***. “We can never truly know..[Trump’s]. character, but we can examine and assess it based on his actions…This is why I focused on Donald Trump’s obsession with money and the trappings of wealth, and his many comments about women not as equals, but objects, their value measured in particular by the size of their busts and the length of their legs, not the size of their hearts or how far their minds reach. It is also why so much of this book is about Trump’s many complex and little-known with criminals – a vast assortment of con artists, mobsters and mob associates, swindlers, and other unsavory characters, including a major drug dealer he went to bat for.”
[ Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston: “The Making Of Donald Trump” ]
This post presents excerpts from “Trump Just Took Us Somewhere The Country Had Never Been Before” [ Noah Shachtman: New York Times; 5/24/26 ]. We also present statements by Pulitzer Prize winners, relatives, close observers about Donald John Trump. Ethical behavior and empathy for others have never been his strong suit. YOU should not be surprised that Trump is brazenly engaging in obvious corruption. Close observers tell YOU he’s engaged in morally-challenged behavior before.
5] “Just in terms of sheer dollars, this is the most corrupt action in American history,” says Brendan Ballou, a former Justice Department special counsel…”This may be the most infamous thing that Donald Trump does beyond Jan. 6, 2021.”
14] “…Mr. Trump’s scheming will define him and his family. When he leaves office, the Trump name will most likely be stripped from the Kennedy Center. The challenge coins he’s affixed to the White House doors will no doubt be stripped away. his ‘enhancements” to the Oval office may eventually be remodeled away. All that will be left is his reputation. Mr. Trump has made that synonymous with corruption forever.”
7] “..openly monetizing the presidency is a true Trump innovation. You have to go back at least a hundred years, to the administration of Warren harding or Ulysses Grant, to find anything remotely similar. And no one ever accused Harding of minting memecoins. “This isn’t the ‘honest graft’ of Tammany Hall – corruption as the price paid for public improvement,” The Time’s Jamelle Bouie wrote. “It is petty theft.”
12] “If political violence committed in the president’s name is not only tolerated but actively rewarded, it could take this already bleak timeline somewhere much, much darker.’
***. ‘..Donald, who understands nothing about history, constitutional principles, geopolitics, diplomacy [ or anything else, really ] and was never pressed to demonstrate such knowledge, has evaluated all of this country’s alliances, and all of our social programs, solely through the prism of money, just as his father taught him to do…In the midst of obscene plenty, one person, using all of the levers of power and taking every advantage at his disposal, would benefit himself and, conditionally, his immediate family, his cronies, and his sycophants; for the rest, there would never be enough to go around, which was exactly how my grandfather ran our family.”
[ Mary L. Trump: “Too Much And Never Enough” ]
1]. “President Trump has been thinking a lot about his place in history. That’s one of the reasons…he’s paying so little attention to his plummeting popularity and so much attention to remodeling Washington in his own image. But there’s no arch high enough, no ballroom gilded enough, to distract from the mountain of corruption he’s constructing.”
2]. “The president may wish to be considered in the same class as Napoleon or Alexander the Great, but he is in danger of turning himself into the next Mobutu Sese Seko or Suharto: a kleptocrat remembered not for his ideas and not for his power but for his greed.”
3] “Mr. Trump has devoted a large portion of his second term to enriching himself and his family with foreign and private funds…But until recently, there was no evidence that his most brazen capers involving taking actively, from you and me. That changed when he, two of his sons and the Trump family business sued the government for $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns.”
4] “Trump supporters convicted of crimes connected to the Jan. 6 riot could get large spoonfuls. But the Trump clan looks to be the biggest beneficiaries of all: As part of the settlement, the U.S. government would be barred from prosecuting or further auditing the Trumps or their family businesses for any potential misconduct preceding the agreement. That would save the Trumps from penalties that some estimate could reach $100 million or beyond. More than that, it could functionally put the family beyond the reach of the law in these tax cases…”forever.”” [NOTE: read this again – forgiven for misconduct, now and “forever.” Wouldn’t YOU like to have this?????]
