When George Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, his strategy was to overwhelm the Iraqis with violence so that they would feel that resistance was useless. He called it “shock and awe.” Today, Trump is using shock and awe for his corruption. It is so overwhelming that one doesn’t know where to begin. His first act upon returning to office was to pardon 1600 violent fascist January 6 rioters. He followed that up with pardoning potential political ally, former Honduran president and global drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández.

He then realized that his pardon power could be used for personal profit. According to Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro  “Trevor Milton… was pardoned in March 2025 after pouring nearly $2 million into pro-Trump political committees in 2024.

“In another case, Changpeng Zhao the founder of Binance pleaded guilty to money laundering and was subsequently pardoned last October after the company he founded took steps that effectively enriched the Trump family with hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Four large players in the cryptocurrency industry—Robinhood Markets, Coinbase, Ripple, and Kraken—each made donations ranging from $1 to $5 million to Trump’s 2025 inaugural fund. Then in the early months of the Trump Administration, these companies had Securities and Exchange Commission cases against them dismissed, and the Justice Department disbanded a crypto crimes task force.”

According to Wikipedia, Trump has pardoned about 350-400 in addition to the 1600 January 6 criminals. The “normal fee” for those pardons is $1 million. That makes the tidy little fee of about $400 million overall and counting.

Trump investments
Trump has merged foreign policy with his personal investments. For example, in May of this year the Brennan Center reported “Trump bought millions of dollars of Boeing stock before the trip, which led to the sale of 200 Boeing airplanes to the Chinese government. Among his biggest purchases has been Nvidia stock, which has seen steep increases after the U.S. government cleared 10 Chinese companies to purchase its advanced chips, in a big reversal from earlier national security concerns.”

Regulatory Power
Trump has used federal regulatory power to extort corporations. In particular, this has involved federal power to approve or veto corporate mergers. For example, according to American Prospect the Paramount Skydance merger with Warner Brothers met all the guidelines for being anti-competitive. However, according to Wall St. Journal, “Ellison gave roughly $45 million to a political nonprofit group supporting Trump’s election efforts in 2024… More recently, Ellison has given millions of dollars more to groups that support Trump since the election… with some of the funds going to Trump’s legacy initiatives in Washington, D.C. Oracle is among the corporate sponsors listed by Freedom 250, a Trump-aligned group hosting celebrations for the country’s 250th birthday.

“Trump’s investment accounts were actively trading Oracle shares earlier this year, including a sale worth at least $1 million in January and a purchase worth at least $1 million in March, federal disclosure filings show.”

Cryptocurrencies
Trump has done a complete one-eighty on the issue of cryptocurrencies. He used to be opposed to its use. Then he realized it and similar investments could be profitable.

The NY Times reports that Trump’s family backed firm “introduced a cryptocurrency called stablecoin just months before he signed legislation promoting stablecoin.”

The Wall St. Journal‘s Peggy Noonan explains further:“There is the $Trump meme coin, some of the largest buyers of which have been given access to the president, some at a dinner at one of his golf clubs. A Washington Post analysis suggests roughly half may be foreign-based. The Journal has reported that representatives of Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi agreed to purchase 49% of a Trump crypto entity for $500 million. Sheikh Tahnoun is not only a businessman but a senior member of the United Arab Emirates’ ruling family and its national-security adviser. This newspaper also reports that Mr. Trump made many millions licensing his name to overseas property developers, including developers in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Oman…”

Trump and Putin
Trump’s close ally Putin heads one of the few regimes that is as corrupt as the Trump regime. Their alliance also results from the fact that for many years Trump was a money launderer for the same Russian oligarchs upon whom Putin rests. Here’s an example of the symbiotic relationship between these two:

Recently, Trump signed off on additional sanctions against Russia. Those sanctions include penalties against the Russian oil conglomerate Lukoil. This was to help Trump’s bottom line, not to help Ukraine. Here’s how it works: Lukoil owns assets around the world, including oil fields, refineries and U.S. gas stations. Due to the sanctions, the value of those global assets has plunged. The NY Times picks up the story from there: “Some of the key figures poised to benefit from the Lukoil sale have ties to President Trump’s family and his associates — including the administration’s envoys to Russia….

