Teflon Trump was preceded by Slick Willie. Trump’s rising popularity despite a cacophony of allegations of wrongdoing is being explained by some with the normalization of political corruption a la Clinton.
Thanks, Bill and Hill!
https://amp.businessinsider.com/bill-hillary-clinton-normalized-trump-2018-5?__twitter_impression=true
Excerpt:
As the Trump administration corruption scandals mount and yet President Donald Trump's poll numbers continue to tick upward, Democrats ask: Why don't voters care? Doesn't corruption matter?
Here's one reason the Trump corruption scandals aren't connecting as much as they should: Before Democrats spent the past 18 months telling everyone this is not normal, they spent years reassuring voters that this was normal.
Well, not precisely this. But the general this: politicians having extensive financial conflicts of interest.
Democrats told voters that taking high-dollar speaking fees right before you run for president from the industries you might regulate should you become president was just something everybody does. They said it was unsophisticated to worry if entities related to you had been fundraising from countries with foreign-policy interests before the US.
They said nobody would object if a man did these things.
They said you should look past the finances and understand that the Clintons shared your values and had your best interests at heart.
Of course, the Clintons' behavior was never normal. They had the second-deepest set of financial conflicts of interest we've seen in a national political operation in my lifetime - second only to Trumpworld.
Democrats could have picked virtually any other candidate for president and gotten a clean advantage on the corruption issue in the general election. But by defending the Clinton model, Democrats were playing right into Trump's hands, essentially telling voters there would always be a swamp, that everybody does it, that a leader is always going to have financial interests that intertwine with his or her public duties.
Is it any surprise so many voters decided they might as well put their own corrupt guy in charge of the swamp?
The Trump model is the Clinton model on steroids
Years before Trump started taking policy advice from friends at Mar-a-Lago, Hillary Clinton was forwarding freelance intelligence memos about Libya from Clinton Foundation consultant Sidney Blumenthal around the State Department as Blumenthal pursued business interests in Libya with other Clinton associates.
Close associates using the perception of closeness to officials to seek large consulting fees from businesses? How do you think Bill Clinton's former personal aide, Doug Band, got rich enough to buy David Rockefeller's $20 million mansion?
Getting in private business at the same time you serve as a top official adviser in government? Huma Abedin was doing it years before Jared Kushner.
You can even compare the Clinton and Trump swamps live in action in Prague this month, where Steve Bannon will debate longtime Clinton confidant (and brownnoser) Lanny Davis at an event sponsored by the Czech defense contractor for which Davis lobbies.
My point is not that what Bill and Hillary Clinton's associates did is as bad as what Trump and his associates have done. It's not as bad. Trumpworld has taken graft and influence peddling to a new, vulgar level. And my sense is Trump's associates have been significantly more sloppy about legal compliance than Clintonworld ever was.
But the fundamental ethical concern is the same: That a leader has marinated himself or herself in financial conflicts of interest, making it unclear where the public interest ends and private interest begins.
Democrats were defending this before they were resisting it.
