US President D. Trump is Far More Corrupt and Dangerous than Some Corporate Media Portray Him

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay

[This article by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay was originally published by Global Research. You can read it here.]

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” –Donald Trump (1946- ), American President (2017-2021 and 2025- ), (in an infamous statement on the morning of Tuesday, April 7, 2026)

“The first time (first term), I had two things to do – run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys. And the second time (second term), I run the country and the world.” —Donald Trump (1946- ), American President (2017-2021 and 2025- ), (in the interview in the Atlantic, “I run the country and the world”, published on April 28, 2025)

“If he thinks he’s going down, he’s going to try to take the rest of us down with him.” —Mary Trump (1965- ), American psychologist and Donald Trump’s niece, author of the book ‘Too Much – Never Enough: How my family created the world’s most dangerous man‘. (in a YouTube interview, on November 6, 2020)

Since taking the oath of office of U.S. president for the second time, on January 20, 2025, real estate magnate Donald Trump (1946- ) has demonstrated to anybody who is moderately informed, that he is not your ordinary politician. It is well documented that he is, by far, the most corrupt and the most incompetent American president that the United States has ever had.

This is beyond the fact that he has serious character flaws and vices, such as his dictatorial, confrontational, bullying and manipulative temperament, which should normally have disqualified him to occupy a high public function.

Moreover, for Donald Trump, lying has become a sick obsession. He is a politician who lies, not just occasionally, but constantly, in his daily rants. This allows him to live in a childish fantasy world. In his mind, rejections are acceptances, failures are successes, and disasters are achievements. That makes him untrustworthy, to say the least.

For a head of government, or any leader for that matter, who loses touch with reality, this is a major flaw that can only have tragic consequences. In his case, what makes it very dangerous is when he distorts reality and invents serious accusations and claims, which are nothing but pure allegations or fabrications, and that are, for the most part, devoid of any logic, justification, or proof.

Because intellectual corruption often precedes financial corruption, this may explain why D. Trump does not have much respect for the U.S. Constitution, and why he is allegedly perceived as violating often his oath of office, which he took in 2017 and in 2021:

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” (Article II, Section One, Clause 8).

Therefore, by now, a majority of Americans know that real estate magnate and authoritarian politician D. Trump is lacking in intellectual honesty and in financial integrity. He is a bare-knuckled extortionist, who is ruthless in pursuing his private and family interests by relying openly on the old trick of “pay to play“.

Moreover, D. Trump has used various deflection tactics to refuse to abide by a law passed nearly unanimously by Congress, in December 2025, (the Epstein Files Transparency Act), to make public all the so-called un-redacted Epstein files and the scandals they contain, (despite his 2024 election campaign promises to do so!)

Trump’s cover-up means to keep secret his long involvement with the scandalous J. Epstein international pedophile sex ring, which made more than 1000 teen-aged girls, from many countries, victims of such a racket. This could possibly include other alleged examples of sexual misconduct, on his part.

I. A New Book Reveals the Portrait of Donald Trump and His Authoritarian and Dysfunctional Administration 2.0

On June 23, 2026, two experienced New York Times reporters, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, published a blockbuster book about Trump’s many horrors and insanities in his second term imperial presidency. Entitled ‘Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump’, it is a book that every American voter should read before the coming November 3 midterm election.

Indeed, the 496-page book ‘Regime Change‘, published by Simon & Schuster, depicts in detail Donald Trump’s second term in power. This is a book that will be read by future historians, as describing a period “unprecedented-in-our-lifetime“, in the use of authoritarian and corrupt power, “and how he and a small group of people prepared for it, and the events that drove it“.

II. Donald Trump’s Staggering Corruption is Without Limits

The list of D. Trump’s egregious acts of corruption is limitless.

One of Trump’s first corrupt decisions during and immediately after the 2024 election, was to accept hundreds of millions of dollars from super billionaires like Elon Musk, the Las Vegas Adelson family, and from many other super-wealthy donors.

Then D. Trump filled his administration and public agencies with oligarchs and people who had made large contributions to his Super Political Action Committees (PACS). For example, Trump appointed Howard Lutnick Secretary of Commerce, after the latter gave $9 million to a pro-Trump super PAC.

[Image: Official portrait of Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick (Public Domain)]

The dismantling and weaponizing of the independent U.S. Justice department

One of the most visible of Donald Trump’s acts of unprecedented political corruption is his destruction and weaponizing of the American Department of Justice, in naming his own personal lawyer in charge, and in turning that institution into his own instrument of political vindication and revenge.

In so doing, D. Trump put an end to the long tradition of keeping the Justice Department independent of the White House in cases of criminal investigations. He has led devastating attacks against the “rule of law” and against the long established principle that ‘nobody is above the law”, by indiscriminately firing most of the professional lawyers in the Justice Department, and other watchdogs, who were in charge of prosecuting cases of political corruption and waste. He also disbanded an FBI squadtasked with investigating congressional corruption and misconduct.

