“One thing has never changed,” Trump spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez told The Wall Street Journal last week. “President Trump can’t be bought.”

Alvarez’s comment was included in a Journal report with considerable evidence to the contrary.

“Interviews with dozens of donors, executives, lobbyists, Trump advisers and others indicate a staggering fundraising and influence operation,” the Journal reported, “with Trump at the center of it all.”

The president reportedly keeps close track of which companies contribute to his presidential library, ballroom, political action committees and other entities. Apple, Microsoft and Meta all have donated at least $10 million.

“Several top Washington lobbyists have been asked to raise $50 million or more, including from their clients, for Trump projects,” the Journal said.

This “Trump Transaction Tax,” as one Wall Street analyst called it, as well as his crypto profiteering, his plane from Qatar, the “anti-weaponization fund” and the many other money-grabbing acts of his second term make his corruption an obvious target for Democrats this fall and beyond. Even under far cleaner administrations, investigating corruption can be a powerful weapon for legislators from the opposition party. But in this case, Democrats can contrast what Trump promised to what he’s done. As former Trump staffer Marc Short told the Journal, “One of the things that most rallied his crowds in 2016 was draining the swamp. The crowds would go wild.”

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Now the president has abandoned even the pretense of ridding Washington of corruption. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates, like Sen. Jon Ossof of Georgia and Texas state Sen. James Talarico, who’s running for the Senate, appear to be making headway with campaigns that heavily feature fighting corruption. However, over all, according to recent polls, running on corruption may be more difficult than many Democrats suspect. But that makes their doing so all the more necessary.

Last week’s CNN/SSRS poll that calculated Trump’s approval rating at 34% (tied for his lowest ever) found that 64% of respondents think Trump “has gone too far” in “pursuing his personal business interests while serving as president.” Yet when the same poll asked which party could be described as “the party that fights corruption,” nearly half of Americans (46%) said “neither.” The rest split almost evenly between the two parties. The “neither” camp included two-thirds of independents, more than half of people who disapprove of Trump and a third of self-described Democrats.

James Downie

James Downie is an opinion editor for MS NOW Daily.