“When Mr. Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, met with Mr. Putin at the Kremlin last month, the Russian president asked them to get the Lukoil deal done. The Americans said they would work on it, reasoning that doing so could build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices. The leader of the investor group is Todd Boehly, a billionaire asset manager and co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, among other holdings. He is also a major donor to Mr. Trump’s political causes. He contributed $1 million to Mr. Trump’s affiliated MAGA Inc.

“Mr. Trump; his three sons; Mr. Kushner; Ivanka Trump, one of the president’s daughters; and the Witkoff family all have financial ties to partners in the deal, which requires sign off from the Trump administration and the Kremlin.”

Trump and the Arab capitalists
Corruption in the Arab states is also involved. The same NY Times article reports: “The investors who have teamed up with Mr. Boehly include one of the richest investment funds in the Middle East, International Holding Company, which is overseen by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family.

Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan with Witkoff and Kushner

“Sheikh Tahnoon separately runs outfits that own nearly half of World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company co-founded by Mr. Witkoff and still run by Zach Witkoff, one of Steve Witkoff’s sons. Donald Trump Jr. and Barron Trump, two of the president’s sons, also are stakeholders and co-founders of the company, and so they too are effectively business partners with Sheikh Tahnoon.

“Sheikh Tahnoon, one of the most powerful players in Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates, controls companies that oversee Lunate, an investment fund that took a major stake in the private equity firm Affinity Partners, which was set up by Mr. Kushner after he left the White House at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term.”

There is no end to Trump’s corruption. Everything is a money-making proposition. When he realized that his “Truth Social” comments affect stock prices, he started selling advance notice of what he was going to post for $100,000 per month. When he realized that he could profit from holding international gatherings like the G7 and G20 on his properties, he started holding them there. As of the present, he’s planning to hold the next G20 meeting at Mar-a-Lago in December. In order to curry favor with Trump, Amazon paid millions of dollars to produce and promote a virtually worthless puff piece by and about Melania Trump. Donald Trump even sued his own IRS for $10 billion and ended up settling the suit with himself for a mere $1.8 billion. That, however, was too much for the federal judiciary, which threw the settlement out.

Trump with one of his closest business partners, Meredith O’Rourke

Meredith O’Rourke
A signal event for Trump was the meeting he convened with oil executives during his 2024 presidential campaign. He told them that for $1 billion in donations he would enact the policies they wanted regarding energy. He received that bribe, and once in office, he moved to kill the competitors for the oil market: Wind energy. It then dawned upon him that once he occupied the White House the money-making opportunities would be even greater. Key to these opportunities is his chief fund-raiser, Meredith O’Rourke, whom he calls nearly every night according to the Wall St. Journal, which describes  O’Rourke’s role in depth: “After the 2024 election, Trump realized how many donors and companies were lining up outside his Mar-a-Lago club to cut multimillion-dollar checks and told O’Rourke to immediately start soliciting donations, advisers said. She was planning to slow down operations. Strike while the iron is hot, Trump told O’Rourke…. Trump asks O’Rourke which companies and donors have cut checks and which haven’t, and for how much. He often asks her to make much larger financial requests than she was planning—for some donors the ask is $5 million, for others it is $50 million. And the president gives her names to call, often including people who have recently met with him.” 

The following all comes from that same WSJ article also explains that SoftBank, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Apple have been strong-armed into donating between $5 million and $50 million each towards Trump vanity projects (the ballroom and the helipad) and Trump-aligned political committees. Some of these, such as the Trump presidential library will be used both as a vanity project and for future personal enrichment. The Trump library is to be housed in a new multi-story steel and glass building which will also house a hotel. It doesn’t take much to figure out who will profit from the hotel!

Tobacco companies donated tens of millions of dollars, after which the administration loosened regulations which restricted selling vaping products to minors.

