{"id":216076,"date":"2026-07-06T01:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T01:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trumps-2bn-bonanza-heralds-the-rise-of-political-grifters-across-the-west-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T01:26:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T01:26:15","slug":"trumps-2bn-bonanza-heralds-the-rise-of-political-grifters-across-the-west-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trumps-2bn-bonanza-heralds-the-rise-of-political-grifters-across-the-west-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s $2bn bonanza heralds the rise of political grifters across the west – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

With voters embracing leaders who brazenly monetise public office, experts say an ethical code is breaking down
Donald Trump came to office in 2017 after decades of bankruptcies and business failures. Yes, he was rich, but his latest financial disclosure, published this week, suggests he will depart billions richer.
In the first year of his second term, he made more than $2bn from Trump hotels, Trump golf courses, Trump cryptocurrency, Trump watches, Trump cologne, Trump Bibles and more.
That means Trump has accomplished something none of his predecessors achieved, at least not on this scale: transforming the American presidency into a moneymaking enterprise.
Politicians have always enriched themselves but the chutzpah with which Trump is doing so raises the possibility that an ethical code is breaking down. And not just in the US. Across the west, from Clacton to Queensland, a new type of leader is emerging: the political grifter.
Making public office a ticket to the high life while living standards fall might seem a hard sell to the electorate. Yet many voters seem prepared to put up with grifting, even happy to reward it.
Nigel Farage has traded on his fame and influence to become the best-paid MP at Westminster while maintaining an image as the champion of downtrodden Britons. He takes flights on the private jets of a billionaire benefactor, as does the Australian populist Pauline Hanson, who has repeatedly breached<\/a> rules on declaring them.
\u201cFor decades, there was an implicit understanding that using public office for personal enrichment carried political and reputational risks,\u201d says Tutu Alicante, a human rights lawyer based in the US and an expert in kleptocracy worldwide. \u201cThat restraint appears to be eroding.\u201d
Alicante adds: \u201cWhat feels different today is the brazenness.\u201d The shift reminds him of places like his native Equatorial Guinea, where \u201ccorruption has become aspirational\u201d as youngsters idolise the flashy kleptocrats who drive Lamborghinis and hang out with models.
\u201cI worry we\u2019re beginning to see echoes of the same phenomenon in parts of the west, where politicians who openly monetise public office \u2013 and the business figures and influencers who orbit them \u2013 are celebrated by some as symbols of success rather than cautionary tales.\u201d
With an ease that was impossible before the advent of cryptocurrency, Trump supporters can buy into the bonanza, though some may wish they hadn\u2019t.
Having once called crypto a scam, Trump launched his own meme coin \u2013 essentially a digital trading card bearing his likeness and name \u2013 upon returning to the White House. Many who bought them lost money when the price plunged. But Trump\u2019s disclosure indicates he made $635m.
That is only one half the president\u2019s crypto play, however. The other is what Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator, was referring to this week when she denounced his \u201cbrazen crypto corruption\u201d. This is the allegation that the Trump crypto ventures are a way to buy political favours.
For years, the Trump family business was real estate. Trump\u2019s sons Don Jr and Eric, formally in charge while their father is president, have struck plenty of property deals during their global moneymaking blitz<\/a>. But there have been complications, as in Serbia, where protests and a prosecution thwarted plans for a Trump Tower<\/a>. Even a project in Vietnam, which received a favourable tariff rate after welcoming Eric to embark on a new golf resort, is behind schedule.
Crypto deals face no such hitches. The one that has generated the greatest outcry was a three-way set of transactions involving the Trump crypto company World Liberty Financial, the authoritarian rulers of the United Arab Emirates and a convicted crypto kingpin. The upshot was that $500m of Emirati money flowed to the Trump company<\/a>, the UAE gained access to powerful American AI chips and the crypto kingpin received a pardon.
Those involved say it was all just legitimate business. The White House says: \u201cNeither the president nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.\u201d
Trump himself has waved off the scrutiny. \u201cI made a lot of money before I became president,\u201d he has told reporters. The White House has long maintained Trump\u2019s businesses are walled off from his official duties and run by his adult sons. The president was \u201cnot involved in running his businesses and has turned them over to his children, so these business endeavours do not involve him,\u201d an official said.
Farage likewise says there is no quid pro quo in how he makes his own crypto millions. He has promoted dubious crypto schemes on the Cameo video site<\/a> and plugged a bitcoin venture led by Kwasi Kwarteng<\/a>, who as chancellor delivered Liz Truss\u2019s premiership-ending budget.
Beyond these personal money-spinners, Farage\u2019s entire political project since Brexit has depended on the largesse of Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto tycoon<\/a> who has given Farage\u2019s Reform UK and its predecessor, the Brexit party, two-thirds of their funding.
\u201cDoes he want anything from me?\u201d Farage has said of Harborne. \u201cNo. Absolutely nothing in return at all.\u201d
Yet Farage is now facing two investigations into their relationship. Labour this week urged the standards watchdog<\/a> to look into whether he broke parliamentary rules by lobbying the Bank of England to drop a cryptocurrency plan that could be costly for Harborne.
The watchdog is already investigating Farage\u2019s failure to declare a \u00a35m personal gift he received from Harborne<\/a>. Farage has given shifting explanations for this payment. \u201cIt\u2019s not the public\u2019s business,\u201d he has said.
In Transparency International\u2019s most recent annual survey of how bad the public think corruption has got in their country, the US, UK, Canada and France recorded their lowest scores since comparable records began in 2012.
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing a concentration of wealth and power on a scale unprecedented in modern history,\u201d says Duncan Hames, a former Liberal Democrat MP who is now head of policy at Transparency International UK. \u201cThere\u2019s a growing risk of state capture through extreme wealth and advanced technologies by those intent on protecting their own interests instead of advancing the public good.\u201d
Nonetheless, large numbers of voters embrace grifters. Anne Applebaum, a historian who writes for the Atlantic and recently published Autocracy, Inc, says this is possible because \u201csocieties with long traditions of the rule of law \u2026 have been transformed by tribal politics\u201d.
Applebaum has studied Russia and other ex-Soviet kleptocracies. \u201cThe followers of corrupt leaders either don\u2019t know about corruption \u2013 the information bubbles they inhabit don\u2019t tell them \u2013 or they don\u2019t care, because they see their leaders as \u2018ours\u2019, or \u2018one of us\u2019. If they are stealing money, then somehow it\u2019s \u2018our\u2019 money.\u201d
There have been plenty on the left who have blurred the lines between public office and personal enrichment, from union leaders to Peter Mandelson<\/a> to the Democratic ex-governor who tried to sell Barack Obama\u2019s old senate seat<\/a>.
But nationalists are better able to generate the kind of loyalty Applebaum describes. Trump and Farage grow rich while stoking nativism; Hanson demands that Australia become \u201cmonocultural\u201d as she flaunts lavish perks<\/a> from donors.
Trump\u2019s ability to profit far exceeds that of fellow grifters, in proportion to their power. His loyalists in Congress, the justice department and watchdogs have cowed the institutions that should uphold probity.
Tom Keatinge, of the Centre for Finance and Security at the Rusi thinktank in London, says: \u201cWe should be looking across the Atlantic and saying: Could our system resist the kind of capture that the Trump administration has achieved in the States?\u201d
If you have something to share about this story, you can contact Tom using one of the following methods:
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If you don\u2019t already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS<\/a>\/Android<\/a>) and go to the menu. Select \u2018Secure Messaging\u2019. To send a message to Tom Burgis please choose the \u2018UK Investigations\u2019 team.
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source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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