This is an adapted excerpt from the Feb. 16 episode of “Inside with Jen Psaki.”
For the last few weeks, Donald Trump has tried really hard to get a certain message across, vowing to hunt down corruption in the federal government. But just because you say something over and over again doesn’t make it true.
When it comes to the president, every accusation is usually a confession.
When Trump and his billionaire buddy Elon Musk are pressed to provide any actual evidence to prove that their grand plan to root out mass fraud and corruption in the government is working, they come up short.
What is becoming increasingly clear is that they’re not really after corruption at all, they’re simply going after the things they don’t like. What is also clear is that when it comes to the president, every accusation is usually a confession. Let me put it this way: If Trump was actually hunting for corruption, it might get a bit uncomfortable because the call is coming from inside the house.
Just consider the Trump administration’s move to freeze a U.S. law banning the bribery of foreign officials, a law that has previously hit suppliers for Tesla. Or Musk’s attacks on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that would have likely cracked down on his attempts to turn X into a digital payment platform.
There’s the administration’s plan to lay off thousands of Internal Revenue Service employees, a move that would likely benefit the richest taxpayers. (I wonder who falls into that category?) There’s also Trump’s recent firing of inspectors general, whose jobs are literally to find corruption.
You could also look at Musk’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, where they sat in front of a U.S. flag and an Indian flag just like a bilateral meeting — a meeting that even Trump doesn’t seem to know the reason behind.
“I don’t know, they met, I assume he wants to do business in India,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. “I would imagine he met possibly because he’s running a company.”
So was he there as a government official for the country, or as a CEO for himself, or maybe as a fake government official so he could make some better business deals? That seems like the kind of fuzziness you would want to avoid if you’re laser-focused on rooting out corruption.
Luckily, Trump says he will personally oversee whether or not Musk has any conflicts of interest which, clearly, seems to be going great so far.
But nothing encapsulates this administration’s embrace of corruption better than the case of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, someone who faces actual corruption charges for conspiracy, bribery and fraud — all those things Trump and Musk claim to care so much about.
But last week, acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove sent a memo ordering federal prosecutors to drop those charges against Adams. Bove claimed the case hampered the mayor’s ability to tackle “illegal immigration and violent crime.” The message there seems pretty clear: Never mind the law, forget the evidence, you do our bidding and we’ll make it like it never happened.








