The most powerful crime syndicate in history
By: James Speyer (New York Daily News)
OP-ED
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
It is time to acknowledge what has become tragically obvious: the Trump administration is essentially acting as a massive criminal enterprise. It lies, steals, extorts and murders — all while cloaked in the awesome authority of the state. It is on a crime spree that puts Al Capone to shame.
This is not hyperbole or hyperventilation. It is our reality, as the facts amply demonstrate. This administration has:
Murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti, slandered them as "domestic terrorists" and "assassins," and allowed their killers to walk free. Unleashed thousands of minimally trained ICE agents, recruited with explicitly white supremacist messaging, to inflict terror on people of color. Repeatedly violated the constitutional rights of citizens and non-citizens by arresting them for First Amendment-protected speech, raiding their homes without judicial warrants, and imprisoning them without due process.
And killed dozens of civilians on the high seas solely on the unsubstantiated claim that they were drug runners (not that being drug runners would justify their summary executions without due process anyway). Released hundreds of imprisoned felons who brutally beat Capitol police officers on Jan. 6. Converted the once-independent Department of Justice into an instrument of personal retribution via the prosecution of cooked-up lawsuits against the president's enemies. Threatened to seize the territory of a sovereign nation (a NATO ally no less).
And declared that legislators should be executed for reminding military personnel of their duty to disobey illegal orders. Tried to impose ruinous and unconstitutional sanctions on some of the country's largest law firms simply because Trump doesn't like them. Violated court orders on a massive scale. As the chief federal district judge of Minnesota recently wrote, "ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence."
And shaken down some of the country's largest universities by illegally threatening to withhold funding; and engaged in breathtaking corruption: as the conservative writer David Frum stated, "Trump's scale of stealing and bribe-taking has never been remotely paralleled in any democratic country ever before."
And that's just for starters; there are dozens more examples.
It is difficult to comprehend the level of state-sponsored criminality we are witnessing because our country has never experienced anything like it. It is also difficult to absorb because it is happening so quickly, and on so many different fronts. In the words of the 2022 movie, it sometimes feels like "Everything Everywhere All At Once." And that can be exhausting, numbing, and overwhelming.
But viewing the Trump administration as a massive crime syndicate allows us to be clear-eyed about what is coming down the road, and to plan accordingly. To take the most urgent example, there ought to be no question as to whether Trump will try to steal the midterm elections. Of course he will try to steal them. Criminals gonna crime.
Trump tried to steal the 2020 elections, and the lack of any consequences for that supremely traitorous act only further emboldened him. It is every patriotic American's duty to oppose the coming effort to nullify the will of the voters.
That this administration can reasonably be viewed as a criminal enterprise should not be cause for despair. The courts have rejected many of the administration's power grabs and unconstitutional or illegal acts. The president is less popular than he has ever been. Prominent Republicans are defying him more than ever. The brave citizens of Minneapolis are showing us how effective organized resistance can be.
And Bad Bunny, with his Super Bowl message that "The only thing more powerful than hate is love," gave us reason to believe that kindness, compassion and decency will prevail.
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Sooo Accurate.
What is even harder to comprehend is how, how were the American people so damn stupid to elect a 34 time convicted felon who said he could just grab women buy that pussy, pay off his little playmates and porn stars, openly steal Top Secret Classified Documents, and openly attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power, all while lying daily about almost EVERYTHING.
This POS potUS needs to just GO THE FCK AWAY ASAP
The Worst President Ever
Presidents ’ Day is a good day to rank presidents. There’s debate about the top three—my choices are Lincoln, Washington, and FDR—but no suspense about who’s bringing up the rear. Even if he racks up an achievement or two in the next couple of years, we can be confident that Donald Trump will be viewed as the worst president in U.S. history, with Richard Nixon now a distant second.
Yes, historians said that in his first term, and more than 70 million Americans ignored his coup attempt and returned him to office. But Trump has no road back now; the country as a whole is finished with him. This period reminds me of 1943, when the Allies knew we would eventually defeat the fascists, but only after a lot more death and destruction. It took nearly three years then, too.
With every day bringing a fresh outrage, it’s hard to know what will stick over time. My guess is that historians of the future (and yes, we’ll still have them) will focus on three surpassing abuses:
Let’s start with the Constitution.
By trying to send members of Congress, journalists, and others to jail for criticizing him (after claiming in his inaugural address to be committed to free speech), Trump is trampling on the First Amendment. By building an American gulag of detention centers for migrants guilty only of non-violent misdemeanors (crossing the border illegally), he is violating the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which guarantee due process. And by authorizing ICE to enter homes without judicial warrants, he is ignoring the Fourth Amendment. That’s not even mentioning all the laws he has broken after swearing an oath to uphold and execute them.
Remember Louis IV’s “L’État, c’est moi” (“The State is me”)? That’s Trump.
