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There was a fascinating new poll from Fox News yesterday. It showed that the number one issue in America today isn’t the economy. It isn’t this illegal war in Iran. It’s not immigration. It’s corruption.
After nearly two years of the most corrupt administration in American history, the issue I believe sits at the root of everything fundamentally broken in this country has blasted through the door. It’s now top of mind for the overwhelming majority of Americans.
And it’s not hard to see why. The president of the United States took a $400 million luxury jet from the government of Qatar. He launched his own meme coin and then auctioned off a private dinner with himself to the people who bought the most of it. His family has turned the White House into a business development office, cutting crypto deals and foreign deals while the rest of us are told to tighten our belts. And his administration is stuffed with incompetent sycophants doing favors for friends like Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former Ambassador to Greece.
That’s just what we know. The stories we remember, the ones we’ve already forgotten, and the ones we still haven’t heard about. Honestly, the things I don’t know about are what keep me up at night.
This is Banana Republic corruption. And people are pissed.
They understand that their lives are materially worse since Donald Trump took office because of the corruption and criminality in Washington. The economy is bad because of corruption. The war is spiraling out of control because of corruption. Your life is worse because of corruption.
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Democrats, rightly, are closing their arguments in this election with a killer instinct. Brutal ads tying Republican candidates in every state and every district to the corruption inside this administration. If there’s any justice in this world, the American people will punish Republicans for sitting on their hands while Donald Trump and his family stole from them.
But punishing Republicans at the ballot box isn’t the same thing as accountability. And accountability is the thing this country has forgotten how to deliver.
Think about everything that’s happened in my lifetime.
Did anybody really go to prison for Iran-Contra? No.
Did anybody go to jail for the 2008 financial crisis that ruined so many lives? No.
Did anybody go to prison for the January 6th insurrection? They did. And then Donald Trump sprang them.
Is anybody going to go to prison for all the crimes Trump, his family, and his administration have committed? I worry the answer is no.
And if the answer keeps being no — if we keep asking people to participate in a democracy where the powerful, the wealthy, and the well-connected are never held accountable because of who they know and how much money they can slip into the back pocket of the right politician — then why would anyone engage in that democracy?
When people say politics isn’t for them, that they don’t give a damn, that nothing ever changes, that nobody’s fighting for them, that their vote can’t make a difference, this is what they’re talking about.
So I have a warning for the Democratic Party, which I believe is on the precipice of winning the House and the Senate, and potentially the White House in 2028 if we nominate a candidate who can rise to the moment.
You have to stamp this out. Not with a strongly worded press release. With action.
That means a real investigation into everything this administration has done, run by prosecutors who aren’t afraid of who they’re investigating, with the full power to follow the money wherever it leads. It means banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks, period. It means no more handing ambassadorships and cabinet posts to the highest bidder. And it means putting teeth back into the ethics laws Trump spent the last two years laughing at, so the next guy can’t do it again.
And yes, that includes the corruption inside our own party.
The Epstein files were never a partisan issue. There are plenty of Democrats in there. Congressional insider trading isn’t a partisan issue either. Lots of Democrats do it, including a lot of Democrats I like and respect. The self-dealing, the donors getting ambassadorships, all of it happens in both parties.
Now let me be clear: I am not both-sidesing this. Donald Trump is far and away the most corrupt president we’ve ever seen, and his family is out of control. Comparing the rest of it to Trump is like comparing a hot day in Arizona to the surface of the goddamn sun.
That doesn’t make it right.
Trump has thrived in an environment where people fundamentally believe every politician is corrupt. And it’s hard to argue with the average American who thinks nobody is fighting for them, when the system is this broken and nobody seems willing to make the hard decisions to fix it.
For all the insider trading, all the corruption, all the grift inside this movement, a lot of people have had to turn a blind eye. A lot of people have had to say it doesn’t matter. A lot of strategists have said, “Well, we can’t focus on that right now, we have to stay focused on the economy.”
Well, the message has broken through. And it’s a generational opportunity for the next president of the United States to become a historic figure. To pass historic reform. To bring accountability and gravity back to American politics and society.
What an incredible opportunity to show people the system can work. By actually making it work. By bending it to our will and fixing these problems. Do that, and we’ll pull in more people from the sidelines than we’ve seen in generations.
We can do it if the right person steps up in 2028, and if Democrats in Congress and across this country are prepared to do the work. Not out of petty grievance because Republicans were mean to us and hurt people while Trump was in power. Because it’s the right goddamn thing to do.
It could set this country on a new path in a way most people don’t yet understand.
Let’s get to fucking work.
With urgency,
—Mike
It's the economy too...but, Trump is doing what Trump always does, steal anything that's not nailed down. He thinks because he's occupying the Oval Office, tax revenue is his personal piggy bank.
Even though there is not enough revenue coming in, because of his ridiculous tax-cuts and the real result of his moronic Tariff war, he still thinks he has unlimited checks in the White House CHECKBOOK.
He added $11.5 billion to the National debt, and his vanity projects are adding to the debt DAILY.
Americans are (finally) beginning to link the overwhelming Corruption as the Source of our economic problems. My, My, what will the elites and oligarchs do when Socialism is no longer exclusively available for just them.