If the president is for sale, so is everyone else, and—spoiler alert—nations where endemic corruption takes hold aren’t stable, prosperous, or small-d democratic for long. Trumpism corrupts, and absolute Trumpism corrupts absolutely, so expect more unsubtle stories of political payoffs by powerful interests. In 2019, sanctioned Russian oligarch and Putin bestie Oleg Deripaska mysteriously announced that his firm, Rusal, would build a new aluminum plant in the United States, in Mitch McConnell’s home oblast of Kentuckistan.1