In his second term, he and his lackeys have leveraged every power of the executive branch to harass, intimidate, extort, and prosecute anyone who dares oppose him. “No Kings” resonates powerfully because it captures the essence of Trump: He’s a walking reversal of the American Revolution.
And of course, with Trump, it’s all about the Benjamins.
He’s already raked in more than $1.2 billion from favor-seeking foreigners and tech bros who lack character. There are dozens of examples of his profiting off the presidency, but here’s one of the worst: World Liberty Financial is a cryptocurrency platform co-founded by the Trump family and Steve Witkoff, now Trump’s top diplomat. A sheikh from the United Arab Emirates bought a 49 percent stake for $500 million just before the Trump Administration reversed a longstanding national security policy and approved the export of advanced AI chips to the UAE, which will likely share them with China. This makes Warren Harding’s Teapot Dome scandal look like Pinochle.
The good news is that we might be witnessing what Bill Scher of the Washington Monthly calls “ The Ephemeral Presidency .” Some of the vandalism—like that committed against USAID and the EPA—will take years to fix. But by signing easily reversible executive orders instead of hard-to-repeal new laws, Trump has chosen shock and awe over permanently shaping the government.
Now smart Democrats are beginning to figure out how to make us stronger at the broken places. It didn’t take Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter long to remove the stain of Watergate. They restored the independence of the Justice Department, which had been politicized by Nixon, who wiretapped his enemies. The guardrails constructed during their presidencies lasted for four decades. We can rebuild them and, by thinking anew across a range of problems, turn trauma into transformational change.
Same for our global alliances, which—contrary to much recent analysis—are based not on trust, but mutual interest. The post-Trump world order won’t be dominated by the U.S.; Trump has dealt a serious blow to our power abroad. But the might-makes-right view he shares with Putin and Xi is not the wave of the future. The next generation of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic will work well together again.
In the meantime, what do we do about Trump? Democrats are understandably wary of impeaching him a third time; many voters would see it as a distraction from their economic concerns. Conviction in the Senate is a long shot even if Democrats sweep the midterms and, if somehow successful, would give incumbent President J.D. Vance a leg up in 2028.
So the best option is to impeach and convict Trump between Election Day, 2028 (assuming it brings a Democratic president) and Inauguration Day, 2029, with the help of new Democratic senators elected that year and sworn in by early January, plus a few Republican senators trying to get right with their constituents and their grandchildren. The Senate should make the conviction effective at 11:59 a.m. on January 20. That way, Trump is stained by removal from office, and Vance is remembered as the one-minute president who didn’t even get the chance to be sworn in.
Of course, Trump’s name will still be used as shorthand for this Era of Bad Feeling, just as Joe McCarthy’s is for the early 1950s. But after he’s gone, Washington will follow the example of New York and strip his name off of nearly everything he doesn’t own. It’ll eventually come off the Kennedy Center, and his new White House ballroom—doubling as a community center for local kids—will be named for no one.
In 1972, Nixon carried 49 states. Two years later, he was forced to resign, and today he is memorialized at just two elementary schools nationwide. ( JFK has over 100 .) The same will go for Donald Trump. Unless you count tour guides at Mar-a-Lago and a few Breitbart holdouts, Americans will move on, happy if they never hear that wretched name again.
Subscribe to Old Goats with Jonathan Alter , where this article originally appeared.
I don't believe impeachment at any time is a good idea. Democrats need to focus on the economy, health care prices, and getting respect back from the rest of the world, ie, diplomatic relations
It really wouldn't help much anyway. Next in line is Vance. Do they think their world would be better under that weasel?
I agree. We would just be trading one devil for another. I just want the GOP defeated in 2028 and both trmp and JD slither off to whatever rock they crawled out from under
Vance would be impotent compared to Trump. If he took over, he would likely sit at the desk for the remainder of the term.
We would not have an idiot behaving like a petulant 5th grader, trolling allies and trade partners, imposing (and then TACO-removing) tariffs, naming buildings after himself, glory seeking, accepting expensive gifts, destroying structures like the East Wing, engaging in lawfare, firing those who do not slavishly support him personally, trying to convince the world that the 2020 election was stolen, sending the military into the streets, etc.
Aso, the spineless Rs in Congress would not fear the irrational rantings of a cult leader affecting their reelections and might just start operating as a coequal branch.
Trump out of the presidency is net good. It removes the virus that has damaged our nation and at least mitigates further infection.
I'm not that optimistic.
As a Democrat in Chicago, knowing what you must have seen take place with your own eyes, do you ever think twice about calling the Trump family "the most powerful criminal syndicate in history?" Because there's no way Trump could ever rival that level of corruption. Ever.
LOL.
Are you saying Trump is no worse than Rod Blagojevich ?