Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America

by Sarah Kendzior

The longer autocrats stay in power, the smaller the inner circle becomes, and the more kinship ties tend to dominate. Parties bound by blood or marriage are easier to control. Nepotism allows for an easy accumulation of leverage: if a staffer dares to diverge from the party line, their relative’s position—and if necessary, their life—can be threatened. (Witness the deadly kin rivalries in the authoritarian governments of North Korea or Saudi Arabia.) Officials who are not related by family ties in Trump’s cabinet are often people who have been working together in corrupt ventures for decades. For example, Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross were both protégés, like Trump, of Carl Icahn, who stepped down as a White House adviser after a year following a proposed ethics investigation that was, like so many other investigations, mysteriously dropped. Expand the circle further, and you find political actors who are tied by complicity, including, at this point, the entire GOP, which is contaminated by the influx of dark money in the 2016 election and beyond. For example, in 2017, the GOP made Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer who would later be sentenced to three years in prison for campaign finance violations, the deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Corruption breeds loyalty out of fear. The choice is to embrace the crooked gains, hoping that the new regime will consolidate power and rewrite laws to create a sort...