The Corruption Is the Strategy
Donald is not hiding his market manipulation. He is normalizing it
Donald has always used power as a means to enrich himself, his family, and those to whom he is beholden. That is not new. What is new is the scale. What is new is the brazenness. And what is new is the extent to which it is happening in full view, without consequence.
Donald has been engaged in corrupt practices for decades. That includes, at times, market manipulation alongside my grandfather. Now, with the full weight of the presidency behind him, those same instincts have been amplified into something far more dangerous.
Consider what happened on April 9, 2025.
At 9:37 in the morning, Donald posted on his social media platform that it was a great time to buy. The message was clear. The implication was obvious. Less than four hours later, he announced a 90 day pause on tariffs.
The market responded immediately. The S and P 500 surged by 9.5 percent in a single day, one of the strongest performances in decades. As a direct result of that movement, Donald’s personal stake in Trump Media increased by approximately 400 million dollars in a matter of hours.
He later acknowledged that he had already been considering the tariff pause before telling the public it was a good time to buy.
That matters because it means that the people who acted on his statement were operating without the full picture, while he and those close to him already knew what was coming. On that same day, Donald openly celebrated the gains of a billionaire who benefited from the market swing he helped create, stating:
This is Charles Schwab. It’s not just a conversation. It’s actually an individual. He made two and a half billion today and he made 900 million.
That is not normal. That is not leadership. That is the President of the United States acknowledging, in real time, the extraordinary wealth generated by a market movement he very likely triggered.
Meanwhile, ordinary Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities. They are choosing between feeding their families and paying for gas.
There were calls for investigations into potential insider trading and market manipulation. That would have been the appropriate response. But in what appears to be more than coincidence, the head of the Office of Government Ethics was removed. Oversight agencies failed to act and no accountability followed.
When asked directly whether his actions constituted market manipulation, Donald did what he always does. He deflected. He avoided the question. He refused to engage honestly.
And this was not an isolated incident.
In March of this year, approximately 580 million dollars in oil futures trades were executed within a narrow fifteen minute window just before Donald announced that talks with Iran were productive. That statement signaled a potential deescalation. Within minutes, oil prices dropped sharply and stock futures moved higher.
The timing of those trades raised immediate concerns. They were flagged as unusually precise given the scale and positioning. One market participant reviewing the activity described the outcome simply.
Somebody just got a lot richer.
And once again, we are expected to believe that this is the result of skill rather than access.
There have been repeated instances in which oil prices fluctuate dramatically in response to Donald’s statements about military actions, ceasefires, or negotiations. Each time, the same pattern emerges. Sudden volatility. Confusion in the markets. And yet, somewhere within that chaos, certain individuals are positioned to benefit.
Financial analysts have noted that contradictory messaging from the Trump regime has increased instability. But instability, for those with the right information, is not a problem. It is an opportunity. Of course there is more.
Donald’s cryptocurrency venture is not grounded in a legitimate business model. It operates as a mechanism through which wealthy individuals can gain access, influence, and proximity to power. It allows money to flow toward him in ways that are difficult to track and even harder to regulate. That includes foreign actors. That includes individuals and entities with interests that do not align with those of the United States.
None of that appears to matter as long as Donald benefits.
Senator Chris Van Hollen described the situation clearly. This is what he said:
We are witnessing the most corrupt White House and presidency in American history. It’s not even close. The corruption is global. Today, I want to zero in on just one piece of it here at home, and that is the Trump and Melania meme coins. These are the coins that Trump sold to retail investors, and he’s pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars from those sales. Even as retail investors have lost billions on the Trump and Melania meme coins. And here’s the catch. Whether the value of these coins goes up or down, Trump makes money. In other words, the value of it could collapse entirely, but it’s the trades. And so what Donald Trump’s been doing is trying to pump trades because every time a trade is made, Donald Trump pockets a little bit of your money. He’s won hundreds of millions of dollars, even as people who trusted in him have lost billions.
That is the structure. That is the design. Profit regardless of outcome. Losses absorbed by everyone else. And from Donald’s perspective, that is exactly how it should be.
There is a broader danger here. When corruption operates this openly, it begins to reshape expectations. People start to believe that if it were truly illegal, it would be hidden. If it were truly wrong, someone would stop it.
But that is not how this works. By being so brazen, by refusing to conceal it, Donald is normalizing it. He is conditioning people to accept it. Over time, what should be unthinkable becomes routine. What should be disqualifying becomes background noise.
We have seen this before.
We saw it when he convinced millions that the 2020 election was stolen. We saw it when he reframed an insurrection as something justified. The strategy is the same. Repeat the lie. Remove the guardrails. Erode the standard.
And eventually, enough people stop questioning it and that is where this leads.
Donald has convinced far too many people that authoritarianism is a good thing for the United States. He is now conditioning tens of millions more to accept the idea that presidential corruption is not only acceptable, but desirable and that the President of the United States is entitled to abuse the power of his office to enrich himself. And, of course, the corollary follows: that the rest of us should be willing to sacrifice more.
We should be prepared to give up our Social Security checks, for example, all in the name of making America great again which, in Donald’s mind, means making himself richer.
Open corruption such as this also makes it clear to everyone else on the Trump ladder that it's also okay for them to engage in corruption.
For a lot of Americans, yes, it’s being normalized. (How they see it as normal is beyond me, but I realize that’s the trick.) But a whole lot of other people are still not paying attention. They’re not very interested, or they actively avoid politics. They are the ones who freak me out, make me mad, whatever. Well, so do the ones who’ve been blinded by the Normalizer.