Have you heard about the president who received money from China and other foreign countries? No, not the current president. The former one.
House Republicans recently launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, premised on the claim that he is hiding, in the words of Speaker Mike Johnson, “millions of dollars in payments from America’s foreign adversaries.” As yet, they have produced no evidence to back up the idea that Biden profited. (The payments they have flagged involve the business interests of his son Hunter Biden, who is facing two separate federal indictments at the moment, and his brother James.)
Meanwhile, House Democrats on Thursday released a report detailing how former President Donald Trump received, and then tried to hide, millions in payments from America’s foreign adversaries. Unlike in the impeachment inquiry, which is premised on a suspicion that Republicans hope will turn up evidence, the receipts are here.
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The saga of the foreign payments is a good case study in how Trump has taught Americans to tolerate brazen corruption—so long as it’s his. To do this, Trump relies on two tactics. First, he does much of it out in the open, recognizing that voters tend to assume that only hidden deeds are nefarious. Second, he finds ways to slow-walk the release of the most damaging information, so that by the time the full picture is clear, the public has become almost inoculated—as though it had been out in the open all along.
When there’s so much trash keeps piling up in your room with no idea which way is up or down anymore, your brain just kinda begins to accept it for what it is and goes with the flow.