Mr. President, I am a big Boston Red Sox fan, and one of the most famous players in Red Sox recent history is Manny Ramirez. Manny Ramirez was a good baseball player, but he had a habit of doing some pretty ridiculous things on the field and off the field that were really detrimental to the team, some really bizarre on-field behavior-- cutting off throws from other outfielders before they got to the infield--and bizarre off-the-field behavior. It disrupted the team.
It became so regular that a phrase was adopted amongst the Red Sox fans: ``That is just Manny being Manny.'' And over the years, it just was accepted that every year, Manny Ramirez was going to do a whole bunch of stuff that was really detrimental to the team, and over time, it just kind of became accepted that that was a fact of life, a way of life with Manny Ramirez. As time went on, people reacted with less hostility. It barely got noticed in some cases when he was engaged in these detrimental forms of conduct.
I tell that story because it stands for kind of a universal concept. When bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior even if that behavior is hurting people.
Today, the world is littered with corrupt governments, governments where the leaders and the really rich men who surround the leaders--the oligarchs--they steal from people. That is what they do. The leaders and the leaders' friends just keep a hand constantly in the government treasury, and they steal taxpayer dollars. They rig the rules of the economy in order to make themselves fabulously rich. They hurt the citizens of those countries.
Vladimir Putin, for instance, has never had a job outside of government, but he is reportedly worth $200 billion. One of his many houses cost $1.4 billion to build. Supposedly, the landscaping costs on an annual basis for that house are $2 million alone. That $1.4 billion house was paid for by money he stole from the Russian treasury. In other words, he stole it from the Russian people.
Putin and his friends have been doing it for so long and doing it so openly and brazenly--Putin, for instance, wears a watch that retails for half a million dollars even though his official
That is what is happening in America today. It is heartbreaking for me to say this, but in the first 6 months of the Trump Presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption. It is not fundamentally different than what happens in Russia. These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves.
Their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption or, maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works; that government is just corrupt. So the fact that it is happening out in the open instead of happening secretly--well, it is really nothing new.
But this is not how government works. The things that have happened over the last 6 weeks are unprecedented. The President and his billionaire friends are not supposed to steal from us. They are not supposed to use their power and their access to power, their access to government levers, to rig the rules to enrich themselves. That has always been wrong, it is still wrong, and we do not have to accept this.
So in the next few minutes, I want to try out an exercise. I want to try to lay out for you as quickly as I can just some of the most significant instances of blatantly corrupt activity that have happened in just the first 6 weeks of Trump's Presidency. When you see it all together, there is no way to avoid a simple conclusion: This White House is on its way to being the most corrupt in the history of the country. And just because they are doing it out in the open for everybody to see doesn't mean it is not corrupt.
My hope is that if you see it all in one place, the gravity of this moment may hit you. My hope is that my colleagues and the public choose not to normalize a President or his advisers using the Oval Office as a blunt mechanism to make themselves even wealthier.
It is our decision--our decision--to have zero tolerance for corruption. It is also our decision to just decide to become a place like Russia where our leaders are allowed to routinely steal from us.
So this is a heartbreakingly long list. This is just 20 or so examples of corrupt behavior in the first 6 weeks of the Trump Presidency.
Here it goes. We are going to start on January 17. On January 17, Trump launches the meme coin. This is maybe the most corrupt of all of the acts because--what is the meme coin?--the meme coin is essentially a mechanism by which Russian oligarchs or corporate CEOs can literally send money privately directly to Donald Trump. Nobody knows who buys the meme coin, but Trump makes money when people buy it. So it is just an open sewer valve that allows for anybody who is trying to influence the Trump administration to be able to secretly funnel money to Donald Trump.
He reserves 80 percent of the coin. He waits to release that coin until the price jumps back up again, which essentially means he is waiting for people who want favors from him to buy a bunch of the coins to inflate the value so that he releases more and makes more money.
It is a disgusting kind of corruption because this is essentially Trump just posting his Venmo for anybody secretly to wire him as much money as they want. We have never seen something like this before, where anybody who has anything to gain from the Trump administration, through a manipulation of the value of Trump's meme coin, can funnel money directly to the President, whisper in his ear: That was me. That was me that purchased all that coin that jumped up the value that allowed you to release new coin. Hey, take care of me on the back end.
