The NPR Politics Podcast - How power, corruption & lies influence voters' choices

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

Overwhelming majorities of voters think that corruption is a problem, according to research from the Brennan Center for Justice. Democrats plan on making allegations of corruption a key part of their midterm strategies, but will that succeed in getting voters' support?This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, congressional reporter Eric McDaniel, and senior political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

One of the key messaging themes emerging for Democrats this year is corruption. But in an age where scandal does not seem to matter anymore, will that work? Let's dig into it. It's the MPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Eric McDaniel. I cover Congress.

And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And Eric, I want to start with you to start big picture. How are voters thinking or are they thinking about corruption right now? They definitely are. I mean, I recently saw some polling from the Brennan Center for Justice, which is a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for various kinds of small D Democratic reform, good governance stuff. And they polled. They asked voters of this. And what shocked me was how many voters think about corruption as a huge problem in American politics. We saw 90% of Republicans say it's a problem, 93% of Democrats, and 93% of self-identified independence. So basically all voters, right? And, And two-thirds of them of voters think of corruption as a systemic problem in governance, something that is part of the way American government is almost designed and functions rather than an ethical problem with politicians, right? So it's not that folks without ethics are going into politics hoping they can make a buck, but rather that the system incentivizes voters think lawmakers to prioritize their own self-interest and those of big corporations over the interests of regular voters. Oh, I do feel like the alarms start going off when I hear poll numbers where wide majority of Democrats and Republicans feel a certain way. Yeah.

But the word corruption does feel a little squishy, Mara. I mean, when voters say something like that, what are they actually talking about? Well, I think the simplest way to think about corruption is when people who are elected officials make money based on their office. In other words, when Donald Trump makes $2 billion in a year by investing in companies that have business before the government, where he's, where he's, going to make decisions or his Justice Department is going to make decisions about a merger between two companies and he invests in them. Or as in the case in Palantir, he invested in Palantir. Then he praised Palantir as a company and posted a social media post that included Palantir's stock ticker. So that's what people don't like. They don't like the idea that they're paying higher prices

while the president or members of Congress and their billionaire friends are making a lot of money. Yeah. And what's interesting, Mara, that I think about is when you and our colleague Ashley Lopez watched those swing voter focus groups in Pennsylvania and corruption came up. Those voters, I mean, responded to Trump specifically when asked about it. And they were kind of split over whether Trump himself was a specific problem or whether the whole system was kind of rigged. And that's why they weren't surprised by it, right? Right. But, you know, that could be all of the above. In other words, you just talked about some pretty eye-popping numbers of percentages of people who think that. corruption is a problem. In our focus groups, we basically had samples of three reactions. One is a shrug. Everyone does it. I don't think it's right, but all politicians do it. The second one were among Trump supporters who said, well, he's a great businessman. No wonder he's making so much money. And then the third reaction was, this is morally wrong. It's an abuse of power.

he's making money not as Donald Trump, the businessman, but as Donald Trump, the president of the United States, he should be representing us not adding to his own bottom line. Yeah, and Miles, I feel like I've seen Democrats on the campaign trail in the midterms trying to thread a needle between all of those different kinds of attitudes. Yeah, I mean, that's what I was going to say is like voters are feeling this way, but it does seem like Democrats are also seeing these same polling numbers, right? In terms of I've seen, we were just talking about the Michigan race yesterday. I was thinking about Abdul Al-Said and how he talks about specifically that, that basically, I think he says that Trump is the worst symptom of a broader disease, basically, but he's not the only Democrat out there talking about this. No, that's right.

I mean, Senator John Assoff, he is the relatively young senator, Democratic senator from the state of Georgia, and he's been on the campaign trail talking about this pretty regularly. Corruption in America runs a lot deeper than Donald Trump. American politics is coin-operated. money goes in, favors come out. He also talks about because of this, Georgians being stuck on a treadmill running and running and not getting ahead because when politicians are focused on themselves, they're not focused on kitchen table issues like the cost of living. I mean, the concept of corruption is a pretty heavy accusation to be throwing around. And so much of this does center on Trump, Mara, how does he respond to the fact that this is how Democrats are talking specifically about the money that he's made in the last year and a half or so?

