A tiny piece of good news about Trump corruption

     “No, she wasn’t a member of my family. She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago. She went to Greece, she was doing a good job, but we didn't like what we were reading.  I didn't speak with her, no. She will, uh I didn't like what I read."

Trump comments to reporters on Kimberly Guilfoyle

Kimberly Guilfoyle: terminated as U.S. Ambassador to Greece

We should accept this moment with a good and generous spirit.

Trump corruption has limits.

I share the dismay many readers feel that America has reset its standards of corruption so low that open, proud pay-for-play grift, crypto meme-coin bribery, and pardons-for-donations are tolerated by the congressional maority.  How could we sink so low?

And am I now writing that we should see Trump’s preposterous effort to distance himself from Guilfoyle as something good? Yes.

The fact that Guilfoyle lived with Trump’s son, Don Jr., and was engaged to him, in a relationship that lasted six years and ended only in 2024, makes Trump’s distancing an even more heroic lie. Trump is normally a confident, rapid-fire liar. He appears to believe what he says while he is saying it. It is part of his persuasiveness. The idea in circulation to explain this phenomenon is that Trump doesn’t lie; he truly believes obviously untrue things, then speaks his mind.

His claim that Guilfoyle was some remote stranger was so obvious a lie that he couldn’t get the words out cleanly, by his usual standard. He fumbled. It means Trump has a conscience -- yet more good news.

There is a limit to Trump’s corruption. Family members are exempt, of course, but Guilfoyle was near-family, and she remains a fierce loyalist. She was careless in her grift. There were guilty words in texts. She was either running a shakedown, because she had some knowledge of bad behavior by the favor-seeker, or simply peddling influence without a sufficient cover story. 

Trump avoids putting things in writing, and he always has a pretext ready. His pay-to-play dealmaking has the cover of an “investment” in crypto coins. That was plausible enough that thousands of gullible Trump supporters sent money to get in on the bonanza. They were the suckers. They lost money. The big-money players, the smart money, had no illusions. They knew it was a bribe, not an investment. Their reward was a seat at the dinner party, where Trump could acknowledge their deposit in his favor bank.  

Guilfoyle’s firing is not, however, simply a failing grade in grift-craft. Nor, I think, is it simply a failing grade on the look required in the Trump orbit — her garish plastic surgery having given her the “Mar-a-Lago face” that mangled her appearance and casts shade on the Mar-a-Lago brand. Trump did, in fact, set a boundary. He does not want open grift by non-family loyalists. 

It means something that he does not openly embrace the grift brand. That was in dispute. One could argue that he saw getting money from selling influence as a positive, a sign of dominance — proof that Trump is not a trustee of an office owned by the public, but rather the country’s de facto owner, free to take what he wants. Trump personally takes what he wants. That is established. It was uncertain how far Trump could delegate personal enrichment.

We got the beginning of an answer, a boundary: not as far as Guilfoyle.

In the months ahead we will see other boundaries tested to establish how Trump manages enrichment for an umbra that includes White House staff, cabinet members, major donors, friends of donors, and others. We already know that Republican politicians are “protected” IF they are 100 percent loyal. We saw that scandal-plagued George Santos and Ken Paxton are protected. Guilfoyle now joins former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in being cast out. We learn who can enrich themselves by inference. Like Trump himself, close family and in-laws can do anything. Very wealthy friends appear to be in the protected class, if loyal. Presidential appointees are a mixed case, requiring more definition. Kash Patel is in, for now. Males have more latitude than females.

The fact that there is any boundary is a positive. Trump is establishing a standard for acceptable corruption, the standard of old Tammany Hall: “honest graft.” 

At least it isn’t a free-for-all.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]