On January 20, when he is sworn in, he institutes his new energy agenda. Now, open reporting suggested that during the campaign, he met with the oil and gas industry, and they cut a deal in which the oil and gas industry would give him a billion dollars of campaign contributions in order to receive favorable treatment when Trump was sworn in.
Guess what happens on January 20. Trump unveils his energy strategy. What does it do? It preferences oil and gas, and it punishes oil and gas's competitors. It, for instance, freezes all permits on wind projects, both for the land and the sea. It undercuts permitting processes, not for oil and gas, but for oil and gas's competitors.
Oil and gas got exactly what they asked for. They gave a campaign contribution, and they got the favorable treatment.
Five days later, Trump fires 17 inspectors general. What do inspectors general do? They look for corruption inside of these Agencies. What do you do if you are trying to engage in corruption, if you are trying to steal from the American people, you fire the inspectors general.
Two days later, on January 27, Trump fires Gwynne Wilcox from the NLRB. This is the National Labor Relations Board. When she is fired, the National Labor Relations Board cannot function any longer. Why does this matter? Because the person that has been put in charge of reviewing the hirings and firings of these Agencies is Elon Musk who, by the way, has lots of cases before the NLRB--so do the people that are standing behind Trump during the inauguration. Almost all of them have active cases before the NLRB. The billionaires supporting Donald Trump now don't have to worry about the NLRB because, on January 27, the NLRB is rendered powerless.
Three days later, on January 30, Trump awards more than $800,000 worth of stock to several of the board members of the Trump Media & Technology Group. This is the publicly traded company behind his social media platforms.
So now, his Cabinet members, people like Kash Patel and Linda McMahon, are owning equity in Trump's media platform--equity that can be cashed out, sold to people who want to buy them out of their interest at any time. Those people who might want to buy them out-- Cabinet members--could be individuals with issues before the Department of Education, before the FBI--yet another avenue in which people who have influence, who want to gain influence inside the Trump administration have a conduit to be able to move cash from their pocketbooks, from their treasury, from their bank accounts into the bank accounts of Trump Cabinet members.
Shortly thereafter, we start to see the weaponization of the DOJ. On February 23, a civil complaint from DOJ that had been pending against SpaceX, Elon Musk's signature company, is dropped. Eight days later, the DOJ drops a case against a Republican Congressman.
On February 19, 2 or 3 weeks later, the DOJ opens up something called Operation Whirlwind, which seeks to target anyone who dares to try to obstruct or criticize the work of Elon Musk and DOGE.
Over the course of the first few weeks, the DOJ has turned into an entity that drops cases against those who are loyal to Donald Trump and pursues aggressively investigations against those who are trying to criticize Donald Trump.
On February 1, Trump fires the Director of the CFPB and announces plans to shut down--to shutter--the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Again, very much like the NLRB, this is an Agency that was, at the moment that it was rendered powerless, investigating Elon Musk and many of the biggest financial backers of Donald Trump. So, once again, those that have access to Donald Trump, the billionaires that are close to him, now don't have to worry about labor violations being investigated by the NLRB. Now, they don't have to worry about consumer actions being taken against them by the CFPB.
On February 4, there is the first of two extraordinary meetings in the White House in which Donald Trump convenes his business partners-- his business partners--the Saudi golf league and the PGA, to try to negotiate a solution to the dispute between those two golf leagues. Why? Because Trump has a business interest in that
On February 6, something absolutely stunning happens. Pam Bondi, the AG, issues a memorandum in which she proposes to dull the criminal enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
If you are representing a foreign government before the United States, you have to register so that we know if you are acting on behalf of American interests or you are acting on behalf of foreign interests.
In the prior Trump administration, Trump officials got in big trouble for secretly working for and getting paid by foreign governments without registering.
Well, what has Trump announced? That they are going to limit the applicability of the enforcement of that statute, making it much easier for Trump's friends, for his MAGA crowd, for the people who show up to Mar-a-Lago to get paid quietly by foreign governments in order to influence Donald Trump.
On February 10, maybe aside from the meme coin, the most stunning act of corruption--the Eric Adams quid pro quo, in which Eric Adams, indicted for corruption, is let off the hook. His charges are dismissed in exchange for the mayor's pledge of political loyalty to Donald Trump. They literally went on TV and announced the deal--that they were getting rid of the charges against Eric Adams as long as the mayor pledges political loyalty to the President.
