BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  NOV 10, 2026

Democrats swept the floor on election night. The post-election analysts, of whom there are many, have had few disagreements over the reasons: the economy, abuses of immigration enforcement, broken promises, the Iran war and all its divisive ramifications, tariffs, data centers, and big money in politics. It’s only a matter of degrees.

They are legitimate causes of the carnage, especially the economy. The Administration and Wall Street said it was humming along just fine, but the the people paying gas and grocery bills said not so fine. The voters won.

Behind those issues, however, was an undercurrent of angry feeling toward President Donald Trump that gave those problems more potency. I doubt the drubbing would have been as severe if there had not been such disgust with Trump’s behavior and his attitude.

Forty years ago, the main character in a movie told investors at a stockholders meeting that:

… “greed, for lack of a better term, is good. Greed is right. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all its forms: greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper [a mythical company central to the plot] but that other manufacturing corporation called the USA.” –Gordon Gekko, character in the film Wall Street

But greed is not good. Its more extreme version, avarice, is one of the seven deadly sins, as is pride (excessive self-love and the sense of superiority), which also applies here. There’s a very thin line between greed and corruption. One generally follows the other. It is human nature to have but always crave more and then crave too much. For politicians in particular greed eventually gets exposed and the perpetrator dethroned.

Some may remember Hans Christian Anderson’s 19th Century tale The Emperor’s New Clothes, in which corrupt swindlers played on the emperor’s insatiable vanity and sold him lavish clothes. They said the garments were invisible to stupid people but visible to all others. So off he went into the public square naked. It didn’t take long for a child on the street to loudly proclaim that the emperor has no clothes.

Trump told Americans to pretend he was on the ballot, presumably because he thought his presence would salvage the elections for his Republican candidates. It turned out all of Trump’s magic was gone and the voters knew it.

You could see it coming early in his second term as the scandals added up.

A Fox News pre-election poll found that corruption was the top issue for voters, edging out inflation, gas prices, and health care. The final CNBC All-America Economic Survey found that: “Voters are now more concerned about government corruption than any other issue, including high grocery and gas prices…” The Financial Times had similar findings: “About 69 percent of registered voters, and almost 50 percent of those who voted for the president in 2024, said they were ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ concerned about ‘corruption, self-dealing or conflicts of interest’ in the Trump administration.”

After the votes were in, “Nearly two of three voters said he (Trump) had the wrong priorities. Sixty-two percent said he put his personal interests above the country’s while 90% said government corruption was a “crucial” or “major” factor in their vote,” according to Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal.

Trump has always seemed to take things too far; to spoil what good he does, to be relentlessly vengeful against both friend and foe, and to be openly transfixed with personal and family riches and power. He’s just always greedy for more.

It is not hard to conclude that a lack of character, topped by an arrogant dismissal of the rule of law, civility, and a self-consuming approach to public service contributed significantly to his repudiation. His Administration became a haven for grifters, grafters, and swindlers.

I’m a Republican, but didn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2016, 2020, or 2024, primarily because of his lack of character and ethics. His opponents didn’t instill confidence, either. In his first campaign, Trump dialed into many of the issues the American people were upset about, and he showed great empathy for their conviction that they had no say in the conduct of federal governance and no access to politicians who seemed too busy accommodating the press, lobbyists, and deep-pocketed contributors.

Trump is tough talking, flamboyant, and unfettered from common sense, remorse, discretion, or truth. He made outlandish promises that required a suspension of disbelief, which his early disciples willingly granted him. They thought they were getting a rough-around-the-edges Sir Galahad, their Knight in shining armor, but Attila the Hun, the scourge of the East, showed up instead.

Trump has expressed little regret for the debacle voters laid at his feet, although he did concede possible excesses in immigration enforcement. In the closing days of the campaigns he seemed dismissive of the impact domestic issues were having. The day before the voting he was consumed by the reflecting pool, his mega-party ballroom, the arch, the golf course, and more gold plating of the capital city.

Voters believed Trump believed in them and maybe he did, but in his last term he has taken advantage of them. They may have realized that Make America Great Again wasn’t about them after all.

