New from Vanity Fair: "Not A Joke: Trump Is Looking At Making Bribery Legal"

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/01/donald-trump-bribery-laws?utm_social-type=owned&utm_medium=social&mbid=social_twitter&utm_source=twitter&utm_brand=vf

The trouble with the Trump administration, beyond the moral bankruptcy, rampant nepotism, sheer incompetence, mass corruption, white nationalism, idiot children, assault on the concept of truth, and pure evil, is that oftentimes it’s beyond parody. For instance, we know Donald Trump is a wildly shady businessman who believes the purpose of the presidency is to enrich his family and friends, that he thinks the law is for suckers, and that he might be a tax cheat, but it would just be too much to learn that he was actively looking into making bribery legal. And yet!

A forthcoming book called A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America, by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig, reports that Trump has complained about existing rules, and that he clashed with former secretary of state Rex Tillerson in 2017 when Trump pushed to scrap the FCPA.

“It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas,” Trump said, according to a passage published by the Post. “We’re going to change that.” The law is designed to prevent individuals and businesses in the U.S. from paying money or offering gifts to foreign officials as a way to win business overseas. Critics of the law complain that it puts U.S. businesses at a disadvantage in places where bribes are customary.

Lest anyone think this is some made-up, inflammatory anecdote designed to sell books, as the president will surely suggest, his own National Economic Council director has admitted that it’s totally true. “We are looking at it,” Larry Kudlow told reporters at the White House on Friday, responding to a question about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. “I would just say: We are aware of it, we are looking at it, and we’ve heard complaints from some of our companies,” Kudlow said. “I don’t want to say anything definitive policy-wise, but we are looking at it.” Kudlow is, of course, beyond parody himself, having once praised the Trump administration for almost exclusively hiring millionaires, because, and we quote, “Wealthy folks have no need to steal or engage in corruption.”