Corruption as a Driving Force

(upbeat music) October 15th, 2026. There's an old saying about rats and sinking ships. There's also an old saying about how a democratic system taken over by a single party quickly becomes corrupt because the ruling party lacks oversight. Then as corruption becomes the party's driving force, the only people willing to work for it are either corrupt themselves or so unqualified they support the corrupt leadership to gain power, knowing that in a merit-based system it would be entirely out of their reach. Okay, that second old saying is shared mostly among political scientists, but it's accurate and it's right up there with the rats and the ships to describe what's happening in Trump's orbit now. The saga of Kimberly Gilfoyle, who was recently forced to resign from her post as US ambassador to Greece, continues to expand. Gilfoyle left her post after news broke that she had tried to get a donor, Eric Dieters, to pay down her credit card debt. She and her lawyers countered the story by claiming Dieters was withholding money she had earned and said the text messages he shared with news outlets were false. Gilfoyle dated Don Jr. from 2018 to 2024 and was engaged to him the last four years of that time. Now there are rumors that during her time inside the family as a trusted loyalist, she kept a burn book about the family. While that may or may not be true, the fact that there's such a threat out there reflects the cracking loyalties of Trump insiders. More to the point might be the video released today by Dieters himself saying that he had launched a lawsuit against Gilfoyle for defamation and that he would depose her and Don Jr. and demand subpoenas to clear his name. He also vowed to play a 16-minute phone conversation tomorrow that he claims has information which might just bring down the entire Trump administration, an administration which I have supported from day one. Note that the story of Gilfoyle's alleged shakedown is breaking now, although it happened more than a year ago. Also in the category of old stories coming to the surface is one reported yesterday by Mark Caputo of Axios. He wrote that Trump's former lawyer, Alina Haba, is saying that another one of Trump's advisors, Rick Grinnell, did not deposit her billionaire husband's $5.6 million donation to the Kennedy Center. According to Haba, Grinnell asked that the donation be routed through a $17.6 million payment for a business deal, an accusation Grinnell called absurd. Trump appointed Grinnell to be US ambassador to Germany and then acting director of national intelligence during his first term. After retaking office, he named Grinnell as a special envoy to Venezuela before putting him in charge of the Kennedy Center. A fight that has been going on for more than a year in the administration broke into the open this morning in a political story by Daniel Lippmann. He explained that Trump named Italian Paolo Zempoly, a former modeling agent who introduced Trump to First Lady Melania Trump at a party in New York City, as a special envoy at the State Department with a portfolio of cultural diplomacy. But Zempoly apparently ignored that assignment and struck out on his own on a wide range of issues infuriating Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau. My number one boss is the president of America. Zempoly told James Fontanella Khan of the financial times in April. I get my instructions from the White House, Commerce and the Department of War, anything to advance the America First Agenda. More than 16 administration officials have been included in the angry email change. Zempoly and Landau have exchanged, which at one point led to communications about the fight with a top-level foreign official. At one point, Zempoly accused Landau of leaking to reporters what appeared to be the story that Zempoly had tried to get custody of his son by asking immigration and customs enforcement to deport Amanda Ungaro, the boy's mother. That story created its own scandal when Ungaro, a former model, threatened to expose information about the president and first lady. Landau responded to Zempoly's accusation, which he sent to more than a dozen other officials, saying, "Your threats and accusations are getting more and more bizarre, defamatory and inappropriate for broad dissemination on email." An administration official told Lippman that the State Department was generally squeaky, clean and professional and above it all. In contrast, these exchanges were cartoonish and embarrassing. By this afternoon, Lippman had a follow-up story. Zempoly had been fired. It's not just the current associates of the president who are problematic. Today, news broke that two women have named former Republican Representative Matt Gates, Republican of Florida. Along with his friend, former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg and others, in a civil lawsuit, alleging that from 2017 through January 2019, Gates and Greenberg coordinated recruitment, payments, drugs and travel to obtain commercial sexual acts. In 2024, the House Ethics Committee reported that Gates regularly paid women, as well as a 17-year-old girl, for sex, and bought and used illicit drugs while a member of Congress. Those accusations helped to sink Trump's nomination of Gates for U.S. Attorney General in 2025. Gates' response was hardly a denial. I look forward to taking the plaintiff's depositions because much of the conduct alleged against me is false, he wrote. The lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a congressional committee report that didn't allow me to confront my accusers. Now I will finally have that chance. One has to wonder why anyone would want to be part of such a mess, but Trump's new White House press secretary provides an answer. In a normal administration, she would never make it through the door. Trump has described Katie Zachariah as an attorney, and she has identified herself as a general counsel, and seemed to claim she worked as an attorney in China. But after Judd Legham of popular information, noted there was no sign she had ever passed the