Corruption is who Trump is — and voters hate it: analysis

Bloomberg Editor Tim O’Brian minced no words on what kind of man President Donald Trump is.

“Why does he feel so emboldened?” asked MS NOW anchor Katy Tur. “Why does [Trump] feel so free to talk about the ballroom and the gilding, etc. [with inflation like it is]

“Because this is who he is,” snapped O’Brian. “I don't think it's necessarily that he feels free to do it. It's just this is, at his core, who Donald Trump is. And he's been doing this kind of stuff since he was in his 20s. The only thing that's changed is the scale of it and the power he has to affect it have dramatically increased as he's moved through life. But he did it as a businessman. He did it as a celebrity, and he's now doing it in the White House.”

And while the Trump is at his heart a thing of corruption and rank opportunism, O’Brian said what’s “not specific to him is the inability of the Republican Party and the unwillingness of the Party, and the federal institutions” that were meant to put a check on him.

“[That] check on presidents or people in power of either party aren't functioning right now to rein him in. And they're not functioning right now to rein him in because Trump's party is scared of him. And he oversees institutions that would otherwise normally check this behavior, like the Justice Department, like the Securities and Exchange Commission, like the IRS and so on,” O’Brian added. “And trump himself is happy to do it because he's craven. He really lacks any kind of moral gravity.”

O’Brian added that Trump sees the White House as a “piggy bank” and public policy as a method to “feather his own nest.”

“He's motivated constantly by money and self-aggrandizement. I don't think he really cares about the future of the Republican Party once he's out of office, [but] … the way that translates into electoral realities is I think there is a growing part of the electorate that doesn't forgive this, that ultimately voters are probably going to be the only check on him when the midterms roll around.”

O’Brian said pollsters are identifying an expansion in people calling themselves Independents, and even through his core base in the GOP will forgive him anything, independent voters are “tired of all of this, and there might certainly be a price to pay for it at the midterms.”

Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha told Tur the facts are on the ground among voters with Democrats having “flipped 28 state House seats, while Republicans have flipped nothing,” primarily because of the lopsided enthusiasm between Republican voters and everybody else.

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