this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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I think the media latches onto simple corruption cases like this because they're easy for people to grasp.
"Trump overpays donor to do subpar job on major national monument, ruining it" is a simple quid pro quo with visible (and ironically metaphorical) results.
It's a little harder to talk about all his insider trading schemes, Melania movie $40M kickback, crypto rugpulls, campaign finance violations, etc. Because those have more plausible deniability and the results don't have immediate and observable effects - often just pay for play schemes between him & corporations which are less concrete.
People can either delude themselves into thinking it's legitimate because they don't understand financial stuff/how things typically worked before being massively corrupt, or because it's initially just Trump making money (usually illegally) which is something they expect him to do and the illegality is difficult to explain or not very hard-hitting.
Or because they don't matter. It's millions while the war is costing billions.
Well that's a bit of a false equivalency. Yes the war is costing billions in tax payer money and innocent lives, which is bad, but that isn't corruption. That's just a warmongering administration getting into and losing unnecessary wars.
All these random, relatively small, examples of corruption are sometimes uses of taxpayer money like in this case, but that isn't the problem - if the pool needed to be resurfaced then that is a legitimate government expense. It wasn't necessary, but that'd just be waste if we stopped there. The actual problem is the corruption - the facilitation of funding to the Trump campaign and Trump family, illegally, through pay for play schemes.
Both things matter, and obviously the war matters more as it has cost innocent lives, they are not the same type of thing though.
Right. However if newspapers would start investigating the war expenses, don't you think they would find billions wasted in corruption?
so like, remember how every time the military gets audited they fail the audit? if a company in the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) fails their audit, they get kicked out of the MIC and can't do business with the gubmint but the military itself misplaces billions of dollars every year (mostly bribes being paid and not being properly accounted for. just write them down, military dudes) and whoopsie poopsie, failed audit whatcha gonna do we got nukes.
I think they are investigating that though, right? It's just a different sort of story, requiring more reporting investment and more specialized reporters. I've seen lots of reporting on the war over the past months (humanitarian, economic, military, etc. etc.)
Obviously though most of that reporting is institutionalist, serves western interests, etc. I just don't expect different from the corporate press
You thinking maybe we don't trust the military-industrial complex? I Ike the way you think.
MSMs arnt talking about the actual things like insider trading because most of them are owned trump lvoing conservatives.