***. “[Trump]..routinely staked out positions on issues that violated the law and that ran counter to what career law enforcement, intelligence, military, and economic officials believed was right. Even more mysteriously, at times Trump appeared to favor positions that benefitted America’s geopolitical adversaries, like Russia, more than the United States… McGahn had spent hours laying out what the president did and said behind closed doors as he sought to maintain control over the Russia investigation.. how the president insisted on having a loyalist oversee the investigation..the true reasons the president had for firing the FBI director, James Comey..told them that Trump wanted Mueller out.” [ Pulitzer Prize winner Michael S. Schmidt: ‘Donald Trump V. The United States” ]
6] “Mr. Trump is the defining political figure of the past decade. But despite his enormous influence, he’s had relatively few legacy-making accomplishments….He’s bullied specific schools instead of remaking the educational system and cut bargains with drug retailers instead of recasting the U.S. government’s relationship with Big Pharma….[So far, only Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court appointments and their warped decisions have amounted to truly historical changes.]”
8]. “Mr. Trump has already pardoned convicted criminals after receiving donations on their behalf…Trump cronies…brought up .case over a round of golf with the president.”
9]. “This new slush fund – set up with minimal guardrails, not even a definition of what constitutes “weaponization”..Just think what people might be willing to do to get this money, and what Mr. Trump might get in return. This fund would institutionalize that ethical disaster…This would make cronyism an official function of the federal government, a U.S. Agency for Corruption.”
*** “Trump’s dozens of pardons are just one of several moves by the administration indicating a newly permissive environment for white collar crime.” [ Jeffrey Toobin: “The Pardon Brokers…How The Trump Administration Turned Clemency Into A Lucrative Cottage Industry”; New York Times Magazine; May 31, 2026 ]
***. “..the lucrative pardon industry that has emerged around mr. Trump. It is based in part on the proposition that paying the right person to deliver a message tailored to mr. Trump’s politics of grievances is more important than demonstrating remorse or a likelihood of recidivism.” [ Kenneth P.Vogel: “Pardon Industry Offers the Rich A Path to Trump”; New York Times; 3/8/26 ]
10]. “The primary risk is that this money is going to be used to fund paramilitary organizations that are loyal to the president,” Mr. Ballou said. “Financial support for violence – that is going to be the most important thing, and it’s fundamentally new and different from, say, the Qatari jet.”
11]. “THe self-described “American terrorist” Andrew Paul Johnson was convicted of his role in the Capitol riot, pardoned by Mr. Trump and subsequently found guilty of molesting two children. To silence his victims, he is said to have promised them a share of the millions he said he was about to get from the federal government for being a “Jan. 6-er.”
13] “The 14th Amendment to the Constitution bars the government from paying ‘any debt or obligation incurred in aid or insurrection or rebellion against the United States,” which would appear to bar payments to people who attacked the Capitol in an effort to overturn an election.”
*** “The characteristics of Trump’s leadership, blazingly evident through the first three years of his presidency, had deadly ramifications in his final year. he displayed his ignorance, his rash temper, his pettiness and pique, his malice and cruelty, his utter absence of empathy, his narcissism, his transgressive personality, his disloyalty, his sense of victimhood, his addiction to television, his suspicion and silencing of experts, and his deception and lies. Each trait thwarted the response of the world’s most powerful nation to a lethal threat….Most of Trump’s failings can be explained by a simple truth: He cared more about himself than the country.”
[ Pulitzer Prize winners Carol Leonnig, Philip Rucker: “I Alone Can Fix it” ]
[ NOTE: read this again – SLOWLY – and remember, this all occurred when, during Trump’s first term, he was “restrained’ by patriotic advisors and others from doing numerous illegal and dangerous and destructive things. Now – in his second term – Trump is deliberately surrounded by loyalists and Project 2025 authors. That largely explains the Trump DICTATORSHIP. ]
With Justice For All 