The 'New Deal' of grift: Trump sets standard for presidential self-enrichment

There's a reason Franklin D. Roosevelt's portrait still hangs in the Oval Office, even under Donald Trump, despite his being a Democrat. FDR set the standard for a prolific presidency.

Trump hasn't actually signed any transformative laws in his first 100 days, like Roosevelt did. But Trump has surpassed all presidential standards in one area: He's the FDR of grift.

A pair of events just this week underscore the extent to which Trump has turned the U.S. presidency into an unprecedented engine of self-enrichment.

There's the half-billion dollar plane from Qatar he insists he'll never actually use for personal reasons, though it will go to his presidential museum.

Then there's the more than $100 million auction for his family's cryptocurrency, where a group of mostly non-Americans won a private audience with Trump.

These and multiple other actions make a mockery of precedent, including the Constitution's emoluments clause against foreign gifts.

Other presidential families have engaged in shady hustles, from Jimmy Carter's brother hawking a beer brand and taking a Libyan loan, to Hunter Biden's lobbying and hefty art commissions, to Bill Clinton letting campaign donors use the White House's Lincoln bedroom. 

But this? To torture the moniker of FDR's signature program, this is New Deal-level grifting.

This is more brazen, more frequent, with more zeros attached than the sums involved in past presidential cash scandals, says one presidential scholar.

"It's just off the charts. No other president has done anything like this," said James Pfiffner, a presidential expert at George Mason University.

Another presidential historian expresses fear that people are so cynical about politics they believe Trump's behaviour is normal — Everyone does it, right?

No, says Barbara Perry, this is not normal.

"My take? This administration is on the take," said Perry, co-chair of the presidential oral history program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.

"I don't think I'm exaggerating. I would say if you added all the previous corruption of all [past presidents]… Trump, individually, surpasses them all. Especially if the plane deal with Qatar goes through. But even prior to that."