Corruption is likely to be of great significance under Donald Trump’s upcoming administration, in part because accountability mechanisms have weakened since his last time in office. Jeff Hauser, from the Revolving Door Project, contends that the probable scope of corruption under the new Trump administration is beginning to sink in across the political spectrum.
JEFF HAUSER; hauser@therevolvingdoorproject.org
Hauser is the executive director of the Revolving Door Project.
Hauser told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “Corruption is not only bad in and of itself. It’s also a bad thing that makes other terrible things more likely to happen. If you corrupt the enforcement of environmental protection laws, people will be poisoned by the water they drink and air they breathe. If you corrupt the Department of Labor, workplace safety will collapse over time and wage protections will disappear. Events like [the 2023 train derailment in] East Palestine are more likely. Air safety disasters, like Boeing 737 Max planes dropping out of the sky, are more likely. That’s what happened under the last Trump administration. This is going to be worse. Food safety issues, automobile safety with driverless cars, rail safety––these are all risks that the Trump team will be taking with the lives of ordinary people. It’s incumbent on us to explain why [these events] occur when they do. That will be the case with our financial markets too. Banks and crypto are on the cusp of going wild.”
Hauser said he was surprised by Trump’s Cabinet picks so far. “We were ready for things to be bad,” Hauser said, “but there’s a cultural frisson here that is over the top. We couldn’t have guessed Pete Hegseth [would be the Secretary of Defense pick]. Under Harris, we knew [her picks] were reasonable people. Some might be bad, but there was normal evil. This is chaotic evil. These picks have been fast and capricious. There’s no process.
“The extent to which these candidates are uniquely poorly qualified is unlikely to resonate outside of the politically aware. The fact that these are not the typical people to run these federal institutions will not be anger inducing. Civil society will only start holding picks accountable when there are tangible impacts; the lack of credentials is not enough. The political consequences will only start happening when people tie these individuals to the inevitable calamities that will ensue. For instance, when the impacts of Hurricane Maria didn’t get fixed, there wasn’t follow-up in the media tying Trump’s failure to prioritize rebuilding the island of Puerto Rico. His branch failed. Without that story being told, Trump made inroads with Puerto Ricans.”
Hauser noted that many of Trump’s Cabinet picks––as well as his other allies in other countries, like Javier Milei of Argentina––share a “collective disdain for civil servants. It makes sense that they might seek to replace civil servants with AI. We are very alarmed about the Social Security Administration (SSA) and other parts of government that serve lots of people. SSA works with disabled and older people, and eligibility questions and benefit management are hugely important to their lives. Martin O’Malley [the current commissioner of SSA] did a good job. But SSA employs a fair number of people and is a logical place where a Silicon Valley bro would think he can replace human beings with computer programs. The software is not anywhere near ready for that, and the reality of working with people is much more complicated than is understood by these tech bros.”