THIS TIME IT WILL ALL BE OUT IN THE OPEN

If history is a guide, it’s worth remembering that all of America’s most ambitious and accomplished demagogues have also been crooks.

In 1939, the U.S. Justice Department sent prosecutors to Louisiana to clean up the Huey Long political machine. In the trial that finally happened, the sitting governor admitted that in his single four year term in office following Huey Long’s assassination, he personally took in nearly $500,000 - over $10,000,000 in 2024 dollars. While the governor went to prison, the judge hearing what was known as the “Hot-oil Case” expressed doubt about the guilt of all the lower- level state functionaries who had participated in the scheme, saying, “It is a matter of general and common knowledge that the state of Louisiana was more or less under a dictatorship.”

Rachel Maddow’s recent article in the New Yorker on demagogues and corruption also details how Father Charles E. Coughlin, who campaigned against the “filthy gold standard,” claiming the virtue of what he called “Gentile silver,” was actually one of he largest single holders of silver in the country, through his secretary, Amy Collins, who claimed that her purchase of 500,000 ounces of silver was her own idea, pursued at her own initiative. Maddow also provides the basics of the story of Spiro T. Agnew detailed in her book “Bagman” (soon to be a movie).

Here and now in 2024, Trump starts his return to power legally barred from serving as an officer or director in any New York corporation or from taking out loans from New York banks. He stands convicted of 34 felonies involving financial chicanery around his attempted payoff of Stormy Daniels to prevent her story of their affair becoming public in the 2016 presidential campaign.

The final six months of the 2024 campaign saw Trump launch a line of overpriced watches made in China for which the company actually selling them noted “Delivered product may not appear as in this photograph.”

He also promoted a cryptocurrency scam in which he and his sons are partnered with the self- proclaimed “dirtbag of the internet” and the guy who created Date Hotter Girls, L.L.C., another of the many internet dating site scams.

Folks, as they used to say in vaudeville, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

Remember Trump’s meeting with oil company executives in which he promised to make whatever changes they wanted to government climate policy, in return for their donating a billion dollars to his campaign?

Remember his various pitches to other uber-wealthy donors to make the changes they wanted in return for massive campaign contributions?

That all happened. The money was delivered.

And since now, as President, he can kill the legal liabilities he faced that were draining his coffers in legal bills, that money is now his to do with as he pleases.

He did it all out in the open in front of us, and 49% of Americans said “Send that guy back to the White House for more of this! He’s fighting for us little guys!”

As Greg Sargent puts it at The New Republic, “Trump and his allies will likely interpret this as a green light to engage in an extraordinary spree of unrestrained malfeasance.” That’s putting it mildly.

It turns out, Senate Democrats have not been asleep; the question is whether there is enough time to make the coming corruption public at all.

The Senate Budget Committee has been investigating the $1 billion Big Oil solicitation with the intent of establishing precisely what Trump promised in direct exchange for campaign money. Solicitation of a bribe happens to be another felony and Trump wasn’t President when he did it, so the Unsupreme Court’s immunity decision doesn’t apply; while there is little likelihood that whichever crook he finally places in charge of the Department of Justice will pursue the case, Trump can still be convicted in the court of public opinion before January 20. The same is true for his other bribe solicitations.

At least one major energy company has confirmed that the meeting where the solicitation was made did happen, and no one has refuted the reported solicitation. However, given that there are now 60 days until Trump’s inauguration, all the companies have to do is sit on what they know, secure in the knowledge the incoming Republican Senate majority will not follow up on anything that as been revealed.

The most massive potential corruption involves Trump’s new playmate, Elmo Muck, who has been enraged by government oversight of Space-X. Now he’s in charge of an advisory committee masquerading as a government agency in charge of “efficiency” where he can recommend rollbacks of regulatory limitations on Space-X and his other companies. DOGE may only be “advisory” but since Muck is now Trump’s bagman for influencing the Republican Party through his control of Xitter and the potential his PAC can make any challenger to any insufficiently-loyal congressional Republican a financial powerhouse, one can expect his “advice” to go further than that of most previous advisory committees.

Trump is completely open in proclaiming his belief that government exists to serve his supporters, business partners, and friends.

Truth Social, which produces nothing and has a stock valuation higher than major companies, is a perfect vehicle for rich people seeking favors to deposit their bribes in the form of “investment.”

Huey Long, whose “Hot Oil” scheme allowed massive graft in skimming from the production of unlicensed “hot” oil took in probably less than $50 million total in 2024 dollars. It almost seems quaint when compared to what’s coming in 60 days.

All of our most ambitious demagogues have all been crooks. Trump is merely the most obvious. That he does publicly what was only done behind closed doors before shows his contempt for everything. So far, in 78 years, he’s gotten away with every crime he’s ever committed.

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