How Bad Is It?: Trump’s Self-Dealing and the Question of Kleptocracy
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.2 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
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Summary
The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt for the latest installment of “How Bad Is It?,” a monthly series on the health of American democracy. Their guest is David D. Kirkpatrick, whose new investigation details the many ways President Donald Trump has profited during his second term—from a reported private jet gifted by Qatar to soaring valuations of Trump Media and a flood of crypto ventures. They discuss whether these attempts at self-enrichment amount to ordinary political corruption or whether they represent tools for consolidating power which could accelerate democratic backsliding in the United States, much like in kleptocracies and oligarchies abroad.
This week’s reading:
- “How Much Is Trump Profiting Off the Presidency?,” by David D. Kirkpatrick
- “Can Donald Trump Police the United States?,” by Christian Fairas
- “Pam Bondi’s Power Play,” by Ruth Marcus
- “The Troubling Lines That Columbia Is Drawing,” by Eyal Press
- “The Texas Democrats’ Remote Resistance” by Peter Slevin
Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Andrew. |
| 0:07.8 | What's up, Tyler? |
| 0:08.4 | How's it going? |
| 0:09.2 | Good. |
| 0:09.7 | I'm happy to have you back for our special series, How Bad Is It? |
| 0:13.7 | Which is part of the political scene from the New Yorker, where you and I sit down for a monthly checkup on the health of our democracy. |
| 0:23.8 | This is going to be a good one. |
| 0:25.2 | This is we have a guest who can really focus us and bring some specific detail and even |
| 0:31.5 | quantification to our normally sprawling conversation. |
| 0:35.9 | Yes. |
| 0:36.1 | So our guest is the staff writer David Kirkpatrick, |
| 0:38.8 | who recently wrote a groundbreaking investigation about how much money Trump has made during his time |
| 0:45.9 | in office. And so it raises this question, which is, is this just the usual self-dealing that |
| 0:51.7 | we might come to associate with American politicians, or is this something |
| 0:55.4 | that we have truly never seen before? Yeah, I loved this piece. I loved how rigorous it was and how |
| 1:01.5 | it's not the normal riffing or interpretation that you see. This is a really specific dogged exercise. |
| 1:10.2 | Great. So next we're going to talk to David Kirkpatrick. |
| 1:12.8 | This is the political scene. |
| 1:14.2 | I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker. |
| 1:17.0 | I'm Andrew Morantz, and I'm a staff writer. |
| 1:24.8 | Hey, David. |
| 1:25.7 | Thanks so much for joining us. |
... |
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