Just nine days after an election in which voters ranked government corruption alongside the cost of living, Donald Trump has settled on a mission for his vice president. JD Vance is heading into the blue swamp. The president on Thursday said he had told Vance to give his "complete and total attention" to corruption and crime in Democratic-run states, naming Minnesota, California, and Illinois and claiming that billions of dollars were being stolen every month.
It would come at the cost of Vance’s involvement in diplomacy in Iran. Trump concluded, for now at least, that the U.S. has no need for a deal with Tehran. To be fair, this isn’t new territory for Vance, who has eyes on 2028, and pinned the blame for the Republican midterms rout on Trump’s war with Iran, which spiked energy prices.
He already chairs the administration’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. In one sense, Trump has listened to the voters. Corruption was among the defining issues of the midterms.
But his problem is where voters were pointing when they raised it as a top concern of theirs. Election Day polling by CBS that put corruption near the top of the agenda found roughly six in 10 voters believe Trump puts his own personal interests ahead of the country’s. The man who once promised to drain the swamp is perceived as refilling it.
So, Trump is right about the issue and wrong about the swamp most aggravating voters. By making corruption the theme of his post-midterm presidency, he has chosen to fight on ground where many Americans already regard him as part of the problem. Minnesota, under Democratic governance, has produced some of the most-brazen theft of public money in recent memory.
The Feeding Our Future scheme diverted roughly $250 million from a federal pandemic program meant to feed children. Sixty-five defendants had been convicted by April. In May, the nonprofit’s founder, Aimee Bock, was sentenced to 500 months in prison by a judge who called the scheme a "fraud vortex." A day earlier, the Justice Department had announced charges against 15 more people in alleged Minnesota Medicaid and childcare schemes involving more than $90 million in intended loss.
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