In the News

Trump Is the Ultimate Corrupt Washington Politician

Jesse Lee and Will Ragland explain why no president in modern history has embodied the qualities of corruption more than President Donald Trump.

In President Donald Trump’s final debate with former Vice President Joe Biden, he tried to conjure up one of his core arguments from 2016: that he is an outsider, while Biden is a “corrupt politician.” The argument rested on conspiracy theories about Biden’s family that were barely comprehensible.

But after almost four years of Trump’s presidency, we don’t need elaborate fever dreams to know that he has become the ultimate corrupt Washington politician.

Trump promised to “drain the swamp” in 2016 and rid the system of lobbyist and big money influence. Yet his administration hired more than 280 ex-lobbyists, filling one out of every 14 political appointments, in its first three years, and Trump has appointed at least 10 ex-lobbyists to his Cabinet—double the amount Obama did in two terms.

The above excerpt was originally published in Newsweek. Click here to view the full article.

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Authors

Jesse Lee

Senior Adviser

Will Ragland

Vice President, Research