Proving that a lying clock tells the truth twice a day, JD Vance recently quipped that politics have shifted so much that “if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story.” Vance was unwittingly acknowledging his own handiwork as he and his intellectually compromised boss flex Steve Bannon’s flood the zone strategy: throw crap on the wall, throw it often, throw it fast, until the American public is so overwhelmed they can’t keep up and turn away.
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It’s working. Eighteen months into this nightmare regime, as one act of corruption follows the next, Americans are turning away. One study found that 65% of Americans across political affiliation and age groups are consuming less news due to information overload and fatigue. It’s exactly what Trump wants.
As Trump awards billions in no-bid federal contracts to his political donors, from the no bid multi-million dollar Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool debacle, to hundreds of millions to build a ballroom, to multi-billion dollar no bid contracts to rape and pillage our national parks, his political donors are reaping windfall rewards. His sons aren’t doing too poorly either. After Republicans blew a gasket over Hunter Biden serving on a corporate board, the Trump boys have cashed in big time with an Air Force contract to buy interceptor drones from Don Jr. and Eric (who have no experience in the drones business), Don Jr.’s ownership stake in a mining project that just secured $1.6 billion in government backing (ditto), and a $620 million Pentagon loan for Don Jr.’s venture capital firm. Trump’s crypto scams have caused investors to lose up to $3.8 billion while the Trumps made up to $2.3 billion across the same crypto projects. Now Trump wants to personally profit from his own policy announcements, “selling” early internet access to his social media posts to facilitate insider trading.
Meanwhile, as wealthy individuals spend millions to secure presidential pardons, and Trump’s scheme to establish a separate $1.8 billion slush fund for his supporters refuses to die, the Department of the Treasury just announced that it is destroying its anti-corruption database, the federal registry of shell-company ownership. It plans to destroy all the data it has already collected, to prevent future administrations, future FBIs, future DOJs, and future local police departments from ever seeing the incriminating data. An SNL skit writer could not write this stuff as fast as it’s happening.
Money is one thing, national parks are another
One piece of corruption that appears to be getting through to the public involves the Big Bend National Park in Texas. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security fast-tracked multibillion-dollar, no bid contracts to erect a nonsensical steel barrier wall along parts of the Rio Grande River where cliffs and canyons already rise nearly 1,500 feet and serve as natural barriers to illegal crossings. The administration waivied standard financial transparency, competitive bidding laws, and environmental reviews to award massive no-bid contracts to long time Trump and republican donors.
Robbing the American taxpayers of billions most people can’t comprehend is one thing, robbing them of their national parks is another. Even Republicans in Texas are pushing back. Calling it a “crazed road-building spree,” and an unnecessary “boondoggle,” given the region’s “God-given barriers,” a bipartisan furor has erupted over Trump’s “monument to corruption” that “no Texan asked for.”
The nonsensical project will cause permanent damage to the environment for no purpose other than rewarding Trump’s corporate donors. It will alter the flow of the Rio Grande River, cutting off flood plain distribution, wreck the feeding routes and habitats of already threatened black bears, Texas Big Horn sheep, and mountain lions, and ruin the business of hundreds of local tourism companies. Now the administration is saying contractors may blast through part of Mariscal Mountain, a 4000 foot limestone ridge in Big Bend. The Center for Biological Diversity said the “extensive dynamite blasting,” would be “the most heinous attack on an American national park” in generations.
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Trump’s destruction for profit is straight out of an authoritarian playbook
When I discussed the issue on Thom Hartmann’s show earlier this week (it’s about 10 minutes, you can watch it here), Hartmann characteristically pulled the camera back to widen the perspective. He noted that what Trump is doing— spending billions for unnecessary projects just to line the pockets of his donors—was the same modus operandi of other authoritarian regimes like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin. As Hartmann put it, this is how Orban and Putin “cement loyalty with their oligarchs.” It’s also why Republicans in Congress won’t quit Trump: he’s corrupt, but the spoils spill over into their donors’ hands as well.
In Russia, when communism fell, Russian oligarchs (“apparatchiks”) divvied up Russia’s industry and national resources. As I recounted in early 2025, in I did business in Russia. Trump is importing KGB thuggery, I experienced Russian thuggery first hand. Before I became a 1st A trial lawyer, I was corporate. I was general counsel to a Chicago beverage maker, negotiating contracts and foreign licensing agreements. My client’s biggest customer was Russian, and they tried to misappropriate (eg, steal) my client’s world famous trademark. When I was in Moscow to try to resolve the matter, two things happened: The government representative from what is now called Rospatent (Russia’s Patent and Trademark Bureau) said, point blank and on the record, that my client was at a disadvantage because of U.S. legal prohibitions against bribing government officials. We were already spending millions on the litigation, and it was quite obvious that my adversary had already greased many palms.
The other thing that happened was worse. An American businessman staying in my hotel was murdered, gunned down as he left the building. The LA Times reported that Paul Tatum helped develop the Radisson-Slavjanskaya Hotel into one of the first Western-style hotels in Moscow. Just before he was killed, Tatum said he was in Moscow to “defend his share in the hotel against unscrupulous executives, the Chechen Mafia, and a Russian business culture that wouldn’t play fair.”
That was an understatement. Tatum, according to reports, noted correctly that murder is “a corporate strategy in Moscow.” It’s true. I traveled with a bodyguard because hundreds of business executives are killed annually in Mafia-style hits throughout Russia.
This is the business culture our ‘president’ is nurturing; Russian-style corruption is his natural habitat. Make no mistake: without the rule of law, Americans will be no different from Russians. Trump’s well-rewarded oligarchs- uber rich CEOs who will do anything to – will slide quite easily into murders for hire.
Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.
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