No Mercy / No Malice: Criminal

Scott Galloway opens by arguing that President Donald Trump is a criminal and that corruption is shrinking the advantage America has historically offered entrepreneurs. In the United States, he says, an entrepreneur’s worst case is usually that a venture fails; in other countries, the worst case can include criminal prosecution or violence to seize the business. He frames Trump’s conduct—including a Qatar-gifted jet, government-funded vanity projects costing $1.8 billion, a proposed golden ballroom, the “Arc de Trump,” and a possible slush fund for January 6 rioters—as evidence that the American system is moving toward gangsterism. Galloway invokes The Godfather’s opening line, “I believe in America,” spoken by the undertaker Bonasera after the courts fail to punish the men who assaulted his daughter. Bonasera turns to Don Corleone for justice, and Galloway says the scene captures the moment people stop believing in law and start believing in criminal power. He then applies the lesson to the economic research of Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson, and Simon Johnson. Their argument is that inclusive institutions protect property, enforce contracts, and let people compete, producing a middle class and deep capital markets; extractive institutions channel wealth to political insiders, producing megayachts, capital flight, and failed states.

Galloway supports the institutional argument with corruption and investment data. He cites IMF economist Paolo Mauro’s 1995 study of 67 countries, which found that a modest improvement in a country’s corruption score increased investment by 2.9% of GDP and could raise annual growth by as much as 1.3%. Over a generation, he says, that helps explain a country such as Singapore; allowing corruption to fester produces something more like Russia. Russia’s 1990s provide his example of an economy where owning a business required submitting to the right protection racket. The boundary between gangsters and state officials was so unclear that owners who chose the wrong allies could lose both their companies and their lives. Russians called these shakedowns “raidershva,” a distorted version of the corporate-raider concept without a tender offer. Galloway cites a 2016 World Bank and Moscow Higher School of Economics study of nearly 2,000 Russian manufacturers: firms in regions with heavy raiding were one-third less likely to make capital investments than firms in regions with low levels of raiding. Under Putin, he says, the practice became state policy, beginning with the 2003 dismantling of Yukos, Russia’s largest oil company. The lesson for investors was that property rights existed only at the Kremlin’s pleasure.

Galloway argues that Trump’s second term has attacked the legal and regulatory infrastructure that makes markets trustworthy. He quotes Shakespeare’s “The first thing we do is, Let’s kill all the lawyers,” noting that Justice John Paul Stevens interpreted the line as insightfully pointing toward totalitarian government. Galloway says Trump has fired or pushed out half of the Justice Department’s lawyers. At the SEC, one in six employees has left or been forced out, and the agency has brought only five enforcement actions during the year, compared with 80 two years earlier. He then lists cases where Trump’s personal financial interests appear alongside official decisions. Trump bought Oracle shares while helping broker an Oracle acquisition of TikTok, purchased Nvidia shares before clearing the way for its China chip sales despite national-security concerns, and bought shares in Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix, and Paramount while signaling regulatory approval around a possible Warner sale. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has lost 22% of its staff, with enforcement reduced to 80% of the decade’s annual average, even as Trump’s meme coin and crypto empire reportedly earned him $1.4 billion last year. Galloway also says Trump gutted the IRS, cut total staffing by 25%, reduced high-net-worth audits by nearly 40%, and obtained immunity from audits. His conclusion is blunt: for white-collar criminals with political connections, this is a “golden age.”

Galloway turns to journalist Isaac Saul, founder of the nonpartisan site Tangle, who attempted to catalogue Trump’s corruption. In a May post and a follow-up published that month, Saul identified nearly 100 alleged instances of corruption, self-dealing, and conflicts of interest. Galloway names alleged bribes for regulatory favors, pay-to-play pardons, crypto schemes, trading on inside information in equities and prediction markets, an insider-trading subscription service operating through Truth Social, foreign governments investing in Trump family ventures before favorable U.S. policy decisions, and Trump’s children taking stakes in companies that received federal contracts. The exact totals are difficult to establish because disclosures lag and financial records are opaque, but Galloway cites a New York Times estimate that Trump made $2.2 billion in his first year back in office. He acknowledges that the public’s distrust of corruption is bipartisan. A National Bureau of Economic Research working paper found that congressional leaders outperformed rank-and-file lawmakers in investment gains by as much as 47 percentage points. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s portfolio increased 166-fold from 1987 to 2024, and she made 213 stock trades since 2014. Yet Galloway contrasts that with Trump’s activity: shortly before pausing his “Liberation Day” tariffs, Trump made 327 trades in one day. His quip is that Trump is not draining the swamp; he is “swamping our ability to keep up with his crimes.”

Galloway says Robert Caro’s study of Lyndon Johnson led him to a broader principle: “Power always reveals.” Power shows what someone wanted all along and what they are willing to do to obtain more of it. For Galloway, two actions expose Trump’s motives most clearly. The first is the forced sale of TikTok’s U.S. business at an estimated 94% discount. Trump abused his power by forcing a sale on his terms and then divided the resulting spoils with political allies. Like Russian investors after the dismantling of Yukos, American investors are being told that the president—not markets—determines valuations, deal terms, and who may buy what. The second is Trump’s treatment of Ukraine and Russia. Less than a month after signing the bipartisan Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, Trump waived sanctions on Russia while arranging a diesel purchase. He later effectively ratified Elon Musk’s decision to restrict Ukrainian access to Starlink and Starshield. Galloway says the United States is therefore financing Russia’s war while weakening Ukraine’s defenses, indirectly aiding Iran because Russia supplies Tehran with intelligence, technology, and diplomatic support. He cites Tom Nichols’s explanation that Trump either thinks Putin is under his control regarding Iran or does not care that U.S. tax dollars support weapons killing American troops. Galloway calls the resulting policy treasonous and says it signals to every autocrat that American foreign policy is for sale. He closes by arguing that a future Congress should use subpoenas and investigations to preserve evidence for a reconstituted Justice Department, and urges voters on November 3 to “make America boring again,” meaning a country where rules apply equally and ordinary business deals are not distorted by political fear.