Marshall Helmberger

If only I wasn’t in the news business. A recent poll found that those who aren’t following the news these days remain the most content with the current state of America. It’s those of us who do feel an obligation to remain informed who are feeling increasingly despondent over the descent of our nation into utter corruption, incompetence, and chaos.
In Trump’s America, it appears that ignorance is as close as one can get to bliss.
I could fill every page of this newspaper with example after example of the insanity that emanates daily from the Trump White House. But the sheer breadth of lawbreaking and constitution-shredding by this White House, makes it difficult to focus on any one outrage. So, I’m just going to focus on Tuesday’s shocker, the revelation that President Trump has issued a full and unconditional pardon to a Florida man, a college-drop-out, who inherited a chain of nursing homes from his mother. The man, Paul Walczak, was convicted in a court of law after federal prosecutors proved that between 2016 and 2019, he had withheld more than $10 million from the paychecks of his employees, ostensibly to pay the Social Security, Medicare, and federal income taxes those employees owed. Instead of paying the money to the government as required, which credits his employees’ accounts, Walczak used the money to buy a $2 million yacht and fund a lavish lifestyle.
He had just been sentenced to 18 months in a federal prison and ordered to pay $4.4 million in restitution. Trump’s pardon not only saves Walczak from his prison sentence but forgives the restitution he was supposed to pay for the millions of dollars he stole from his employees, many of whom may well see smaller retirement benefits than they otherwise would have received due to his actions. These were employees who had put their trust in Walczak and he knowingly stole from them, week after week, for years.
In sentencing him to prison, the judge in the case commented that “there is not a get-out-of-jail-free card” for the rich.
Turns out there is, and it comes gold-plated, with Donald Trump’s leering mug on it.
With Trump, of course, everything comes at a price. Walczak was helped by the fact that his mother was a big Trump fan, who had held fundraisers for Trump’s previous campaigns. According to news reports, Walczak’s pardon petition focused on his mother’s past support for Trump, but that apparently wasn’t enough of a chit to wipe away his crimes.
A few weeks before the pardon decision, Walczak’s mother was invited to a $1 million-per-person fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago, ostensibly sponsored by MAGA Inc., a political action committee that can accept unlimited donations.
Considering that Walczak’s mother had never donated more than $12,000 to any of Trump’s campaigns, $1 million was an implausibly large ask… unless something really important hung in the balance. She opted to accept the invitation and ponied up the $1 million.
Turns out it was a good investment. Three weeks later, Trump signed the full and unconditional pardon, saving her son from a felony conviction, 18 months in prison, and $4.4 million in restitution to his employees and the government for the funds he stole.
I wish I could say that this was a one-off, but this kind of thing has become standard practice in the Trump White House, a routine event where pardons can be simply bought and sold, as long as the politics are MAGA and the money goes into the right pockets.
We’ve certainly had corruption in high office before in America, but it’s never been as brazen as in the current White House. Whether it’s cash for pardons or buying access through meme coins, crypto, golden sneakers — or having his kids follow him on foreign trips to hustle side deals— the scale of corruption is literally jaw-dropping. And the collective shrug from his fellow Republicans, who spent years foaming at the mouth over that small-timey influence-peddler Hunter Biden, is astonishing.
As an American who grew up in a time when politicians still could be shamed, I don’t recognize this country anymore. Perhaps I just have to stop reading the news…