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A half-century ago, President Richard Nixon’s resignation in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal shifted how Americans viewed corruption in Washington. Today, as President Trump has shattered norms around public service ethics in ways that have enriched himself and his family, politicians in both parties agree that Nixon-era scandals seem quaint.
“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” Vice President Vance said in June at an event at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.
“Watergate was like a Cub Scout prank compared to what we’re living through,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told NPR in May.
Good governance watchdog groups have cataloged a litany of apparent corruption and conflict of interest incidents in Trump’s second term. That includes a settlement between Trump and his own government that prevents the IRS from auditing the Trump family, high-dollar stock trades of companies directly involved in administration policy and outside cryptocurrency ventures that have dramatically increased his net worth.
Asked why he has made no effort to limit his family business ventures this term, Trump told The New York Times in January that “I found out that nobody cared.”
“I prohibited [my children] from doing business in my first term, and I got absolutely no credit for it,” he said.
Now, Democrats like Raskin are making the case to voters across the country that now is the time to tackle anti-corruption reforms — not only to serve as a check on Trump, but to overhaul an entire political system that polls show voters believe has been co-opted against their interests.
How do voters define corruption?
Nearly all voters say corruption is a big problem in American politics. That’s true of 90% of Republicans and 93% of both Democrats and independents, according to recent polling by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan policy organization that advocates for reforms.
Americans see corruption as “an embedded structural problem,” said Marina Pino, an attorney with the organization’s Elections and Government Program. “Part of this is this perception that the government is primarily working for the ultra wealthy and the well-connected.”
“Voters are defining corruption expansively,” she said, and they tie it directly to the political issues they care most about. Eighty-eight percent of voters, for instance, say that “corruption is responsible for big problems that our government has failed to solve,” like the high cost of living.
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Since President Trump first took office in 2017, Democratic lawmakers have tried to make the president’s financial and foreign entanglements a key issue in the minds of voters, with limited success outside of their base voters.
Lately, though, some Democrats have been expanding their message on the issue, arguing that corruption extends beyond the president to the whole of the U.S. political system.
“The Mar-a-Lago Mafia has taken American corruption to spectacular new heights,” Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., told the crowd at a Savannah rally in June. “But corruption in America runs a lot deeper than Donald Trump.”
“American politics is coin operated. Money goes in, favors come out,” Ossoff said at the rally. “We’re promised hard work earns wealth and advancement. But for too many, the treadmill gets faster and steeper. Georgians work harder and harder, but the bills get higher and higher.”
Thinking about corruption as a structural problem, rather than simply one of personal ethics, could help to explain some voters’ indifference to recent disclosures about Trump’s specific scandals, including his family’s financial windfall since he began his second term in office.
NPR observed two focus groups of swing voters in Pennsylvania earlier this month. Half the 12 participants, when asked, said they were “troubled” by the president’s earnings. The other half waved it off.
“When it comes to ethics, moral and financial, I think that just about every politician is corrupt,” one participant, Todd A., said. “So, the fact that he’s a known huckster, I mean, we’ve known that for years about him.”
The voters, who agreed to be part of the focus groups on the condition that they be identified by their first name and last initial only, were all primarily concerned about other issues, like the high cost of living.
What would Democratic-led good governance reforms look like?
Still, oversight of the Trump administration would certainly be a pillar of a Democratic congressional agenda, centered on investigations and public messaging rather than legislation. Even if Democrats retake both chambers of Congress, Trump would retain veto power over any bills sent to his desk.
“No other president came remotely close to what Donald Trump has done,” Rep. Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary committee, told NPR in May. “Every part of the government has been prostituted and co-opted for moneymaking purposes. And the president made more than a billion dollars in his first year in office.”
“There’s nothing remotely comparable to that in all of American history,” Raskin said.
A tally from The New Yorker estimates that Trump and his family have pulled in an estimated $4 billion during the first year of the president’s second term.
His financial ventures include branded sneakers, Bibles, guitars, his social media company Truth Social, settlements from lawsuits against the press and social media companies, gifts from foreign countries including a luxury jet gifted by Qatar destined for his presidential library, hospitality deals and increased Mar-a-Lago resort fees, his children’s private equity and crypto deals as well as Trump Media’s own bitcoin holdings as well as the TRUMP meme coin.
Raskin has proposed legislation that seeks to prevent the president from profiting off foreign influence or public office and as well as prevent the president from accepting payments from pardon recipients, among other reforms.
But the party’s candidates have also proposed reforms targeting the more broad-based view of corruption held by American voters.
“It’s hard for us at any level of government to get to the substance of how we improve people’s lives,” Democratic House candidate Paige Cognetti told NPR last week, “if corruption is getting in the way.”
Cognetti is running against Republican incumbent Rob Bresnahan to represent the northeast corner of Pennsylvania. She currently serves as mayor of Scranton. Her predecessor in that office was embroiled in a corruption scandal that ultimately resulted in a seven-year prison sentence.
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Her eight-point anti-corruption proposal includes a prohibition on congressional stock trades, a ban on former lawmakers becoming lobbyists and term limits for members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices.
Cognetti said that if Congress can put those reforms in place, “then we can get to the actual substance of reforming our healthcare system, reforming our education system, making sure that everyone has a fair shot and that we have true economic opportunity for people all across the country.”
Reform proposals like Cognetti’s have been Democratic priorities for years, but have gained new traction this campaign season in conjunction with the party’s focus on affordability. The party has announced numerous groups and policy agendas focused specifically on anti-corruption measures. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced another new initiative last week.
Republicans cast doubt on Democratic credibility
Some Republican campaigns are also embracing an anti-corruption message. Tackling waste, fraud and abuse across the federal bureaucracy has been a central focus of House Republicans this term. They have conducted investigations into alleged abuses of social safety net programs and advanced legislation to curtail fraudulent abuses of federal spending.
House Republican lawmakers also advanced limited restrictions on stock trading and ownership last week.
National GOP campaign teams are also working to assail Democrats’ credibility as credible messengers on the issue of corruption.
“Jon Ossoff claims the moral high ground while cashing checks from the very ‘Epstein class’ billionaires he condemns — proving his so-called fight against corruption is nothing more than a campaign talking point,” said Bernadette Breslin, national press secretary at the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Ossoff’s campaign has received donations from billionaires at the legal maximum contribution limit of $7,000 and his campaign is supported by the national Senate Majority PAC, which can receive uncapped donations. His fundraising is majority-funded by contributions under $200 with an average amount of $42, according to the campaign.
Republican operatives have levied corruption allegations against Democratic candidates — including Cognetti, whose campaign denies wrongdoing — and highlighted more serious criminal charges faced by Democratic members of Congress.
Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, was accused by federal prosecutors of accepting roughly $600,000 in bribes. Former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., resigned this year after being charged with theft by federal prosecutors. Both have denied wrongdoing.
Additional reporting from NPR’s political correspondent Ashley Lopez and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson
