President Donald Trump’s wealth, which has grown by a suspicious $2.2 billion since he began his second term, is now officially hurting the entire Republican Party, at least according to one prominent right-wing commentator.
“Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume suggested Monday that President Donald Trump and his family’s rapidly growing wealth caused voters’ concerns about government corruption as Republicans suffered sweeping losses in last week’s midterm elections,” reported Mediaite’s Kathryn Wilkens on Monday. “Hume joined Monday’s edition of Special Report, where anchor Bret Baier highlighted a Fox News poll showing that 55 percent of respondents considered government corruption ‘crucial’ to their congressional vote. Another 36 percent called it a ‘major factor.'”
After describing how Baier is a “massive number” and Hume agreed, the latter added “when times are tough, and we’re going through an economic transformation of an extraordinary degree, and prices are high, even though jobs are plentiful, people are hurting, and that was a big issue in the election. They look at Washington, and they see the president, apparently a rich man to begin with and never afraid to talk about how rich he was and is, suddenly several billion dollars richer, according to Forbes magazine. They see his sons involved in cryptocurrency businesses that are netting them a large amount of money, and they don’t like the look of that.”
Even before the results of the 2026 midterms, experts agreed that voters were turning on the president because of how blatantly he and his fellow officials have enriched themselves while ostensibly serving the public.
“Donald Trump is robbing Americans blind, and even Republicans are starting to notice,” The Bulwark’s Catherine Rampell wrote in October. “You may recall that back in March, there were some suspiciously timed, uncannily lucrative oil and stock trades. About fifteen minutes before Trump abruptly announced he was retracting some threats against Iran, billions of dollars’ worth of contracts were placed on bets that oil prices would fall and the S&P 500 would jump. And those lucky bastards turned out to be right!”
While Rampell is right-leaning, even nonpartisan analysts said that corruption was proving to be a major issue for midterm election voters.
“Corruption is moving the needle whenever voters are focused on the explosion of greed and self-enrichment by Trump and his family—easily the worst in presidential history,” Larry Sabato, a political scientist and political analyst, posted on X in October.