One of my biggest gripes about Donald Trump's first term was the inability of the media or congressional Democrats to wrap their minds around the flagrant corruption that was happening right before their eyes. Yes, stories were written and some investigations undertaken. We all learned what the word "emoluments" means. But it seemed there was no way to deal effectively with a political figure so shameless that he didn't even try to hide his conflicts of interest, and nothing was ever done to hold him to account.
As we learned during that first term, the president and vice president are not subject to the conflict of interest laws that apply to every other government official and employee. The idea was that the president should be able to act in the national interest even if it happens to benefit him personally. (Mar-a-Lago meet-and-greets for hundreds of thousands of dollars are surely in the national interest, right?) Various entities sued Trump for violating the aforementioned "emolument clause," which prohibits payments and gifts from foreign governments, but the courts dragged their feet as usual and by the time the issue reached the Supreme Court Trump was out of office and the justices court dismissed the cases as moot. Trump's lucky that way.
