SEN CHRIS MURPHY: In Trump's first 100 days, he has normalized corruption. It must stop
A Tesla showroom on the White House Lawn. $5 million for 1-on-1 meetings with the president. Illegally firing Inspectors General. Special tariff exemptions for friendly corporations. The first 100 days of the Trump administration have been filled with non-stop acts of brazen corruption, bribery, and favors for President Donald Trump’s billionaire friends.
When you think of corrupt politicians, you might imagine smoke-filled rooms where secret deals are brokered and bribes are exchanged. But what makes Trump’s corruption unique is that he isn’t trying to hide what he’s doing. He brags about it. After he posted on Truth Social, "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!!," and then paused his across-the-board tariffs, he brought Charles Schwab — yes, the same Charles Schwab (net worth $12.9 billion) of the bank Charles Schwab — into the Oval Office on April 9th and announced Schwab had made $2.5 billion that day thanks to some suspiciously well-timed stock purchases.
Why is Trump doing all of this out in the open? It’s not because he believes in transparency. No, it’s because Trump thinks that if he publicly engages in enough corruption and grift, it will start to feel normal to people. As the media fails to keep up with the sheer pace and volume of corruption, most of it flies under the radar. He will try to convince us this is normal. But it’s not.
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Let’s take one example, which may be the most corrupt of them all: the Trump meme coin. For most people, the crypto industry is an enigma. That’s what makes it a perfect vehicle for corruption.
Right before the inauguration, Trump launched a meme coin called $TRUMP. It has no actual value -- its value is simply related to how much demand exists, and as president of the most powerful country in the world, Trump is in a position to use his enormous official power to generate demand for the coin, and in turn, profits for himself and his family.
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Last week, the crypto coin scandal went nuclear. Trump posted on the coin’s website: "HAVE DINNER WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP. The most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World. Only for the TOP 220 $TRUMP Meme Coin Holders." The price of the coin jumped more than 50%. Its market value soared to $2.7 billion. To juice the price even more, they announced the top 25 coin holders would also be invited to "an Exclusive Reception" before dinner with Trump complete with a "Special VIP Tour" of the White House.
In just two days following the announcement of the dinner, Trump and his allies made nearly $900,000 in trading fees alone. It’s so brazen as to be hard to believe -- the president selling access to the White House as a mechanism to enrich himself personally.
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The get-rich-quick scheme isn’t even the worst part. The biggest scam is that we will never know who exactly is buying the Trump coin and putting cash directly into his pocket. It is as if Trump has posted his Venmo or CashApp online for every corporate interest and foreign government to funnel money directly to his bank account. Tech billionaires, Russian oligarchs, Saudi princes, CEOs of oil companies, or executives looking for exemptions from the tariffs — they can all purchase Trump’s meme coin and curry favor with the president by making him even richer. There is even a leaderboard tracking who buys the most coin but the usernames are completely anonymous.
Trump’s meme coin is just one of the dozens of examples proving that Trump has no interest in keeping the promises he made to the American people about lowering costs.
It’s no wonder he’s done nothing to tackle prices -- he is spending every day trying to figure out how to use the power of the presidency to make himself and his friends richer. In fact, Trump has done more to enrich himself and his ultra-wealthy friends in the first 100 days of this presidency than he did in his entire last term.
America doesn’t need to accept this level of corruption. It’s up to us whether we allow him to make all of this feel normal.