A Rich Man's Trick

“The corruption that hides in plain sight is the real threat to our democracy.” - Zephyr Teachout

Every stroke of Donald Trump’s pen is making life in the U.S. increasingly dangerous and transforming the law into more of a theory than fact. Nothing he has done, however, has been more debilitating to the rule of law and the majority than the creation of his meme crypto coin $Trump. By using crypto, anyone who wants can invest in his presidency for any amount and purchase influence. Tracking the source of funds on the Blockchain is not impossible, but forensics are extremely difficult, and when fiat currency is turned into digital value by using multiple banks, the depositor might always remain a mystery. If $TRUMP were built on a privacy-focused blockchain like Monero or Zcash, tracing would be significantly harder because such blockchains are designed to obscure transaction details, or if the investment occurred through decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms without Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, it could complicate tracking down the donors.

Trump, of course, knows this but has set up a construct that allows corporations and the global oligarchy to make regular payments to seek his beneficence. And it works. The market cap for his crypto coin grew to $60 billion dollars almost overnight when it was announced after he took his oath of office. Trump’s financial solicitors can be anyone from Putin to General Dynamics to Exxon or England’s royal family. Pay your money, take your chances, and the American public will never know.

But Donnie Darko will.

Not much is new about this in America, but it is significantly more blatant. What little precepts of democracy that were left in this country disappeared with the Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled money is a form of free speech. Consequently, corporations became people and Super PACS solicited cash that did not have to be reported in any meaningful fashion. Cable news and print and digital and social media became filled with lies and distortions designed to destroy any useful national discourse and to leave voters disaffected and misinformed. Honesty had already been finally and completely removed from our electoral process when Ronald Reagan’s administration got rid of the Fairness Doctrine, which required public issues and candidates to receive fair and equal coverage on broadcast airwaves. American taxpayers own those airwaves but Reagan thought business competition would maintain a balance of information. It did not, and instead spawned programs and broadcasts that were decidedly one-sided.

The political and cultural shock waves emanating from Trump’s executive actions are, nonetheless, fairly stupefying. What possible rationale might exist behind the decision to end cancer research at the NIH? Theoretically, he is condemning hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions, to death, in much the same way as his ineptitude cost a million lives during the Covid pandemic. Is he angry at NIH for thrusting science in his face during the pandemic, or does he have investments in cancer treatment companies that produce the drugs, protocols and machinery for chemo and radiation? Immunotherapy and vaccines are making great advances in curing certain cancers, which might reduce the revenue flow for big pharma. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) along with the NIH have been ordered by Trump to stop communicating with the public.

Too many people, however, believe Trump is taking a sober approach on matters like the future of social media tool TikTok. The Chinese platform, owned by ByteDance, was set to be banned from the U.S. because federal authorities believed it was being used to gather data that could be deployed economically and militarily against this country. The new president decided to hold off on implementing the ban and began to suggest there was not much valuable info to be gathered by China watching teenagers make videos. His real reasoning almost certainly has to do with money.

Jeff Yass, a significant investor in ByteDance and co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, has been a prominent political donor, especially to conservatives. Yass contributed over $46 million to conservative political action committees and candidates during the 2024 election cycle and TikTok sponsored an event celebrating right-wing influencers around the time of Trump's inauguration, with sponsorship contributions ranging from $10,000 to $50,000. Though this money does not constitute a direct donation to Trump, it does show a level of engagement with political events associated with the president. My guess is that the delay in banning TikTok is to give Trump and his lawyers and investment team a chance to work out a deal that will give a Trump holding company or trust a piece of the action from TikTok’s billions.

Possibly the most disturbing characteristic of Trump’s political survival, though, is that a large part of the public is shocked by his behavior as president. His unrepentant grab for power and money seem incongruent with what we expect of our leaders. Consequently, Trump’s actions leave many people utterly stunned. How can he be so obvious? The obviousness of Trump’s greed, however, is the only element that is new about the American presidency and the oligarchies that have long controlled the U.S. and much of the wider world. Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), just one example, became ridiculously wealthy off the Vietnam War as his Texas supporters Brown and Root built airports, harbors, fire bases, and roads in Southeast Asia. Texas defense contractors also won government deals to design and build the fighter jets used in the conflict, which was nothing more than a fraud prompted by a false flag incident in the Gulf of Tonkin.

(The above documentary is long, but worth every minute of an American’s time. The producer has offered a more honest telling of this country’s history and our role in facilitating great geo-political horrors to enrich a small number of people. It also offers the best visual unraveling of the JFK assassination conspiracy that I’ve ever seen.)

