President Donald Trump attends an event at the White House in Washington, D.C., February 23, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
President Donald Trump's blatant second-term corruption is souring him for more and more high-profile former supporters, and as one former White House official told MS NOW, there are two clear reasons why he cannot get away with it as he used to, and they are becoming a "lethal combination for him."
During the Saturday broadcast of MS NOW's Deadline: White House, host Nicole Wallace shared a clip of famed podcaster Joe Rogan expressing disgust at the ways in which Trump has enriched himself and his family, and scammed followers out of money, via his cryptocurrency ventures. This marked another sharp departure for Rogan, who voiced support for Trump in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
Wallace also welcomed Ben Rhodes, a former Obama administration national security adviser, to discuss the phenomenon, and he put forward what he viewed as the two main reasons that voters could no longer stomach Trump's corruption like they managed to in his first term.
"I think part of what's going on here, Nicole, is, number one, the scale and obvious nature of this corruption is much simpler of a story to tell than some of the more bank-shot corruption of the first term," Rhodes explained. "You know, Saudis paying a lot of money to stay in Trump hotel rooms or something like that. The scale [this time] is billions of dollars, and it's pretty clear when you juice, like, a meme coin, and then it collapses in value, and you walk away with a lot of money and all the people that you convinced to invest in it walk away losing a lot of money. Well, that's an easy story to tell. So that's the first thing: the scale of it and how clear it is."
He continued: "I think the second thing that's really important here is that the economy is not good, that prices are still up. If the economy was going gangbusters for people and oil wasn't through the roof, and the price of groceries wasn't through the roof, maybe, maybe some of these people would be kind of less focused on this. But the reality is, it's that context. It's those two things together. Most people cannot afford things, and Donald Trump is getting fabulously wealthy in the process. Like, that is a lethal political combination, and that's something that, frankly, some Democrats like Jon Ossoff are making the case. But you almost don't have to. Even a Joe Rogan is doing his own research and coming to the same conclusion."
Wallace further expressed continued shock at how much disdain Trump appeared to have for his own voters, given how much he takes advantage of them. Rhodes concurred and called the trend one of the "dark truths" of Trump's political career.
"The people that they need to take advantage of are the people that most believe in them," he explained. "Whoever thinks that they're going to benefit by getting close to Trump, you know, always ends up losing in the end."
