“Since the finance aristocracy made the legal guidelines, was at the head of the administration of the state, had command of all the organized public authorities, dominated public opinion by means of the precise state of affairs and by means of the press, the identical prostitution, the identical shameless dishonest, the identical mania to get wealthy was repeated in each sphere, from the court docket to the Café Borgne to get wealthy not by manufacturing, however by pocketing the already out there wealth of others. Clashing each second with the bourgeois legal guidelines themselves, an unbridled assertion of unhealthy and dissolute appetites manifested itself, notably at the prime of bourgeois society—lusts whereby wealth derived from playing naturally seeks its satisfaction, the place pleasure turns into crapeleaux (debauched), the place cash, filth, and blood commingle. The finance aristocracy, in its mode of acquisition in addition to in its pleasures, is nothing however the rebirth of the lumpenproletariat on the heights of bourgeois society.”
So wrote Karl Marx, the founder of scientific socialism, in The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850. As in so many different spheres, Marx offered not solely a scalding critique of the infamies of the bourgeois society of his time however an evaluation of the elementary tendencies of capitalism as a socio-economic system that also drive bourgeois politics as we speak. And in the persona of Donald Trump and his household of fascist parasites and swindlers, we’ve, as in the interval main as much as the 1848 revolution in France, the reemergence “on the heights of bourgeois society” of each kind of criminality in the service of wealth accumulation.
The topic of Trump household corruption is an inexhaustible one. His first time period was infamous for the use of his “branded” properties, varied Trump lodges and resorts, as conduits for firms and international governments to funnel money into the household coffers. Behind the scenes, far larger sums have been raked in by means of the abroad operations of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with greater than a billion {dollars} “invested” by Saudi monarchs and Gulf sheiks alone.
Nevertheless, Trump’s reelection final November and his return to the White Home on January 20 have been accompanied by an excellent larger orgy of money-grubbing. By some estimates, the Trump household wealth has doubled since the election. His social media firm Fact Social, regardless of negligible promoting and buyer base, has seen its inventory value soar. The president has made vital money from the sale of branded gadgets, starting from replicas of his fascist government orders to bibles, golf golf equipment and guitars. Trump has additionally raked in $500 million in contributions to varied political motion committees to fund future campaigns, though the Structure bars him from in search of a 3rd time period in the White Home.
However nothing compares to the huge fortune accrued by means of the Trump household’s plunge into the cryptocurrency market, with the launching of World Liberty Monetary, a enterprise that’s 60 % owned by the Trumps. It’s overseen by sons Don Jr. and Eric and co-managed by Zach Witkoff, the son of Trump’s prime Center East envoy, billionaire Steve Witkoff. World Liberty has partnered with an array of firms whose monetary flimflam is supposedly “regulated” by federal companies now managed by Trump himself.
There was little to little interest in World Liberty earlier than the election, however after Trump’s victory, the worth of its cryptocurrency, often called $WLFI, soared to a nominal $1.1 billion. Estimates reported by Fortune and Forbes magazines place the Trump household’s whole crypto fortune at between $2.9 billion and $6.2 billion.
In a prolonged profile of World Liberty, the New York Instances wrote:
The agency, largely owned by a Trump household company entity, has erased centuries-old presidential norms, eviscerating the boundary between personal enterprise and authorities coverage in a way with out precedent in fashionable American historical past.
Mr. Trump is no longer solely a serious crypto seller; he’s additionally the business’s prime coverage maker. To date in his second time period, Mr. Trump has leveraged his presidential powers in ways in which have benefited the business—and in some instances his personal firm—although he had spent years deriding crypto as a haven for drug sellers and scammers.
The super-rich have made use of World Liberty for what quantities to barely disguised bribes of Trump in return for favorable regulatory choices and even presidential pardons. Chinese language crypto billionaire Justin Solar, beforehand greatest recognized for paying $6.2 million for a bit of “artwork” consisting of a banana taped to a wall, purchased $75 million of $WLFI. Quickly afterwards, the Securities and Change Fee, now headed by a Trump appointee, requested a federal court docket to halt proceedings in a fraud case in opposition to Solar. Arthur Hayes of Ethena Labs, a crypto companion of World Liberty, had pleaded responsible to violating the Financial institution Secrecy Act in 2022. Trump gave Hayes a full pardon on March 27.
