“In 2016, into this tangle of worry and anger, came a showman
who made big promises. A man who swore he would drain the swamp, then
surrounded himself with the lobbyists and billionaires who run the swamp and
feed off government favors. A man who talked the talk of populism but offered
the very worst of trickle-down economics. A man who said he knew how the
corrupt system worked because he had worked it for himself many times. A man
who vowed to make America great again and followed up with attacks on immigrants,
minorities, and women. A man who was always on the hunt for his next big con”― Elizabeth
Warren.
"...Trump’s presidency is government by a team of smash-and-grab thieves, intent on gaining as much money and advantage as they can while they retain access to the levers of power. Taken altogether, it’s both an affront and an embarrassment. It’s almost certain some portion of 2016 Trump voters know it, at least in part..." (Washington Post).
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/09/11/trump-didnt-drain-the-swamp-supporters-are-starting-to-notice/?utm_term=.3ce32bc1035a
"...With Trump there is no pretense of respectability or rectitude. There is only the open, shrugging grift. This shrug makes it hard for his critics to fathom how the Trump campaign ever persuaded anyone that its candidate would actually 'drain the swamp.' Some of the liberal fixation with fake news reflects an attempt to explain Trump’s anti-corruption pitch as just a fraud that voters swallowed (or were force-fed by the Russians). And indeed, a portion of Trump’s supporters choose to live the fantasy worlds of Pizzagate and QAnon, where the most impeachable of presidents is as a white knight taking on a fictive ring of pedophiles.
ReplyDelete"But the more common reason a certain kind of Trump supporter accepted his anti-corruption pitch was less conspiratorial and more cynical. He’s bad but they’re all like that, the whole elite class is rotten, so why not send a grifter to catch a bunch of grifters?
"That hasn’t worked out; it turns out that when you send a businessman-grifter into the world of political grifters he hires some of the worst of them to help him with the fleecing..." (New York Times).
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/opinion/sunday/under-trump-the-swamp-is-draining.html
"...The Daily Beast examined 341 nominations the president has made to Senate-confirmed administration positions. Of those, more than half (179) have some notable conflict of interest, according to a comprehensive review of public records. One hundred and five nominees worked in the industries that they were being tasked with regulating; 63 lobbied for, were lawyers for, or otherwise represented industry members that they were being tasked with regulating; and 11 received payments or campaign donations from members of the industry that they were being tasked with regulating.
ReplyDelete"Of the 162 nominees who didn’t have an overt conflict, 19 had either given money to or been a surrogate for Trump’s campaign (many of them ending up in ambassadorships), while 24 were career appointments or reappointments..." (The Daily Beast).
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-pledged-to-drain-the-swamp-instead-he-filled-it-with-industry-sharks