On the standard scale, measured against every American administration since Eisenhower, the current one is the most corrupt in the record, and it does not need a projection to win. It scores 76 at month twenty against 53 for the next highest, which was its own first term, and 41 for Nixon, in a field where eleven of thirteen administrations never reached 25.
On proven evidence alone it scores 69 against Nixon’s 41. It is the only administration in seventy years to score eight or higher on enrichment, on the disabling of oversight, and on impunity at the same time, a combination no previous president reached on any two of the three. On the world table it sits with Yanukovych and the Tweed Ring, the elected governments that ran the state as a family business until an election or an uprising ended it, and no American administration had ever been inside that range before.
On the full-term model, it finishes at 91, which is the top of the world table, level with Obiang, Suharto and Mobutu. The honest qualification is that their scores are completed records and this one is carried forward from twenty months of checkpoints. The pace assumption is a single cell in the workbook, and anyone can change it. On the family scale, the Trumps are second only to the Obiangs at month twenty and first on the full-term model.
So, it it safe to say that the current administration is the most corrupt in American history by a margin no predecessor approached, on any reading of the evidence. On the world table it is already inside the range of the kleptocracies, and it finishes the term among the most corrupt governments of the modern era if the last twenty months continue. The two things that interrupted that pattern in every historical case were a court that held and an election that counted.
Re: Day 1 of Trump's Presidency... and all the days that follow
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