PREVIEW: The Friday Edition. - I'm responding to criticisms of my Trump corruption piece.
Tangle
Isaac Saul
4.7 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last week, I published an exhaustive 6,000-word essay on the self-dealing and potential corruption of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
I shared clips of the article on X, and it went viral. The initial feedback from readers within and outside the Tangle community overwhelmingly asked us to drop the paywall on the piece. After a few hours, we did.
Since then, we’ve been inundated with comments, criticism, and questions. Usually, when an article takes off like this, I write a follow-up piece addressing those criticisms and questions. I do this because I think engaging with our audience is an important way to gain trust and an important exercise in humility and intellectual honesty. I often engage with feedback by quoting specific readers and then responding directly to what they said in a Q&A format.
That’s exactly what I’m doing today.
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Here is the piece Isaac is responding to: Corruption in the Trump administration?
“After reviewing the evidence of the first 15 months of President Trump’s second term, I believe the president is profiting off the office and making foreign policy decisions based on business interests to a level we’ve never seen or even conceived of before, and apparently nothing is being done to stop it.”
Gold phones, Qatari planes, Syrian golf courses, cryptocurrency schemes, ballroom donations. Market moves, board seats, lawsuits dropped, lawsuits threatened. Pardons, prosecutions, profits, profits, profits… This past Friday, Executive Editor Isaac Saul waded through all of it in a thorough exploration of the charges of corruption against President Donald Trump.
In case you missed it, you can read the piece here. We’ve also decided to make this Friday edition open to everyone, so please share it with anyone you think would be interested!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From executive producer Isaac Saul, this. |
| 0:08.8 | Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. |
| 0:19.4 | I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's |
| 0:21.8 | episode, I am answering your feedback and criticism. Last week, I published an exhaustive |
| 0:30.0 | 6,000-word essay on the self-dealing and potential corruption of President Donald Trump's second |
| 0:36.0 | administration. I shared clips of the article |
| 0:38.9 | on X. I read it down here on the podcast. It blew up when viral, the initial feedback from readers |
| 0:46.4 | within and outside the Tangle community overwhelmingly asked us to drop the paywall on the piece. |
| 0:52.2 | So after a few hours, we did. Since then, we've been inundated |
| 0:56.0 | with comments, criticism, and questions. I've done some interviews about the piece. Usually, |
| 1:01.2 | when an article like this takes off, I write a follow-up piece addressing those criticisms and |
| 1:05.6 | questions. I often do this by quoting specific readers and then responding directly to what they said in a |
| 1:11.8 | Q&A format. I do this because I think being in dialogue with my audience is an important part of |
| 1:18.7 | gaining their trust and an important exercise for me to stay humble and intellectually honest. |
| 1:24.7 | So that's what I'm doing today. Of course, as is typical, the responses came from |
| 1:28.9 | across the political spectrum. To give just one illustrative example, a reader named Mary Ellen |
| 1:34.1 | wrote in to say that I've scurred Biden's son over and over and used this article to pour more |
| 1:39.6 | venom into that story. She also expressed her frustration that I was only slightly less biased than the rest of |
| 1:45.9 | the major media who report on Trump corruption on page three or not at all on TV. Simultaneously, a |
| 1:53.4 | reader named John said, I'm one of the readers who stopped reading about halfway through. I just |
| 1:58.8 | couldn't stand Isaac's obvious distaste, if not revulsion, of President |
| 2:03.1 | Trump. It's obvious in all of his my-take comments. I think he's doing a disservice to the |
... |
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