are all finding ways to get money into Trump-related businesses. The White House claims that because Trump’s sons run these companies, no conflict of interest exists, but experts have noted that Trump hasn’t really distanced himself meaningfully from his companies and he continues to profit from them.

And nearly everyone involved is winning. Trump is making out like a bandit— perhaps very much like a bandit— and people such as Paul Walczak are getting their pardons. (Notably, Trump seems quick to pardon people charged with either fraud or corrupt use of government positions— both offenses of which he has been accused.) Unfortunately, the losers are the American people: anyone who might want the government to support rule of law, discourage corruption, and operate as something other than a concierge desk for those wealthy enough to buy in.

When news emerged earlier this month of Trump’s plans to accept a $400 million airplane from the Qatari government, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Republican, dismissed any concerns about emoluments. “I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought,” he said. “I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?” This is either deeply cynical or painfully gullible. Trump’s entire career has been consumed by his quest for more money— this is a man who once cashed a 13-cent prank check from a Spy magazine correspondent— even if he hasn’t always been very good at it. Now that he’s found a reliable way to keep the cash rolling in, he’s not going to turn it down.

The Republicans are already trying to goose MAGA turnout by shouting from the rooftops that if the Democrats win the 2026 midterms they will impeach Trump. Most Democrats would rather not discuss it, although it’s very much what the Democratic base wants. It’s a familiar playbook— energize loyalists by framing Trump as under siege, leveraging his personal brand and polarizing appeal. The MAGA base eats this up, especially since Trump’s business ventures, from Trump Media to licensing deals, thrive on his political clout rather than traditional metrics of success. The midterms could become a referendum on Trump’s personal corruption versus his supporters’ belief in his outsider status. Democrats would need a disciplined message— focusing on rule of law and tangible economic issues— because some Democrats think that crying “impeachment” risks alienating so-called moderates if it’s seen as overreach. Meanwhile, Republicans will keep betting on Trump’s cult of personality to drive turnout, regardless of his financial controversies.

The midterms will determine whether Trump faces any institutional resistance at all. Republicans are defending their narrow House majority with a ruthless focus on gerrymandered districts, voter suppression and massive financial backing from the same oligarchs who profit off Trump’s chaos and corruption. Democrats, for all their flaws, at least maintain the basic premise that public office isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. But polling reveals a striking disconnect, showing that 45% of voters say “dishonest”—meaning nearly two-thirds acknowledge his dishonesty. Even though Trump has “historically bad poll numbers for a president through the first 100 days,” but the White House's 2026 strategy will still “run through Trump himself.” This suggests Republicans believe Trump's corruption is already “priced in” with voters. His supporters have rationalized it as either fake news, Washington swamp behavior, or “he's fighting for us so we don't care.” The key question is whether the scale of current corruption crosses new lines that even his base finds unacceptable.

Democrats face a strategic challenge: how do you make corruption stick when it hasn't before? Many Democratic voters are disappointed in their party but still motivated by an opportunity to rebuke Trump. The corruption angle will energize the Democratic base, but it risks looking like the same old whiny complaints to some swing voters. As Maine Senate candidate Jordan Wood told me this week, the more effective approach might be connecting corruption to kitchen table issues— showing how Trump's self-enrichment comes at taxpayers' expense while undermining government effectiveness in ways that affect ordinary Americans' lives.

But Trump’s grievance-based politics might actually benefit from being under attack, potentially flipping the usual midterm dynamics. Believe it or not, the corruption narrative could backfire if it reinforces Trump's deep state persecution frame. Alternatively, if the corruption becomes so brazen and economically damaging that it breaks through to non-political voters, it will accelerate the typical midterm backlash— if the Democrats exhibit the talent to make that message stick. The midterms may ultimately turn on whether Americans view Trump's corruption as a feature or a bug of his presidency— and whether Democrats can make that choice clear and consequential for voters' daily lives.