The attempts to create a huge ‘slush fund’ to help convicted supporters

Another most blatant corruption, among Trump’s hundreds of personal acts of political corruption, was his attempts to use taxpayers’ money to create a Justice Department’s ‘slush fund’ in the huge amount of $1.776 billion, to be used to help his supporters condemned by the courts, including 2021 Jan. 6 rioters. This was too much even for the most corrupt Republican members of Congress, who revolted.

The openly selling of Presidential pardons

Moreover, Donald Trump has gone full speed ahead to abuse a previously and sparsely used presidential constitutional prerogative to grant clemency to people convicted for cause.

In fact, he has allegedly engaged in selling multiple pardons to convicted criminals, including murderers, political donors and political allies, turning this process, according to observers, into an ‘industrial-scale’ corruption business of its own.

Trump has even named one person in the White House who is responsible to pressure rich individuals and companies to collect funds to finance his vanity projects, thus by-passing Congress.

III. D. Trump Has Violated the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution by Accepting Huge Gifts From Foreign Organizations and Donors

It is doubtful that Donald Trump has ever read or cared about the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Indeed, there are specific constitutional provisions against accepting “bribes” (profits, advantages, payments for service or financial gains) while holding a public office in the United States federal government. The purpose is to prevent corruption, limit foreign influence on federal officers, and preserve a sitting president’s independence:

Foreign Emoluments Clause (art. I, Sec. 9, Par. 8):

“No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Further, there are reports that indicate that President Donald Trump is much more involved in unconstitutional conflicts of interest and much more corrupt than the corporate medias usually depict him. Donald Trump’s list of conflicts of interest and of corruption profits is incredibly long.

[Click here to watch the video]

One example, and not the least, is D. Trump’s blatant use of the complex cryptocurrencies financial industry, which he has nearly completely deregulated, to enrich himself, his family and some close friendly ‘deal-makers’, with billions of dollars of profits yearly, at the expense of credulous speculators.

Indeed, on June 30, 2026, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics released a 927-page report that provides the most detailed look yet at Trump’s finances during his first year back in the White House. His crypto-related income dwarfed earnings reported by his traditional businesses and marked a sharp increase from past disclosures.

The report details how President Donald Trump cashed-in $1.4 billion in income, mostly tied to his family’s cryptocurrency ventures, in 2025.

Donald Trump’s ‘activities’ in the cryptocurrency sector are the main reason for the near tripling of his personal wealth, which increased from $2,3 billion to $5,6 billion between 2024 and 2026, according to Forbes magazine.

According to the Financial Times, Donald Trump declared that he made more than 22,000 stock transactions in 2025, as reported by the Financial Times analysis. His immediate predecessor, Joe Biden, made only 13 transactions, over a period of four years.

According to the Wall Street Journal, D. Trump is even about to sell a fast access to his public posts on his platform Truth Social, for $100,000 a month, to Wall Street speculators who are anxious to get privileged information about his upcoming decisions! And this comes after D. Trump has enriched himself through insider trading.

World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture Trump helped launch in 2024, is also planning to launch a so-called digital dollar (USD1) that will be, in reality, a stablecoin pegged at a 1-to-1 ratio to the U.S. large public debt.

This will create the illusion that such a cryptocurrency is ‘tied’ to the U.S. dollar, while creating an artificial demand for Treasury bonds. One goal is to prevent the yields on Treasury bonds from rising, when foreign central banks sell them.

Conclusion

Numerous reports, investigations and court decisions have clearly established that mogul and politician Donald Trump is not very honest intellectually and is, in fact, an untrustworthy, self-serving, corrupt, extortionist and a malicious individual, who has no empathy and no morality whatsoever, both in his personal life and in his functions as President of the U.S. Government, since January 20, 2025.

He projects the image of someone who believes, in his own mind, that it is impossible for him to lose any election, even when more than 60% of Americans disapprove currently of his job performance, with below 35% of Americans approving. That is why he continues to repeat in public that he did not lose the 2020 election, even though court decisions, in over 60 court cases and state audits, have again and again shown that his claims were false.

Therefore, Americans have every reason to be worried and to be on their guard. Indeed, President Donald Trump could attempt to use federal powers to cheat and steal the coming November U.S. midterms election.

American voters and rich donors, domestic and foreign, who support such a dangerous politician are either misinformed or are willfully complicit in his frequent violations of the U.S. Constitution and other misdeeds and crimes.

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International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals “The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles” of the book about geopolitics “The New American Empire“, and the recent book, in French, “La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018“.

He was Minister of Trade and Industry (1976-79) in Quebec’s Lévesque government. He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University.

Please visit Dr Tremblay’s site or email to a friend here.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).