Yes, Trump is incompetent. But he’s becoming alarmingly good at corrupting the government.

We have become so accustomed to President Trump’s incompetence that it’s easy to miss a crucial change: In his fourth year in office, Trump is learning to bend government to his corrupt purposes.

The incompetence was and remains uppermost, most lethally in the president’s surrender to the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. mortality rate, while not the world’s highest, is some 84 times greater than South Korea’s.

But in less visible corners, Trump is coming to understand how to use the bureaucracy to his ends. We might welcome such a learning curve in most presidents, because most presidents want government to serve the public good, as they see it. Continue reading.