Every Day of the Trump Presidency Is a Hellish Game of Ethics Whac-A-Mole

Since the inauguration, Trump Hotels have drawn gobs of lobbyist cash, both foreign and domestic, and the Trump Organization is considering opening a second hotel in Washington. During the same time period, the Chinese government has approved at least five trademarks for Ivanka Trump, though both parties claim everything is on the up-and-up. Three of those approvals were granted after Ivanka Trump and Kushner dined with Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Where were they dining? At Mar-a-Lago, of course!)

This is the Whac-A-Mole problem of the Trump presidency. There are so many bad things going on at once—so many minor corruptions and shady deals and strings that if tugged will surely lead to more evidence of self-dealing—that it’s impossible to concentrate on one at a time.

The flagrant, prima facie corruption of the Trump administration is so transparent and so all-encompassing that, perversely, it’s impossible to get people to care about it. The most pressing threat to our democratic norms isn’t Russia’s meddling in the election, it’s the endless stream of details of political corruption becoming white noise, proving each day that our system isn’t equipped to deal with officials who cannot be shamed or embarrassed into voluntarily avoiding the appearance of impropriety.

 

Look, here’s a piece in the New York Times on Jared Kushner’s financial ties to an Israeli mogul whose billionaire uncle is under investigation for bribery and money laundering. If reporters whose jobs are to follow this stuff can’t keep up, how are citizens supposed to?