People cheer as their pockets are picked. The only mystery is why

By James J Devine

There is a certain kind of swindle so bold, so brazen, that the average mark refuses to believe it is happening even as the thief’s hand is elbow-deep in his trousers. That is where the American voter sits today.

The Republican Party’s leadership has stood aside—nay, has pulled back the velvet rope—while Donald Trump raids the national treasury, the rule of law, and any pretense of honest government.

A great many ordinary citizens, the very ones being fleeced, applaud as though they were watching a parade.

Since his return to the White House, the president has pocketed no less than $1.4 billion. That is not an opinion. That is a conservative estimate from news organizations that have traced the money.

A billion with a B. Fourteen hundred million dollars. Equal to the annual income of more than sixteen thousand average American households.

What did he trade for it? Access. Influence. Pardons. The quiet bending of federal policy to favor a foreign government here, a tech giant there, a cryptocurrency scheme everywhere.

Consider the parade of the newly pardoned.

A man named Trevor Milton was convicted of defrauding investors out of $660 million. He gave nearly $2 million to Trump-aligned committees. The president wiped his slate clean.

That stolen $660 million will never be returned. The victims—everyday people who invested their savings—get nothing. Mr. Milton gets his freedom and keeps the money. That is not justice. That is a price list.

Consider Andrew Wiederhorn, the fast-food executive indicted for stealing $47 million from his own company.

The company donated $100,000 to the Trump inaugural fund. The prosecutor was fired by a White House official. The case was dropped. The executive went back to work. The company then went bankrupt, leaving workers and creditors holding the bag.

That is not law enforcement. That is a protection racket.

And the Republican leaders of Congress?

They hold hearings about Hunter Biden’s laptop. They rage about transgender athletes. They clutch their pearls over a few thousand dollars of foreign influence from a decade ago.

But when the sitting president accepts a $400 million jet from Qatar—a gift he plans to keep and display like a trophy—they study their shoes. When a foreign government buys $2 billion in Trump family cryptocurrency and suddenly gains access to advanced American chips, the GOP’s outrage machine goes silent as a tomb.

In the case of New Jersey’s Congressman Tom Kean Jr, the missing Republican lawmaker, GOP representation disappeared completely.

The absurdity is not that Trump is corrupt.

The absurdity is that millions of Americans look at this spectacle and conclude that the problem is the people pointing at it.

They have convinced themselves that a man who lies about his own wealth, who sells pardons like hot dogs at a county fair, who treats the Oval Office as a cash register—that this man is fighting for them.

For the factory worker in Ohio. For the waitress in Florida. For the farmer in Iowa. For the abandoned families in New Jersey.

Let us be plain. That factory worker’s pension is not being protected. That waitress’s overtime pay is not being expanded. That farmer’s crop insurance is not being strengthened. You family is caught in the maelstrom of your own making.

A cryptocurrency baron who laundered money for terrorists and child pornographers was just pardoned. A man who rolled an inoperable truck down a hill to fake a test drive walks free. A border czar who reportedly accepted $50,000 in a paper bag from undercover agents keeps his job because the office that would investigate him has been gutted to five attorneys.

You cannot call it a conspiracy. It is too public for that.

It is a fire sale, conducted in broad daylight, with the Republican majority holding the sign that says “Everything Must Go.” And a shocking number of the people watching still believe they are the ones who will get a bargain.

Harry Truman went home to Missouri without a car. He refused to cash in on the presidency because he understood that the office is a trust, not a lottery ticket.

That idea now seems as quaint as a horse and buggy. The modern GOP has replaced it with a simpler creed: the winner takes all, and the loser can go hang.

The truly galling part is that none of this is hidden.

It is written in court filings, documented in wire reports, summarized in the very newspaper of record. Some journalists have done their job.

The numbers are right there. Four hundred million dollars from Qatar. Ninety million in legal settlements from media companies afraid of retribution. Eight hundred sixty-seven million from cryptocurrencies that are essentially unregistered bribery vehicles.

But facts have a hard time competing with a good story.

And the story that Republican leaders tell—that the deep state is the real thief, that the coastal elites are the real villains—allows their followers to ignore the hand in their own pocket.

It is a masterpiece of misdirection. Pick your metaphor: the magician’s flourish, the card shark’s banter, the revival tent preacher’s promise of healing while he collects the offering plate.

It works because people want to believe.

So here is the question that ought to keep every Republican voter awake past midnight: If a Democratic president had taken a single foreign gift worth more than most Americans will earn in ten lifetimes, would you call that corruption? If a Democratic administration had dismissed a felony case after a six-figure donation to a inaugural fund, would you demand a special counsel? If a Democratic operative had accepted cash in a paper bag, would you be satisfied with a shrug?

The silence from the Republican Party’s leaders is answer enough. They know. They have always known. But they have calculated that their own power depends on keeping the faithful just angry enough at the other side to miss the looting happening right in front of them. And so far, that calculation has been correct.

A republic cannot survive this arithmetic forever. At some point, the bill comes due. The treasury empties. The law becomes a joke. The people realize that the strongman they cheered was not strong for them but only for himself. That realization usually arrives late, accompanied by regret and a bitter taste.

The only question is whether it will arrive before or after the last honest man gives up and goes home.