At the least 5 cryptocurrency corporations signed offers with World Liberty that revenue Trump personally, at the same time as he has adopted a sequence of insurance policies favoring the business. This consists of the announcement that the US Treasury would create a federal cryptocurrency stockpile, together with Bitcoin, the business chief, and Tether. Tether’s value jumped 13 % after the announcement, netting World Liberty a $33 million revenue by itself holdings in Tether. In different phrases, Trump’s resolution on the stockpile put $33 million into his personal pocket.
Maybe the most brazen buying of affect in the second Trump administration has come by means of the issuance of “memecoins,” a cryptocurrency that’s tied to a joke, a phrase or a selected character. All cryptocurrencies are tokens with zero intrinsic worth. They’re generated by means of a posh computer-based calculation course of that makes use of huge portions of electrical energy and due to this fact represents a sizeable waste of society’s sources. They’re autos of pure hypothesis that usually observe a typical Ponzi scheme: New patrons drive up the value, and so long as the value rises, additional new patrons are attracted. However as soon as the shopping for spree stops, it’s musical chairs with nothing in any respect to take a seat on: The true worth drops to near-zero, and the final holders lose all the things.
Trump issued two memecoins, $TRUMP and $MELANIA, on the eve of his inauguration. Insiders purchased them low-cost, for pennies, and then cashed out as the value leapt to greater than $7,000. In an evaluation printed Could 8, the Washington Put up reported, “Almost 67,000 crypto novices have pulled out their debit playing cards to guess on Trump’s meme coin enterprise. … To date it’s been a monumental bust.” Of the small fry who poured $15 million into purchases that benefited Trump personally, 80 % misplaced cash and solely 3 % gained. Requested about the rise and fall in value, at the expense of gullible supporters, Trump instructed NBC Information Sunday dismissively, “I haven’t even regarded.”
Trump was involved nonetheless, about the response of huge traders, saying April 23 that he would host the largest holders of his memecoins at a particular “Gala DINNER” occasion Could 22. After an uproar, the location was switched from the White Home to his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida. The value of the memecoin jumped 69 % in 4 days.
Commentators have famous that promoting entry to the president is a violation of the emoluments clause of the Structure, however a subservient Supreme Court docket rejected a swimsuit in opposition to Trump on this subject throughout his first time period. There may be hardly a murmur of opposition in official Washington to the bare self-enrichment of the second Trump time period.
When Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut made, early in Trump’s second time period, a prolonged presentation of the proof of Trump’s corruption on the flooring of the Senate, his fellow Democrats yawned, the company media barely made reference to it and the White Home didn’t trouble to reply. Below any earlier US president, such a report would have produced screaming headlines and calls for for impeachment.
Final July, the Supreme Court docket issued its ruling in Trump v. United States, declaring that any US president is immune from prosecution for actions carried out as half of the duties of his workplace. This is able to apply to actions reminiscent of promoting pardons, or giving directions to regulatory companies and the US Treasury that lead to tens of hundreds of thousands in private revenue. Battle of curiosity guidelines don’t apply to the president.
And simply to tie up any free ends, below Govt Order 14178, Justice Division prosecutors have been directed to not pursue felony instances involving “digital belongings” until they relate to cash laundering by drug cartels or terrorists, presumably not together with the president of the United States.
Final week, the state funding agency of the United Arab Emirates, one of the wealthiest oil sheikdoms, introduced it will pump $2 billion into buying a brand new cryptocurrency coin issued by World Liberty Monetary. The deal was revealed in Dubai by Zach Witkoff, with Eric Trump by his facet. The identical day, Bloomberg Information reported that the Trump administration was contemplating enjoyable restrictions on the sale to the UAE of Nvidia chips utilized in synthetic intelligence, which had been restricted by the Biden administration.
There’s a lengthy historical past of corruption scandals in America. Greater than a century in the past Mark Twain famously remarked, “There isn’t any distinctly American felony class—besides Congress.” The Teapot Dome scandal in the early Twenties, involving bribery to acquire favorable oil leases, ended with the jailing of Secretary of the Inside Albert Fall, the first US cupboard official to be despatched to jail. The checklist of congressmen and senators arrested, prosecuted and convicted for corruption is lengthy and bipartisan, culminating in final 12 months’s conviction of Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who stashed gold bars and different proceeds of bribery in his residence.
However the Trump regime marks a brand new high quality. We now have mentioned that it’s a authorities of, by and for the billionaires, utilizing the foulest and most anti-democratic strategies to maintain its rule and enrich the class it represents. As David North, chairman of the WSWS Worldwide Editorial Board, said at our May Day rally:
The White Home floats atop a smelly dung heap of fraud. Trump, the crude huckster and maestro of swindle, is nothing however the personification of a felony oligarchy.
