A pair of journalists who have written inside information-filled accounts about President Donald Trump explained his brazen corruption simply: He does not care if Americans are angry or Republicans are hurt at the polls.
"Where are we?" MS NOW anchor Nicolle Wallace asked on Thursday to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. "We’re five days out from an election where every single poll I’ve seen that’s become public, whether it’s commissioned by Democrats or Republicans, has Democrats very likely taking over the House, potentially the Senate as well."
Wallace added, "Are they worried about the flagrant corruption, the pay-to-play, the mixing of business with foreign policy?"
When Haberman and Swan asked for clarification as to who "they" is and Wallace said she meant Trump and others in the White House, Swan replied "if it’s involving him, I don’t think Donald Trump is worried, obviously."
Wallace asked, "Because of immunity, or because he thinks it’s not illegal?"
Swan replied, citing an example, that "Donald Trump wants a cut." Both journalists made it clear that, when it comes to everything from harming American foreign policy to the domestic political fallout of their corruption, Trump is indifferent as long as he personally benefits.
For example, they mentioned how Trump did not inform Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang that China might be spying on him out of fear it would disrupt US-China trade negotiations and the AI industry, both of which involve businesses from which Trump is personally profiting.
"Trump more broadly sees Nvidia’s success as completely connected to the success of the U.S. economy," Haberman said. "He doesn’t want to do anything, as you played some tape, to disrupt the artificial intelligence boom, to disrupt their chip sales. He didn’t want to do anything to disrupt his relationship with Xi Jinping and China. So there are no incentives, from Trump’s perspective, to upset anything there. So he didn’t act on that information."
Since taking office for his second term in January 2025, Trump has been linked to an unprecedented $377 billion in corruption. He has personally increased his net worth by roughly $2 billion, much of it from cryptocurrency projects in which the vast majority of his investors lost everything. The overt profiting from being in office by Trump and his family — which have engaged in foreign policy projects from Kazakhstan to Albania since he took office — is especially controversial because of criticisms of former President Joe Biden's son Hunter profiting while in office.
"I made a big stink about Hunter Biden. We had to take a firm stance that this was wrong," Republican attorney Richard Painter recently said. "Donald Trump, he’s encouraging it. And it’s 1,000 times worse than [what] Hunter Biden did."
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