President Donald Trump has been so corrupt during his second term, a recent report indicates that scandals that set the political world on fire during his first term are barely attracting attention now.
“When President Trump decided in his first term to host the annual Group of 7 summit of world leaders at his own private golf club in Miami, the act of self-dealing was so astonishing that it incited an uproar among fellow Republicans, forcing him to scrap the idea,” reported The New York Times’ Peter Baker on Sunday. “Now in his second term seven years later, Mr. Trump has decided to host the Group of 20 annual summit of world leaders at his private golf club in Miami in December — and this time the plan has generated practically no protest.”
Baker added, “The unprecedented blitz of self-enrichment by Mr. Trump, his family and his friends since he returned to the White House last year has become so extensive, so profligate and so brazen that he has effectively moved the goal posts of what is considered out of bounds. An act that was deemed an outrage in 2019 is barely noticed in 2026.”
The reporter cited a number of examples of Trump’s over-the-top corruption in his second term including enriching himself by $2.2 billion since it started, accepting a luxury jet from Qatar, having his own administration grant him immunity from back-taxes he might owe, filing a trademark for Trump TV even as he supports it with taxpayer money and using taxpayer dollars to launch campaign advertisements for himself and his Republican Party during the upcoming midterm elections.
“The decision to bring the leaders of the G20 nations and their considerable entourages to Trump National Doral Miami from Dec. 14 to 15 in some ways offers the most clear-cut case study of how the standards have changed, not just from other presidencies but from Mr. Trump’s own first term,” Baker reported. He then quoted Paul Rosenzweig, who served as senior counsel to Ken Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton.
“Let’s be honest — in the world of all the bad things he’s done, this is pretty small,” Rosenzweig told Baker. “But it is a really good, easily understood example of how he has defined deviancy down.”
Last month, a poll revealed that Americans are increasingly upset by the perceived corruption in the government under Trump.
“Breaking: @Gallup has dropped a new poll that’s consistent with our own corruption survey findings: the American public’s alarm over political corruption is at record highs and is driving broader distrust in government,” the Brennan Center’s Daniel Weiner posted on X at the time. As the Gallup Poll wrote, “Americans’ perceptions of government corruption in the U.S. are at their highest level in 20 years, with 89 [percent] of U.S. adults saying it is widespread. That figure is up 10 percentage points from last year and well above readings in the 72 [percent] to 79 [percent] range between 2010 and 2025.”
One irony about Trump focusing on his golf courses to make money is that Trump is notorious for cheating while playing his favorite game. Sports journalist Rick Reilly, an expert on golf who wrote a book about Trump’s relationship with the sport called “Commander in Cheat,” wrote that Trump was infamous among caddies for cheating as well as stiffing club members and staff.