According to a recent Fox News poll, corruption is now the most important issue for voters.
In a survey of 1,202 registered voters taken October 9 through 12, 88 percent said they were extremely or very concerned about corruption in government. Inflation and high prices came in at 85. Gas prices at 83. Health care at 80. Sixty percent said they were extremely concerned about corruption — the single highest-intensity number in the poll.
This is the same poll that put Trump’s approval at 36 percent, the worst he has ever recorded in a Fox survey for either term, with 77 percent disapproving of his handling of the economy and Democrats up 54–45 on the generic ballot.
Corruption is no longer an elite concern. It is the most widely felt concern in the country, and it is beating the pocketbook issues it was supposed to lose to.
Voters have stopped treating these as two separate things. As James Talarico said in a recent CNN town hall: “We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis.”
Here is the problem we still have. When people hear corruption, they still think of a broken system. DC is broken. Politics is broken. Both sides are corrupt.
That blur is the Republican Party's single most valuable asset right now.
The reality is, corruption in this country isn't a system problem. It is a single-party problem. It is being run at the largest scale we have ever seen, by Donald Trump, by his administration, by the people in his orbit, and by the Republican Party that protects all of them.
Heading into these midterms — and frankly well past them — the job is to divide, delineate, and establish that distinction until it sticks.
Not a system problem. A party problem. A Trump problem. A Republican problem.
Here are four stories that prove it.
The Ballroom
Last Thursday, the Washington Post obtained the internal spreadsheet tracking donations to Trump’s White House ballroom. Sixty-seven gifts over $10,000. Three hundred thirty-three million dollars. At least $77 million of it anonymous.
Donald Trump is not on the list.
A year ago he said the ballroom was “being paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine.” The friends are on the spreadsheet. He isn’t.
Here’s how the money moves. It runs through the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit that generally doesn’t have to disclose its donors, under a twelve-page agreement that requires anonymity “to the extent permitted by law.” From there it reaches an account the President controls. Unlike a campaign contribution, there is no limit, no disclosure requirement, and no reporting deadline.
Here is who is on the list:
Charles Ergen, $25 million. The FCC opened an investigation into his company, EchoStar, in May 2025. In June, Ergen met with Trump and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr; EchoStar later said Trump encouraged “an amicable resolution.” The FCC dropped the investigation in September. Ergen gave $12.5 million in December and another $12.5 million in February — both times asking to stay anonymous. In May, the FCC and the Justice Department approved EchoStar’s license sale to AT&T.
Salesforce, $3 million. Marc Benioff pledged his first million the day after Trump publicly praised him. Then the Army awarded Salesforce a contract worth up to $5.6 billion. The Pentagon says it received exactly one bid.
Nvidia, $25 million, roughly three months after the administration cut it a deal to sell advanced chips to China. Rocket, $10 million, three weeks after the Federal Housing Finance Agency approved its acquisition of Mr. Cooper. ServiceNow, $5 million, after the GSA agreed to make its AI software available to federal agencies at a discount. Crypto companies and their investors, more than $18 million combined.
Isabela Herrera, $2.5 million. Her father, the banker Julio Herrera Velutini, was indicted on bribery charges in 2022. In August 2025, the charges were reduced to a misdemeanor. The following month, she pledged the $2.5 million and wired a first installment of $835,000. In January, Trump pardoned her father. Her second payment was due this month.
About half the $333 million came from companies or executives holding federal contracts.
The $580 Million Trade
On March 23, between 6:49 and 6:50 a.m., roughly 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate contracts changed hands. The Financial Times valued them at about $580 million.
Fifteen minutes later, Trump posted that he was postponing all military strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days. Brent fell as much as 14 percent.
Somebody made a fortune in a single minute on a decision only a handful of people on earth knew was coming.
Analysts at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission did their jobs. They flagged the trades and sent an insider-trading referral to the agency’s enforcement division. Then, as Bloomberg reported Monday, an adviser to CFTC Chairman Michael Selig — a Trump appointee — ordered the referral withdrawn and took over the examination himself.
These aren’t victimless crimes. Someone placed a $580 million bet one minute before the President of the United States moved the global oil price, and the other side of that trade was ordinary investors and, quite possibly, pension funds. The CFTC’s own analysts thought it was worth investigating. They were overruled.
One Billionaire, One Senate Seat
Elon Musk has put $366 million into this election. Two hundred seventy-six million of it since July.
To put $366 million in context: he spent roughly $290 million electing Donald Trump president in 2024. He is now spending more on a midterm than he spent on a presidency. And he’s spending a lot of it in one state.
