“Welcome to the Golden Age!” says a banner on the White House website.

Maybe it’s golden for Trump and his family, who’ve made billions by cashing in on the presidency, and for their ultrarich friends whose political influence rises along with their wealth.

But it’s not so golden for Americans paying higher prices for food and gas prices due to economic uncertainty caused by Trump’s chaotic tariff policies. They’re also paying high energy prices and facing fertilizer shortages resulting from his war against Iran, amid massive cuts to social safety net programs and threats of unregulated artificial intelligence.

At a time when millions of families cannot meet their basic needs, and millions more live with anxiety and economic insecurity, Trump is focused on self-aggrandizement. His ridiculous gold-plated Louis XIV ballroom. A massive arch we don’t need and nobody else wants.

And, untethered to the actual lived experiences of the American people, he waves away questions about American families experiencing hardship due to his policies, saying he doesn’t give them a thought.

Political authoritarianism and economic corruption go hand in hand. They’re bad for democracy, the economy, freedom and families. When political leaders don’t think they have to follow the laws that apply to other people, they have an incentive to abuse their power and manipulate the system to enrich themselves and their friends.

To achieve their ends, they undermine the rule of law, disadvantage honest economic players and corrupt both public and private institutions.

Consider Trump’s Justice Department. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche recently OK’d an agreement to drop ongoing IRS audits of Trump’s taxes. That alone could be worth $100 million to Trump. But there’s more. Blanche’s agreement bans the IRS from looking into any previous wrongdoing by Trump, members of his family or any part of their massive business networks. It’s astonishing.

Blanche was Trump’s personal lawyer before he put him on the government payroll. He used his new, powerful position to end Trump’s legal troubles far more thoroughly than he could have done in a courtroom. Even the most imaginative crime novelist or script writer would have a hard time coming up with a more brazen example of corruption.

And that came right on top of another corrupt deal. Trump had filed a legally laughable claim that taxpayers should give him $10 billion because an IRS contractor leaked some of his tax returns.

Rather than fight it, the Justice Department caved in to their boss and shoveled almost $2 billion in public funds into a slush fund to be doled out in secret to violent insurrectionists and anyone else whose support of Trump had gotten them in legal hot water.

On Friday, a judge temporarily blocked federal payments to the fund so she could address an emergency motion to block it altogether.

That’s a huge pot of taxpayer money that Trump could use to reward lawbreaking on his behalf — or dangle over the heads of potential dissenters or critics to keep them in line.

That adds to the steaming pile of self-enrichment by Trump and his family, whose combined net worth has soared by billions of dollars via shady crypto deals and massive “investments” from foreign governments.

Recently we learned that the White House intervened to steer Defense Department dollars to a company Donald Trump Jr. had invested in. Trump even turned the president’s pardon power into a sleazy cash grab, with nary a peep from Republicans in power.

Republican acquiescence to Trump’s corruption has been a theme of this regime. The evidence is all around us.

One revealing moment didn’t get as much attention as it deserved. Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald was at a press conference talking tough about prosecuting fraud. A reporter noted that Trump has repeatedly granted clemency to people who have stolen many millions in Medicaid funds — as he has pardoned other fraudsters and grifters. A reporter wondered if people without White House connections could expect similar mercy.

“I’ll take a different question for the final question,” said McDonald, turning away.

Silence and turning away. That’s been the standard operating procedure for Republican officials when it comes to Trump corruption — when they aren’t actively cheering for it.

The consequences have been terrible.

Trump has been able to count on his cult of personality among the stubbornly supportive MAGA base to help him punish any Republican who crosses him. But polls suggest that even his loyal followers are not fans of his transparently corrupt slush fund. The same holds true for some Republican lawmakers. But will they do anything about it?

Republicans who are afraid to stand up to Trump may want to consider the fate of another of their heroes: Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, whose hostility toward immigrants, repressive authoritarianism, Christian nationalism and enrichment of political insiders was the model for MAGA governance in the U.S.

People in Hungary put up with corruption while their own economic circumstances were good. But when times turned tough, and people struggled while watching the corruption class flaunt their ill-gotten wealth, they turned against Orbán and his party.

It can happen here. We can make it happen here. Five months until the midterms.

Svante Myrick is president of People For the American Way. 

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