To a degree unseen since Watergate, Democratic officials and candidates emphasized government corruption as a central issue in the midterm elections. It proved effective: Polls showed voters prioritizing corruption in ways that likely caught Republicans off guard.

There’s no great mystery as to why: Donald Trump’s corruption was so uniquely brazen that it helped the issue break through for the electorate. As writer Brian Beutler summarized a few weeks before Election Day, in reference to the president, “He isn’t just more corrupt than most politicians; corruption is his raison d’être. This isn’t just ‘government corruption’ to be reformed away. It’s a GOP crime spree.”

After Democrats were able to capitalize on the backlash to widespread corruption, the party took the obvious next step: It started making plans to use Congress’ oversight authority to investigate years’ worth of wrongdoing.

This, by all appearances, has sparked widespread panic in the White House and throughout the Republican administration — according to whistleblowers, at least one Cabinet agency has begun destroying documents, in the hopes of keeping them from lawmakers — and the president himself appears to be increasingly anxious about the potential for sunlight on activities he has long preferred to keep in the shadows.

To that end, Trump spent the first weekend after the midterms accusing the incoming Democratic majority of being “extortionists” who deserve “imprisonment,” and ordering his Justice Department to “look into” the Democrats’ “totally illegal” plans to conduct routine oversight.

The Republican used his social media platform on Thursday morning to publish a series of related missives, each of which was rooted in the idea that it’s his Democratic opponents who are actually corrupt. One online item, published at 5:50 a.m. ET, included this gem:

I, perhaps foolishly because the Fake News refuses to write about it, including in my First Term, don’t even take a Salary, worth Millions of Dollars. I am the only President to have done so! In any event, THE DEMOCRATS ARE CORRUPT AND EVIL, and I am the exact opposite! Fight hard, Republicans, or you won’t have a Country left!

In the hours that followed, the president continued to publish a series of related posts, all of which insisted that those concerned about corruption need not bother looking at him.

It’s unlikely that anyone will be persuaded by such nonsense, though I was struck by the nature of his defense: To hear Trump tell it, he can’t be corrupt because he doesn’t accept his presidential salary.

He’s going to need a better talking point.

Right off the bat, let’s note that the base annual salary for an American president is $400,000, which is not “Millions of Dollars.” It’s also worth mentioning that Trump keeps telling people he’s the only president to ever decline his official salary, but that’s still not true: Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy also donated their presidential salaries.

But even if we put these details aside, what Trump doesn’t seem to fully appreciate is the fact that he doesn’t need the $400,000 a year because he’s already profiting off the presidency.

As a candidate for the nation’s highest office, Trump vowed to reject “the politics of personal profit” and to stand up to those who had gone to the nation’s capital and “lined their pockets.” But as a president, Trump has practically sent his pants out to the tailors to get bigger pockets.

In the first year of his second term, the Republican pulled in at least $2.2 billion, including more than $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency-related income, according to his latest annual financial disclosure.

No other president in American history has ever seen such financial gains while in office, and as a recent analysis from The New York Times explained, “Mr. Trump’s profits are a haul once unimaginable for any leader of a liberal democracy, particularly a sitting American president. No modern Western leader has ever publicly disclosed such big windfalls while in office. The Trump family’s earnings, experts said, have moved him into an echelon of enrichment more associated with strongmen in Russia and Turkey.”

In other words, the proof the president came up with to show his lack of corruption is actually evidence pointing toward his apparent corruption.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Why Trump’s defense against corruption allegations is plainly self-defeating appeared first on MS NOW.

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