Patrick Pass

Within one 24 hour period, Trump: - got out of a $100 million IRS fine - secured "immunity" from all future tax investigations for his family and friends - created a $1.8 billion slush fund for lawbreaking supporters - was reported for likely insider trading worth nearly $1 billion All of the obvious things to say about this are true. It's bad. Nobody even tries to defend it. The closest thing to a defense you get is something about how "but Democrats suck" and "woke was also bad," which is not a defense, but rather a kind of moral blank check made out to the administration to give them the right to do anything. But what I'm most curious about is whether this sort of lurid corruption creates a countermovement that successfully returns government to rule of law or whether it's establishing a norm of executive imperialism that every future administration will use to achieve its ends, which can always be justified by the moral blank check of "the other side is worse, so let us do whatever we want."