View from the Left: Trump's corruption is metastasizing as Republicans feed his power
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Last week America learned of a massive pay-to-play scheme where Donald Trump's longtime lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen sold millions of dollars’ worth of White House access to international corporations for which he did little-to-no work. It represented more thView from the Left: Trump's corruption is metastasizing as Republicans feed his power
Last week America learned of a massive pay-to-play scheme where Donald Trump's longtime lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen sold millions of dollars’ worth of White House access to international corporations for which he did little-to-no work. It represented more than just the venal corruption of one man brazenly lining his pockets through his proximity to one of the most powerful men in the world—in fact, it was our first real insight into the systemic corruption that has already begun to overrun our government just over a year into Trump's presidency. But this week, Trump blew Cohen's Essential Consultants scheme out of the water with his own flagrant favoritism for countries that are doing him lavish favors to the tune of hundreds of millions—and perhaps even billions—of dollars. Trump's head-scratching new “China first” policy announcement coincidentally came after the Chinese government agreed to drop a cool $500 million on a real estate development in Indonesia in which Trump's family business has a big stake. After weeks of pushing his get-tough-on-China trade policy, Trump suddenly fretted over Chinese telecom giant ZTE ceasing operations. «Too many jobs in China lost,» he declared, instructing his Commerce Department to review the sanctions it had slapped on ZTE several weeks earlier for being a bad global actor. Six U.S. intelligence chiefs have warned ZTE is a national security risk and last month the Department of Defense yanked ZTE phones off the shelves of U.S. military bases. But sure, let's make sure they're open for business to U.S. consumers. And then there's the curious case of Qatar which, despite hosting a mission critical U.S. military base, suddenly fell out of favor last year with the Trump administration before mysteriously falling back in favor with it last month. The difference? Last year, Qatar representatives made the grave error of turning down Cohen's advances for an upfront $1 million consulting fee while also rebuffing Jared Kushner's push for a bail out on his family's disastrous billion-dollar purchase of Midtown Manhattan's 666 Fifth Avenue. But now Qatar appears poised to rescue the Kushners from the massive $1.4 billion mortgage coming due early next year. What a difference a bribe makes. In the wake of the Essential Consultants bombshell last week, any other White House would be doing PR triage—circumspect about its every move. Not Trump—he dashed off that first ZTE tweet on Sunday as the country was still struggling to wrap its mind around what a cesspool he's overseeing in Washington. Read more