Hannah Arendt observed that Americans as a political people are inherently apathetic due to our individualism and pursuit of private happiness. I tend to agree. We are a docile beast, slow to anger. French-style manifs are rarely our jam. But if the midterms turn out to be the predicted blue tsunami, Americans will have proven that there is a limit to the abuse we will suffer.
To paraphrase the Ragin’ Cajun: It’s the corruption, stupid.
Less than a week before today’s midterm elections, a Minnesota TV station revealed that private prison company CoreCivic had tried to sell the state a defunct prison near the South Dakota border for $75 million in 2025. Minnesota was not interested. But a year later, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, punchdrunk on billions of dollars in “Big Beautiful Bill” funding, paid CoreCivic $495 million for that very property.
Last Friday, FBI director K$H Patel and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent showed up in St. Cloud, not to apologize or investigate, but to promote the administration’s faux fight against fraud. It was apparently their turn to run the dog and pony show designed to indulge MAGA’s racially tinged obsession with the Feeding Our Future case, in which a white female director oversaw a $250 million scam involving social service assistance to Somali migrants. She is now in prison.
The two Cabinet Secretaries were either unaware of the spectacular private windfall at taxpayers’ expense or, more likely, prepared to scoff at it – which is precisely what Bessent did, in a brief surly exchange with a reporter who asked whether the $420 million ICE prison overpayment constituted the kind of fraud that concerned them.
Bessent’s reply: “That question is a waste of time.” I recommend watching him here to fully appreciate a moment that encapsulates the essence of Trump 2.0: arrogance, corruption, insult and total disregard for the commonweal.
The CoreCivic deal is just one of countless examples of how Trump family business principles have come to influence economic actors in America. The guiding spirit of Trump 2.0 is that if you pay your taxes or follow the letter of the law when it comes to government, business or environmental regulations, you’re a chump leaving money on the table.
You can see it in Bessent’s face and hear it in his remarks: bottomless scorn for the rule-follower, the journalist, the civic-minded.
Trump has a long and proud history of laughing at “losers,” a label he has attached to American POWs and dead soldiers, Democrats and other political opponents, the educated and educators, and even his own fans gone astray. If a blue tsunami washes over America, will expensive gas and groceries be blamed? Or are some MAGAs beginning to realize that their “favorite president” thinks they’re losers too?
“Losers!” happens to be one of Trump’s most beloved rallying cries, often provoking chants of “USA! USA!” But his list of losers now includes his own supporters who’ve failed to remain loyal through his policy U-turns – the dummies who were confused when the Epstein “conspiracy” turned into Epstein “hoax,” who didn’t get the memo when bad foreign wars became good, or when inflation, affordability and high gas prices (once “destroying America”) suddenly became fake news.
The list of defrauded losers left standing outside Trumpworld looking in includes hundreds of victims of major white-collar frauds whose perpetrators have paid millions to escape prison and restitution obligations. In just two years, Trump has freed dozens of wealthy criminals, relieving them of nearly $1.7 billion in court-ordered restitution owed to their victims. Those unpaid government fines would have helped support a variety of victim services, including rape and domestic violence crisis centers.
In a report titled “Pardons Inc,” House Judiciary Committee Democrats detailed what they called “industrial-strength pardons” that have “overwhelmingly been about economics, specifically the enrichment of the President, his family, his businesses, and his miscellaneous projects.” The Democrats accused the administration of “cater[ing] to the highest bidder” and favoring right-wing political figures and donors. “President Trump’s pardon mill is a public-private auction conducted by a rapacious politician helping well-heeled criminals escape confinement and accountability.”
The losers include Trump voters and other Americans who played by the rules and were collectively conned out of – literally – a billion and a half dollars. Colorado pig farmer John Long was ripped off by Marian Morgan, a Florida Ponzi schemer who was pardoned by Trump and absolved of having to pay nearly $20 million in court-ordered restitution. Another pardonee, Carlos Watson, conned investors, including Thomas Franco (who lost $4 million) through a fraudulent media-startup investment fund. Watson was convicted of misleading investors with fabricated financial claims, forged documents and impersonation of media executives. He was sentenced to prison and ordered to pay back $37 million.
Then there’s Trevor Milton, who ran an electric-truck investment fraud and was convicted of deceiving investors out of more than half a billion dollars. Prosecutors had asked for $661 million in investor restitution. They got zero. So did the 10,000 victims of David Gentile, another Trump pardonee who was convicted of a private-equity investment fraud scheme that raised $1.6 billion from more than 10,000 investors.
Losers!
Besides those pardonees, the Trumpworld winners’ circle includes dark-web drug and weapons entrepreneur Ross Ulbricht and Adam Kidan, whose business partner, convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in 2005. As of 2018, Kidan still had not paid the $21 million he owed in restitution. He gave plenty to Trump, though: he donated $270,000 to Trump-affiliated PACs during the 2024 election and hosted Trump fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago. Trump even attended his May 2025 wedding to a much younger Brazilian bride at the resort. Trump pardoned him on the Fourth of July.
As the midterms approached, the White House – belatedly aware that the smell of corruption surrounding the family’s mining deals, crypto business and Qatari jet gift had even its own supporters reaching for gas masks – dispatched JD Vance to “lead the nationwide fight against fraud.” But white collar fraud committed by white people wasn’t part of the Vice President’s remit.
The Vice President’s crime-fighting efforts appear to have been confined to occasional public statements highlighting stories of poor Black or brown people scamming the system. Those stories, like the rare but politically prized cases of white females murdered by illegal migrants, keep a legion of conservative elves hunting down examples for fame and profit. After right-wing political operatives in Minnesota steered 23-year-old YouTuber Nick Shirley toward the Feeding Our Future scandal, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel made his video go viral.
A day after the revelations about the Minnesota prison scam, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins posted a meme of a Halloween costume called “SNAP Fraudster,” depicting a Black man. Obscene on every level – starting with its racism – coming from an administration that has pardoned dozens of white millionaire repeat offender fraudsters.
As voters fill out their ballots today, Trump has offered a $1 million bounty for reports of voter fraud, which could incentivize fraud of its own (Trump has described it as a “one percent commission”).
Polls suggest that even that inducement isn’t likely to drag enough MAGAs off the couch to keep Democrats from a solid chance at taking control of Congress.
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Great piece Nina, and you're absodamnlutely correct: the 🍊💩's administration has made chumps of us all. WTF?
President Trump and his minions are an obvious, huge, and bright target. I would like to see greater focus on our representatives in Congress who absolutely failed on their job. The President is the manager, so he is there to get things done; his abuse of that role and power are too obvious to miss, but a cheap target for loud and inflaming articles and opinions. But the President does NOT REPRESENT the people — the Congress does or at least is supposed to. Blaming the President for what he does or does not do is like blaming an out of control dog for the damage to a bunch of kids on a playground, but ignoring the person who is supposed to hold the leash. Maybe it is high time to start asking our REPRESENTATIVES about their failed representation and non-existent oversight. Maybe it's time to ask ourselves who, if anyone, is REPRESENTING the American PEOPLE?