Yeah, well, he's had a couple of different responses. One, he was asked about this while he was about to board Air Force One. He was on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews. And here's how he excused his own big windfall. Well, you know why I'm proffering? Because the stock market's going up. Everybody's profiting. Do you have a 401K?

How's your 401k done? It's about up 85%. Thank you, President Trump. And at other times, Trump has said that he doesn't know what his investment. are. He has professionals do it for him. He said that he told his kids not to do trades that affected his office, but he got no credit for that. He's also said that nobody cares. But J.D. Vance, the vice president, has gone even further. And not only excused Watergate, which is the big scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon's re-election committee broke into

Democratic Party headquarters, and then President Nixon tried to cover it up. He eventually was forced from office. J.D. Vance gave a speech at the Nixon Library, and here's what he said. If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy. So in other words, he's saying that Watergate should not have been a big deal. I guess he's excusing, breaking into the imposing party's headquarters, but he even went further and he said that Donald Trump is being persecuted

for making money off his office. So, of course, Jady Vance does have an audience of one. He's going further than any other Republican has to excuse Trump's what his critics would say is avaricious behavior.

But that's how confident some Republicans are that voters just don't care about this. That's what I don't understand here. This seems like a real misreading of how people feel about the situation to sort of minimize this idea that corruption is a problem in American politics when you say that there's kind of poll numbers that show

that almost everybody feels the opposite. I don't know what's going. What do you guys make of that? I think that's right. And there are a couple things here, which is like in some ways, voters belief that politicians across the board are corrupt helps give air cover to the president who is, you know, who made $2 billion in his first year of his second term. And in part when Republicans talk about the issue, they actually focus on other things. So Democrats have a lot of specific reforms. One of them is banning lawmakers, including the president and vice president, from trading stocks while in office and their direct family members from doing the same. Republicans advanced in the House a week or two ago a similar measure, although much more

narrow. It would prohibit lawmakers from buying new stocks while in office and focus just on Congress. That hasn't passed the Senate. It's much more narrow. But they do talk and think about corruption, but usually in the context of things like people abusing social safety net programs, committing fraud, receiving benefits while saying not working or something like that. And they have looked into that House Republicans this term. But it's certainly Democrats who are focused on corruption as a specific message, I'd say. I do want to play a little devil's advocate to the idea that this is going to matter in the midterms as a messaging strategy, considering over and over again what we hear from voters is that affordability and economic issues are their top priorities. Mara, I mean, I guess how important is this message going to be this midterm year? I think if you ask people if corruption alone as an issue was a top priority for them in the midterms,

I don't think it would rank that high. But what Democrats are trying to do is link it to voters' number one issue, which is affordability. They're trying to make the argument that the reason you're paying more at the pump, at the grocery store for health care, is because elected politicians, including Donald Trump, are only, interested in fattening their own bottom lines. And Trump is making more money. His billionaire friends are making more money. Meanwhile, you're broke. And Miles, I'd say you know this as well as anyone. Politics is both about persuasion trying to convince voters that your solution to something matters, but it's also about turnout, right? And Democratic voters have long been excited and motivated

when Democrats run on the idea of Trump's alleged corruption. All right. Let's take a quick break and more on all this in just a moment. And we're back. So, Eric, I want to focus in on something that we kind of brought up a second ago, which is this idea that Democrats are focusing on Trump when they kind of allege this idea of corruption. But they do seem to be broadening it out to a more systemic criticism, which I feel like ties into something we've talked about for years, which is that the party seems to realize that they can't run only on Trump. Is that a fair assessment here? I think that's totally right. And what I'd note is that it often starts with Trump. You heard Assoff say it goes deeper than Donald Trump.

But Trump is definitely a big focus. Top Judiciary Democrat, Jamie Raskin of Maryland in the House. I spoke with him back in May, and he brought up Watergate, too. Watergate was like a Cub Scout prank compared to what we're living through. I mean, we've seen the entire government just saturated with corruption. But, you know, there are candidates who take it more broad than that. I talked to a woman named Paige Cognetti in northeastern Pennsylvania. She is running as a Democrat.

