Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

If I was going to write about something over the recent Memorial Day Weekend, it could have about those who gave their lives to defend the country I live, the United States of America.

But, even as offer supreme value for those deaths, my mind turns to one Donald Trump.

If you want to know the definition of corruption, just look at Trump.  You would see more than you want to see.

Now, about two years into Trump’s second term, you could have thought you had seen all the self-dealing you could tolerate from a president who looks after himself and the cronies who bow to him.

Then, no.

You see what New York Times editorial writers saw when they wrote under this headline:  “There Has Never Been an Example of Presidential Corruption Like This.”

Here is how the editorial started:

“Has there ever been an episode of presidential corruption so blatant and threatening to constitutional order?  Certainly not in modern times.

“President Trump’s Justice Department is using taxpayer money to create a $1.8 billion political slush fund.  Ostensibly set up to compensate those who the department claims have ‘suffered weaponization and lawfare,’ it will in fact reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.”

The Times says the fund combines three of Trump’s most alarming traits:

• One, it is an obvious form of corruption coming from a president who has used his office to enrich himself, his family, and his allies.
• Two, the fund continues his pattern of using the Justice Department as an enforcer to punish his perceived opponents and protect his friends and allies.
• Three, the fund is his latest attempt to re-write history about the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on Congress.

This further comment from the Times:

“It is worth pausing to put the fund into the larger context of Trump’s political project:  He is destroying pillars of American democracy to empower himself.  He claims elections are legitimate only if he wins.  He uses federal law enforcement to investigate and prosecute his perceived enemies.  He purges his party of officials who defy him.  He describes members of the other party and civil society as traitors and enemies.  He incentivizes his supporters to break the law on his behalf and rewards them when they do.  He directs his allies to change election rules to keep his party in power.”

How did Trump think of doing this?

Well, he told the IRS what to do and, remember, he controls the IRS.  He instructed the agency to negotiate a resolution to a suit he filed contending that his tax returns had been released unfairly.

He negotiates with himself and you could predict the result:  He wins.

For Trump’s supporters, the handouts will come from the slush fund.  The Justice Department will tap a permanent stream of revenue that Congress created in 1956, known as the Judgment Fund, to settle lawsuits against the federal government.  Now, this fund will reward those who committed acts of aggression against the government in 2021.

So, this conclusion from the Times:

“Americans should be cleareyed about what the president is doing.  He is taking their money and showering it on criminals.” 

Including on himself, for he is a felon.

An essayist in the Times put it this way:

“The president may wish to be considered in the same class as Napoleon or Alexander the Great, but he is in danger of turning himself into the next Mobutu Sese Seko or Suharto:  A kleptocrat remembered not for his ideas and not for his power, but for his greed.”