As anyone knows who reads the news carefully, the Trump regime is clearly kleptocratic in the accumulation of wealth while the Mango Paedo is in office. On top of this, his and his appointees’ inability to understand the world and the ramifications of some of their stupid decisions, clearly indicates they are a kakistocracy as well.
Kleptocracy is a term used to refer to a government in which those exercising political power use that power to enrich themselves, their families and their associates1.
There is now an enormous amount of evidence that the Trump regime has used the presidency to boost the Trump family’s private financial interests. For example, Trump and his family have derived very large revenues from cryptocurrency ventures while Trump has simultaneously exercised governmental power over the regulatory environment governing cryptocurrencies. Reporting in July estimated US$1.4 billion in Trump-related revenue during 2025, including cryptocurrency, Truth Social and other business interests, while ethics experts warned that his second presidency has produced unprecedented conflicts of interest2.
Not only is it Trump and his family with their snouts in the trough, but Steve Witkoff, one of Trump’s Laurel and Hardy middle east envoys has disclosed more than US$100 million in 2025 from an entity connected to World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency entity he co-founded with Trump and his family3.
There seems to be absolutely no understanding of the concept of conflict of interest, to the extent that weakening of ethics laws allows money to flow in large quantities to Trump and his family. Much of this money comes from foreign governments and others seeking to curry favour with Trump4.
Kakistocracy is a term used to describe a government in which those exercising political power are the worst, or least qualified people5. While it is easy to dismiss Trump and his cabinet of curiosities as comprising people who are stupid (examples are numerous), it is probably more accurate generally to describe them as being selected on criteria other than competence. One of the striking features about the second Trump administration, is the number of people in senior positions who are extraordinarily wealthy, with as many as 57 senior officials being worth over US$100 million. This is more than four times the combined number in the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations6.
The Trump regime selects people on the basis of loyalty, wealth, ideology, personal connections or subservience far above selection for competence.
These two types of government, kleptocracy and kakistocracy, are mutually reinforcing, with the desire for personal enrichment leading to the selection of wealthy/loyal insiders, and their concomitant weakening of independent institutions and expertise, leading to the fact that there are fewer people capable of challenging bad decisions. This in turn leads to more poor decisions being made, with a greater dependence on loyalists to cover these up, explain them away or blame them on someone else, which in turn provides greater opportunities for personal enrichment7. This is a self-reinforcing political system, and it is characterised by what is termed epistemic failure. This means that it has failed in one or more ways of acquiring and justifying knowledge of something8. This explains Trump’s and his cohort of incompetents’ refusal to accept reality and their inability to understand the likely ramifications of his idiotic decisions.
A functioning government needs mechanisms that allow reality to contradict the leader. Such phrases as ‘That policy isn’t working’; ‘the intelligence doesn’t support that conclusion’; ‘that goes against the constitution’; ‘economists think this will cause inflation’; ‘allies are telling you that this will damage the alliance’; and ‘the scientific evidence contradicts your claim’, are never heard in the Trump administration. A healthy administration has the institutions capable of delivering such messages to the decision-makers, and a cult like ‘personalist’ government, where power is largely concentrated in the hands of a single individual tends to progressively eliminate those feedback mechanisms9.
This gives you something more dangerous than simple incompetence; i.e. an inability to learn from reality. This is because the system increasingly rewards people who tell the leader what he wants to hear; not that his decisions are idiotic, but that he is brilliant (a stable genius?). Trump and Putin are birds of a feather. For example, Trump is deluded with respect to the Iran war, just as Putin is deluded with respect to the Ukraine war. If Putin isn’t defenestrated soon, he will destroy Russia. Similarly, if Trump is not effectively ousted by the result of the November mid-term elections, the US, as an experiment in democracy is finished.
Sources
- https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/07/what-kleptocracy-and-how-does-it-work
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-01/trump-financial-disclosure-crypto-gifts-real-estate/106865296
- https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/steve-witkoff-earned-over–100-million-from-trump-crypto-ent
- https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-weak-federal-ethics-laws-enable-presidential-profiteering
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy
- https://www.citizen.org/article/trump-billionaire-boys-club/
- https://www.demdigest.org/kleptocracy-and-kakistocracy-feed-on-each-other/
- https://jmlascala71.medium.com/its-what-we-know-that-just-ain-t-so-epistemic-failure-in-software-engineering-6ad0dcb37bdd
- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-rise-of-personalist-rule/