“I didn’t know the swamp was this dirty and this deep. I didn’t know about the swamp creatures being as bad as they are,” - Donald Trump in a 2020 campaign video.
No one cares, Matt Yglesias argues. And I get it. I’ve never been one of those journalists — like, say, Josh Marshall — who focuses on corruption in politics. Those stories can get complicated/boring very quickly, involve lots of opaque financial jargon and know-how that I’ll never understand; and in America, they rarely take politicians down these days unless the grift is truly epic.
But still.
What’s going on now in Washington is on a wholly new scale — an open, shameless exercise by those in power to benefit personally and massively from the leverage that comes with public office. In the words of Ann Coulter: “This is the most corrupt presidency in U.S. history. I mean, it is so blatant it’s right in front of our eyes.”
Worse than the “Biden Crime Family?” Yes. Andy McCarthy notes that the total amount of dirty money accrued by the Bidens over the years was claimed to be around $27 million. And the GOP nearly launched an impeachment over it! But the Trump family? Start with $2.5 billion in bribes from the United Arab Emirates — funneled into a company called World Liberty Financial. Add a $400 million 747 airplane from Qatar, and we’re talking real money.
How did the Trumps pull this off? The incomprehensible bullshit called crypto currency (i.e. WLF) induces a coma in most voters; and the ethical conflicts are “resolved” by having the failsons of Trump, Howard Lutnick, and Steve Witkoff “run” the businesses while their dads direct government policy. Here’s nepo-baby Zach Witkoff at a crypto conference in Dubai last year announcing the deal with WLF, sitting next to the heir-spare Eric Trump:
We really need to take a page out of His Highness’s and the Emirates’ book. They are just an amazing example of how you can lead with innovation while also maintaining your family values.
Ah yes, those famous Trump family values: money, power, rape. And once the money landed in the Trump crypto accounts, of course, government policy changed. Trump gave the UAE rare and advanced AI chips, brought the UAE into the US Stargate AI project — along with an ownership slice of TikTok — and pardoned the sleazy billionaire felon, Changpeng Zhao, who had helped seal the deal with WLF. Not just corruption, but possibly at the expense of our national security, if those UAE chips make it to the CCP.
This is the real Epstein class: utterly amoral networkers and nepotists with no loyalties to anything but their absurd bank balances and party invitations. And this is their administration. From the dime-store Versailles that Trump is constructing on the rubble of the East Wing, to the Gaza wasteland where Jared Kushner is now preparing to cash in after the slaughter, this is a kleptocracy notable for its callousness as well as its insatiable money-lust.
I think of that day a year ago that Elon Musk posted the following on X:
We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.
And then I think of the tens of thousands of the poorest children on earth who were about to die in a matter of months as a direct consequence. If you need a face to go with those statistics, here is Suza Kenyaba — a 5-year-old girl who died of malaria after life-saving meds were stymied by Musk’s wood chipper. I’m not one to despise the rich and successful. But this kind of rich and evil? Yeah, I can despise them.
Which is why I’m not as sure as Matt Y that a popular revolt against the corrupt nihilism of the 0.00001 percent is a total non-starter. You can tangibly feel the weight of this enormous overhang as regular people are having trouble affording groceries and their electric bills. The data confirm this:
Between 1989 and 2022, the [top] 1 percent added 100 times as much wealth as those at the national median, and between 1982 and 2022, the share of national wealth owned by the top 0.00001 percent has risen by a factor of almost 10.
Add to that the sheer amoralism of the Epstein class, its nihilist ability to overlook the child-rapes of Epstein or the IDF’s massacre of children in Gaza, its reckless pursuit of unfettered AI, and its attempt to control the media: and we may have a movement. Senator Ossoff has the right idea here:
We were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans. But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich. It’s the wealthiest Cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class. They are the elites they pretend to hate.
Indeed they are. Steve Bannon, Epstein’s close buddy, is chief among them — but Ossoff calls out George Soros as well, in a small Sister Souljah moment. The one thing the Epstein files show is how this coterie of super-rich and their hangers-on spans left and right: there’s Noam Chomsky, Woody Allen, Deepak Chopra, Larry Summers, and, my favorite, Kathryn Ruemmler — a Goldman Sachs Obama alum beyond good and evil.
This is a moment for a sane, non-fake populist on either the right or left to seize. You don’t need a gimmick like a 5 percent billionaire tax. But you can reverse Trump’s tax cuts for the rich to fund childcare and Obamacare subsidies; and you can lower prices instantly if you commit to repealing the tariffs. These seemingly “left” moves are actually conservative in a way, since they are designed to rescue capitalism from this statist, crony version, and to provide ballast for the middle class — the essential component for a liberal democracy to thrive.
