Americans were recently treated to the official results of the U.S. House’s ethics investigation of Matt Gaetz. The concluding paragraph of the 37 page report says it all:
The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress.
This was the person Trump initially chose to head up the Department of Justice. (I’ve lost a lot of respect for Merrick Garland due to his timidity and what has evidently been an overly zealous desire to avoid politicizing DOJ, but the contrast between a compulsively ethical Attorney General and a thoroughgoing degenerate is representative of the difference between today’s Democratic Party and the cult of Trump–aka the GOP.)
Because it isn’t just Gaetz. Trump has chosen nominees who mirror many of his own numerous legal and ethical failings–a clown show composed not only of ignoramuses and conspiracy theorists, but sexual predators, racists and businessmen with falsified resumes and glaring conflicts of interest. Long gone are the days when political figures were held to a high moral standard–when those aspiring to leadership positions took care to project an ethical and probative public persona, even if their private behaviors were somewhat less exemplary.
To be fair, the Trumpian mafia being assembled to run the Executive branch has its counterpart in the current, rogue Supreme Court; Rolling Stone, among others, has reported on recent, added discoveries of highly unethical behaviors by the Court’s “usual suspects.”
A new 20-month Senate investigation into ethical conflicts and legal violations at the Supreme Court has uncovered and underscored a raft of dubious behavior by justices both living — and dead.
The new 95-page report reveals that deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia — who expired in 2016 on a “free” quail hunting trip, paid for by a benefactor — was a conflicted mess, and effectively patient zero for the corruption now dogging the court. The arch conservative justice accepted “at least 258 subsidized trips” from wealthy patrons, including “several dozen hunting and fishing trips with prominent Republican donors.” Scalia accepted more such gifts “than any other justice,” the report states, and failed to properly disclose them “in violation of federal law.”
The report, issued by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also excoriates current conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito for violations of federal law over undisclosed travel, including luxury fishing and yacht vacations. It targets Thomas in particular for having “accepted lavish gifts from billionaires with business before the court for almost his entire tenure as a justice,” adding that “the number, value, and extravagance of the gifts accepted by Justice Thomas have no comparison in modern American history.
Dick Durbin, chair of the Judiciary Committee, issued a statement underscoring the effect of these ethical lapses, saying that “justices are losing the trust of the American people at the hands of a gaggle of fawning billionaires.”
Disclosure of the repeated failures of Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves from cases affecting the interests of the billionaires whose largesse they’ve enjoyed comes at a time when trillionaire Elon Musk has assumed a de facto role as “co- President,” and as Trump is preparing to install a cohort of shady billionaires with massive conflicts of interest in important government positions–positions for which most of them are massively unqualified.
As ABC News recently reported,
President-elect Donald Trump has shown no qualms about making or sticking by picks for his Cabinet no matter the baggage they carry — even some accused of sexual assault.
It’s a far cry from the days when much smaller-scale scandals, such as marijuana use or hiring an undocumented worker as a nanny, sunk candidates put forward by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, experts said.
“We’re in untested waters,” Jonathan Hanson, a political scientist and lecturer in statistics at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, told ABC News.
I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us. After all, American voters just elected a mentally-ill convicted felon who has also been found liable for sexual abuse by a civil jury.
Apparently, MAGA’s version of “Making America Great Again” is limited to its (very obvious) goal of “Making America White Again.”
Ethics? They don’t need no stinkin’ ethics!
Thanks, Sheila, for corroborating so many outrages from contributors to this blog. But these are not uncharted waters in the strictest sense. Every banana republic we’ve sneered at over the years has behaved similarly. We’re just doing it on a huge scale. Once the billionaire class got what they wanted in tax evasion laws, Justices they could purchase cheaply and the subsequent decisions that allow endless, anonymous bribes to politicians, the game was up.
The blatant corruption by mostly Republicans is nothing new. Just look at the string of Republican administrations for OUR banana republic experimentation. Start with Harding, then go to Coolidge, Hoover, Nixon, Reagan/Regan, both Bushes and now the most un-ethical piece of garbage this nation has ever put forth in its history. The decay of our capitalism and democracy is accelerating. Marx predicted this would happen. But I’ll bet he didn’t realize it would be so ugly or the fall from grace so precipitous.
