robert jeffress

President Donald Trump's corruption is reaching a state of critical mass, a political analyst warned on Wednesday — and the fact that this pattern exists is having profound consequences in terms of Americans' trust in their government.

"A now-former ambassador [Kimberly Guilfoyle] who asked for $100,000 to cover her credit card debt from a man she was helping lobby the administration — and repeatedly urged the man not to leave a paper trail, according to texts obtained by the Wall Street Journal," CNN's Aaron Blake wrote on Wednesday while listing the major corruption scandals that have rocked Trump's administration over the past few weeks. "Her lawyers have denied the allegations."

Blake added, "The Department of Homeland Security buying multiple airplanes from a donor to the outgoing secretary at apparently inflated prices. The former secretary and current secretary have pointed to one another for the purchases." He continued with "a Russian oligarch paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for parts of Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding celebration. Trump Jr.’s wife downplayed the idea that there was anything amiss with the arrangement, but the oligarch later said Trump Jr. had refunded the money."

Blake then mentioned "a mysterious alleged multimillion-dollar transfer from a wealthy Turkish investor that one Trump ally (who recently married the investor) claims another Trump ally misallocated, according to reports in Axios and the Times. More on that complicated mess below" as well as "that same first Trump ally, married to the Turkish investor, accepting a job that would pay her $50 million even as she served as a top adviser in Trump’s Justice Department — shortly before the billionaire Venezuelan banker who hired her got a pardon he had been seeking. She denied any role in the pardon."

He later brought up even more scandals, writing that "these aren’t the only remarkable and eye-catching developments for those looking out for corruption over the last two years, of course. Trump has made more than $1 billion off cryptocurrency. He’s repeatedly promoted companies shortly after buying their stock, according to a CNN investigation. His social media company is allowing Wall Street firms to pay for quicker access to market-moving posts. And he accepted a jet as a gift from Qatar to use as Air Force One; it is supposed to be transferred to his presidential library."

As a consequence, "a Gallup poll recently showed a record-high 89 percent of Americans said corruption was widespread in the US government." A similar 88 percent were found by Fox News to be either "extremely" or "very" concerned about government corruption. Going through other polls, Blake found an unbroken pattern of Americans believing the government is corrupt and Trump is a big part of the problem — although they're skeptical that Democrats would make things better.

Blake is not alone in noticing that Trump's corruption is having political consequences. Earlier in October, The Bulwark's economist Catherine Rampell wrote that "Donald Trump is robbing Americans blind, and even Republicans are starting to notice. You may recall that back in March, there were some suspiciously timed, uncannily lucrative oil and stock trades. About fifteen minutes before Trump abruptly announced he was retracting some threats against Iran, billions of dollars’ worth of contracts were placed on bets that oil prices would fall and the S&P 500 would jump. And those lucky bastards turned out to be right!"

Robert Reich, who served as Secretary of Labor under former President Bill Clinton, wrote earlier in October that "Trump’s war on Iran is causing Americans to spend almost 50 percent more on gas than before the war, on average. And the diesel fuel needed to transport almost everything else we buy now averages more than $6.00 a gallon, which is also being passed on to consumers. These price increases due to Trump’s war tell only half the story. The other half is the political corruption at the root of the war — enriching Trump’s friends and family."

Speaking to AlterNet in September, polling expert Kyle Kondik of Sabato's Crystal Ball provided more detail about the historical context in which Trump is grappling with these corruption scandals.

"It's primarily the president's weak approval rating combined with the usual difficulty that the presidential party has in a midterm," Kondik told AlterNet. "I also think there may be even more for voters to react to in 2026 compared to even 2018, because Trump has acted as more of an imperial president and there is more dissatisfaction both with the economy as well as the president's foreign policy choices."

Former Justice Department lawyer Sarah Wilson spent years working for the federal government and representing agency clients, in both Democratic and Republican administrations. But she said the second Trump administration took her to the point where she could no longer do her job.

“We realized something different was going on here,” Wilson told Bloomberg Law, describing revamped agencies where politicized department heads and outright hacks were making legal decisions that should be left to actual lawyers.

“It was a scary time,” said Wilson. “… We went from being seen as the starting point for any discussions on how a case was going to being the last person to know about some of these decisions being made in our case.”

Normally when a court order comes in the attorneys study it and decide what it requires their government agency client to do. Department of Justice attorneys are going to have to show up in court and defend the choices made, after all, so lawyers first have to hash out if the order can be complied with without some form of tweaking. And sometimes, she said, the honest answer is ‘no.’

