Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 16, 2025
by Tony Wikrent
Elite impunity
The Corrupt Roots of America’s Elite Run Deep
David Kurtz, November 13, 2025 [Talking Points Memo]
In reviewing a portion of the 20,000-plus Jeffrey Epstein emails released yesterday, I was left astonished not so much by the chumminess he enjoyed with elites even after he’d served time for soliciting prostitution with a minor but by the messages’ flagrantness, their casual disregard, and their indifference to consequence.
It was perfectly captured by political scientist Ed Burmila: “The crisis of elite impunity that is ruining our society cannot be more clearly or convincingly demonstrated than with the fact that all of these people wrote all this stuff into an email and hit Send.”
Impunity. That’s the word I was looking for.
It is the same impunity that got us Trump. Like Epstein, Trump built a career on a transactional chumminess, mutual self-indulgence, and an alarmingly high tolerance level for misbehavior by the layers of political, business, media, and cultural elites surrounding him.
At it’s most extreme, the misbehavior manifested in both men as abusive sexual misconduct. It’s one of the oddities of this whole spectacle that the question is whether Trump — already an admitted pussy grabber, held liable as a sexual assaulter, and prone to traipsing through his pageant dressing rooms to gawk at young flesh — was also engaged in another kind of sexual misconduct, as if stacking revelations high enough will finally overcome the elite impunity that’s cosseted Trump for more than 40 years….
Liberal Elites Kicked the Door Wide Open for Trump’s Flagrant Corruption
Dylan Gyauch-Lewis, November 9 2025 [The Intercept]
…While Trumpian corruption is striking in frequency, scale, and just how routine it is starting to feel, this administration was the logical endpoint of the long-standing tradition of elite impunity. The second Trump administration is a striking monument to governmental misconduct, but the ground was broken long ago, with both parties laying the foundation. For the past half century, corporate and white-collar crime have gone largely unenforced. This was the result of both a widespread shift in views of governance (à la the Reagan Revolution) and a coordinated plan orchestrated to enable private wealth to hijack our democracy, as David Sirota and Jared Jacang Maher documented in their new book “Master Plan,” building on a podcast of the same name.
Trump himself is a byproduct of the wealthy being empowered to violate the law. Seemingly his entire pre-government career was predicated on getting away with gaming bankruptcy law, committing widespread financial fraud, and racial discrimination. Now, in government, he is employing the “blitzscaling” model pioneered by firms like Uber to break the law faster than anyone can keep up with….
The Great Recession was a turning point; the extent of corporate lawbreaking in the financial sector was laid bare. And, famously, hardly anyone ever went to jail. Obama-era regulators, in many ways the acme of our last half-century of the hands-off approach to ruling-class misconduct, earned rebuke and scorn as “the chickenshit club,” afraid to square up against the powerful, if not overtly committed to serve elite interests. Since 2008, it has only become more apparent that the wealthy play by an entirely different set of rules.
Trump’s first election was, in part, built on the argument that he knew “how to play the game.” In this telling, his ability to break the rules was actually an asset because he would break them for you rather than just for the powerful. It was always a dubious pitch, but it’s understandable why — faced with the choice between someone trying to convince you the game that’s obviously been fixed is actually not rigged, and someone who tells you how they cheat and promise to help you get ahead a little bit — people would gravitate toward the latter. Part of the early MAGA mythos was built on resignation to the fact that our rule of law is fundamentally perverted to create two parallel tracks of justice: an unforgiving, punitive, carceral system for most people, and a cushy, consequence-free dinner party circuit for the ruling class.
Dethroning Trump will not be enough to restore real rule of law; the Biden administration is proof enough of that. Donald Trump was excised from the White House with historically bad public sentiment in the immediate aftermath of a failed coup. Under Biden, the Garland Justice Department tried to wind the clock back to 2016 and resume operating the way establishment politicians did in the 1990s and 2000s. It failed spectacularly, allowing bad actors like Elon Musk to grow ever more powerful while continuing to flout the law with impunity. The result was an embittered Trump who faced no real repercussions for his corruption — the worst-case scenario….
To dislodge the hold that corruption has on our government and restore the rule of law, Democrats will need to decide who they really are — and who they’ll fight for.
[TW: More accurately, Democrats will need to decide who they’ll fight against.]
Trump not violating any law
‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’
Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]
We now know why Trump’s DOJ prosecuted Epstein in 2019—and why he died in Trump’s custody
Dean Obeidallah, Nov 13, 2025
The new Epstein document dump tell us many things. But my takeaway is this: Jeffrey Epstein in 2018/early 2019 was increasingly telling people he knew how “dirty Donald” was, that Trump “knew about the girls” and that “I am the one able to take him down.” That means Epstein poised a huge problem to Trump’s 2020 re-election—and more.
To protect Trump, his DOJ suddenly charged Epstein in July 2019. They then denied Epstein bail—forcing him to remain in the custody of the Trump regime. And just a few weeks later, Epstein conveniently committed “suicide.” Trump’s Epstein problem—at least for the 2020 campaign—was over.
Now I will concede there is a level of speculation to this theory. That is why I’m not writing it as a statement of fact but rather one of opinion. But if you see the facts and timeline, it’s clear a full investigation needs to be conducted—either now by a Democratic state Attorney General or by House Democrats if they win the 2026 midterm….