I burglarized the house you failed to protect with a better alarm system

What I’m saying is that there’s plenty of blame to go around when you think about it:

Ethics watchdogs rarely mince words about President Donald Trump.

They’ve called him the most corrupt and conflicted president in US history. And since he returned to the White House, they’ve watched with horror as he privately dined with wealthy investors for his personal memecoin fund, brazenly accepted a $400 million luxury airplane from Qatar and purged inspectors general from federal agencies.

Adding to their long list of gripes, the president’s company announced Monday that it was launching Trump Mobile, a wireless service with monthly plans and a $499 smartphone, which would be regulated by many of the federal agencies now run by Trump appointees.

That has led to soul-searching among Washington, DC’s self-appointed ethics watchdogs at advocacy groups and think tanks, who are wondering how this could’ve been prevented. Some have championed liberal causes for years; others aren’t beholden to either party but are stunned by Trump’s sea-change to the ethics landscape.

While they primarily hold Trump responsible for his own actions, they’re increasingly concluding that former President Joe Biden also deserves some of the blame.

“The single biggest failure of the Biden administration was that he and Congress didn’t pass any post-Watergate-style reforms,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, director of government affairs at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight. “President Biden had zero interest in doing that, and congressional Democrats didn’t have much interest.”

Many of these experts, including Biden allies, say much more could’ve been done to get legislation across the finish line when Democrats had unified control in DC. House Democrats passed a landmark ethics and democracy bill in late 2021, but it languished.

It would’ve banned officials from taking foreign money (as Trump has with his memecoin). It would’ve tightened the rules for who can serve as acting leaders at federal agencies (a loophole Trump used to install loyalists). It would’ve protected civil servants from being reclassified and fired (which Trump is trying to do). it would’ve added job protections for inspectors general (Trump summarily fired more than a dozen in January). And it would’ve added transparency to the pardon process (which Trump has wielded to reward allies).

I don’t know what’s more impressive here: the Olympic class level both siding, or the pure magical thinking about the relationship between Donald Trump and the American legal system.