Snapshot: The Grotesquerie of Corruption

Reflecting on Trump’s sickening plan to take a $400 million "gift” from Qatar

Trump standing outside Air Force One in February. (Photo by Joe Raedle via Getty Images)

The so-called Attorney General, Pam Bondi, was a registered lobbyist for the Qatari government, raking in $115,000 a month. The so-called President, Donald Trump, was criminally immunized by John Roberts’ Supreme Court. Their so-called government, uninterested in serving the people, has been taken over by sycophants, miscreants and unprincipled men and women who could not care less about the appearance or reality of corruption at an unprecedented level.

Should we be surprised that Trump intends to take a $400 million “gift” from Qatar’s royal family—a decked-out 747-8 jumbo jet described as a “flying palace”? Should we be surprised that he doesn’t give a damn about the Constitution’s Emolument Clause to prohibit elected officials from accepting foreign bribes? Should we laugh or cry about the fact that our Founding Fathers specifically articulated that there should be no taking of gifts from any “King, Prince, or foreign State” without the consent of Congress—and this “gift” involves all three?

Day by day, as the criminal violations and desecrations of democracy pile higher and higher, the idea of assessing the transgressions of known norms, rules and any iota of propriety or human decency becomes increasingly absurd. Of course Pam Bondi, pretending to be the head of a department concerned with justice and the law, has approved of the foreign gift.

No, we should not be assuaged by a few Republicans wondering whether this pretend President of the United States flying around in a foreign country’s plane—intended to replace Air Force One—just might be bugged, endanger national security or be otherwise exploited by the Hamas-funding Qataris seeking to curry favor. Trump dismisses any criticism by saying he’d “be stupid” to not take the plane—which he would keep after he leaves the White House—underscoring that he is the most unprincipled human to ever cross the threshold of our Oval Office. “I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” Trump blithely told reporters yesterday.

If Trump can take a $400 million foreign bribe, what’s next? A new multibillion-dollar palace to replace the White House that he gets when he leaves office? The scale of illegal corruption is disgusting and the lack of enforcement a reminder we’re being held hostage by a lawless regime.

Yes, this is a different tenor than the illegalities involved in rounding up people and disappearing them to a foreign gulag without due process. But make no mistake: Trump is making a mockery of our nation’s laws, norms and final shreds of propriety. He is brazenly telling us that by taking Qatar’s bribe he will do anything—anything—that feeds his ego and avaricious desires. Meanwhile, he’s telling Americans they should make do with two or three dolls.

The guardrails are gone, his pretend “leadership” team applauds the madness, and America—the one that could inspire a lyric like “God sheds his grace on thee”— becomes harder and harder to find.

Our duty to keep the light on grows.

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