Donald Trump and Elon Musk are trying to steal from us so regularly, so openly, so unapologetically that they convince the American people to just accept it as normal.

Their theory is that if they do the corruption out in the open, they can con the American people into thinking it’s politics as usual.

This White House is on a fast track to being the most corrupt in American history, and I want to explain just a few of the most brazen examples we’ve seen.

January 17: Trump launches his crypto meme coin. It has no inherent value or benefit, but it is a mechanism where anyone — including corporate CEOs, billionaires, and foreign governments — can give money directly and anonymously to Donald Trump. We have no idea who is buying this coin, but every time they do, they can whisper in his ear that it was them to get favors on the backend.

February 6: Attorney General Pam Bondi issues a memo to dull the criminal enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In the last Trump Administration, a bunch of Trump’s buddies got in trouble for secretly working for foreign governments without disclosing it. So this time around, they are making it easier for foreign governments to influence Trump — while his Mar-a-Lago crowd profits and hides the truth.

February 10: The Eric Adams quid pro quo. Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, who had been indicted for corruption, got his charges dropped in exchange for political loyalty to Trump. They announced the deal on TV. Multiple career DOJ officials quit over their refusal to acquiesce to Trump’s demand to drop the charges. Trump sent a message loud and clear to every politician, corporation and billionaire out there — if you are loyal to him, he will not investigate or prosecute you.

February 26: Elon Musk had the FAA cancel a contract with Verizon to substitute in his own company, Starlink. He used his power and access to shove his competitor out of the way to enrich himself.

This week, Wired reported that Mar-a-Lago guests are paying millions of dollars to dine with Donald Trump personally. Advertisements for tickets to these private dinners are being targeted at corporate CEOs for as much as $5 million each. Imagine if your mayor was selling meetings at city hall for $1,000. People would rightfully run them out of town.

They are asking us to pretend this is normal because it’s happening every day and out in the open.

They want people to believe their corruption was what always happened behind closed doors. But this stuff didn’t happen before. It is unprecedented.

I lay all of this out because I still believe and hope that it is not too late for us as a nation — and particularly my colleagues in the Senate — to say this is not okay. There is still time for us to stand up to say that the rule of law matters. We can say it’s not okay that people can anonymously and illegally funnel money to the president or that Musk gets limitless access to data and has the power to change contracts to enrich himself.

The president and his friends are not supposed to steal from us or use their power to rig the rules to enrich themselves. It is our responsibility to do everything we can to demand accountability and preserve democracy while we still have a chance.

Every best wish,

Chris Murphy

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