A Second Trump Administration Would Be a Carnival of Corruption and Greed

By now, the story has made the rounds. Back in June, Oklahoma’s superintendent for public instruction, Ryan Walters, ordered every classroom in the state to teach the Bible between fifth grade and high school. Three months later, when he released the guidelines for companies bidding to supply the Bibles, they included some unusually specific terms.

The Bibles had to contain not just the King James Version of the Old and New Testaments, but founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as well as the Pledge of Allegiance. And they had to be bound in leather, or some reasonable facsimile.

The only Bibles that fit these parameters happen to be endorsed by Donald Trump or his son. The $59.99 “God Bless the USA” Bibles (which are, incidentally, printed in China) cost 20 times more than a mass market paperback version of the King James Bible. It’s not clear how much Mr. Trump earns per sale — The Timeshas reported that he receives royalties for use of his name — but his cut is likely significant. Mr. Walters’s spokesman has confirmed that the $3 million in the state budget earmarked for Bibles came directly from “payroll savings”; that could pay salaries for 75 entry-level teachers in Oklahoma.

Maybe a rogue ideologue handing a chunk of Oklahoma’s education budget to the former president strikes you as egregious. It should also strike you as familiar. Mr. Trump’s entire term in office was marked by profit-taking schemes and uses of public funds for personal benefit. If we know anything about what life would be like if he wins again, we know this bottomless grifting would continue.

Corruption is not unique to any particular political party. In the last 13 months, Democrats such as former Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas and New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, have all been indicted (and in Mr. Menendez’s case convicted) of accepting bribes in exchange for official acts. But in Mr. Trump’s first term, the ethical lapses, while often not technically illegal, tended toward pervasive, unending, low-level self enrichment. That is, in fact, an unheralded explanation for his participation in politics. Mr. Trump ran his business by stiffing contractors, ripping off customers and exploiting bankruptcy to shed debts. He ran his government with the same mentality, as did many of those around him.

That hasn’t been a prominent topic of this presidential campaign. We can tick off the broader scandals: two impeachments, threats to democracy and national security and ugly or shocking policies such as family separation. Anti-Trump figures are invested in placing themselves at the center of a struggle against the potential collapse of our governing institutions. And they have cause for alarm.