According to the WSJ, Marc Short, former head of legislative affairs for the first Trump administration calls what is happening today a “corporate shakedown”. Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University said: “Trump is shattering all fundraising paradigms in regards to hitting up corporate America for donations. The scope is mind-bogglingly large.”

Further from the WSJ: “If a company encounters an issue with the federal government that comes to Trump’s attention, he will want to know how much money the company gave, according to a person familiar with the matter. At times he’ll rib the corporate leaders who haven’t met the goals he set, the person said.

“Companies have traded notes about what Wall Street analyst Blair Levin calls ‘The Trump Transaction Tax,’ or a payment outside of the cost of normal business. ‘Another way of saying it,’ Levin said, ‘is simply that we’re replacing the free market with the market for Trump’s affections.’”

Trump’s freedom from all constraints
One of the most blatant acts of Trump’s “monetizing” the White House was his lawsuit against the IRS for $10 billion. He then “settled” the lawsuit for $1.8 billion. Since Trump directly controls both the IRS and the Department of Justice, this was simply an attempt to raid the public kitty, and it was so blatant that a federal judge threw it out. That affair showed that Trump has no concern for how he is generally perceived. It is part of his general lawlessness. He feels free to go to war without the least attempt to rally public support for that war, never mind the Constitutional requirement that only Congress can declare war. He feels free to bomb helpless crews in motorboats in the Caribbean. He feels free to impose whatever tariffs he likes. He has freed ICE to shoot people in the streets of every US city with no consequences. He is free to build whatever monstrosity he likes in Washington DC, with no outside control or input. Time and again, his various agencies have violated court injunctions, the latest being his Postal Service violating a temporary restraining order against starting to work on taking control of the mail-in voting system.

Corruption and repression
Trump’s “shock and awe” approach to monetizing his possession of the White House depends on acceptance by his own cult followers. They compose about 35-38% of the electorate. Trump must obscure the fact that the MAGAites, themselves, are paying for Trump’s corruption. He does so by appealing to other aspects of the MAGA psychology. First and foremost is bullying and brutality. The MAGAites get pleasure out of seeing others – the supposed enemy – suffer. That is why ICE rampages, mass deportations, murder of innocents overseas are all supported by the MAGAites. The most extreme example of this is Hegseth’s current proposal to carry out the execution of a soldier convicted of murder by firing squad, and to do so in public, so MAGAites can enjoy watching it. What is next – public stoning? This is part of the psychology that is necessary to get the MAGAites to accept the fact that Trump is robbing them blind.

Trump’s corruption is linked with his gathering the reins of power into his own hands, freed from any other controls. In Naomi Klein’s ground breaking 2007 book The Shock Doctrine she showed how from Pinochet to Putin one dictatorship after another combined governmental corruption with state repression. That is exactly what is happening under Trump.

Centralizing personal power: The U.S. Supreme Court
The federal judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, are supposed to provide a check on presidential power. Through a series of rulings, the Supreme Court’s Trump Six (Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Alito and Thomas) have done just the opposite. They are moving towards the “unitary executive” legal theory. This legal theory holds that the entire executive branch of the government is controlled by a unitary or single executive – the president. The unitary executive theory holds that every single federal agency, every federal branch including the Department of Justice is under the direct control of the president. According to Scotusblog Kavanaugh and former (in)Justice Scalia officially support that theory and Roberts is close, having stated that “the President occupies a unique position in the constitutional scheme as the only person who alone composes a branch of government.”

Now, the Trump Six is moving towards formally adopting that theory. In March of 2025 Trump fired two Democratic appointees of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). One of these, Rebecca Slaughter, sued. In October of 2025 the Trump Six ruled that the Constitution prohibits the legislature from restricting the President’s inherent power to remove their subordinates from office and upheld the dismissal. This in effect gives Trump personal control over federal agencies, despite the fact that those agencies were established by laws passed by congress and imbued with certain regulatory powers.

