President Donald Trump’s blatant corruption, at times, can feel depressing. While other White Houses have made it a point to show their administration is not for sale, this one seems to have done the opposite – making a big show of their business relationships with corporations, Silicon Valley, and other governments, given the right price.
This type of pay politics was the focus of a recent conference in Washington, DC, organized by the American Economic Freedom Project, a think tank focused on corporate consolidation, breaking monopolies, and accountability for corrupt businesses. It is also the focus of Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), who has made this anti-corruption issue a focus of his message and policy proposals since the 2024 election.
I spoke with Murphy last week as part of a conference; In a lengthy conversation, I asked about the effectiveness of this message, what role the Democratic Party also plays in Washington’s current culture of open corruption, and if there is anything the public can do to push back.
The following is part of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can hear the full interview Today, It’s Explained wherever you find the podcast, and you can also watch this episode on video at YouTube.com/vox.
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When I think about corruption, one thing that immediately comes to mind is that when we think about the Trump administration, this is not done in retroactive deals. Many of these things are happening right in front of us. Is corruption even the right word to use when it is widely approved by legal and governmental bodies?
I think corruption is still a buzz word. I think people understand that corruption is a bad thing, it is something that we have tried extensively to remove from our politics. And I think that people in general understand corruption as something that happens quietly without hiding it.
Corruption is something that you try to hide, and so I think the most important part of this time is trying to understand what to do with the very public way that Trump engages in corruption, because the fact that he does it every day, that he does it openly, publicly and proudly, it causes some people to question, Wait, wait, is this corruption? Because this is not what I learned corruption. There is no shame in this.
I don’t know if it means you change the word. He is trying to change the concept of corruption by making it public. And so if you call it something different, then I think you’re playing his game.
You know, your Corporate Exemption Report documents more than 160 companies that have been exempted from government action.
As we know, corporate influence has been in Washington for a long time. Do you think this is a qualitatively different time than the usual influencer influence we’ve seen?
It’s a nude activity right now. It’s an easy story to tell, whether it’s the donations that Boeing gave that got them out of their problems, whether it’s Toyota’s donations, whether it’s the money that Zelle brought into the administration,
Now it is not done by slowly putting money into the political system, slowly building connections. It’s only one million dollars for the company’s exemption. And that now happens within weeks or months. It put Eric Trump on your board, the lawsuit or the enforcement action was dismissed, right? It is fast and so naked that it is difficult to hide.
What do you think is the result of such an obvious destruction of the process? What do you think is the result of his being in your face in this way?
Trump is taking over when many Americans were seriously considering abandoning democracy, right? And while that conversation may not be on the surface of the kitchen table conversation in our country, it is below the surface. People don’t think their voice matters anymore.
They, for a long time, have believed that the elites get whatever they want from the system and the way that Trump has chosen to do that is clearly, I think, an effort to completely break the trust of the people in the whole business and change the country to a kleptocratic oligarchy.
And so, yes, I think this is a very dangerous time for a country where most Americans unfortunately are willing to just say, Fuck her. This thing no longer works. Now it’s obviously not working, because we have a president-elect who is just stealing from us. I’m just going to walk away from the whole business.
And when the people give up and retreat from public affairs, that’s when the oligarchs take power and never give it up. The reason I’ve been adding to the disapproval of corruption — that it’s not normal, that we shouldn’t normalize it — is because I think Trump’s primary case here is, if he succeeds in normalizing it, it could be a death blow to people’s faith in the entire democratic enterprise.
What? Is there some kind of confusion between outright corruption and something like corporate integration? Or do you see them as the same thing when we’re talking about these monopoly media companies (like Paramount)?
It’s all part of the same story. The only way that Paramount Skydance becomes as big and corrupt and cunning as it is because of corruption, is because of the basic agreement that is made between the Ellison family and the Trump family.
I mean, (Secretary of Defense Pete) Hegseth says this on stage: I can’t wait until my friends, the Ellisons, get control of CNN because then you will stop telling the truth about the war.
And again, refer back to how you send this message: Yes, I understand that it’s hard to break up a bad relationship. Yes, I understand that by the time we get things under control here, the prediction markets will be more mature, but by saying what you’re going to do, you can really turn reality around by being confident in your claims about what you’re going to do with power. People – and not just people in the public, but members of Congress, right? – start registering for the project as it is with confidence.
The scope of Trump’s corruption may feel weakened. The administration seems to be unable to access public opinion most of the time, undeterred by legal and institutional barriers.
It feels like we are stuck at the beginning of a roller coaster and you don’t know where it ends. Is that true? Are obstacles coming?
It only comes if the Democratic Party, as we head towards the 2028 elections, will make the manipulation of our democracy a pillar of our party’s message.
If it is up to me, the message of our party is to undo democracy, destabilize the economy.
I’ll stop here because you’re right that people feel so discouraged and powerless right now. We as a party have to start our analysis of what is needed at this time through the recognition of how people feel like they have no agency. Our economic and political message must be about returning control to the people and explaining to them, as we have talked about a few times, that it goes both ways: The corruption of our economy is downstream of the corruption of our democracy.
But also, the right way to end the corruption of our democracy is also under the corruption of our economy. When our economy is an economy that only cares about profit and efficiency, it becomes a winner-take-all economy where the people who do well take it all. And we’ve fixed that because we’ve fixed the idea that that shared prosperity is no longer valuable in our economy.
When we fix zero virtue in our economy, it’s easy to say, maybe, virtue shouldn’t matter in our politics either. And so that’s why the project is so big, right? There are cycles between what happened in our economy and affecting our politics, what happened in our politics affecting our economy, that’s why your willingness to deal with this issue of corruption in the government and in our economy and to realize how they go back and forth is very important.
