Not long ago it was the time of the indignant. Now what best defines our time is the lack of indignation. Desensitization towards corruption. There is so much that a good part of the population accepts that a president is surrounded by it without flinching with each new scandal. I’m thinking, for a change, of Donald Trump.
Their scandals are of another dimension. Yesterday we learned that Trump earned 2.2 billion euros. And that’s just part of the loot, difficult to quantify because he is the only president not to make his statement public since Nixon. His income since returning to the White House has quadrupled in a year.
2.2 billion euros is such an astonishing amount that it is difficult to imagine. Nothing to do with what he won in his first term, nor with what he earned outside of politics. Most of them in cryptocurrencies. Thus, the exact origin of the money is not known, nor how much is taxed on it, nor what favors the US president has given in exchange. 2.2 billion euros without something like 1,700 necklaces like the ones Zapatero had in his safe. Not even Uncle Gilito’s gold pool.
Some ethics organizations in Washington (yes, there is still that) have done the math and found that Trump earns the equivalent of $1.1 million per hour for his private (and opaque) businesses as president. 1.1 million. Per hour! Cryptocurrencies make it difficult to know the origin. There are also million-dollar purchases of shares of large technology companies, which have benefited from the Government’s decisions.
Trump founded World Liberty Financial with his children just three days before resuming the presidency in January 25. And immediately 500 million dollars arrived from the United Arab Emirates. Months later, Trump authorized the sale of artificial intelligence chips to the Emirates, despite security warnings.
And this feeling that in the face of the inflation of scandals we no longer put our hands to our heads enough, I’m afraid it seems familiar to us.
Moral?
People have become desensitized,
so much scandal is too much
