'out-and-out Grifting': Msnbc Panel Details Ways The Trump Family Has 'reframed Corruption'

Millions of consumers and small businesses in the United States are getting ready for hard times thanks to the steep new tariffs that President Donald Trump is imposing on a long list of countries. Businesses are trying to figure out how much the tariffs will increase their overhead and prepare accordingly, but it's difficult for them to make budgetary plans because Trump keeps changing the amount of the tariffs.

But while Trump's tariffs are likely to bring hardship to countless businesses, others expect to profit from Trump's second presidency. And MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle took a look at some of them during a Friday night, May 9 broadcast of her show "The 11th Hour."

Those who expect to prosper, according to Ruhle, range from his sons to Trump's cryptocurrency allies — and government ethics, she lamented, are being violated along the way.

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One of Ruhle's panelists, CNBC's Ron Insana, told her, "I believe, firmly, that the Emoluments Clause is being wildly violated, because there is foreign money coming into his meme coin. There's foreign money that may very well come into this new club — a way to curry favor with the president at $500,000 for a membership. There's all kinds of things going on that in our past, would have never survived any kind of scrutiny."

Others on the panel included podcast host Pablo Torre, Slate's Mary Harris and Columbia University journalism professor Jelani Cobb, who argued that Trump "has reframed corruption as aspirational."

Cobb told the panel, "He has capitalized on the most cynical conception of human nature possible: You would do it if you had the chance too. And for millions of people who believe that…. the problem is not that he's corrupt — the problem is that you're a hater because you wish that you could be as corrupt as he is."

Harris lamented that some Americans are resigning themselves to the idea that "corruption is just the way we do things now." And

Insana recalled the Whitewater controversy of Bill Clinton's presidency, arguing that it was "nothing" compared to Trump's "grifting" in 2025.

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Insana told the panel, "(Whitewater) was a failed land deal…. It was nothing…. whereas this is out-and-out grifting that is happening right before our eyes."

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Watch the full video below or at this link.

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