“This is more like importing alligators and pythons than draining a swamp”
A OPINION by Walter Mason, Alfred
A great deal of the commentary by Trump is that the chaos being caused by the executive orders is about looking for corruption. To an impartial person, like me, it seems like Trump is trying to make government safe for corruption. There are so many actions this argument needs to be made in bullet points.
1. First thing is getting rid of the beat cops.
- Firing most of the inspectors generals. Trump has fired 18 of 20 inspectors generals, whose job it is to audit the government to find waste, fraud and abuse.
- Fired the head of the FEC. He’s still around, due to a court order, but his job is to keep elections honest.
- Stopped work at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, making life safe for usury.
- Fired the head of the SEC, that controls stock fraud, making the world safe for pump and dump, and crypto.
- Fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel at the Justice Department. The person whose job it is to protect whistle blowers.
- Fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics.
- Fired the people in the Freedom of Information Act office, so there will be nobody around to fill these requests.
2. Opening obvious channels for bribery.
- Trump hotels are still open for business by countries hoping to influence the US. This of course caused some embarrassment as many countries spent large amounts in the hotels.
- Trump’s and Melania’s crypto coins. One purpose of crypto is to launder money. 94% of the money in those coins was invested by 20 whales, who bought more than 10 million each. Wonder what they wanted for their money.
- Trumps inauguration raised 250 million dollars this time, mostly from corporations. This is a record only beating his last inauguration. For what its worth Obama wouldn’t take any corporate money.
- Stopped enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits American companies from bribing foreign nationals.
- Ended enforcement of the Foreign Assets Representation act. This act requires lobbyists for foreign governments to register that fact. They also disbanded the Foreign Influence FBI task force. Pam Bondi herself was a lobbyist for Qatar.
- Filing bogus lawsuits, where the money goes directly into his pockets.
3. Things that are kind of corrupt and corrupt adjacent.
- Elon Musk got 230 million in contracts signed in 2025, while all these cuts are going on.
- Republicans introduced a bill to uncap the bank overdraft fees that Biden capped at $5.00. Lobbyists still working.
- Trump refusing aid to Hurricane Helene victims in Georgia. Rumor has it this is revenge for Brian Kemp’s inability to find 11,000 non existent votes. Using the government for petty revenge is a from of corruption, since we own the government not him.
- Pardoning Blagojevich and dropping charges on Adams. Does DJT just identify with corrupt politicians?
- Harassing and firing FBI agents assigned to pursue the Jan 6th defendants – this is punishing them from doing their jobs.
To many things to detail here. This is more like importing alligators and pythons than draining a swamp.
