Within days of his second inauguration, Trump rescinded executive branch ethics requirements in place for decades. He replaced them with a policy that explicitly permits conflicts of interest in dealings with foreign business interests.
Not accidentally. Not as an oversight. Deliberately and in writing.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace called this a “startling reversal of U.S. global anti-corruption policy.”
“He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” — Immanuel Kant
For decades, the United States used its global leverage to push other nations toward transparency and institutional integrity. We wrote the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. We told the world that democracy produces cleaner government.
That argument is now dead in the water.
How do you tell other nations to clean up their corruption when your own president has a written policy permitting foreign business conflicts?
Every authoritarian government on earth is pointing at us. Every kleptocrat who once had to answer to American pressure is breathing easier. Our moral credibility — built over generations — is being liquidated.
Daniel 5:27 — “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.”
The Moral Decay Index Podcast holds the mirror up to power. themoraldecayindex.com.