How Trump Uses our Government as his Personal ATM

We pay taxes. They steal our money and they use the government we pay for to make their rich friends richer.

Edwin Eisendrath hosts It’s the Democracy, Stupid on Lincoln Square and WCPT820 AM/Heartland Signal. He’s the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a long-time management consultant, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago’s public schools. Subscribe to his Substack.

Illustration by Riley Levine

I’m not used to feeling disgust when I file my taxes. Most years, even though it hurts, I’m proud to support our government. I want money going to scientific research that makes us the most advanced and innovative nation on earth. I am truly grateful that we have funded medical research. Some of that is directly responsible for treatments that have literally given new life to people I love. I support spending on education and social security. I am more than willing to pay for our national defense. I prefer roads and bridges and airports that aren’t falling apart. And, I have come to know how important working independent courts are.

Of course, the government is never as efficient as I’d like. I don’t like everything it does. But in the aggregate, it does what Americans, through their members of Congress, agree it should do.

This year is different. This year you and I are being robbed by the lying thief in the White House. It is disgusting.

As the rest of us filed our taxes last week, Trump and his family were “negotiating” with the Justice Department to settle his $10 billion-dollar suit against the us. That suit stems from a contractor’s release of a portion of Trump’s tax return five years ago.

Never mind that Trump promised dozens of times to release those returns himself. Never mind that the statute of limitations ran out before he filed the suit. Never mind that even if he went to court and prevailed — something every lawyer tells me would be nearly impossible — the remedy would be something quite small.

Trump doesn’t have to go trial because he is on both sides of the suit. The taxpayers have no defender. Instead, the Department of Justice and the lawyers bringing Trump’s case both have the same client. It isn’t us.

Not content with stealing our money to pay himself because of the tax return leak, he is also suing because the government had the temerity to ask for its top-secret property back when he hid it in his Mar-a-Lago loo. We taxpayers are going to write him a check for that, too.

Trump’s ugly, bruised hand is in our pockets. With a useless GOP Congress, the U.S. Treasury is his personal property. Like I said, it is disgusting.

The greedy thieves haven’t just weaponized the Justice Department to hunt down their adversaries. They have turned every bit of our government into their personal cash station.

War in Iran? Don Trump Jr. is a major defense contractor. Our lead negotiator, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, is on the payroll of gulf countries. Many credible reports make clear that someone is using the war to manipulate markets and line their pockets. Again, that’s not you or me.

Our hard-earned money is going into their pockets. Information about the deployment of our young men and women in arms is being used, at least in part, to rig markets to further line their pockets.

And, instead of using the government to make our lives better, they are using it to make their rich friends richer.

Do you remember when advertisers fled the X platform because they didn’t want their brands marketed right next to neo-Nazi recruitment videos and other right-wing trash? Musk sued the advertisers saying that they were engaged in an illegal boycott. The advertisers said they were just protecting their brands. Musk lost the case.

But then Trump’s FTC stepped in. They changed the rules to ban advertisers from refusing to place content next to certain “covered bases.” And they go on to define “covered bases” as politically or ideologically contested facts, journalistic or ethical standards, or anything to do with DEI. They also banned ad companies from rating, ranking, or evaluating publishers on these bases. The ad companies caved. Because Trump’s FTC intervened, money will now flow back to X and to Musk. And you will see ads for clothing and cars and movies next to content that promotes hate.

We pay taxes. They steal our money and they use the government we pay for to make their rich friends richer.

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Trump doesn’t care what Congress says about taxes and spending. Never mind that the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. Trump’s tariffs were illegal. His impoundment of Congressionally mandated spending is illegal. His outlay of our money for purposes that Congress did not authorize or appropriate funds for- that’s illegal too.

Last week, Democrats on the House Science Committee released a report documenting the administration’s contempt for Congressional budgets. “[NASA] violated the basic separation-of-powers framework set forth in the Constitution. NASA’s actions derailed critical projects, demoralized its employees, and broke its trust with the scientific community and the private sector. NASA repeatedly denied what it was doing, but the facts prove otherwise. This staff report provides an overview of the evidence my team has gathered and highlights the damage NASA inflicted upon itself by yielding to pressure from OMB instead of following the law.”

It should be repulsive to every taxpayer that the President spends our money on himself, on his friends, and as he wishes without so much as a nod from Congress.

He can be stopped. But that requires a Congress that actually does it’s job- cue the exit door for that useless piece of gum on the bottom of Trump’s shoe — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

Trump’s monarchical contempt is destroying our great country.

He led us into a war against the counsel of his advisors, a war with a target list but without a strategy, a war that has strengthened Iran as an adversary and a regional power. Yesterday Trump announced that the Strait of Hormuz was open and the war essentially over. This morning Iran announced the Strait was closed. And we are left wondering if he’s completely at sea, or whether he is lying to manipulate markets.

The contempt is everywhere. How else are we to understand Pete Hegseth, the warmongering Secretary of Defense, who led a prayer meeting and asked everyone to bow their heads while he read a Quentin Tarantino movie script that he thought was scripture.

Our Congress didn’t hold a debate about going to war. Just as our Congress hasn’t held hearings about impoundment or illegal spending.

It’s April. We are paying taxes, Trump is stealing from the Treasury, and Congress is useless.

Americans will not tolerate a King, and we will not forgive his court. The reckoning is coming.