That was so corrupt that six or seven DOJ officials resigned because they refused to withdraw those charges. But the deal went through because the seventh or the eighth or the ninth official finally filed the withdrawal.
And now, in America, it is 100 percent clear, if you want to get away with corruption, if you want to steal from your constituents and you are an elected official in this country, all you have to do is just sign up for political loyalty to Donald Trump, and he will instruct the Department of Justice to let you get away with it.
On February 10, Donald Trump directs the DOJ to pause enforcement of U.S. laws that prohibit companies from paying bribes overseas. Come on--like come on. He instructs the DOJ to pause enforcement of U.S. laws that prohibit companies from paying bribes overseas.
Here is an example. Goldman Sachs was engaged in outright bribery. They were paying bribes to Malaysian officials so that they could get a contract to manage the resources of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.
American companies should not be overseas bribing foreign governments. That compromises America's reputation and America's national security. But now, you are going to pause enforcement of the laws that stop American companies from bribing foreign governments because corruption is now being normalized.
This is what you do if you want to normalize corruption; it is that you make it legal for American companies to engage in corruption overseas. That makes it easier for Trump to get away with corruption here.
Two days later, on February 12, the announcement comes out that the State Department is going to buy $400 million in armored Teslas.
OK, so now it is getting even more blatant. It is getting even more brazen. The State Department is just going to buy a whole bunch of product from Elon Musk--product that they were not previously scheduled to buy.
It is true that the Biden administration had a blueprint that it was going to buy some electric vehicles, but it was around $483,000 worth of vehicles. Trump revises that blueprint of spending so that now the Federal Government is going to spend $400 million on armored Teslas from Elon Musk.
Let's see. That is February 12. That same day, Elon Musk's people infiltrate the Department of Labor, and reporting suggests that, during that infiltration, Elon Musk's personal representatives get access to enforcement information at OSHA, not only against Elon Musk's companies--and, by the way, SpaceX has an employee injury rate that is nine times higher than the industry average--but, also, workplace safety violations against Elon Musk's competitors.
Here is the message: If you are close to Donald Trump personally, if you support him politically, you can get secret access to enforcement data against your companies and your companies' competitors. That is what happens on February 12.
Three days later, there is some suspicious firings at the FDA--again, related to Elon Musk's personal financial interests. Elon Musk owns a medical device company called Neuralink. It is currently being reviewed by the FDA. And guess what. On February 15 and 16, all over a weekend, there are 20 people fired from the FDA's Office of Neurological and Physical Medicine Devices--fired by DOGE, run by Elon Musk.
Clear message: You are going to get fired if you aren't on the right side of Elon Musk's application.
Now, whether that was explicit or not, if the guy who is firing you has a pending application before your Department, aren't you going to think twice? Aren't you going to think twice about ruling against his interests?
This is why this is unprecedented. It feels normal because it has been happening every day. But never before in American history have we allowed someone who has a pending application for approval of a medicine or a medical device to be able to personally decide who gets hired and who gets fired at the regulatory Agency making the decision over that medical device.
But, now, this stuff is happening every day because, on February 15, as well, that same weekend, there is an announcement that the FDA cuts are going to be even deeper, perhaps as big as 50 percent. That means that hundreds of drugs and devices won't get approved at the FDA.
And you know who benefits from that? The folks that are selling the snake oil products.
And guess who is selling the snake oil products? The people who work for Donald Trump selling ``vita gummy scams.'' The Director of FBI is selling vaccine reversal pills. When the FDA gets gutted, it is the people who sell those unregulated products who stand to gain.
On February 19, 4 days later, we find out that the IRS is going to be cut by 7,000 people, and the biggest chunk of the folks who are going to be laid off are the people who do the audits of the billionaires and the millionaires and the corporations.
So, once again, Elon Musk and the people standing behind Donald Trump on inauguration day are going to get off because the IRS just had its enforcement powers--its audit powers--absolutely gutted.
That same day, on February 19, we start to receive word that advertising on Elon Musk's platform is starting to grow again. And the reporting on February 19 indicates that American companies have come to the collective decision that they need to keep advertising on Elon Musk's platform because Elon Musk has so much regulatory power inside the Federal Government that they need to make sure that they are paying Musk through Twitter and through X, so that if they ultimately need something from the Federal Government, they can get it.