“There are definitely orders that come down from trial court judges that simply aren't possible. Or maybe we could comply — but there's a good reason we shouldn't have to,” said Wilson. “We have to figure out why we have to file a motion and alert the court that there's an impossibility here, that we might have to ask the court to lift some of the requirements so that it can actually be carried out [in accord with the Constitution].”

That's how it used to work, but under the second Trump Administration the administration barred career lawyers from analyzing that paperwork.

“At some point we were told we were not allowed to advise clients on decisions on how to comply with court orders, for example, or decisions that were going to have to be made at a much higher level,” said Wilson.

“Wait. You were told you couldn't advise [agency] clients?” demanded Bloomberg host Matthew Schwartz.

“Yeah. I mean never in my career has a lawyer’s access to the client been limited in that way. It wasn’t in every case, … but then it happened over and over again,” Wilson answered.

Another former attorney that Schwartz spoke to described instructions deliberately limiting what lawyers could tell their agency clients. The instructions came in writing, according to the unnamed source. For example, a senior Trump political appointee of the Justice Department’s Civil Division ordered lawyers handling high profile immigration cases to send the agency heads the judge's order, only without analysis on how to comply. Agency politicians, according to the source, was expected to figure things out on their own. This later became standard practice, reports the source — which might explain the Trump administration’s repeated failure to adhere to judicial orders, and probably plenty of bungled legal submissions.

“Just to be clear attorneys’ advise their clients,” argued Schwartz flatly. “It’s one of the main things an attorney does. The American Bar Association Model Rule No. 2.1 puts it plainly: A lawyer's job, it says, is to ‘exercise independent professional judgment and render candid advice.’

“I felt like this wasn't the job we signed up for,” said Wilson. “And to be villainizing us and make it seem like we were not part of the team but we were somehow antagonistic to the team, and that our legal advice, our legal knowledge was somehow adversely affecting the department. It was a really hard thing to hear.”

The result, said Schwartz, is that departments like Homeland Security have violated more court orders than other agencies have violated in their entire existence.

Dallas Cruze was once a huge supporter of President Donald Trump in Detroit, Michigan. Now he thinks voting is pointless. He revealed that despite making $85,000 a year, he will still be short about $350 on his bills.

“I’ve checked out," he told Bloomberg News, which approached him as he sat at a table in a board game shop.

Cruze was among the young men who flocked to Trump in 2024 from the so-called "manosphere" and male-focused podcast hosts. Thanks to Trump's youngest child, Barron Trump, the campaign invested heavily in these hosts and the president eagerly appeared on their shows.

Those in the manosphere once prided themselves as taking the "red pill," a reference to the film "The Matrix." Taking the pill revealed the hidden reality. For men, that secret truth wasn't that life was a simulation but rather that feminism has rigged society and relationships against men.

Now, Cruze revealed, they're talking about a "black pill." It's more of a fatalistic worldview, in which they believe that some men are just doomed to romantic and sexual rejection regardless of what they do, New America explained. They think it's more about being unattractive and that women choose men not based on personality but physical features. They dismiss women's complaints about intelligence, self-improvement, social skills, personality and even cleanliness as factors.

Now Cruze is more concerned about the economy and war in Iran.

"The final betrayal, he says, was Republicans’ inclination to protect the rich and powerful rather than prosecute those named in the records of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein," the report explained.

He's not alone; the gripe has proliferated through male-focused podcasts in 2026.

Now Cruze is more focused on what he fears is coming as Americans grow increasingly desperate.

“I don’t see it going any other way besides violence,” he told Bloomberg. He took an informal survey of those playing games in the room at other tables. “You have no idea how bad I want to be wrong.”

He suggested everyone make friends with people who are stockpiling rice and beans, raising chickens and squirreling away things like gold and silver.

“Those are the people that are actually paying attention to what’s actually happening,” he said.

Those voters expected Trump to deliver on promises about the affordability problem, low wages, high gas prices and his pledge for "no foreign wars." He's failed on all of them. Where he has delivered is in his "war on woke," where white men can feel like they're not being discriminated against. While Trump's efforts have focused largely on colleges, it hasn't helped much when those young men still can't afford to go to college.

Jobs are another problem. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that more than 700,000 women have entered the workforce since Trump came back into office. Only 65,000 men have. In large part, male-dominated jobs like construction, manufacturing, mining and transportation and warehousing have taken a hit in the Trump economy. The one industry that continues to grow is healthcare-related, which is a predominantly female field.

Amanda Iovino, co-founder of the GOP polling firm Pantheon Insight, said that what they've found is that young men are simply turning out again. They've tracked whether they will hold their noses and vote again or if they're simply checked out altogether.

