Trump is Trans

With few hardcore values, Trump has always been the ultimate transactional politician. With a supporting cast of adoring loyalists, this transactional nature has gone fully transparent, leaving us with a government transformed. In Popular Information, Judd Legum provides one relatively minor example of the way things work in Trump’s Trans Am. How to buy your way out of a federal lawsuit. “On June 6, 2023, the SEC filed charges against Coinbase, a crypto trading platform, alleging that the company was operating as an unregistered securities broker.” You may recall that June 6, 2023 falls into a time period when laws mattered; an era that ended roughly three months ago. Cut to Feb 21, 2025 when the Coinbase CEO wrote that the SEC had dropped the suit in exchange for zero changes to the business and zero dollars in fines. But that doesn’t mean no money changed hands. A few bucks toward the election, a few bucks toward the inauguration, a few favors to the top dog and a reminder that you find him simply transcendental. It’s really not complicated. In fact, it’s about as uncomplicated as it gets. Except when it comes to ethics. But even those are getting easier as CEOs explain away these transgressions by explaining that they have a responsibility to shareholders and besides, everyone, including America’s biggest companies, is transitioning to the new transactional economy. It’s transmutational and transcontinental. It’s the new cost of doing business. And in fairness, they didn’t transform America. Voters did.

+ The new transactional rules even apply to transportation. Musk’s Starlink gets FAA contract, raising new conflict of interest concerns.