Donald Trump’s second term presidency has been marked by his broken campaign promises to reduce the cost of groceries, energy, housing, mortgage rates, healthcare and everyday consumer goods. Instead, his deliberate policies of imposing tariffs on virtually every country in the world and the war he launched with Israel against Iran, resulting in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has fed rising inflation and caused the price of oil and gas to soar.
But apart from growing opposition to what many now believe are Trump’s reckless policies, recent polls find that there’s an increasing public perception that Donald Trump is corrupt. Several recent examples of the president’s alleged corrupt behavior include the widely condemned $1.76 billion slush fund he devised to dole out taxpayer funds to his allies and Jan. 6 insurrectionists, insider trading, no-bid defense contracts given to family members, pay-to-play pardons, the Trump family’s multi-billion-dollar cryptocurrency operations funded by foreign actors, and a group of White House ballroom donors recently awarded $50 billion in federal contracts.
In response to what appears to be an orgy of self-dealing and feeding at the public trough, Stand Up America and End Citizens United recently launched their “Kick Out Corruption” tour to expose how corruption in Washington is driving up costs for everyday Americans. The tour, whose first stop was in Tempe, Arizona on June 7, will visit key battleground states ahead of the November midterm election. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Christina Harvey, executive director of Stand Up America, who talks about the goals of the Kick Out Corruption Tour and some proposals to clean up rampant government and corporate corruption.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: So we’re teaming up with End Citizens United and national leaders to take to voters our message about the connection between the corruption in Washington and rising costs and to offer real solutions for how we can get our government back to actually working for everyday working people.
And we had a fantastic crowd that came out yesterday, a really engaged audience as we talked about really how Washington has stopped even trying to hide corruption. It’s come out of the smoke-filled backroom and it’s out in plain sight. We talked with folks about the gilded ballroom whose corporate funders have received $50 billion in new and expanded federal government contracts and voters are mad because they know that they’re paying for those contracts.
And we talked about how the cuts that Congress made last year and their billionaire budget to food assistance and school lunches and healthcare—so that they could give their ultra wealthy donors tax breaks—are impacting Arizonans and their costs and their quality of life.
SCOTT HARRIS: Yeah. I wondered if you could give some more examples of the corruption we’re seeing, as you said, “in our faces,” because they are no longer trying to hide it. They may be trying to spin it, but they’re not trying to hide it much. And that includes everything from domestic and foreign policy. You’ve got Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law doing deals with the Gulf monarchies as he’s oversees trying to thus far unsuccessfully broker a peace agreement with the war the U.S. and Israel started against Iran. But the money deals are really front and center. I mean, they are not trying to hide it. And certainly one of the biggest recent examples of corruption is the attempt by the Trump administration to negotiate with itself to give Donald Trump $1.776 billion in what’s being described as a slush fund that he can give to anybody he wants.
CHRISTINA HARVEY: Yes, there are so many examples. And I’m so glad that you brought up Jared Kushner because one thing that people in Arizona and across the country are concerned about are rising gas prices and the prices of all the other goods that are going up because the cost of fuel is increasing. This illegal war in Iran is putting service members’ lives at risk. It’s driving up costs for Americans. It’s destabilizing the global energy market and at the same time it’s creating some really serious questions about whose interests are being served by this war.
As you said, Jared Kushner—who for folks who don’t know is Trump’s son-in-law—advised him to enter into this war and he has extensive business dealings in the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, countries that are two of Iran’s biggest competitors on the global energy market. And unfortunately, the Trump family possibilities for corruption when it comes to Iran don’t end there.
Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, own a stake in a drone company that was just awarded a defense contract to produce weapons used to defend against Iranian attacks. So whatever your view is on the war in Iran, we shouldn’t have to wonder whether politicians’ personal financial interests are influencing decisions that are putting American lives at risk or costing taxpayers billions of dollars. We should be able to trust that if they’re taking us to war, it’s based on national security. Not on whether the president’s friends and families stand to profit. And unfortunately we have to wonder.
For more information, visit Stand Up America.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Christina Harvey (19:40) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. To subscribe to our podcasts, email newsletters, our Trump authoritarian playbook Substack or social media, subscribe here.