And if the Dems win in November, we can also have hearings. Bring in the corrupt nepo-babies for a grilling; expose their privilege and ill-gotten gains; and make the case for an economy built on markets not access, excellence not parentage, and an economy built on middle-class values for middle-class protection.
We don’t have to resign ourselves to this level of corruption and inequality. We really don’t. If this new Gilded Age has any silver lining, it may be that it becomes a prompt for the very kind of reforms the old one did.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: a discussion with Zaid Jilani on the state of the Dems; my response to two writers defending Trump; a dissent from Steven Pinker; more dissents from readers and listeners on a variety of topics; nine notable quotes from the week in news; 17 pieces on Substack we recommend this week; a musical mashup for a Mental Health Break; a rare window view from Antarctica; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
From a new subscriber on why she pays for the full Dish:
I really need dispassionate voices when it comes to these times. When the vocabulary becomes loaded, or the points exaggerated, I feel polarization in me rising and my peace robbed. I can appreciate criticism of either the right or the left, but it must be balanced. I crave context, the big-picture, pattern recognition, and identification of unseen consequences.
The Difficulty Of Defending Trump
I find intelligent people’s defenses of Trump’s policies fascinating. Two recent cases.
(Read the rest of that piece here, for paid subscribers.)
New On The Dishcast: Zaid Jilani
Zaid is a young center-left journalist (after the young center-right journo we had on last week, Jason Willick). Zaid worked as a reporter for The Intercept and as a reporter-blogger for ThinkProgress, United Republic, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and Alternet. He’s now on Substack at “The American Saga” — subscribe!
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on what the Dems should do on immigration, and whether Ossoff and Buttigieg could be strong contenders for the presidency. That link also takes you to commentary on our pods with Jason Willick and Jon Rauch. Dishheads also discuss Epstein, transing kids, climate change, and liberals turning to guns.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Sally Quinn on the WaPo and silent retreats, Michael Pollan on consciousness, Jeffrey Toobin on the pardon power, Derek Thompson on abundance, Matt Goodwin on the UK political earthquake, Jonah Goldberg on the state of conservatism, Tom Holland on the Christian roots of liberalism, Adrian Wooldridge on “the lost genius of liberalism,” Tiffany Jenkins on privacy, and Kathryn Paige Harden on the genetics of vice. An abundance of riches! And a lot of reading for yours truly!
As always, please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
Steven Pinker responds to last week’s column, “Notes On Epstein:”
You asked “What was Steven Pinker thinking?” with the implication that I was a willing associate of Epstein. I know the question was rhetorical, but let me answer it.
I disliked Epstein from the moment I met him, judging him to be a sleaze and an impostor. I never sought his company, never solicited or accepted funding from him, was never invited to his mansion or island, and would not have accepted. But as we know, Epstein was an obsessive collector of celebrities, including academic celebrities, and he was tight with an astonishing number of my close colleagues, making it difficult to escape associations with him. These included my Harvard colleague and co-teacher Alan Dershowitz; my PhD advisor, department chair, and dean Stephen Kosslyn; my Harvard colleagues Lawrence Summers, Lisa Randall, and Martin Nowak; my former MIT colleague Noam Chomsky; my literary agent John Brockman; and the Director of the ASU Origins Project, Lawrence Krauss. I am astonished that these smart people took Epstein seriously.
On the two occasions when I was forced into his company, I found him to be a deeply unserious and attention-deficit-disordered smart-ass.
Read the rest of that long response, along with other dissents, on the pod page. As always, please keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
I went on Mark Halperin’s pod to talk about the Epstein class, the Dems’ chances, and Trump’s permanent stain on America:
I also had a long discussion with Rob Montz about Tucker’s edge-lord episode with the troubled Milo Yiannopoulos over the question, “Is gayness a trauma response?” — and other unsettling questions. (I look awful in the vid — fat, ugly and horizontal— so it’s just a link. I swear my body fat is 16 percent as of last week.)
In The ‘Stacks
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as the political impact of AI, a new wildly popular world leader, and coping with online addiction. A few examples:
The theocratic thugs in Iran are holding corpses for ransom.
This piece by Jesse Singal explains why so many doctors stood by while kids were experimented on.
Here’s a list of the substacks we recommend in general — call it a blogroll. If you have any suggestions for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday at 11.59 pm (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month sub if we select your entry for the contest results (example here if you’re new to the VFYW). Contest archive is here. Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. Here’s an entry from last week from the ever-creative sleuth in San Mateo:
