It was one of those stories that causes barely a ripple of interest anymore, one that we’ve become so inured to that it passes almost unnoticed but that would trigger a massive investigation/impeachment hearing were this any other administration.
Here was the New York Times headline on Tuesday: “Trump Paid $2 Million by South Korean Company Facing Trade Investigation.”
Given the billion-dollar figures that accompany President Trump’s name seemingly each hour, it was easy to dismiss this one. I mean, a measly two million bucks? That’s like chump change now. A rounding error. Yet reading the story brought a fresh perspective on the everyday bribery, grift and graft that drives our criminal-in-chief.
The $2 million payment was revealed on Trump’s mandatory 927-page financial disclosure report, part of the $2.2 billion he earned in 2025. It was made by something called the Base Group, and the document referred to it only as a “nonrefundable development fee” (evidently the latest Orwellian term for payoffs). The Times was told in a statement that the payment was related to “a still-unannounced golf course project.”
Here is where things get still sketchier: this Base Group and its corporate affiliate Korea Aluminum were charged with circumventing U.S. trade duties. The payment was purportedly unrelated to the investigation into the company and its near decade of courting the Trump family. Yeah right.
The article maintained that the financial ties between Trump and this company “illustrate the minefield Mr. Trump has created” with various foreign business interests all over the world.
Of course, a spokesman for the Trump Organization was aghast that anyone could possibly infer that the $2 million had anything close to the whiff of a payoff that it appears to be. He defiantly maintained, “Any suggestion that this transaction was driven by anything other than legitimate business considerations is pure fiction.”
Seriously? Pure fiction? Not even quasi-fiction? It’s like, “Oh, dear me, how could you possibly imply that anything surrounding this president is anything less than completely ethical and above-board?”
Excuse me while I take a few moments to laugh hysterically.
Let me back up a moment to address the Times’ use of the word “minefield” in describing the environment Trump has created in the White House. Because no, it’s not a minefield at all. It needs to be called precisely what it is in the headline of the story.
Corruption.
At the very least – and I do mean very – it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest and calls into great question Trump’s integrity. (And no one understands better than me the absurdity of putting “integrity” and “Trump” in the same sentence.) To pretend otherwise is disingenuous at best and seems to prove the point.
The Base Group is but a tiny piece of at least $125 million in payments that Trump’s holding company collected last year directly from foreign sources in several countries, according to the story.
What’s consistently astonishing is that not even the thinnest attempt is made any longer to hide the self-dealing. Trump is operating like a guy who has Congress in his front hip pocket and the Supreme Court in his back pocket. He appears to believe that the immunity he’s been granted extends to every area of his life, not just his presidency. And at the moment, he’s probably right.
The corruption being enabled and tolerated at the highest levels of our government is an international disgrace. The Republicans, who have not done a single thing to so much as acknowledge it, much less put a stop to it, own it just as much as does Trump and his cronies who are fleecing the country and destroying the rule of law in real time. It would only take 10 of them to put the brakes on this madness, yet they choose to do nothing.
Of course, Trump’s $2.2 billion gross revenue windfall last year – more than triple his $622 million total from 2024 – represents a shamelessly grotesque profiting from the presidency. The blatant grift is likely only to rise in 2026. I mean, what’s to stop this guy from raiding the U.S. Treasury itself and snatching $20 billion, $50 billion, $100 billion?
Let’s take a closer look at the $2.2 billion. We know that a majority of it came from crypto scams. But think about how much money that is. Here’s some simple math:
Over the course of a year, $2.2 billion is:
- A bit over $6 million dollars a day.
- $250,000 an hour.
- $4,167.00 per minute.
- $69.44 every single second.
In the time it will take you to read this column (depending on how slow or quick you are), Trump will have made between $12,000 and $18,000, if we take last year’s income as a gauge. That’s an appalling use of his office to generate massive amounts of wealth. By all accounts, it’s the primary reason he wanted to be back in the White House. That, and of course destroying everything he lays his hands on.
Trump is selling out our nation to line his bank accounts. As he’s found, this presidency thing is the best con going. Kickbacks are his love language. And yet the MAGA crowd still points to his decision not to take his $400,000 annual presidential salary as laughable evidence of his being a patriot, even if he earns that much back in a little over an hour and a half.
Despite overwhelming evidence, the New York Times article failed to prove a definitive quid pro quo link between the Base Group and Trump. Yet the investigation into the company (dating to at least 2022) was dropped as soon as the $2 million payment was made. It’s not difficult to connect those dots.
In Trump’s world, this is what is known as protection money. You take care of the boss, he takes care of you. If you don’t cough it up, well, it’s a matter of, “Nice little company you got there. Be a shame if something were to happen to it.”
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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