President Trump lobbied Japan on behalf of Sheldon Adelson

At the beginning of his first campaign, Donald Trump presented the Americans with a comforting account of how politics works in their country. Asked to justify his past donations to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, Trump explained, "I give everyone. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And it's a defective system.

What the Americans needed was therefore a politician too rich to be bought – from a man who could finance his campaign by himself and owe nothing to anyone after election day, with the exception of ordinary voters. When Trump did not call for a Muslim ban, neither for the size of his wall, nor to encourage his supporters to beat the protesters, it was the product he had sold to the GOP base: a president's dream that money could not touch.

Of course, like so many other Trump products, this dream was a sham. The nabob had always financed his big projects with the money of others and his political project was no different. The "broken system" of influence peddling had no place in reality – he just wanted to move to the "seller" side. His campaign has therefore accepted $ 25 million from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. And when Sheldon called after the day of the inauguration, Trump was there for him.

Specifically, the President has agreed to make "increasing the global market share of the Sheldon Adelson game empire" a top priority of US foreign policy vis-à-vis the Japan.

For years before Trump's election, casino moguls watched this country with an unrequited desire: thanks to its strict laws against casinos, Japan was one of the last untapped markets for the exploitation of drug addicts on the island. Earth. A month after Trump painted the Rust Belt in red, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe passed a bill legalizing casinos in the legislature. The new law allowed for the issuance of only three casino licenses throughout the country, thus guaranteeing to their recipients the local monopolies.

Thus, in February 2017, Adelson traveled to Washington, DC, for a meeting with the new president and Japanese Prime Minister. And after Adelson launched the Japanese ruler on his company, Trump approached for the fence. As ProPublica reports:

Adelson had a powerful ally in his quest: the new president of the United States. After the business breakfast, Abe met Trump before boarding Air Force One for a weekend in Mar-a-Lago. The two heads of state dined with Patriots owner Bob Kraft and played golf at the Trump National Jupiter Golf Club with South African golfer Ernie Els. At a meeting in Mar-a-Lago this weekend, Trump presented the Adelson Casino offer in Abe, according to two people informed of the meeting. The Japanese side was surprised.

"It was totally out of the sky," said one of the people informed of the exchange. "They were a little incredulous that he was so reckless." After Trump told Abe that he should seriously consider licensing Las Vegas Sands, "Abe did not really respond and thanked you for the information," said this person.

Adelson still has not obtained one of Japan's most coveted casino licenses. But in a recent earnings call, he told investors:[W]We are in pole position # 1. "

ProPublica then details Adelson's influence on other aspects of the Trump administration's governance, including its transparent role in shaping its (extremely hostile) policy towards Palestinians. However, Adelson's success in persuading EPA to devote a portion of its limited funds to studying the poor water technology of its billionaire friend is less well known. The Israeli start-up Watergen, belonging to the friend Adelson Michael Mirilashvili, manufactures machines capable of extracting drinking water from the air. In his first weeks as EPA director, Scott Pruitt met with Watergen executives at Adelson's request, then quickly asked the agency to enter into an agreement with the company that would allow the US United to study its technology:

According to an e-mail, Pruitt asked staff to explore "as soon as possible" if a transaction could be concluded "without the standard contractual requirements". "

A senior scientist from the agency warned that "the technology has been around for decades," adding that the agency should not "focus on one provider, in this case, Watergen". Officials said that Watergen's technology was not unique, noting that there were as many as 70 different vendors on the market with products using the same concept. The notes of a meeting stated that the agency "currently does not have the expertise or the staff to evaluate these technologies". The attorneys of the agency "seemed to be afraid" of the agreement, according to an internal text exchange. The EPA did not respond to requests for comment.

The transaction was made.

With any other president, these revelations would be an important news. But this administration has been about as forthright about its own corruption as Donald Trump once was about US campaign funding. The notion that public servants should not use their offices to defend the private interests of their clients is totally foreign to the contemporary government's philosophy of government. The Republican Party today applies the opposite ethical principle, namely that it has a fiduciary obligation to maximize returns for its major shareholders.

The Republicans of Congress have almost all adhered to this principle, publicly, during the battle over the Trump tax cuts of last fall:

"My donors basically say, do it or never call me back," Republican spokesman Chris Collins (NY), a millionaire, said on Tuesday.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters Thursday that a failure of tax reform would break the Republican party and lead to more challengers of the far right. "The financial contributions will stop," he added.

In the White House, of course, the transplant has generally been both smaller and more flagrant. The president relentlessly uses his office to promote his private properties, while virtually every member of his cabinet has been arrested in their hands in Uncle Sam at one time or another. Meanwhile, in regulatory bodies, government officials literally say to industry lobbies that the government should exist to their advantage – and these lobbies then proudly announce their conquest of our republic:

On Fox News and Facebook's right-wing feeds, the GOP maintains a narrative in which Trump is a big enemy of corruption in BC But the party does not need to reconcile the reality they are developing for their base with the one that is clearly visible to anyone who is interested in seeing it. Our government is not just corrupt, but proudly. corruption is its guiding principle.

In this context, it is difficult to get upset at the thought that our president is giving priority to Sheldon Adelson's profits to the broader interests of the United States in Japan. After all, all of Trump's party prioritizes the benefits of the energy industry over the medium-term survival of human civilization.

And yet, as Trump himself acknowledged in 2016, there is a real popular appetite for expelling the money lenders from the temples of our democracy. The corruption documented by ProPublica may well be "how the world works" now. But a better world is possible – or, at least, worth fighting for.