Rod Blagojevich, a corrupt former governor of Illinois, calls himself a “Trumpocrat.”
The label is truly apt because nobody has better articulated the heart of Trumpism than Blago, who famously said, “I’ve got this thing, and it’s f***ing golden. And I’m just not giving it up for f***in’ nothing. I’m not going to do it.”
In this soliloquy captured on wiretap, the Trumpocrat was explaining his approach to selling an appointment to a U.S. Senate seat. In his own Chicago way, Blago was saying it would be irrational for someone with something of value to trade it away without getting something in return.
This is a normal and sensible way to do business. Blago’s problem was that the thing of value he controlled, the Senate seat, was not his — it was a public act, entrusted to him by the people of Illinois. Under U.S. law, it is illegal for an elected official to sell public actions for private gain. Under any normal ethics, it is corrupt.
But President Trump, conducts state business the same way he conducted his own small businesses: everything is or ought to be a quid-pro-quo transaction. Only suckers and losers would help someone else without extracting maximum concessions.
This is the key to understanding Trump. If he controls something of value, and as the leader of the free world, he controls much of value, he wants something in return. Sometimes, the quo is something for the United States. Other times it’s something for him politically. Still other times, it’s something for him personally.
His tariffs, his foreign policy, and his odd set of political alliances are all best seen as the tactics of a man whose mode of operation is quid pro quo.
The Eric Adams story is a nice demonstration.
New York’s ethically flexible mayor seems to have cut a deal with Trump to get federal corruption charges dropped.
Prosecutors allege, with some pretty clear evidence, that Adams traded political favors with the Turkish government for personal favors — about $100,000 worth of flights and high-end meals and hotel stays. There’s healthy debate over the criminality of Adams’s actions, but there’s no real debate over the ethics here: This was obviously an abuse of power for the sake of self-enrichment.
Trump’s Justice Department is working to drop the charges.
The story here isn’t simply that Trump is helping a politician caught playing quid-pro-quo politics, it’s that the deal with Adams itself looks like a quid pro quo. But Trump’s d would say that his own deal with it’s a quid pro quo that benefits the American people.
Adams, bucking the disastrous trend of other Democratic executives, agreed to cooperate with Immigration Control and Enforcement. Specifically, Adams agreed in a Feb. 13 meeting to allow ICE officers into the Rikers Island prison complex to find violent criminal illegal immigrants. The very next day, Valentine’s Day, Trump’s DOJ recommended dropping all charges against Adams.
That same day, Adams appeared with his new Valentine, “border czar” Tom Homan, on Fox & Friends. Homan, who now denies any quid pro quo, definitely implied on Fox that this romance had to be a two-way street.
“I came to New York City, and I wasn’t going to leave with nothing,” Homan said. Then pointing to Adams, he warned: “If he doesn’t come through. I’ll be back in New York City, and we won’t be sitting on the couch. I’ll be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’”
There’s an innocent explanation of these two simultaneous Adams-Trump deals and Homan’s words. Maybe Homan was simply pledging to berate Adams if he didn’t come through. Or maybe he was making it very clear, in the hours after the DOJ recommendation, that Adams’s freedom depended on his cooperation.
Also, pushing for better immigration cooperation is a good thing.
Turning the DOJ and federal prosecution into a political cudgel, however, is corruption. Yet this is how Trump wants to govern.
Trump repealed Biden’s ethics executive order requiring executive branch employees to “commit to decision-making on the merits and exclusively in the public interest, without regard to private gain or personal benefit.” He has not replaced this order with anything comparable.
For good measure, Trump even suspended enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, giving any foreign emissaries the green light to bribe foreign governments or businesses. You can’t let antibribery rules interfere with the art of the deal, you know?
It’s also worth spending some more time on Trumpocrat Blagojevich and his modus operandi. Aside from his failed efforts to sell a Senate seat, Blago was accused of trying to bribe the owners of the Chicago Tribune, offering them a taxpayer-funded bailout if they fired journalists who criticized him too harshly.
He was convicted of shaking down a hospital executive. Specifically, Blago promised to rescind an $8 million grant to care for poor children if the hospital CEO didn’t contribute $50,000 to the governor’s reelection campaign.
Trump takes a similar transactional approach to everything he does, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.
For instance, his trade war with China, rather than focusing on protecting the U.S. from Chinese abuses, instead was mostly aimed at extracting small promises of soy purchases.
Tit for tat, quid pro quo, is how he thinks a business should be run, and so it’s how he thinks the government should be run.
In this light, it’s easier to understand Trump’s approach to Ukraine, which is still under Russian invasion. Trump, in a recent social media post, objected to the $350 billion the U.S. has spent and pointed out that it is more than Europe has spent. These are fine and normal things to worry about. But Trump then complained that “the United States will get nothing back.” There has already been a quid, and Trump is demanding a quo.
We have something Ukraine wants and needs, billions of dollars to keep its government and military running, and so Trump wants to extract something in return. If we give something for nothing, we are suckers and losers, and that’s the worst fate imaginable.
Throughout history, American diplomacy has often erred on the side of entangling alliances that didn’t serve the U.S. interest. Trump is tacking to the opposite extreme: no lasting alliances at all. The United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, NATO — what have you done for me lately?
Alliances are relational. Trumpism is transactional.
TRUMP PROPOSES CRONYISM TRUST FUND
And why would Trump sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin? Forget the conspiracy theories that Putin has kompromat on Trump. More likely, a desperate Putin might have something to offer Trump, in which case, what sort of businessman wouldn’t come to the table?
The power of the presidency is of great value. While wielding it, Trump’s not going to come away with nothing.