Trump's new 'gargantuan shakedown' may be the last straw for voters: expert

President Donald Trump has for years gotten away with flagrant corruption and self-dealing off of the apathy of the American people, Mona Charen wrote for The Bulwark on Thursday — but that may finally be coming to an end.

The extent of his excesses, she wrote, can be seen in the "gargantuan shakedown" Trump is trying to stage against the IRS, which started because a whistleblower working for an IRS contractor leaked information about Trump's tax returns.

"Trump and his sons sued the IRS for the aforesaid $10 billion, alleging that the leak had caused them 'reputational and financial harm' and 'public embarrassment,'" wrote Charen. "Hmm. The financial harm claim is risible — is the Trump family really arguing that, if not for this leak, they would have accumulated money even faster than they have over the past six years? As for embarrassment, it seems the Trumps bear the burden of proving they’ve ever felt such a thing in their lives."

"Beyond that, there is the preposterous sum of $10 billion for this piddling 'injury,'" she wrote. "It would amount to two-thirds of the IRS’s annual budget, and be about a thousand times more than the largest payout in the history of the Federal Tort Claims Act. But that isn’t the most eye-popping aspect of the case. No, that honor goes to the fact, highlighted by Judge Kathleen Williams in her order requiring a new hearing, that there are not two contending parties here. Courts only have jurisdiction when there is a bona fide 'case or controversy.' In this case, Judge Williams observes, Trump is sitting on both sides of the table. He is the plaintiff, but he is also the superior of all the respondents and can fire any at will."

This episode, along with all the other Trump self-enrichment schemes like the free luxury jet from Qatar and the White House ballroom, finally seem to be catching up to him, Charen wrote — for the simple reason that he's doing all this at a moment when the American people are struggling.

"Voters in 2024 made a bargain: Though they knew Trump was corrupt, they bet that he would bring them the kind of economy they’d enjoyed in 2018. This isn’t an admirable trait, but there is good reason to think it’s the way many voters operate," wrote Charen. "Trump has not delivered on the bargain. On the contrary, economic conditions are now worse than they were in 2024."

The bottom line, she concluded, is that "The corruption never seemed to matter much to the American people before, but when gas prices are near $5 a gallon, groceries have only gone up, and the economy is skidding toward recession, the gold leaf becomes not an eccentricity but an indictment. The worm has turned."