She's the current mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, to replace Republican Rob Bresnahan. It's a competitive seat. It'll be a tight race in November. Her campaign motto is page against the machine. And she replaced a mayor who'd been indicted on corruption charges there in Scranton. And she has this eight-point plan. And it echoes a lot of the legislative proposals that have been floating around Democratic circles for a long time. So that starts with things like a lawmaker stock trading ban like we talked about in the first half.

It also includes a constitutional amendment to tighten restrictions on campaign finance that the Supreme Court continues to loosen. It includes things like locking the lobbying revolving door. So Democrats do have proposals to kind of address voter systemic concerns about the way lawmaking works. But we'll see ultimately if voters trust them to actually implement those things. Right. Obviously, those things aren't really going anywhere, the current makeup of Congress. But Mara, do you think it's possible that that could change if Democrats do retake the House and potentially do retake the Senate? I guess what is the future for some of these proposals realistically?

I don't think that as long as Trump is president, these proposals will pass. First of all, Democrats would have to take both houses of Congress with a veto-proof majority if they were going to get these things through. But first things first. And Democrats say, first, they need to make a real movement for reform. And I talked to Michael Waldman, who is head of the Brennan Center. He's followed this. And he says that historically, after big scandals, there has been a period of reform. That's how we got the reforms after Watergate.

Most of them have been chipped away now. But he says that he thinks this moment is very similar to other periods in American history where there have been reforms made. In other words, things that people thought were norms, were kind of voluntary guidelines, had to be codified in. to law. Teddy Roosevelt and the progressive era reforms came after the corruption of the gilded age. After Watergate came a wave of protections and reforms in the 1970s. It's now a half century later, the corruption is growing, the abuse is growing, and it's time for another

reform moment. So the question is, how long will it take before a reform movement turns into actual legislation? It might be quite a while. I guess the other thing I'm a little bit confused about is how to square some of this energy around the idea of corruption with just this broader cynicism about the political system and this sort of resignation we also hear from voters that everyone's corrupt or also this idea that kind of scandals don't seem to matter in the same way right now as maybe they did a few years ago. How do you guys square those two things? Well, people are cynical. I mean, that's where you get voters saying everyone does it. There's nothing we can do. And that's what Donald Trump actually has been pushing for.

quite a while. In other words, you know, the game is rigged, you know, just stick with your own tribe or party. But I think that there are members of Congress, there are elected officials locally who understand that if voter cynicism gets to a certain level, it really does undermine democracy. If you don't believe that your elected officials are honorable in any way, you know, then you lose faith in the entire system. Yeah, that's one of the things that Cognetti, the Pennsylvania candidate I was talking about earlier, brought up with me when we spoke on the phone. She was essentially like, if we can't address corruption, voters don't think we'll be able to address anything else, right? If we don't focus on the influence of lobbyists or how campaign spending happens or, you know, congressional stock trading as lawmakers, then how are we going to bridge the gap to address the things that voters actually need us to address, right? We have to address these systemic problems before we can address the kitchen table stuff. or at least try and walk and chew gum at the same time. Yeah.

And Democrats, as we said, are trying to link those two issues, kitchen table issues and corruption. They would argue because Donald Trump is funneling money to himself and to his wealthy billionaire friends, you end up holding the bag paying higher prices at the gas pump and the grocery store. And I should say, you know, the Republican campaign operatives I talk to say voters shouldn't trust Democrats

as messengers on this. They point to things like multiple. congressional Democrats facing federal fraud charges in the last few years. That started with Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who is currently serving federal prison time. Henry Quayar, a sitting representative for Democrats from South Texas who Trump pardoned on federal corruption charges. Quayar denies wrongdoing. And then a Florida congresswoman, Sheila Scherfilius McCormick, who is facing federal charges right now and resigned earlier this term over allegedly embezzling COVID funds or misappropriate. creating COVID funds and spending it on her campaign. She also denies her I'm doing.

All right. Well, that seems like a good place to leave it. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Eric McDaniel. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.