The scandal of the week was Donald Trump’s acceptance of a Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from Qatar, a $400 million “flying palace” that will cost the U.S. an estimated $1 billion to retrofit for the security necessary for a U.S. president. Attorney General Pam Bondi - herself compromised by making $115,000 a month as a lobbyist for Qatar in 2019 - found a dubious legal workaround of the constitution, which forbids the president from accepting gifts from foreign entities. The plane will eventually be given to the Trump presidential library. (The wonderful novelist Ted Mooney mocked the very concept of a library named after the non-reading Trump in our magazine.)
The story of Trump’s eagerness to accept Qatar’s luxury jet captured public attention not only because of its tackiness - the jet, in fact, is an outdated behemoth, much like Trump himself - but because it contained all the elements of the Trump presidency’s subversion and outright flouting of the rule of law. The Trump family embodies pure greed tinctured by a degree of vulgarity that should be satire, only it is all real and it is happening, witnessed by the tasteless gold ornaments Trump stuffed onto the fireplace mantel of the Oval Office.
This didn’t happen overnight. Thanks to a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and the cultural shift that happened when, in Gordon Gecko’s immortal words, greed became good, corruption has become pervasive in America. Now corruption threatens the state itself.
No one has traced that trajectory more incisively than Sarah Chayes.
I first encountered Chayes when the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan. She wasn’t your typical talking head on the news shows. She didn’t have an ax to grind or a carefully tailored “message.” She didn’t need one. She knew the country: its people, the land, the history, and she spoke with passion and precision.
After getting to know her a little, it doesn’t surprise me that Chayes comes from a family steeped in politics and principle, back when those two words were still used together. It may not be entirely fair to invoke her family - her work stands on its own - but the details feel relevant. Her mother, the lawyer Antonia Handler Chayes, was undersecretary of the Air Force under Carter and later taught at the Kennedy School of Government. As an advisor to the U.S. Department of State in the Kennedy administration, her father played a major role in the Cuban missile crisis. Abram Chayes went on to teach at Harvard Law School but remained active as a lawyer, leading a team suing Slobodan Milošević in U.S. Courts for genocide in Kosovo.
After serving in the Peace Corps in Morocco, Chayes began her professional career working for National Public Radio in the Balkans. Her next assignment was covering Afghanistan. Chayes lived, not in an expat enclave, but with an Afghan family, and as she came to understand the failures of U.S. policy, ended up advising the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The corruption she witnessed in Afghanistan and later, working for the Carnegie Institute for Peace in countries like Nigeria, led to the recognition that corruption was a worldwide phenomenon - including the United States. The corrosive nature of corruption became the subject of several books: The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban (Penguin Random House, 2006); Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (Norton, 2015), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and the most recent: On Corruption in America: What Is At Stake (Knopf, 2020).
With the explosive corruption of Trump 2.0., there could be no more timely subject. In this interview, we not only talked about the current moment but also the decades leading up to an atmosphere in which Trump profiting from his office barely registers with the public.
Fact check: There is abundant evidence that both Donald Trump and his sons are profiting from Trump’s presidency in ways that almost certainly violate the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, which reads:
…no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, 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.
The full extent will only be revealed in the coming years, but what we know now is certainly dramatic enough: the estimated $2.9 billion profit from the Trump crypto scheme that many believe functions as a conduit for foreign entities to influence policy, the $5.5 billion “business” deal for a Trump resort in Qatar struck by Eric and Don Jr. who preceded their father to the Gulf States, and not least, the $2 billion from the Saudis that bankrolled Jared Kushner’s investment fund, noting that Kushner had no prior experience as an investment banker.
All of this is happening while the Trump-controlled Republicans in Congress work to pass a budget that will toss millions of struggling Americans off Medicare and food stamps, and raise taxes on people earning less than $30,000 over the coming years.
Corporate leaders accompanied Trump on his recent visit to the Gulf States, triumphantly returning with major investments in U.S. industries. But that victory was tainted by the Trump family’s backroom deals, capped off by his eagerness to accept the $400 million “flying palace.” While it’s unlikely that the plane will ever replace Air Force One, Trump’s acceptance of the vulgar bauble was an embarrassment, signaling that the current administration can be bought — and for a relatively cheap price.
America is becoming what many commentators call a kleptocratic autocracy. This radical change threatens the safety and well-being of ordinary Americans, as well as those who speak out against the administration.
Anne Appelbaum in her book Autocrats, Inc., traces the international connections of autocratic regimes that buttress their power by sharing influence, resources, and expertise. Chayes’ book is firmly rooted in the United States - and it is a United States of America that will surprise you, while at the same time sounding chillingly familiar. It is worth noting that Chayes holds Democrats as well as Republicans to account for an historic shift that now threatens the very fabric of society.
On Corruption in America is one of those books that reframes the way you see the world. Everyone should read it. But first, listen to Sarah Chayes.
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