Lifelong conservative and former Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan had a glum assessment of her party — and America at large — when it comes to President Donald Trump's corruption.
Writing for the Wall Street Journal, she said that the ways Trump has used his own office to perfect the "art of the self-deal" should be obvious and horrifying to everyone.
"I see two general areas, personal enrichment and the use of government to satisfy private goals," wrote Noonan. "The personal-enrichment part is suggested by recent and frequent reports showing that Mr. Trump’s net worth, and that of his family, has surged dramatically in his second term. This isn’t just wealthy folks seeing their stocks go up: Trump businesses have developed positions in industries over which the administration exercises power."
As part of that, she wrote, Trump has repeatedly rewritten regulations to suit his family's business ventures and allow foreign investors to hand him money, like the United Arab Emirates national security adviser holding interest in the Trump family's crypto projects. "The size and means of this enrichment would seem . . . dubious? Careless of appearances? Appalling?"
Meanwhile, Noonan continued, "there have been numerous reports ... of bending, testing or getting around the law to make the administration’s friends happy and enemies sad. This has included paying people in Mr. Trump’s orbit to lobby for presidential pardons — this newspaper has done great work there — launching strange investigations, and muscling law firms and media companies."
Once upon a time this would be an all-encompassing scandal, lamented Noonan — but "an odd thing about all this is the absence of furor. There is no broad public outcry. Why? Because corruption is a constant and 'the other side is dirty too.' Because the scandal threshold has skyrocketed."
Ultimately, she warned, this unchecked corruption and apathy toward it will undermine America's leadership in the world.
"We were the morally rectitudinous Doughboy GI Marshall Planning JFK and Ronnie People who made the wall come down," Noonan wrote. In the past, "we did our best each generation to be equal to our reputation, or at least to have some class. There are foreign-policy implications to all this. Some day we’ll need friends and see only the satisfied spite of the previously jealous."