President Donald Trump is not unique among American leaders throughout history in flaunting his corruption, MS NOW's Luke Russert argued on Monday's edition of "The Weeknight" — but he is missing the most essential element that allows corrupt leaders to survive.
"The reality of the situation is, though, people are what?" Co-anchor Symone Sanders-Townsend asked. "I guess my question is, what happens when the person that promised to clean it all up looks just as dirty, Luke?"
Russert quipped, to general laughter around the table, that this is a "good question" because we also "have a Reflecting Pool that is quite dirty. They actually had to get garbage out of it from the 4th of July weekend. Don't throw your garbage in the Reflecting Pool if you went down to the mall, what are you doing?"
Regardless, he continued, it is "evidently clear" that Trump's team thought they could simply ignore standards of leadership and ethics because they won a second time despite everything that happened in his first term.
"There's a quote, I think, from Eric Trump at some point where he basically goes, we tried to be honest the first time around, it got us nothing. So now we're going to take advantage and just go ahead and plow forward, because damned if you do, damned if you don't, right?" said Russert. The problem is, "I think that when people are struggling and you see how high the cost of living is, and the president is making $2.2 billion, that's very troubling."
Russert added there is something fundamentally different about stealing money from your own supporters with a crypto memecoin compared to typical, shady backroom dealings.
"Usually in this type of machine politics, corruption, there's some sort of return to the voter, you know," said Russert. "In the Irish machine neighborhoods of New York City in the 1800s, the garbage is picked up, the police are there, the fire department is there. You get something in return. I know there's corruption happening, but I'm getting something in return."
By contrast, he added, "What are you getting from Donald Trump? Squadoosh!"