Latest / DEEP INSIGHT / Trump’s ‘SMASH AND GRAB’ corruption viewed as unfitting in America Journalism professor

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Trump’s ‘SMASH AND GRAB’ corruption viewed as unfitting in America Journalism professor · DEEP INSIGHT

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: As the White House lashes out against a free press,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: some of the sharpest reporting is now zeroing in on
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: allegations of corruption and self-enrichment. There's a new development in
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the saga around Donald Trump Jr. 's unusual wedding benefactor,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: the Russian oligarch who bankrolled his afterparty. President Trump now
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: says his son paid the man back.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: It's totally allowed, and a lot of people have parties
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: and all, but it's totally allowed. But as I understand it,
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: he paid him back. He didn't want to have that,
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: so I hear he paid him back. A person that
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: he knows, I guess a friend of his, gave him
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: a wedding party. That's very common. Maybe he didn't do
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: a background check. But I've given wedding parties to numerous people.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: He hears he paid him back. And while we don't
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: yet have evidence that that happened, it would be a
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: major about face from the family's initial response when the
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: news broke.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: Trump Jr.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: 's new wife, Bettina Anderson, posted online that there was
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: no mystery or conspiracy about what they called a wedding
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: gift from their, quote, dear friend Umar. The couple wrote
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: friendship doesn't require a political motive. Well, some lawmakers aren't
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: so sure. And with possible Democratic control of Congress on
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: the horizon, members of the House Oversight and Intel committees
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: are gearing up for sweeping corruption investigations. And even some
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Republicans think this whole thing stinks.
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: Believe this, a Russian oligarch paid for a lavish wedding
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: after party for Donald Trump Jr.
• 1:30
  Speaker 5: which to me, it just stinks.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: It's corruption.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I don't like it.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: And still with me here at the table, Ashley Parker
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: and Jelani Cobb. So, Jelani, this wasn't a very long friendship.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Kremlev's press office told ProPublica that the two only met
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago and have a friendly relationship.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: That's not how you describe a super close buddy, at
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: least not in the world I'm living in. So if
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: there was nothing to worry about here, as the family
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: has been arguing, why would Don Jr. have to pay
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: him back?
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I think the technical term for this
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: is love bombing when someone does something extraordinarily generous way
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: too early in a relationship. No, but I think that
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: the the other part of this is I'm going to
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: be quaint because, you know, early in my life when
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: I worked in government, they gave us an ethical mandate,
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: which really will sound like something from a bygone era.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: But it was not only to avoid we're not we
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: were not only to avoid impropriety. but the appearance of impropriety.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: And that is so far gone from where we are now,
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: where we have actual impropriety and then blatant things where
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: there may not be, may or may not be something
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: on the books that prohibits this, But the technical term
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: stinks applies. There are all kinds of implications that you
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: would suspect and say, well, what is this person getting
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: in exchange, if anything? And so, yeah, this is the
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: reason that that old ethical standard existed in the first place.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Ashley, Democrats are, of course, gearing up to make a
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: whole lot of hay out of this to do these investigations.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: They talk about it all the time that for many
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: of them, that's sort of priority number one after November.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: And I wonder if there's any risk there for them
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: of over promising and under delivering, just because no matter
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: what happens in the next couple of weeks, they're not
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: going to have a DOJ on their side in any
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: of this.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: There's there's that risk.
• 3:23
  Speaker 5: There's also the risk that I've talked to some Democrats
• 3:26
  Speaker 5: about privately of Overreaching right there, their base is so
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: eager for investigations and for what they view as justice,
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: that there's also the risk that Democrats can sort of
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: overstep their mandate and go too far. But I will
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: say that regardless of what would happen. if this particular
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: very generous wedding gift was investigated and was potentially referred
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: up to Trump's Department of Justice and nothing happened, this
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: strikes me as something that would not be viewed by
• 3:57
  Speaker 5: the public as overreach. This is something that the public
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: understands very basically and simply as something, you know, that
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: is the Republican senator put.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: It, stinks.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Do you agree with that, Jelani, that sort of regardless
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: of what the actual outcome is, that there's a sort
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: of ethical, moral imperative here to do that work anyway?
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: There absolutely is, because you have to establish the record,
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: you know, and as a historian, that's the important thing
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: for us. You have to establish for succeeding generations a
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: record of what exactly happened. The other part of this
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: is that we've been talking about whether or not the
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: presumably Democratic Congress and Democratic Senate would impeach Donald Trump
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: for the third time. But there's also jeopardy from his
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: cabinet members. And so the kind of behavior that we
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: have seen from DOJ may or may not set off
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: alarm bells in Congress because members of the cabinet can
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: be impeached as well. And so that is just an
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: interesting dynamic that will will certainly be on the minds
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: of people. Should both parties switch control in November?
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Ashley, do you get the sense that a lot of
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: folks around the president are banking on angling for pardons?
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: I mean, the president has essentially said as much that
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: anyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: Office may may get a pardon. And another interesting thing
• 5:23
  Speaker 5: is that normally after a midterm, that's when people start
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: to switch jobs, leave the administration. But there is some
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: talk that people close to the president might actually leave.
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: stay in the administration a bit longer than they'd planned,
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: to have the government help pay for their lawyers for
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: some of those investigations rather than trying to handle them
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: on the outside as private citizens.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I'm sure the taxpayers will appreciate that. At a time when,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: you know, there's already evidence that this isn't just sort
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: of being glazed over by the American public, The Economist
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: and YouGov have a new poll out which asked U.S.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: registered voters what words they'd use to describe Trump Fifty
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: three percent. So more than half of people associated him
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: with the word corrupt. Fifty one percent dangerous. Forty seven
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: percent said out of touch.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: Jelani. Yeah, I mean, this is not a revelation. We're
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: looking at what his track record was in business. We
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: look at what the the criticisms that were made of
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: him dating back to the 2016 presidential election or the
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: 2020 election or the 24 election.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: For some people, though, is it a revelation?
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that what has happened is that for
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: a certain segment of people, it's become just impossible to
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: avoid any other kind of conclusion because he's benefited greatly,
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: possibly more than anyone else in modern American politics, from
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: a really extensive benefit of the doubt. His capacity to
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: explain even the inexplicable in ways that leave him Not culpable.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: It's an astounding thing to see that I think it
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: will take generations of historians to figure out. But even
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: that has its limits. At some point, people begin looking
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: at things. Another thing I'll say about this is it's
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: not just corruption. It's the type of corruption. We've had
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: a kind of elegant corruption in American life and American
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: politics for a really long time. What we don't like
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: is the kind of smash and grab envelope full of
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: cash style of corruption. We think of that as beneath us.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: And so when people begin seeing things that don't even
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: have any kind of plausible deniability. It leads you to
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: a conclusion.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of these headlines, they frankly read like
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: things that the United States would have criticized third world
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: dictators for.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: 100%.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: In very recent memory.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: 100%. All right.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Ashley Parker and Jelani Cobb, it is so good to
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: see you both.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: Hey, it's me, Rachel Maddow. If you like the story
• 7:55
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