The Trump Six helped pave the way for Trump’s complete control through several other rulings. In June of 2024 they ruled that bribery is a crime only if the elected official receives the payoff before they act. Then in a ruling that shocked even middle of the road Supreme Court watchers, they ruled that nothing a president does in the line of duty as president can be considered to be a crime. In other words, even if Trump takes a payoff before he gets his Federal Trade Commission to rule favorably to some billionaire, it’s not illegal because he did so in the line of duty as president. If Trump orders ICE to murder people in the US, it’s not a crime because he’s president.

Democrats
After Zohran Mamdani won the mayor’s race in New York City, the Democratic Party became enamored of the issue of “affordability”. Everything was related back to that issue. The illegal and criminal Iran war? The issue is $6.00 per gallon diesel fuel. Trump’s taking it upon himself to build whatever he likes and however he likes in Washington DC? The issue is that while he’s spending millions, ordinary “hard working families” can barely afford groceries. Until recently, that was the Democrats’ approach. Now, since a poll revealed that 89% of US voters consider corruption to be a serious problem, the Democrats are starting to talk about that issue more.

If they recapture control over one or both houses of congress, the Democrats can somewhat weaken Trump’s personal use of the White House. They can hold hearings to further publicize his corruption. While that publicity would have no effect on the 35% or so who still support him, it would further weaken the Republican cult among “independent” voters. The Democrats can refuse to pass legislation that is key to Trump advancing his agenda, including his agenda for self-enrichment. If the Democrats capture a 52 member majority of the Senate they can refuse to pass Trump nominees. (Fifty-two Democrats is required because Fetterman is a Republican in all but name only.)

Democrats and union leadership
Overall, though, the Democratic Party is in a quandary. The overwhelming majority of Democrats don’t like Trump’s blatant corruption because it destabilizes the rule of capital. However, they don’t want to do anything that might provoke a movement which would destabilize things even more. The union leadership simply follows behind the Democratic Party. Take the example of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election: According to an article in the NY Times, in April of 2020, Democratic Party leaders came together with top union leaders to discuss what should be done if Trump lost the then upcoming election and refused to accept defeat. They agreed that they would strictly use the court system and would not mount street protests.

Something similar is happening today. The Democrats’ entire strategy in combating Trump’s corruption and dictatorial rule rests on legislative action plus court appeals. The problems are that the Trump Six on the Supreme Court have essentially handcuffed the lower courts as far as keeping Trump in check. As for legislation: Even if the Democrats capture the majority in the Senate they will require 60 votes to pass any significant bills and anyway Trump’s signature would be required to make those bills into law. As far as removing Trump through the impeachment, two thirds of the senators (67 votes) are required for impeachment conviction. So there are limits over how much Trump’s loss of control over the legislature will stop him.

To really stop Trump, a mass working class movement that actually shuts down the US economy is necessary. The Democrats and their representatives in the working class – the union leadership – are dedicated to preventing that. However, Trump’s loss of control over the legislative branch of the government would be a positive step.

Conclusion: Corruption and social chao 
The MAGAites claim that what Trump is doing is no different from what the Democrats do. The MAGAites are joined in that claim by the ultra left echo chamber dwellers. It is simply false. Trump has taken corruption to a qualitatively new level. As opposed to past presidents, Democrat and Republican alike, he has no care how he is conceived by the overwhelming majority of Americans. His corruption is so great that he doesn’t even try to hide it.

Past presidents saw part of their task as being to try to hold society together in order to maintain stability. Capitalism does not function in the interest of the vast majority of society, but when the alternative to social cohesion is chaos the only ones who benefit are the Elon Musks and Larry Ellisons and two-bit swindlers like Mike, “the pillow guy” Lindell. They use chaos to increase their own wealth and power. That is why they are pouring tens of millions of dollars into getting key MAGAites elected in the upcoming midterm elections. It is also why they support the chaos surrounding Trump, which includes his monetizing of the presidency – these capitalists are also raking in the big bucks. And while economic attacks on the working class may form the background, often it is personal and political scandals that can spark off a real crisis for a regime.

Meanwhile, the link between Trump’s corruption and his direct, personal dictatorship grows ever stronger as he moves towards trying to steal the upcoming midterm election.