fishonjazz
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Tom Homan, the White House border czar, allegedly accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives during a sting operation last year, according to MSNBC. The payment was made after Homan implied that he could help the agents secure government contracts in a second Trump administration.
In layperson’s terms, this is what bribery looks like: officials promising favors in exchange for money.
The investigation related to Homan — which was launched during the Biden administration and was first reported by MSNBC this past weekend — was only recently shut down by FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The Homan story raises a question that has come up over and over again since President Donald Trump catapulted himself to the White House: Do American voters actually care about corruption? After all, Trump has so far gotten away with maintaining unprecedented conflicts of interest, accepting gifts from foreign governments, and turning the presidency into a giant cash grab. And despite his history of fraud and corruption, he still won a second term last November.
Yet polls consistently indicate that a majority of Americans think that corruption is a serious problem that plagues Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. And there’s evidence that corruption scandals can drag down politicians. One recent example is Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, who was indicted last year on corruption charges. An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers believe that Adams should resign, and his reelection bid seems all but doomed: Most recent polls show Adams’s support is in single-digits.
So why is it that no level of corruption in the Trump administration — no matter how brazen or how high up it goes, from Homan to other members of Trump’s Cabinet to the first family and the president himself — seems to ever stick?
Public shaming can be a powerful weapon for citizens protesting their government. It creates an environment that makes the shamed person lose legitimacy, and it puts pressure on institutions or other people in power to take action. And the prospect of public shaming likely deters some politicians from taking shortcuts or engaging in petty corruption, not out of principle or ethics but out of fear of getting caught. After all, public shaming was a tool that ultimately helped push many politicians to resign in disgrace, from President Richard Nixon to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Trump has discovered that not caving to shame eventually leads people to let go and move on. His seeming inability to feel shame has allowed him to plow through scandals — like the Access Hollywood tape — that would have easily ended other politicians’ careers. It’s also allowed him to maintain a sprawling web of conflicts of interest without feeling the need to answer to anyone. Throughout his time in politics, Trump has shown little remorse for his misdeeds, and his strategy to simply power through scandals, often with no apologies, has proven remarkably effective.
Also, there is the cult factor of course.