America Must Reverse Trump’s Moral Squalor

The Democrats’ focus on affordability seems to be a winning strategy (we’ll know for sure in a little over two weeks). But we mustn’t lose sight of the moral squalor at the core of the Trump regime and the necessity of ending it. It’s that moral squalor – the utter disregard for the opinions, norms and ideals of the nation and, for that matter, of humanity – that uniquely marks Trump and the reprobates he has attracted to Washington. It has also poisoned much of the Republican party, including the billionaires and tech bros who finance it. To put this despicable era behind us, we’ll need to renounce and reverse this squalor. What is loosely described as Trump’s ‘conflicts of interest’, for example, extend way beyond enriching himself from his presidency. He has violated the norms of presidential decency.

He recently decided to host the Group of 20 annual summit of world leaders at his private golf club in Miami in December. When he sought to do this during his first term, it was viewed as a blatant violation of the emoluments clause of the United States (US) constitution. Now, after America’s moral sensibilities have been numbed by Trump’s appetite for foreign gifts – such as Qatar’s ‘donation’ of a US$400-million (about N$6. 6-billion) jumbo jet – it barely merits a mention. Trump’s social media platform Truth Social could reportedly charge up to US$100 000 (about N$1. 6 million) a month for access to ‘Truth API’, a service that gives subscribers access to potentially market-moving posts by high-profile users such as Trump in ‘milliseconds’. The service, in other words, enables subscribers to make lucrative stock market trades off market-moving information coming from the president. A company linked to his family files a trademark application for ‘Trump TV’ to control…