This column was originally published by TheStatehouseFile.com.
By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
July 6, 2026
When the news broke that President Donald Trump had made $2.2 billion in his first year back in office—at least some of it in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause—the revelation barely made a ripple.
In part, that is because Trump’s assaults on law, decency and other norms of a civilized and self-governing society have been so numerous that each new one produces little more than a shrug.
A generation ago, if a president had enriched himself by doing business with foreign nations—many of them historic adversaries of the United States—his transgression at the very least would have been enough to produce probing congressional investigations.
And even impeachment.
Not now.
That’s because Trump uncovered two linked and hidden vulnerabilities in our system of government and exploited them.
The first is that our system of laws is dependent upon the good faith of the people in office. No law, however stringent, will be effective if the person entrusted with enforcing it lacks the will to do so.
There are many Republicans who privately despair over the damage this president is doing to this country, its institutions and even their own party. But they also understand that Donald Trump is an amoral creature who views other human beings only in terms of the good they can do for him. They know he would be willing to crush them, their families and all they hold dear just to send a message that his whims should be viewed as laws of nature.
So, they cower.
Trump’s second fundamental insight has been that an overwhelming record of offenses becomes its own defense. A transgression that would have ended other presidencies becomes another ho-hum event when it is followed by another and another and another on a daily or hourly basis.
In fact, anyone who is troubled by just one of these violations can be tarred as someone who is afflicted with “Trump Derangement Syndrome”—an accusation that neatly shifts the focus away from the offense at hand, whether it be sexual assault or taking money from historic enemies and taxpayers, to the person who still has a functioning conscience.
This is bad—on many levels.
The first and most obvious is that our norms of self-government aren’t like a rubber ball. They don’t just bounce right back.
Whoever is president next, whether he or she is a Democrat or a Republican, will operate in an atmosphere less constrained by law or our constitutional balancing of powers between three co-equal branches of government.
Americans’ historic fear of an imperial presidency—a fear that stretches back to the country’s founding—will be much, much closer to being realized.
But another level of this creeping malfeasance may be even more troubling.
Trump’s approach to undermining and assaulting the pillars of a law-abiding, self-governing society has seeped downward.
We have seen as much here in Indiana.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales and Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith all are Trump acolytes. All have adopted his belief that more is less when it comes to trashing the institutions and values they took oaths to uphold.
Before Rokita even took office, he tried to figure out a way he could hang onto a lucrative private-sector gig while serving as attorney general—as if being the state’s lawyer wasn’t enough to occupy his time. Since then, he’s waded into one costly battle after another, few of them having anything to do with being attorney general. Along the way, he’s maneuvered the Indiana Supreme Court into setting up a two-tiered system of rules of conduct for Hoosier lawyers—a strict tier for every attorney but one in the state and another, much laxer one for the attorney general.
Beckwith has used his office to pick fights with people who are his constituents and boasted about his refusal to acknowledge, much less honor, his duty to represent them.
And Morales? His tenure was one scandal after another.
He will leave office, it is true, but not because GOP Hoosier officeholders rediscovered their consciences.
No, he’s going because Republicans looked at the polls and feared he would lead them to party-wide disaster.
That’s the only ray of sunshine here.
Diego Morales is gone not because our institutions served us well but because the people did.
Because they said enough was enough.
There’s a lesson in that.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Also, the views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
