In the grand tradition of ‘drain the swamp’—which, as it turns out, was just a rebranding of ‘flood the swamp with even bigger alligators’—Trump 2.0 wasted no time in making America great for himself again. In a flurry of executive orders, billed as the “Rescinding of Harmful Executive Orders” (because irony is dead), one particularly convenient item was quietly erased: Executive Order 13989.
For those unfamiliar with that little nuisance, EO 13989 was a Biden-era rule that required federal appointees to disclose gifts, investments, and other financial entanglements—essentially a “Please Let’s Not Be Brazenly Corrupt” clause. But Trump, a man who’s never met a conflict of interest he didn’t want to monetize, saw it differently. Why, after all, should his friends, appointees, or—let’s be real—his own family be burdened with transparency? In a single stroke of his Sharpie, the pesky requirement vanished, ensuring that anyone in his orbit could accept lavish gifts from foreign oligarchs, Wall Street power players, or, say, a Saudi prince with a penchant for golf resorts.
But that was just the warm-up act. Next on the chopping block were the inspectors general—those meddlesome watchdogs tasked with keeping the government accountable. Fired, purged, removed, disappeared into the political ether—whatever the preferred term, Trump made sure they were out. Their replacements? Well, let’s just say that “fox in charge of the henhouse” doesn’t quite capture the absurdity of the situation. Perhaps “wolves writing security protocols for the sheep farm” is more apt.
And what, exactly, was the goal of all this? Well, aside from the pure joy of undermining democratic safeguards, Trump’s real mission was clear: unrestricted self-enrichment. With the gift-reporting requirement gone, his inner circle could now enjoy the perks of governance with zero accountability. No more pesky questions about foreign investments. No more irritating ethics complaints when a government contract just so happened to benefit, oh, let’s say, a struggling Trump property. And certainly no more barriers between the presidency and the kind of personal profit that would make a third-world dictator blush.
The message was unmistakable: the government wasn’t here to serve the people—it was here to serve Trump, Inc. And with watchdogs declawed, transparency erased, and accountability turned into a quaint relic of a bygone era, the second Trump term was shaping up to be a masterclass in self-dealing.
Democracy? Ethics? Rule of law? Cute concepts, really. But as Trump 2.0 demonstrated in record time, those things just get in the way of a really good grift.
Written by Robert Cain
Art by Mike Luckovich
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