This, again, is why we have never, ever in the history of this country allowed for the richest man in the world, somebody who controls major companies, to also have an official position inside the government, because, of course--of course--it opens up these clear avenues where people are going to do business with him privately to try to curry favor with him publicly.
I am not done. It just keeps going. The next day, on February 20, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices' monthly meeting is canceled and not rescheduled.
So we were very worried that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who makes money off of his attacks on vaccines, would continue those attacks when he took over HHS because, if faith in vaccines continues to plummet, it is very likely that RFK, Jr., will make money. Why? Because the not-for- profit that he will likely return to--the company that he will return to after he leaves--makes money as vaccine misinformation spreads, and he also continues to collect fees for referring cases to a company that handles claims of personal injury due to vaccines.
And so when the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is canceled, it is a clear indication that, yes, this campaign of assault on vaccines is going to continue, which--not surprisingly--is likely to make RFK, Jr., even more money.
On February 26, we see Trump's MAGA hats that are for sale on his website displayed in the Oval Office. And it is just a reminder that so many people inside Trump's universe continue to sell merchandise on the side in order to make money.
Donald Trump has always done this, and we have just kind of accepted it, even though it is a kind of corruption in and of itself. But Kash Patel, the Director of the FBI, is still selling Kash-branded merchandise, even while he is going to run the FBI. Elon Musk and others are selling DOGE merchandise.
So as they trumpet their brand inside the government, they are making money off their brand outside of the government. On February 26, maybe the third most significant brazen corruption happens. News breaks that Elon Musk is just going to have the FAA cancel a contract with Verizon that has been in the works for years and instead just substitute in Starlink for Verizon. Just extraordinary that this is happening in plain view of everybody.
Elon Musk takes his private company, uses his access to government to just shove out of the way his competitors and instead insert himself and his company. Again, we have never seen this ever before in American history, and now it is happening on a daily basis.
And now we get to this week. This week, Wired reports that guests are paying millions of dollars to dine with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and business leaders are being targeted with advertisements that sell access to a one-on-one meeting with the President of the United States for $5 million.
Come on, like seriously, there are advertisements that say if you are a business CEO and you pay $5 million to Donald Trump, you can get a meeting with him. Like, this isn't OK. And yet because it happens every single day, every single day, they are asking for us to pretend that this is normal.
This is just 6 weeks. It is just 6 weeks, and the last thing on the list is an offer to meet with the President for a million dollars or $5 million. If any previous President had sent out an advertisement suggesting that you could meet with them for a payment to them of a million to $5 million, in and of itself, we would deem that to be unacceptable.
But Donald Trump and Elon Musk believe that because they have arranged this dizzying pace of corruption in which not a day goes by in which something doesn't happen inside our government in which Elon Musk or Donald Trump use their power in order to rig the rules to enrich themselves, that we are all going to feel that it is normal.
This is how democracies die. Democracies die when the very powerful people steal from us so regularly, so openly, so unapologetically that we come to believe that it is normal.
And listen, I understand that many Americans may think that all of this stuff just used to happen quietly, and the only difference is that Trump and Musk are just putting it all out in the open. And I am not saying that there haven't been instances of corruption. Democrats and Republicans in this body have been accused of and convicted of acts of corruption.
It has been a fact of life in American politics for a long time, but never before has the corruption happened this openly or this frequently. And so I lay it all out for you this afternoon in the hopes that it is not too late for us to decide to stand up as a body and as a nation to say that this isn't OK.
The Trump meme coin is not OK. It is not OK for people who have interests before the Federal Government to be able to anonymously funnel money to the President of the United States. It is not OK for Elon Musk to have access to the Department of Labor enforcement data against him or his competitors that nobody else gets access to.
It is not OK to just cancel contracts that were going to Musk's competitors and substituting his own business just because he has the ability to do it as a friend of Donald Trump. The rule of law matters. Doing things by the rules matter.
This level of corruption was not occurring behind the scenes prior. It is not just that the cover got pulled off of it all, and it is our decision as a body and as a country to decide not to normalize this scale of corruption.
I yield the floor.
