Trump’s Corruption Is a Huge Problem. But It’s a Hard Sell to Voters.

Voters often think that political shadiness and bribes happen in the shadows, so the fact that Trump is brazenly unethical and openly brags about “deals” like Qatar’s plane gift might make it seem less bad. “If you’ve already written off the entire political system as fundamentally corrupt, then individual scandals don’t change the equation much,” said Sarah Kreps, a professor at Cornell University. “They might roll their eyes at some of his antics, but they see him as playing the same rough game his opponents are, just doing it more commendably because he doesn’t even have the pretense.”

With help from Republicans, Trump has also redefined “corruption” for his voters to be specific to Democrats. A YouGov survey from January found that nearly 80 percent of Republicans and Democrats thought presidential corruption was a problem for the other party’s president, and Republicans were more likely to view journalists and media executives as corrupt. That argument especially worked against President Joe Biden, who had been in public office for most of his adult life, a D.C. figure and an intrinsic part of an already corrupt system in some voters’ eyes. In a YouGov/Yahoo poll in September 2023, almost as many voters overall said Biden and his family were corrupt as thought the same of Trump and his family. So Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine and laptop were “scandals,” while whatever Trump does is not. Partisanship thus defines corruption, rather than evidence.

Corruption rarely factors as a top concern for voters, although perhaps that’s because pollsters never ask voters to rank corruption among their top concerns. But the issues that rose to the top for most voters in 2024 were the economy and inflation. When asked open-ended questions about what determined their votes in 2024, most Trump voters said “economy” and “immigration,” while Harris voters were motivated to vote for her because of “Trump” and concerns for “democracy.”