The Gaetz concluding paragraph describes Trump and Trump’s job qualification standards to receive high level appointments in his administration. They are the unethical description of his life as man, husband, father, brother, businessman and Republican. The same unethical behavior can be found in different degrees and some created low standards of their own to appeal to Trump for appointment. He ended his own terminally ill brother’s health care and has been accused of incest with one of his daughters; we could not find anyone of lower morals and less humanity as our leader unless we could reincarnate Adolph Hitler.
“Ethics? They don’t need no stinkin’ ethics!”
The corrupt partisanship of the highest court in the land means that 45 really could shoot someone to death in broad daylight and not be held accountable. The only thing keeping us from identification as a “banana republic” is that the cannot be farmed here.
It’s all about oligarchy. We made them; we tolerated them, and now we will live as their subjects.
This is their final feast of gluttony presided over by Elon Musk, who now believes that he is entitled to the adoration bestowed on him by his purchase of Trump.
We have caught up to our turn instead of Europe, with Musk playing the role of power behind the throne when he is the power over the throne.
Heather Cox Richardson’s post today (written yesterday) is a scathing review of how corrupt the incoming administration is, in particular with Musk and Ramaswami effectively running the show, with the president-elect just along for the ride. Their true colors and motives are now coming to light, and they’re not pretending any longer to have America’s and Americans’ interests at heart—only their own interests, even to admitting that they want the H-1B visa program expanded, to bring in more immigrant tech workers (after thousands of American tech workers were laid off in the past couple years) because the immigrants are willing to work for less.
Traditional MAGA is not happy and highly critical, to the point where Musk is banning them from TwitteX. And that’s the good news: the base that got TFG elected again is splintering, and those “undereducated people” that he celebrated back in 2016 are starting to see that they’ve been had. It gives me hope for 2026.
I read the same Substack post by Heather Cox Richardson. As she points out: “Why does this all matter? Because while Trump’s people keep insisting he won in a landslide and has a mandate that he will put in place on day one, his fragile coalition is splintering even before he takes office.” The two elements of Trump’s MAGA base have opposing interests which are at war with each other.
Robert Hubbell’s newsletter today also talks about such splintering where “(a)t some point, people will realize they have been snookered.” A day of reckoning for Trump’s lies is coming more quickly than he thought. With the campaigns for 2026 and 2028 already underway, this does not bode well for the Republican Party.
The only hope we can have is if Pres Biden declares we are in a state of emergency & invokes emergency powers found in statutes (& he can track the statutes trump’s handlers cite) & The Constitution and suspends the results of 2024’s elections. In 2018, Executive Order 13848 declared a state of emergency based on foreign interference in our elections. It’s in my blog. (I hope my putting a link to my blog is not a breach of etiquette.) One last thing: one of the worst things this country could do is call a convention under Art V. There are no rulers for conduct of such a convention, ALEC has a proposed set online. http://civildiscoursenow.com/profiles/blog/new
Trump is giving the finger to every social norm of the presidency. These are “norms” not “laws” so the consequences of violation are respectively “outrage or pushback” or “punishment.” We know he is not going to be punished, but the system of checks and balances should rein him in. This is where Republicans are the last bastion of these checks. They have let him loose like Frankenstein (sorry Frankenstein) in the village for at least 8 years. Now they can stop Frankentrump or they can continue to let him terrorize us. They can stop hiding behind their “party” and start acting with a sense of duty to country. That is why I am writing and calling Todd Young first and foremost. Jim Banks will go along to get along but I believe if enough people contact his office, he may be somewhat persuaded. We who read this column know what Trump is doing, but how many folks don’t follow what is going on? They voted him in, what he does is ok; hence, no resistance due to being uninformed or being stuck on Fox News. It’s pretty obvious when the Wall Street Journal takes umbrage with Trump’s tariff positions and offers criticism of these picks. In the meantime, we should push for campaign reform – from limiting the beginning of campaigns to 15 months before the election to campaign finance laws preventing another Musk situation. At the same time, I do not feel sanguine about any changes unless some spineless Republicans grown some vetebrae.
