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They're All Corrupt. Every Last One of Them

By Dustin Rowles | TV | May 14, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | May 14, 2024 |


corrupt-congress.png

This week’s topic on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is corruption in Congress. Specifically, he looks at the Robert Menendez trial — which is an insanely open-and-shut criminal case — and asks, “But why?” Or, to put it in The Daily Show terms, “How Dumb Is You?”

Because Robert Menendez did not have to so openly accept bribes (to help a group of men corner the market on Halal meat, by the way) because the rules in Congress — and lack thereof — permit Congress to engage in legal corruption. Insider trading was illegal for Martha Stewart but not for members of Congress. Funneling money from lobbyists into slush funds? Totally fine! Leveraging your position to get your wife and kids hired as well-paid lobbyists? Not a problem! Selling your property at an insanely marked-up price to people who want to influence your vote? Whatever!

This is not just Republicans or Democrats. It’s both. The corruption in Congress is neck-deep, and the only body overseeing Congress is … Congress. And if someone wanted to appeal to the Supreme Court? Well, I think we all know how that would go. Besides, the Supreme Court already defined political corruption so narrowly that gold bars and bags of money is the only way to prove it (see Robert Menendez). There’s not a politician around that has any interest in curbing corruption: Not Biden, who spent 36 years in the Senate, and certainly not Donald Trump, whose only real interest in the job of President is the corruption it allows.

It’s depressing as hell. But at least there’s one honest person in this story of corruption: The ex-crackhead.

Here’s Jon Stewart.