analysis
Open corruption, open hatred, appalling vulgarity: When will Americans get fed up?
October 23, 2025, 2:19 p.mOctober 23, 2025, 3:03 p.m
Bennett Gersham is an ethics professor at Pace University. When asked about the latest revelation about Donald Trump’s greed, he was stunned: “What a smear show,” he told the New York Times. “The ethical conflict in this case is so fundamental that you don’t need an ethics professor to explain it.”
What is it about? Trump is of the opinion that he was unfairly persecuted in the case of the Russia affair and the investigations by special prosecutor Jack Smith and that he suffered great damage as a result. He now wants to be compensated for this, to the tune of $230 million. Justice Minister Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche must write the check for this, and he himself must approve it in his capacity as president.
This is what Donald Trump’s ballroom will one day look like.Image: keystone
Bondi does everything Trump tells her to do, and Blanche was his defense attorney in the criminal trials. The conflicts of interest and corruption in this case are so obvious that even Trump is concerned. “It looks a little strange, doesn’t it?” he said in the Oval Office. «I judge myself. That’s why I’m insecure. But the cases against me were severe.”
Trump will get his $230 million, bet? The fact that this involves tax money leaves him cold. In order to defuse the criticism a little, he wants to donate the money to charity. But he had to close his charity because he misused the funds for private purposes.
The $230 million compensation is just the latest example of Trump’s corruption tsunami. He and his children are said to have already pocketed billions with his crypto currencies. He lets the Qataris give him a $400 million jet, and yet he regularly asks his followers to buy his watches, sneakers and even Bibles from him at exorbitant prices.
Add to that Trump’s open sadism. He is using the shutdown to punish the weakest. “Food stamps”, the subsidies for food, will soon no longer flow. Meanwhile, the “Darth Vader” in the White House, budget director Russ Vought, is cutting everything that somehow smells like social welfare or environmental protection.
The president’s almost unbelievable vulgarity is also reaching new lows. Last weekend he published an AI-generated video in which he can be seen wearing a crown in a fighter jet and showering participants in the “No Kings” demonstrations with feces.
The question is therefore not how low Trump can sink. Rather, it is: How long will Americans put up with this? To find the answer, we have to look at the term “own the libs”.
Neoliberalism has left deep traces in the USA. After World War II, the American middle class and workers were doing better than ever before. The deregulations and tax giveaways of neoliberalism have wiped out a large part of this. At the same time, the wealth gap opened to a previously unknown extent. Elon Musk’s fortune, for example, is greater than the accumulated savings of the bottom half of the American population.
The result of this is a huge hatred of the middle class for the rich. However, this hatred is not directed against the new oligarchs, but rather against a “woke”, urban elite and a supposed deep state. Both are associated with the left-liberal Democrats. “Own the libs” therefore means doing something that drives these people crazy.
“Own the libs” is the driving force behind a politics of hate, and Trump masters it masterfully. When Charlie Kirk’s widow wanted to forgive the murderer at her husband’s abdication ceremony, the president replied that he couldn’t keep up. He hates his opponents and only wishes bad things on them.
Content no longer plays a role
Political content plays no role when it comes to “own the libs”. “Hate is no longer a reason to prevent a deal,” as Katie Rogers notes in the New York Times. Nothing is too vulgar or too racist to have consequences anymore. Yes, open fascism is now even accepted.
The online magazine Politico recently published a chat with young Republican leaders in which they made fun of the gassing of Jews and praised Hitler. Only at the very last moment did Trump withdraw the nomination of a certain Paul Ingrassia for a cabinet position. He had boasted that he had a “tendency towards the Nazis”.
Vulgarity, racism and outright fascism are either denied or trivialized by Republicans. “A common practice of the Trump administration is to defend or minimize reprehensible actions and hatred,” said Rogers. “They call it ironic – and therefore not significant.”
Interim remark: Before we get outraged about the Americans, we should sweep our own doors. We also know a form of “own the libs”: those who give the impression today that we are dominated by “woken” heirs who live in our cities like maggots in bacon, only work part-time, have studied art history or ethnology, want to ban cars and nuclear power plants and the hard-working people who get up every morning with an alarm clock and still can’t make ends meet because the tax money goes to asylum seekers and senseless people People who squander eco-projects and want to dictate what they have to eat and where they can go on vacation can also hope for applause.
Back to the USA – the question arises: How long will the Americans put up with this? When will the lies, corruption and incompetence be enough?
Excavators destroy the East Wing of the White House.Image: keystone
There is no clear answer to this. But there is increasing evidence that the “Mad King” could be reaching its limits. Trump’s popularity ratings in the polls are underground, sometimes even below 40 percent. The fact that he is now partially demolishing the White House to build a pompous ballroom is raising eyebrows even among Republicans.
In addition, his policies are starting to cause painful symptoms even among his voters. The removal of subsidies for health insurance contributions and the closure of rural hospitals affect the majority of Republican voters.
Or how can it be reconciled with the MAGA doctrine that Trump wants to bail out Argentine President Javier Milei with a total of $40 billion? Especially since it is the Argentine farmers who are making life difficult for American farmers in the “red” states because they supply their soybeans to China.
What’s more, in order to keep his promise to lower food prices, Trump now even wants to import cheap beef from Argentina. And it is now also known that Finance Minister Scott Bessent wants to use these loans to prevent his hedge fund friends from suffering major losses.
Statue in Washington with Trump and Epstein. Image: keystone
At the same time, the wealth gap continues to widen. The stock market is booming, and the wealthy are primarily benefiting from this, as they have also received a big tax gift with the “Big Beautiful Bill”. Meanwhile, the real economy is weakening significantly. We don’t know exactly because the facts are missing due to the shutdown.
And yes, the Epstein Files are far from over. Not even if Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump sycophant, has been sending representatives on vacation for weeks in order to prevent a newly elected representative from Arizona from being sworn in. She is the tip of the scales to push a petition through the House of Representatives. This calls for the disclosure of these files, which are likely to be devastating for Trump.
With his politics of hate, with “own the libs” at all costs, Trump has succeeded in confusing large parts of the American population to the point where they no longer know where their heads are. “He has ushered in an era of distrust and confusion in which he can assert his own interests,” as Franklin Foer notes in “Atlantic.”
If it fails, and if the Americans actually get fed up with it one day, it will be primarily because forces that Bill Clinton made his legendary maxim at the time prevail: “It’s the economy, stupid.”