bar exam or been admitted to a state bar. Philip Wegman and Alexandra Bruehl of the Wall Street Journal reported today that in fact, she failed the California bar exam when she took it. That itself is not unusual. The California bar exam is notoriously difficult, but it does mean she is not qualified to call herself an attorney. Democracy Defender's Fund, a nonpartisan team defending democracy led by attorney Norm Eisen, has asked the state bar of California and California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate whether Zachariah practiced law without a license in California. We're doing so as a crime. Tonight on his show, Fox News Channel Personality Sean Hannity seemed to undercut Zachariah, asking her why she had chosen to describe herself as an attorney. When she could just have said she went to Pepperdine Law School and then took a different career path. Josh Marshall of Talking Points memo noted that Hannity's stance likely reflected that Trump is turning on her. Ryan Amaker, the man who started a right wing media frenzy when he claimed to have proof that Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Tallarico had sought mental health treatment in Ohio, backed away from that claim today, sort of. Amid suggestions that he might well have run a foul of HIPAA penalties for trying to obtain health information duplicitously, he posted that this entire situation has been blown completely out of proportion and wrote, "As far as I'm concerned, this matter is closed." Later, in response to a post saying he had lied, he added, "Never lied. I just doubled down on wrong information." A blockbuster story by Jonathan O'Connell, Sarah Blasky, and Aaron Schaffer of The Washington Post today explained that the administration has been able to keep donations for Trump's ballroom largely secret by using a non-profit to collect the donations and then channeling that money into a White House account, the president directly controls. The reporters gained access to a list of the 57 donors who have committed to giving $100,000 or more to the project. They found that the vast majority of the funds raised came from companies and wealthy individuals with interests before the federal government. Large technology companies in Vidya and Apple committed $25 million each. Microsoft, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin pledged $10 million each. Individuals on the list who are associated with Trump include Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik's son Brandon, Chair of Investment Bank, Cantor Fitzgerald, who contributed stock worth more than $2.5 million. And the U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands, Republican donor Joseph Popolo Jr. and his wife, who gave $1 million. Missing from the list is Trump himself, who claimed he would be helping to pay for the project. Sarah Longwell of the ballwork was right when she called the ballroom being constructed where the east wing of the White House used to be, a monument to corruption built by a corrupt American president. On Tuesday, Charles Gorevann, Lydia Beoud, and Nicola M. White of Bloomberg, reported that on March 23rd, a few traders placed billions of dollars of contracts, predicting that the price of oil would fall. Just 15 minutes before Trump posted on a social media platform that he had changed his mind about striking Iranian power plants. The deals were worth billions, and analysts from the U.S. commodity futures trading commission, or CFTC, flagged the traders and the deals and sent a referral to the division of enforcement to decide whether to open an investigation into insider trading. But in a virtually unheard of move, the administration asked the CFTC to withdraw the referral. The journalist's note that there have been many trades apparently tied to Trump's announcements, and that between a 20% cut to CFTC staff during Trump's second term, and the agency chairs vow to curb overzealous regulation. Enforcement actions have dropped dramatically from the numbers during the Biden administration. Steven Portnoy and Katherine Falters of ABC News reported today that the White House is claiming that all Trump's conversations about plans to renovate the Kennedy Center are covered by executive privilege and therefore can be kept secret. This is a dramatic expansion of the concept of executive privilege, which enables the president to shield conversations with key advisors from public scrutiny, extending it to consider virtually all conversations private. Apparently in anticipation of democratic investigations, Attorney General Todd Blanch issued a memo as soon as he took office, claiming presidents can shield presidential communications with private advisors, so long as the communications relate to official presidential decision making. A new Fox poll released today showed that voters' top concern is corruption in government, with 88% worried about it compared to 12% who are not. Corruption tops even inflation and high prices, which comes in at 85%, and gas prices, which concern 83% of voters. In a conversation with Rob Finnerty of Newsmax aired tonight, Trump suggested he would pardon everyone in the administration, including himself, to make sure none of the people around him have to go through years of nonsense, hire lawyers and everything else, all for nothing. It's no wonder that Republicans eager to stop Trump are backing democratic candidates for the midterms. Today, 58 Republicans and Independents in New Hampshire declared their support for the Democratic Senate candidate, Representative Chris Papis, over Republican candidate John Sanunu. Those supporters include Don Bouldock, who was Trump's pick for the Senate in 2022, but who lost to Democrat Maggie Hassan by nine points. After he embraced Trump's claim to have won the 2020 election. One of the Republicans supporting Papis told Kevin Landrigan of the New Hampshire Union leader, Donald Trump has turned the Republican party into something I no longer recognize. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Deade and Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.