“Does that mean that they are just not voting, so therefore they’re not participating in anything election-related, which includes polls?” Iovino said. “Or does that mean that they’re just turning everything off yet still voting? I have a difficult time believing that they’ll tune everything out and still go vote.”

President Donald Trump contradicted what his Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge with his own words on Truth Social in his latest self-own in a drawn-out court battle.

In an October 16 filing, government lawyers argued that plans to transform East Potomac Golf Links remained preliminary and that the president's public comments only showed that he gave the project a thought rather than an active plan.

However, in about 48 hours, Trump announced the Interior Department and architect Tom Fazio had "developed a plan" for a "World Class Championship Golf Course" in a Truth Social post. He added that the existing course would close on November 15 for a 15-month renovation and published a redesigned layout.

If that wasn’t enough to contradict his DOJ legal team, he later added: "Work is scheduled to begin IMMEDIATELY!"

That left the attorneys in a precarious position, with the U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes asking:

"Do I believe the president of the United States or do I believe you?" at Monday's hearing.

However, the DOJ still insisted that no plan existed despite Trump’s statement. The attorneys urged Reyes to treat Trump's posts like an executive order rather than a final plan.

After issuing notice late on Friday ahead of the holiday weekend, National Park Service personnel cut down about 400 trees at the old public course on October 10. Officials said the operation aligned with a 2019 landscape restoration report and had nothing to do with Trump’s redesign. Reyes took issue with that account and put a hold on any further tree removal.

Writing in Public Notice on Wednesday, legal analyst Liz Dye argued that the case showed a recurring approach, which is to tell judges government projects are too preliminary to stop, then go ahead with changes that are difficult to reverse.

It is also described as a step to override judicial authority. DOJ attorneys use the Administrative Procedure Act to argue that redesigning the course did not qualify as agency action, potentially limiting the court's ability to intervene. They also invoked separation-of-powers arguments, insisting judges should defer to executive decisions about federal property.

Dye described the argument as an extraordinary effort to place Trump's construction projects beyond judicial control.

Trump attacked Reyes as a "crazed lunatic" for pushing back on his administration's attempt to bypass the rule of law and maintained that the Interior could renovate the course without court approval.

The analysis concludes that while the golf course seems minor, Trump cared enough to lie about it in an ultimately futile attempt to sidestep federal law.

President Donald Trump has been saddled with a "foul mood" and exhaustion for months, The Daily Beast's PunchUp reported, with one "prominent MAGA figure" describing how he has been crumbling as his life devolves into a "disaster."

In an exclusive report on Wednesday afternoon, The Daily Beast noted that Trump appears to be succumbing to the pressure of his administration's seemingly unending scandals, combined with the looming GOP wipeout in the midterms that he seems incapable of preventing.

"The 80-year-old’s administration has been beset by a series of scandals in the past two weeks alone, including being forced to fire his ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfolye, for alleged financial misconduct, launching a White House probe into a distasteful feud between his MAGA allies Ric Grenell and Alina Habba, and dismissing White House press secretary Katie Zacharia within days of hiring her," the report detailed. "The looming specter of the midterms — less than two weeks away — has only served to shorten Trump’s fuse, with the president said to be increasingly frustrated by 'juvenile mistakes.'"

"He’s also just been in a s—— mood lately,” the anonymous MAGA insider with close connections to Trump told PunchUp. “It’s just one damn thing after another... Whether it’s the KG [Kimberly Guilfoyle] stuff, whether it’s the Rick Grenell and Alina Habba stuff, whether it’s Katie Zacharia, nothing is working the way it’s supposed to right now."

They continued: "Everybody goes through seasons in life where nothing is easy. That’s just part of life. Sometimes you go through times where every single little thing is a f—— disaster. We’ve all been there. I think it’s just put him in a foul mood. It’s put everybody else in a foul mood, too."

The report also noted that the insider expressed concern about Trump's "worrisome decline" in patience with those around him, with the abrupt firing of Zacharia after less than a week as White House press secretary being a prime example. The insider was critical of the president for pressing Zacharia into the role, arguing that he "kinda set her up for failure" and made the situation all the more "embarrassing" for her with his public statements about telling her to reconsider.

"I think that’s showing he’s got a shortness right now that he hasn’t had before," the source added. "This term, I think he’s had far more patience with this stuff, and that served him well. Some of the lack of patience may very well be because there’s no time for juvenile mistakes right now. We’re a couple of weeks away from the midterms."

Speaking on the midterms, they added: "We can get completely wiped out, and it wouldn’t shock me, and we could hold both houses, and it wouldn’t shock me."