The Other Sheila states, “the immigrants are willing to work for less.” That pertains to migrant farmers from the South but not Asian tech workers. Musk and company use them because they won’t unionize against the oligarchs and tend to follow them (control) or risk being cut loose. Vivek and Elon are already making waves against the MAGA crowd, and yes, Musk is whining about the disrespect he’s getting on X.
When Trump and Musk disagree, who will the Republican pigeons align with? As others have mentioned in recent posts, Musk is loaded with cash and can fund many primary challenges. 😉
We have to stop with the thinking that Trump and his cohorts are turning Washington into a corrupt and unethical mess. It’s been that way for a very long time. All the outrage is performative by both parties. Always look at the actions taken. There are zero negative consequences. Gaetz paid a 17-year-old girl to cross state lines and have sex with him. That is statutory rape, but the scumbags in Washington are notorious as sexual predators. Has anyone peered into Epstein’s little black book? Why do you think Epstein was murdered under Trump’s watch? If the FBI can’t solve a blatant murder in a prison, how crooked do you think our top law dogs are in Washington? LOL
I remember one of Obama’s last speeches about insider trading and how it must stop because it is eroding the people’s faith in the political system. LOL
Biden gave the same speech recently. How long do you think the politicians from both parties have used their information to make billions across the board? Nancy Pelosi’s husband?
Also, who will be left holding the bag when Truth Social collapses? All the insiders are cashing out, which is a HUGE red flag event. HUGE! The little guy is always the last to know; it’s too late when they figure it out.
As long as there are no negative consequences (deterrents), nothing will change in Washington. Being elected as a congressperson and sent to Washington is the fastest way to become a millionaire in this country. It has nothing to do with serving the people. It’s all about self-interests.
“Political corruption works by having an equally corrupt legal system to protect it.” ~ Steven Magee
If we’re going to limit campaigning, let’s do it right. We all saw a candidate come within a percentage point of winning in a candidacy that lasted less than five months. Take one month for primaries, one for conventions, then three to campaign and introduce the VP pick. We also need an Amendment that clearly states that money cannot be equivalent to speech. Then we limit the amount of money that can be donated by any one individual or entity. One thing we should pick up from England is to minimize the amount of money spent on television advertising The last thing we need is to make election day a national holiday to encourage more people to vote.
The ethics issue shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has observed the change in movie and TV content, vulgar speech, speeding and reckless driving, consumption of addictive drugs, etc. in all of our society over the last decades – politics reflects our culture.
Lester; I agree 100% with your comments and have for a number of years, recently even the ads are ridiculous and/or offensive.
But ethics can pop up is some strange places when least expected; I have had numerous contact problems with Spectrum cable who have done away with technicians to install and set up service and actual Chat Agents when trying to report problems. I received notice that my payment had not been received so tried the usual Chat option then hunted through my AOL address book and found an old E-mail address and explained the situation. I had not received my December statement so copied my November account information and mailed my check on December 2nd; I explained that due to my deafness I could not call them, received an E-mail response with a different phone number to call. E-mailed that I am deaf and could not call (again)_ and said I would attempt to text them. I received a response from a customer service agent on his personal home E-mail telling me he wasn’t allowed to do that but due to my circumstances he needed to know if my billing address had changed and that my check had finally arrived 3 weeks late. That problem resolved in a surprising way but at the same time I was dealing with contact from my State Farm Insurance that they had not received my payment. The contact was from the local office, their payment office is out of state, I responded locally that I had mailed my payment the day after receiving their statement. She informed me that if I intended to pay by check I need to give the local office my checking account number and routing numbers. I have been paying them by check for about 30 years now so ignored that message, the day after Christmas I received another E-mail from the local office to tell me they had received my payment. The State Farm issue was not one of ethics but lack of qualified staff or poor training.
