For decades, presidents avoided even the appearance of profiting from their office.
Harry Truman refused to lend his name to any business, even in retirement. Richard Nixon so feared a brother might profit off their ties, he had his phone tapped. And George W. Bush dumped his individual stock holdings before taking office.
Donald Trump is taking a different approach.
The family real estate business is undergoing the fastest overseas expansion since its founding a century ago, each deal potentially shaping everything from tariffs to military aid.
Led by Eric, and his brother, Donald Jr., the family business has expanded into cryptocurrencies with ventures that brought in billions of dollars but raised questions about whether some big investors received favorable treatment in return.
Trump didn’t unilaterally cancel the safeguards, though. He spent a decade forming a government of sycophants across all three branches of government. Combine that with the recent Supreme Court (6-3 conservative) ruling that the president is essentially immune from prosecution for a crime if it’s an “official act” and Congress (both branches being majority Republican) essentially giving Trump unlimited power by means of not pushing back in any meaningful way, and you get a leader who is allowed to act in a unilateral way. Without that decade of sycophancy buildup, Trump wouldn’t have the ability to act unilaterally.
We need to prevent this from ever happening again, and our current system just isn’t built for that. We need direct democracy. We need a hard wealth cap. We need to prevent a few people from having extreme amounts of power over a populace.