President Trump has given us his answer. No, it’s none of anybody’s business whether he is corrupt financially, politically or any other way. He has told us this at least twice.
First by saying that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III can be fired in any event, but until that blessed day arrives, the red line Mueller must not cross is looking into his finances. It appears Mueller has crossed that line, and we all hold our breath waiting to see in what way Trump retaliates. But let’s go back and ask why this should be a red line in the first place. Trump is known to have had extensive business dealings with Russia. Donald Trump Jr. has now-famously said, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” The other Trump error-apparent, Eric, has said, “We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” Oh!
With those two blatant acknowledgments staring you in the face, how on earth would you be able to assess any Trump collusion with Russia WITHOUT looking at his finances?
The other time Trump has told us it is none of our business whether he is corrupted is every single day that he does not release his tax returns. This standard disclosure by all recent major-party nominees was dodged by Trump all through the campaign, and after the campaign he immediately switched to saying that the voters declared that they didn’t care about his tax returns by electing him. Uh, no. Americans didn’t elect him; the majority of them voted for Hillary Clinton. The electoral college elected Trump. So there is no evidence that voters do not care what’s in his tax returns. But even putting this argument aside, Trump ran for president on a specific pledge to release his tax returns after the legendary “audit” of them was complete. That was his campaign promise that got him into office, however it was that he got in. If you are going to make an argument about what voters cared about, you could only conclude they voted for him to release his tax returns exactly as he promised to do.
And does all of this matter? Have you accepted your instructions to sit down and shut up about corruption? Trump certainly hopes so. As do the parade of Trump hires who also have gotten the administration message about corruption. As long as you are a Trump, or if not a Trump, manage to stay on Trump’s good side, anything goes. And the public has no right to complain, or know, or ask, or even care. New norms! The new normal!
Trump likes the best deals. And the deal he thinks he struck with America is that we don’t get to know whether he is literally corrupted or not. Does anybody remember agreeing to that?