But as Lester said “…politics reflects our culture.” and the lack of qualified politicians about to take total control is a foreign culture to all thinking Americans. The lack of qualified, ethical workers providing actual service is rampant throughout the business world we must rely on to conduct our day-to-day business to survive.
ya thought that during the 70s the deals we made with russia to supply needed food,grain in the pik programs etc, and how i listen to the local sod busters here in the upper plains, many WW2 vets. how they called em ruskies etc, and the talk how corrupt thier nation was to have a goverment for,its own needs.now we stand here with our laundry around our ankles pointing at the conversion of our nation into what we scorned in the past. media did its job, and the think tank bunch,well, ya gotta admit,they know how to turn a good nation in the world view into just another ,well ill quote trump,just another shithole nation..
after all this flack of this run for the money, now it seems the very demos who voted trump did so by,what was placed on the plate in front of them ,via social media and commercial media,instead of having any understanding of what is goingon,and how to change it. the dnc still sees the same old bookends for the next run.. beating a dead horse again and again. until some thing gets the ball rolling,like the next busted bubble, (crypto/stocks)and the fact the billionaires want us to lock up anything we save into their game.then we will find out how much of the free spending cash on mainstreet will dry up,and some one will ask,whered it go bud?
ya might look at Robert Riechs latest on 10 ways this scam is debunked.
inequality.com.etc,
JoAnn:
theres a number of contract people working various companies. when the calls fo unanswered etc, it may well be that the people on the other end just pass ot thru. to who? and the fun starts. ive talked with various working class who answer phones etc from customers,that number.. they seldom have a clie or, were not trained past the simple 123 of getting issues resolved. now chat? see,s it will be the corp side who rules,and doesnt care. ive turned down many a deal because i dont allow many to actully take a monthly payment out of my checking etc. maybe the card,but dont allow them near your bank. one hack and its your word and a fight ahead.. my bank has a notification rule, and its free. and they cover the mess..make sure your bank has the same deal..
It’s counter-intuitive, I suppose, but I find myself a little relieved at the people Trump is picking. I was afraid that he’d pick people who were just as awful, but who were smarter and more knowledgeable about the positions and departments. In other words, I thought it would be substantially worse than last time, but it’s looking like more of the same. So, I now think it’s survivable.
I feel the same about Musk. I fully expect Musk and Trump to be a clown show, butting heads and gumming up the works, but this may actually cause them to be less successful at actually getting anything done. And it may even provide some perverse hilarity along the way.
My real fear was that terrible and competent people would be put in place, which _would_ be disastrous. I guess I wasn’t giving Trump’s idiocy and imagined self-belief its fair credit.
That said, I hope this is the last circus I see in my lifetime.
I found it funny when Trump suggested Wayne Gretzky “run for Prime Minister.” How can a person who has been POTUS not have a single clue about how parliamentary systems work? No one “runs” for Prime Minister; the leader of the party that wins the most seats becomes PM. He’s such a buffoon.
Yeah, but Obama wore a tan suit!
John H. – I believe it is likely that the MAGA world of think tanks, etc. is well prepared to tell the “celebrity” appointees exactly how to do it. Don’t get your hopes up….They have been plotting this for a long time…
Corruption no longer surprises me, sadly. I have to agree with Sheila on my disappointment in Garland, but Democrats persist in appointing “moderates” so as not to offend, while Republicans appoint ideologues, so we shouldn’t be too surprised when appointees follow the mantra “bend over backwards to appear ‘fair’, even if you have to break your back to do so”.
David Stippler – Sadly, Trump’s people probably won’t realize that they have been snookered. They will blame the Democrats and the “deep state” and keep believing in their Glorious Leader.
John H. – I wish I shared your views on the relative harmlessness of Trump’s picks, but I fear that a clueless dolt could make a “small” change that has consequences beyond their understanding and cause widespread and lasting harm.
As was written in 2016: “Elect a clown, expect a circus!” And, “The enemy is within!”
Plans to lower food prices? Plans to take care of the fools who voted for him, who load their cars with idiotic stickers about their orange god? No, nothing but plans to create chaos while trying to screw over his “enemies.”
Lester is correct – Project 2025 has been recruiting talent for four years to take over the “Deep State” jobs buried within the bureaucracy. On day 1 or 2, Trump will pull the strings on an executive order to make all federal employees replaceable. I’m not even sure the union can protect the employees. If there is a lawsuit, the corrupt SCOTUS has Trump’s back.