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The writer is an FT contributing editor, chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, and fellow at IWM Vienna
It is an old debate: is it power that corrupts, or the fear of losing it? Whatever the right answer is, it is clear that something remarkable is happening in the US today.
In the past two weeks, the media has been flooded with stories of President Donald Trump’s personal enrichment. According to reports, the Trump family and their business partners have collected $320mn in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered real estate deals worth billions of dollars and, on top of that, Trump has welcomed Qatar’s offer of a luxury jet as a gift to the US government. Forbes has estimated that Trump’s net worth increased by $1.2bn between March 2024 and March 2025.
This extraordinary situation raises three key questions. First, why is Trump not even pretending to follow the usual presidential script of building a beautiful wall between public office and private business? Second, why is the public not moved by the Trump family’s growing wealth and conflicts of interest? And third, how long can its tolerance last?
The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, has given a straight answer to the first question. Speaking at a business forum in Qatar, he expressed the Trump family’s opinion that “they’re going to hit you no matter what”, so playing according to the rules is a loser’s game. He has a point.
The outcome of the past decades of anti-corruption outrage is that it has become almost impossible to believe that anyone seeking power does not do so in order to get rich. The key distinction here is between those, like Trump, who do not hide their conflicts of interest, and hypocrites who try to cover them up. The saga of Hunter Biden is a reminder that the attempts of a president’s son to cover up his business deals triggered more outrage than the deals themselves.
Trump has also benefited from the size of his profits. For ordinary citizens, any amount of money a hundred times or more higher than their annual income is almost incomprehensible. The public does not think in billions, so Trump’s deals are more or less meaningless to them.
The second question — why is the public unmoved? — is particularly painful for many. “Either the general public never cared about this,” suggests Paul Rosenzweig, who was a senior counsel to Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, or “the public did care about it but no longer does”. In his view, anti-corruption outrage “was always just a figment of elite imagination”.
It is more than this. Historically, subjects of monarchs in many countries tolerated royal corruption because it is transparent; the lavish lifestyle of royals is constantly on public display.
In the 19th century, the conventional wisdom was that monarchy was a form of strong government because people understood it. Democracy today is viewed in the same way. Public preoccupation with corruption arises when democracy stops making sense — when people no longer know who is making the decisions. “Who really decides?” is the question that tears modern democracies apart. Are leaders following the will of voters or of their donors? Are the rulers those who were elected or anonymous faceless bureaucrats.
In a moment of growing uncertainty and mistrust, it is easier to place your hopes in a charismatic individual than in the complex institutional machine of modern democracy. The growing appeal of personalised power is a direct result of the sense people have that they no longer understand how their democracies work.
“Who decides?” is one question you do not need to worry about in Trump’s White House. It is he who decides, and as a result, his family’s enrichment while he is in office has lost some of its menace. Trump may be one of the most tainted of all American presidents, but he is also the most transparent.
Therein lies the discreet charm of patrimonial regimes — the attraction of running the state as a family business. As Trump has realised, personal power is weakened by secrecy, and threatened if the one wielding it is accused not of corruption but of hypocrisy.
His administration is hell for conspiracy theorists because everything is on the surface. The current wave of anti-liberalism is a revolt against double standards. In a society governed by mistrust the cynic is the only one to be trusted. In its idealised version, modern democracy promises that a political leader will treat his own children like any others. But for those who vote for the new potentates, this is the “big lie”.
As for the answer to the third question — how long the public’s tolerance for Trump’s “beautiful” deals can last — that remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: if a majority of US citizens eventually turn against this administration, their battle cry is likely to be “hypocrisy”.
