Just about four years ago, on Capitol Hill, I saw an anti-Trump protest marching up Independence Avenue. One sign, held by a middle-aged white woman, featured a map outline of D.C., Montgomery County, and Northern Virginia and blared, “Don’t Drain My Swamp.”
Well, congratulations. President Trump didn’t.
In pardoning convicted former Reps. Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins, Trump showed that he approves of corruption and always has. We didn’t exactly need more evidence of this, as over the past four years Trump has quietly, but not terribly covertly, enriched himself and his friends.
Abuse of power and self-enrichment was exactly what Trump ran against. And he wasn’t wrong to condemn it. Hunter and Collins were hardly the first House members to use their position to line their own pockets, enrich their friends, or pay off mistresses and jilted wives. Trump’s “Drain the Swamp” message resonated because all of this was so endemic.
I’m not talking about the extraordinary cases, such as Dan Rostenskowsi and AbScam. I’m talking about the ordinary cases like Richard Burr and Nancy Pelosi and a certain other “Hunter” one must not name lest one gets branded a peddler of Russian disinformation.
The misdeeds of the Bidens, Pelosis, and Burrs in no way excuse Trumpian corruption, especially because Trump pretended he was running against self-dealing Washington corruption. The Trumpian corruption is probably worse because it’s simultaneously hypocritical and more blatant.
Start with Duncan Hunter. Hunter used his position as a congressman to pay for luxuries with campaign donor money, to cheat on his wife with lobbyists and staffers, and to pamper that same wife. His extramarital affairs with lobbyists and staffers were gross in their own rights, but there’s something extra venal about his blatant abuse of donor money.
There were people who believed in Hunter as a fiscal conservative and a pro-life champion. Those grassroots conservatives thought that they were spending a few hundred dollars to help their war-hero congressman battle Big Government or other evils. Instead, they were bankrolling his affairs and family vacations to Europe.
Hunter’s big corporate donors, such as the PACs of Northrop Grumman and AT&T, or lobbyists at various K Street firms, weren’t merely funding his campaign. They were, in effect, funding his lifestyle. Every glass of prosecco Hunter raised in Italy was funded by special interests affected by his work on the Armed Services Committee. That is, Hunter’s racket was similar to that of every other lawmaker who extracts cash from the entities he subsidizes and regulates, but with a more acute personal benefit.
When Collins was indicted and then convicted, I was the least surprised person in Washington. Collins’s main policy position was commitment to corporate welfare. He had a low rating from free-market groups because he consistently supported corporate welfare, such as the Export-Import Bank. He favored more spending, more taxes, more green-energy subsidies, and so on, in part, because bigger government made it easier for a congressman to enrich himself and his friends.
Back during the 2016 campaign, the first member of Congress to endorse Trump was Collins. The second was Hunter. Yes, this helps explain Trump’s pardons of them. But it also tells you about what Trump represented.
Hunter and Collins both thrived as corrupt politicians in the pre-Trump era. Trump represented a greater opportunity. They saw that “drain the swamp” really meant “I will punish my enemies and reward my friends.” And getting on Trump’s “friend” list was pretty easy: just praise him and never criticize him, no matter what he does.
One conceit of cynical Trump supporters is that Trump offended the Beltway establishment so much because he brought unwashed regular guys into Washington’s gala of self-enrichment. That’s a lie. Trump’s hangers-on and cronies weren’t outsiders. Collins was a millionaire who was deeply embedded in the regular K Street swamp. As I reported in 2017, he raised more money from the Beltway area than from his home state of New York.
Hunter was no outsider ruffian, either. His father was a (great conservative) member of Congress. Hunter was literally in bed with D.C. lobbyists. According to multiple sources, he used a lobbyist’s Capitol Hill townhouse for his liaisons. Paul Manafort, Corey Lewandowski, Rudy Giuliani, and so on were all firmly ensconced in this particular swamp at the confluence of the Anacostia and Potomac rivers.
Trump himself was no outsider. He bragged about his access to power and how he played the game for self-enrichment. Trump was closer to the Clintons than any other presidential candidate before or after Bill’s eight years.
The best claim Trumpian corruption has over regular D.C. corruption is that it operates on a smaller scale. A bunch of guys funding six-figure vacations or doing some securities fraud is a smaller heist than the Washington establishment’s rigging the whole system to create an impenetrable fortress of Big Government and Big Business in which the elites all get rich no matter what.
The problem with that case for Trump: He and his criminal friends weren’t storming the castle. They were always inside the castle. They were just more shameless than most.
