Dear Americans: your president is a grifting crook. Send him a message on Nov. 3
October 18, 2026 | Markham on Energy
Canadians have made it abundantly clear that they want nothing to do with the scrofulous Trump. Nov. 3 is an opportunity for American voters to stand with their northern neighbours.
Donald Trump’s critics have spent a decade calling him a liar, a cheat, and a grifter. I’m not talking about Congressional Democrats or state critics like California governor Gavin Newsom. I mean respected scholars who are experts in political science, economics, law, and public policy. The academics who generally choose their words very carefully, but are no longer holding back.
They see Trump for what he really is. You should, too, when you vote during the mid-term elections.
If you want to really understand the sea change wrought by Trump, American scholars offer a more useful vocabulary than the familiar exchange of insults. Their research points to three connected developments: the conversion of public power into private financial gain, the systematic destruction of governing institutions, and the concentration of authority in a president increasingly freed from accountability.
Kleptocracy: when public power becomes private property
In the March/April 2026 issue of Foreign Affairs, political scientists Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon published “The Age of Kleptocracy: Geopolitical Power, Private Gain.” The title supplies a starting point for understanding the Trump presidency.
Kleptocracy is not merely a politician accepting a bribe. It is a political order in which access, favour,r and wealth become entangled with the exercise of state power.
“Especially in his second term, Trump has instead wielded U.S. foreign policy principally to increase his own wealth, bolster his status, and personally benefit a small circle of his family members, friends, and loyalists. U.S. foreign policy is now largely subordinate to the private interests of the president and his retainers. “
The crucial distinction is between isolated misconduct and an operating system. If businesses or foreign governments believe favourable treatment depends on pleasing the president or enriching people close to him, even formally lawful transactions can create profound conflicts of interest.
Kimberly Guilfoyle’s forced resignation as U.S. ambassador to Greece offers a revealing glimpse of the appetite for self-enrichment surrounding Donald Trump. According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, she asked a Trump donor to cover a $100,000 personal credit card debt in exchange for access to administration officials. Guilfoyle denies wrongdoing, and the allegations remain unproven.
But the alleged transaction captures the central danger: treating proximity to public power as a private asset to be monetized.
That concern extends to the president himself: Reuters reported that Trump disclosed more than $1.4 billion in income from family cryptocurrency ventures in 2025, while his administration advanced policies benefiting the industry. The ethical standard loses its force when the president profits from the very sector whose rules he helps write.
According to Cooley and Nexon, the Trump administration is systematically turning the institutions of the American government into a giant ATM for the president, his family, and his cronies. The scholars argue that Trump is dismantling the independence of institutions like the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Defense Department while combining foreign-policy negotiations with lucrative business arrangements that benefit his inner circle.
In their analysis, this isn’t ordinary government corruption, where politicians occasionally exploit public office for private gain. They describe a system in which personal enrichment has become a central purpose of American foreign policy, while the institutions designed to prevent corruption are deliberately weakened or dismantled.
The institutions designed to protect Americans from government corruption are themselves being systematically dismantled by the Trump administration.
Ungoverning: destroying the capacity to resist
Political scientists Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum provided the second lens in their January 2025 Foreign Affairs essay, “Trump and the Perils of Ungoverning.” Their argument directs attention away from headline-grabbing personalities and toward the institutions that make government function.
I interviewed Professor Muirhead of Dartmouth College about the essay:
“With the Trump presidency, there’s an undoing of the policy state. He doesn’t want to govern. He actually wants to ungovern. He wants to dismantle both the institutions and the norms that allow the state to pursue settled policies over time.”
A government can be weakened deliberately. Purging experienced public servants, undermining independent expertise and demanding personal loyalty do more than disrupt services. They remove officials capable of saying no, documenting wrongdoing or insisting that law and evidence prevail over presidential preference.
Trump and his supporters defend many such measures as necessary to eliminate bureaucracy, reduce waste and make elected leaders accountable. That claim deserves scrutiny rather than automatic dismissal. But genuine reform strengthens the government’s ability to deliver services under transparent rules.
Ungoverning weakens that ability while making the executive less answerable to anyone.
“The reason that a president and an administration like Trump’s would ungovern, would sideline experts and would dismantle settled operating procedures, is in order to concentrate power in the president’s personal will.”
The danger is cumulative. A weakened inspector general, an intimidated civil servant, and a politicized prosecutor may appear to be separate controversies. Together they change the relationship between the citizen and the state.
Between you – the American voter – and the most powerful, the richest government on the planet.
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Imperial power: when the referee joins the team
Columbia University political scientist Elizabeth Saunders described an “Imperial President at Home, Emperor Abroad” in Foreign Affairs in June 2025. Her analysis identifies the third part of the framework: a presidency able to wield enormous powers while other institutions struggle to constrain it.
That concern is no longer abstract.
Reporting this week describes a Justice Department taking unusually partisan steps as the midterms approach, including interventions in election administration and conduct by senior officials that critics say erodes the department’s political neutrality. Each disputed action must be assessed on its own evidence. The larger test is whether law enforcement serves the public interest or the president’s electoral fortunes.
“Trump has laid waste to U.S. state capacity…These actions have severely hollowed out the U.S. foreign policy and national security apparatus without making a dent in the federal budget, suggesting that the Trump administration had no clear rationale for these moves besides a disdain for expertise, a quest for retribution, and a desire to remove obstacles to corruption.”
There is a difference between vigorous presidential leadership and an executive who treats independent institutions as obstacles to be conquered. In a healthy democracy, prosecutors, courts and election officials are not supposed to be extensions of a campaign organization.
Canada and the international reach of presidential power
Canadians have reason to pay attention to Trump’s rampant corruption and grift. His aggressive self-aggrandizement. The never-ending bullying.
Canada has resisted several major Trump demands, notably over tariffs and sovereignty. And Prime Minister Mark Carney has received international praise for his steadfast refusal to knuckle under to Trump.
He may have bent a few times, but he hasn’t broken. That puts him – and Canada – squarely on Trump’s radar.
U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra recently warned that Washington is watching Canadian politicians for alleged interference in the midterms and could retaliate. His examples reportedly included Ontario’s anti-tariff advertising and remarks by Canadian political figures.
Disagreeing with American tariffs or defending Canadian economic interests is not, by itself, evidence of covert election interference. No persuasive public evidence accompanying the ambassador’s warning establishes the sweeping accusation. Canada has explicitly rejected the allegations.
But there is no point on demanding specific facts because there are none. Therefore, the warning deserves examination through the same three scholarly lenses.
Kleptocracy asks whether economic pressure rewards cooperation and punishes resistance. Ungoverning asks whether independent institutions can check the use of that pressure. Imperial power asks what happens when such methods cross national borders.
The fact that American scholars – and there are many, many more than the ones cited here – are asking these questions is by itself damning of Trump and his sticky fingers. But the President has no shame. No moral centre.
Former White House Press Secretary Anthony Scaramucci says Trump, who he has known for many years, is “pure id.” The id is the primitive, instinctive part of the mind driven by appetite, impulse, desire, and the pursuit of immediate gratification. The id operates according to the pleasure principle: I want what I want, and I want it now.
Is this the kind of man Americans want leading them?
Canadians have made it abundantly clear that they want nothing to do with the scrofulous Trump. November 3 is an opportunity for American voters to stand with their northern neighbours.