Donald Trump arrived at the White House in 2017 with a checkered business history defined by failures and bankruptcies. His financial disclosure filed this week tells a starkly different story: he will leave office billions richer, having generated over $2 billion in his first year of his second term through Trump hotels, golf courses, cryptocurrency ventures, watches, cologne, and Bibles.
What distinguishes Trump's moneymaking operation is not that politicians have profited from office before, but the sheer brazenness with which he does it. And he is far from alone. Across the Western world, a new breed of leader has emerged, one willing to openly transform public service into a personal profit center while voters watch and, remarkably, often reward the behavior.
Nigel Farage has leveraged his Westminster seat to become the best-paid MP in Parliament, all while cultivating an image as champion of ordinary Britons. He flies on private jets supplied by a billionaire benefactor. In Australia, populist Pauline Hanson takes similar flights while repeatedly breaching rules requiring disclosure of such benefits. Both politicians have built fortunes from crypto ventures on the side.
"For decades, there was an implicit understanding that using public office for personal enrichment carried political and reputational risks," says Tutu Alicante, a human rights lawyer and kleptocracy expert. "That restraint appears to be eroding." Alicante, who was born in Equatorial Guinea, sees troubling parallels to countries where corruption has become aspirational, with young people idolizing flashy kleptocrats who drive Lamborghinis. "I worry we're beginning to see echoes of the same phenomenon in parts of the west," he says.
The transformation accelerated with cryptocurrency, which allows supporters to literally buy into a leader's enrichment scheme. Trump, who previously called crypto a scam, launched his own meme coin after returning to office. Many buyers lost money when prices collapsed, but Trump's disclosure shows he made $635 million from the venture alone.
His larger crypto play has drawn sharper scrutiny. A three-way transaction involving Trump's World Liberty Financial company, the authoritarian rulers of the United Arab Emirates, and a convicted crypto kingpin resulted in $500 million flowing to Trump's operation. In exchange, the UAE gained access to powerful American AI chips and the crypto kingpin received a presidential pardon. Trump has dismissed concerns, saying he made his money before becoming president and that his sons now run the business. The White House maintains he has no conflicts of interest.
Farage says there is no quid pro quo in his own crypto millions, earned through promotions of dubious schemes and a bitcoin venture led by former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. Yet he faces two investigations into his dealings, including questions about whether he improperly lobbied the Bank of England to drop a cryptocurrency plan that could have cost his financial backer Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto tycoon who has funded Farage's political movements with roughly two-thirds of their donations. Farage has given shifting explanations for a £5 million personal gift from Harborne, at one point saying it was not the public's business.
Transparency International's latest survey found the US, UK, Canada, and France recording their lowest corruption scores since 2012. Duncan Hames, head of policy at Transparency International UK and a former Liberal Democrat MP, warns of "a growing risk of state capture through extreme wealth and advanced technologies by those intent on protecting their own interests instead of advancing the public good."
Yet large portions of the electorate appear unbothered. Historian Anne Applebaum, who has studied kleptocratic systems in Russia and former Soviet states, explains why. "Societies with long traditions of the rule of law have been transformed by tribal politics," she writes. Followers of corrupt leaders either lack information about the corruption or deliberately ignore it because they view their leaders as "one of us." If the leader is stealing, the thinking goes, then somehow it is "our" money being stolen.
Nationalist movements prove especially effective at generating this kind of loyalty. Trump and Farage grow visibly wealthier while stoking nativism. Hanson demands Australia become "monocultural" while displaying lavish perks from donors. Trump's wealth accumulation exceeds that of other Western grifters in scale, and his loyalists embedded throughout Congress, the justice department, and regulatory bodies have effectively neutralized institutions designed to enforce accountability.
Tom Keatinge of the Centre for Finance and Security at the Rusi thinktank posed the question many observers are now asking: "Could our system resist the kind of capture that the Trump administration has achieved in the States?"
Author James Rodriguez: "The stunning part isn't that Trump is making billions from the presidency, it's that voters seem to have decided this is acceptable. That's the real story, and it should terrify democrats everywhere."
Comments