When inserted in a true historical perspective, Trump’s greed is thus far unremarkable. Americans, who tend to be oblivious to the country’s true history, and parochial with their politics, are not sufficiently diligent to learn the truth about their leaders. When business, politics, and war intersect, we get alliances that focus on profit, not justice or democracy. In fact, there would likely never have been a George H.W. Bush presidency, or that of his son, George W., were it not for the family scion, Prescott Bush’s, business dealings with Nazi Germany.

Prescott was a partner at the Wall Street investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH). His father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, was also a prominent financier and founding partner of BBH’s predecessor, W.A. Harriman & Co. Both men had ties to Nazi-linked businesses through their investments and roles as facilitators of international finance. One of the most controversial connections involved the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), where Prescott Bush served as a director. UBC was a holding company for the German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, an early supporter and financier of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Thyssen’s enterprises provided critical resources for Germany’s war machine, including steel and coal. Investigations later revealed that UBC acted as a conduit for funneling Thyssen’s funds to the United States and other global markets, which made Bush and Herbert Walker quite rich.

In 1942, under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the U.S. government seized UBC and other entities associated with Thyssen, citing their support of enemy operations. While neither Bush nor Walker was directly accused of ideological complicity with the Nazis, their financial dealings undoubtedly contributed to the Nazi war effort. There was no way they were unaware of the importance of their investments in assisting Hitler. Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker profited from these transactions, as their ties to German industries generated significant returns on investment during the 1930s. Prescott Bush used those profits from his Nazi investments to build a vast financial foundation that underwrote the political career of his son, George H.W. Bush. That ultimately led to economic security for George W. Bush and paid for his political ascension. Prescott’s two descendants, while in office, facilitated wars that continued American profiteering, and there is no denying their presidencies would have been considerably less likely without the Nazi blood money from the family namesake, Prescott Bush.

The Bush family was not alone as American vultures working with the Nazis. Henry Ford, a fervent anti-semite, was praised in Hitler’s Mein Kampf and was awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle in 1938, which was the highest honor bestowed by the Nazi regime. Ford’s business dealings with Nazi Germany were substantial. Ford-Werke, the company’s German subsidiary, played a critical role in producing vehicles and machinery for the German military. At the same time, Ford was building Willys Jeeps for the U.S. military, cargo trucks for carrying troops and supplies, and aircraft engines for the B-24 Liberator, a bomber produced at the Willow Run Plant in Michigan. One of those planes came off the assembly line every 63 minutes. No matter which country was winning the war, Ford was making bank.

The Ford Motor Company was growing wealthy and wildly profitable by manufacturing military assets for both Nazi Germany and the U.S. and much of that margin came from the use of slave labor from concentration camps. In a 2001 report commissioned by Ford, the company acknowledged that Ford-Werke, its German subsidiary, actively employed concentration camp laborers, including Jewish prisoners, to produce vehicles and equipment for the Nazi war effort. General Motors, meanwhile, which owned Opel, a German car manufacturer, also played a critical role in the Nazi war effort by producing vehicles for the Fuhrer’s armies. The company’s profits were substantial because it also relied on forced labor from Nazi camps to work in its factories.

Slave labor also drove the war windfalls of IBM, Coca-Cola, and the American partnership with IG Farben, a German chemical conglomerate, which produced the Zyklon B gas that was used to kill millions of Jews in concentration camps. American companies like Standard Oil, which is now part of ExxonMobil, had partnerships with IG Farben, supplying crucial resources and technology before and during the early stages of the war. Extensive slave labor from Auschwitz was used in IG Farben’s factories. IBM’s German subsidiary, too, provided technology and punch-card systems that were critical for Nazi administrative efficiency, including the identification and tracking of Jewish populations. IBM also used forced Jewish labor in some factories that relied on their punch-card tech. Coca-Cola - although not implicated in the use of slave labor - profited greatly from the sales of its Fanta soft drink in Germany during the war, which was developed after the use of cola syrup was restricted.

None of those American corporations or their executives were indicted or prosecuted for assisting Hitler’s regime. Their involvement, however, proved that morality was far less important to capitalists than profits and shareholder returns. Ain’t that America? Why do our history books ignore our transgressions and rank evil and treat our story as one of great moral triumph against oppression? We have never faced up to the fact that the Nazi war machine was just another American business.

And now Trump is CEO.