On September 9, Musk gave $75 million to the Senate Leadership Fund. On September 10, the Senate Leadership Fund wired $75 million to Texas PAC, a super PAC supporting Ken Paxton. On September 23, Musk gave the Senate Leadership Fund $83 million. On September 24, the Senate Leadership Fund wired $83 million to Texas PAC.
The Texas Senate race will come down to a few percentage points. James Talarico raised $64 million from ordinary people last quarter. Ken Paxton just needs the one.
Russia, Russia, Russia.
On October 14, without warning, Starshield — the military version of Starlink that Ukraine’s drone operators depend on — was capped at 100 miles per hour.
Ukraine’s mid-range strike drones fly faster than that. So do the interceptor drones they use to shoot down Russia’s jet-powered attack drones.
That same night, Russia fired 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 drones at Ukraine. Ukraine intercepted four of the 39. Roughly 600,000 people lost power. Presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov said several missions were severely disrupted.
Nobody would say who did it.
Musk’s answer, posted on X: “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately [the President].” The White House said it has no control over SpaceX.
Then Reuters reported Thursday that the order came from inside the White House. A senior U.S. official denied it came from Trump personally.
This does not appear to be Elon Musk unilaterally switching off an ally’s battlefield communications. It appears to be the United States government ordering a private contractor to degrade an ally’s battlefield communications during one of the largest attacks of the war — and then nobody in that government being willing to sign their name to it.
Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel, a move Republican Senator Thom Tillis said on Meet the Press may violate the sanctions law Trump himself signed last month. Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” that Zelensky learned about from the news and Russia violated within hours. Trump told Newsmax that Zelensky is “more difficult to deal with than Putin” and called Ukraine’s refinery strikes “a disgrace.” Tillis has asked the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate the Starshield slowdown.
So: the largest political donor in the United States holds the federal contract for the system that got switched off. The administration he is spending $366 million to protect gave the order. And the beneficiary was Moscow.
Which brings us to the wedding.
“Dear Friend Umar”
ProPublica reported last month that Umar Kremlev — president of the International Boxing Association, financed by Gazprom, decorated with Russia’s Order of Friendship, a traveling companion of Vladimir Putin on a state visit to China shortly before the event, and a figure in a Russian organization under Ukrainian sanctions for abducting Ukrainian children — quietly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Donald Trump Jr.’s May wedding celebration in the Bahamas. He rented the private island. He paid for the fireworks. The money ran through a Dubai entity tied to his boxing federation. His Russian guests kept to themselves and appear in none of the family’s published photos.
Bettina Trump described it on Instagram as an extraordinarily generous gift from “our dear friend Umar.” The President, asked about it: “I have no idea who Umar is.” Days later he said the payments were “totally allowed” and that he believed his son had paid the money back.
Retired FBI counterintelligence official Frank Montoya Jr. supplied the only analysis required: “If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something.”
On September 21, Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee asking it to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. “These reports,” he wrote, “raise legitimate questions about foreign access to members of a sitting president’s family.” They “may create expectations of a returned favor.” They “could even create national security vulnerabilities.” On camera, he was blunter: “It’s corruption. I don’t like it.”
Dick Durbin said he’d support it. John Cornyn said he’d support it.
Chuck Grassley’s committee confirmed it received the letter, said a hearing before the end of the year would be difficult, and would not say whether it will investigate
That’s where it sits. A Republican senator says the president’s son took money from a Putin associate and calls it corruption. A second Republican senator backs him. The Republican chairman says we are too busy to investigate.
It’s the Corruption, Stupid.
A ballroom in the president’s name, with $333 million pledged from contractors and pardon-seekers, routed through a nonprofit that doesn’t have to name them, into an account the president controls. An insider-trading referral on a $580 million bet placed sixty seconds before the president’s own post, killed by an appointee of that president. A Senate majority resting on one man’s checkbook, while that same man’s company holds the contract for a satellite network the White House ordered throttled in the middle of a Russian missile barrage. A Russian oligarch paying for the first son’s wedding, with two Republican senators asking for a subpoena and the Republican chairman unable to find a hearing date.
There is no “both parties” version of any of that. There is no Democratic equivalent waiting to be discovered. These are not failures of a system that got away from everybody. They are decisions, made by people, all in the same party.
Repeat after me: “The system is not corrupt. The Republicans are.”
People are hurting, and the hurt is real. But stop talking about prices as if they came out of nowhere. You paid roughly $1,100 in tariffs the Supreme Court ruled illegal; Apple got $2.2 billion of it back and then wrote the White House a $25 million check. You can’t afford diesel; the people who knew exactly when the strikes would stop made $580 million in one minute, and the regulator who noticed was told to drop it.
Talarico has the frame. We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis. And the solution is proper oversight. In both the House and the Senate.
In 18 days, I suspect the American voters will demand it. Let’s hope the Democrats can deliver.