If America’s founders could see the second Trump presidency, they might admire the efficiency. After all, the country has finally solved the problem of slow, bureaucratic corruption. Why hide it in back rooms when it can be conducted in broad daylight, livestreamed, monetized, and branded. What once required envelopes, intermediaries, and plausible deniability has been upgraded into a seamless governing model where power governs, profit follows, and accountability never quite arrives.
Authoritarianism, we are told, is the central story. Strongman rhetoric, institutional intimidation, loyalty tests, and performative outrage dominate the headlines. All true, but those are merely the theatrics. The real innovation is economic. This administration has discovered that government need not merely rule. It can extract, monetize, and redistribute upward with remarkable speed.
The pivot on cryptocurrency deserves special recognition. Not long ago, Donald Trump called crypto a scam, which was one of the rare moments when his instincts aligned with basic financial reality. Then came enlightenment. Someone, somewhere, apparently explained that crypto is not a scam if you are running it, regulating it, and benefiting from it simultaneously. It is not fraud if it is freedom. It is not bribery if it is decentralized. It is not corruption if no one can trace it.
Thus was born the Trump family crypto empire, a patriotic blend of digital tokens, speculative frenzy, and monetized loyalty. Foreign investors, domestic speculators, and anonymous wallets could all participate. No disclosure. No oversight. No awkward questions. Money flows in, influence flows out, and everyone pretends this is innovation rather than extraction.
Naturally, enforcement would have complicated the vision, so enforcement was solved. A convicted crypto kingpin received a presidential pardon, reminding the financial world that the real regulatory risk is insufficient proximity to power. In the new order, compliance is optional, consequences are negotiable, and absolution is a matter of timing.
Meanwhile, the Treasury Department demonstrated its own flair for improvisation. A massive loan to Argentina appeared with the urgency of a national emergency and the transparency of a magician’s sleeve. Only later did observers notice that a private associate of senior officials had quietly brokered the deal and taken a cut. It was a useful reminder that foreign policy can be many things at once: strategic, diplomatic, and profitable.
At Homeland Security, innovation took the form of a nine figure contract awarded to close friends under the banner of national necessity. Competitive bidding is slow. Oversight is tedious. Friendship is efficient. The money moved quickly, the explanations lagged behind, and the public was reassured that everything was entirely appropriate, which is now the official phrase meaning do not ask further questions.
The Justice Department, for its part, embraced minimalism. Investigations involving senior figures were simplified by being closed. Evidence was streamlined by being ignored. Accountability was modernized by being postponed indefinitely. The rule of law remains intact, we are assured, just selectively applied, carefully timed, and strategically delayed.
International clemency elevated the practice to an art form. The pardon of a foreign leader convicted of serious crimes offered a powerful lesson in American diplomacy. Justice is flexible. Principles are portable. Redemption is transferable. It also raised a helpful question for aspiring autocrats worldwide: why invest in reform when investment in access is so much cheaper.
The handling of seized Venezuelan oil proceeds represents the administration’s most elegant achievement. Hundreds of millions of dollars, extracted from international sanctions enforcement, now sit safely beyond ordinary oversight in foreign accounts. Distance creates discretion. Complexity creates cover. Where money travels far enough, responsibility never catches up.
Each incident, standing alone, can be dismissed as misunderstanding, coincidence, or partisan hysteria. Together, they form a governing philosophy. Public office is an asset. Regulation is a nuisance. Institutions are tools. Government exists to rule, to reward, and to replenish itself.
This is not corruption as scandal. It is corruption as system. It is normalized, routinized, and explained away with remarkable confidence. Nothing illegal has been proven, nothing improper has been admitted, and nothing will change unless someone insists that it should.
Citizens are encouraged to relax. This is just how politics works now. Democracy, we are told, is noisy, messy, and occasionally lucrative. But history offers a simpler warning. Republics are not usually stolen in a single night. They are drained slowly, defended loudly, and surrendered quietly.
The only remaining question is whether Americans will continue to watch this performance as entertainment, or whether they will recognize it for what it is: not leadership, not governance, but the systematic looting of the republic, conducted in plain sight, with the expectation that no one is paying attention.
Van Abbott is a long-time resident of Alaska and California. He has held financial management positions in government and private organizations, and is now a full-time opinion writer. He served in the late nineteen-sixties in the Peace Corps as a teacher.