American character and the values that define it are the glue that keeps our society and our politics tethered to what is right and just. It is in our DNA. Character defines us and we can’t pursue our goals following leaders who lack it. Character and corruption cannot coexist in the same body politic. Corruption and ethical lapses to the degree it has infected today’s politics threaten our constitutional democracy and two and a half centuries of unequaled progress, unless, of course, voters put a stop to it.

So voters and those they elected to Congress have a great challenge in front of them.

There will be dark days ahead. Debunking the President in the midterms was one small step when giant leaps will be needed in coming months and years to resolve the issues that dominated the campaigns, especially in the next two years when Trump still wields a veto sharpie. There is no assurance that the newly empowered Democrats, bent on a barrage of investigations and leaning more leftward away from the majority of Americans, will be that Knight in shining armor. The Republican minority appears to be taking a combative stance and more right-leaning posture as well.

It will take public engagement and consensus legislating to bring back order to years of foreign policy chaos. It will take herculean statesmanship to extricate the U.S. from the Iran War and repair our alliances with Western and Eastern Europe, including the valiant Ukrainians, just for starters.

An even greater challenge will be recreating a political and social environment in which self-rule, representative government, Federalism, the principles embodied in the Constitution and the institutions of government, primarily the US Congress, can flourish.

American citizens—We The People—will have to chart the course and stick with it. It cannot be left to the political class. This means each of us must both practice and help restore civility, civic engagement, civil discourse, honorable public service, national unity, and the human bonds that make us one nation of many people. These basic values have been trampled upon and torn from the fabric of our system of government by very partisan and self-consumed elected officials and angry distrustful citizens isolated and alienated from one another.

We’ve already learned that good governance is not possible without a set of values. We must quit settling for hold-your-nose-and-vote choices, as a good friend reminded me. We are better than that.

Americans will need the tools and the knowledge to accomplish ideals of this magnitude. The tools and a path forward are available (Jerry Climer and I wrote a book about them, Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People).

It is time to rebuild, reform and renew our Republic, step by step, inch by inch. It can be done. We don’t need any more imperial emperors who don’t realize they have no clothes

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Here are a just a few of examples of the corruption, greed, unchecked, and self-aggrandizing actions that have cast a shadow over the Trump Administrations, the President, and his family:

• Unilaterally turning his rath on long-standing allies such as Canada, the European Union, Ukraine, Britain, and soon probably Taiwan.
• His quest to reshape global geopolitics, presumably in concert with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Xi Jin Ping, China’s resident dictator.
• Imperialist actions in South America and Cuba, Haiti, and other nations of Central America in part as a manifestation of the war on drug smuggling, and bringing down autocratic leaders.
• The brazen manner in which he and his family have enriched themselves and their friends through nefarious deals, some of which successfully skirted the law but certainly did not escape the appearance of illegality, abuse of office, or impropriety. Examples include:
  • A Russian oligarch’ s financing his son’s wedding (after the backlash, Trump said his son would repay the full amount);
  • The luxurious new Air Force 1 Boeing 747 gifted to Trump by Qatar, a state beholden to the U.S. and of divided loyalties;
  • His campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize and the fabrication of wars he has ended that justify the award, compounded by what appeared to be the solicitation of a peace prize from the soccer federation running the World Cup in the US;
  • His son-in-law Jaren Kushner’s plan for a Trump resort on Albania’s Sazan Island and the nearby coastline, while serving as the President’s emissary throughout Eastern Europe and Asia;
  • A large increase in the president’s family income last year that hit more than $2.2 billion, based largely on his escapades in cryptocurrency, including his new crypto company, World Liberty Financial, now partially tied to the United Arab Emirates;
  • “Trump has also been involved in other ventures, such as the $TRUMP coin, a “meme coin” bearing his name. Royalties from coin sales provided one of his largest income sources in 2025, the financial disclosure forms show, netting him $635 million,” according to the Washington Post;
  • The President has also been active in the stock market, shedding criticism for insider trading and allegedly engaging in thousands of stock transactions (contends were all done electronically without his influence);
  • Benefitting substantially from the use of his properties by organizations and corporations, particularly political partisan functions by Republican Party entities;
  • Deals made with foreign governments and government-affiliated companies for precious minerals, fuel, and other commodities with little or no transparency for us to judge their veracity;
  • His unilateral, and unapproved risky investments of billions of tax dollars in partial ownership of foreign and domestic companies that do business with the Federal government;
  • The unauthorized use of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars for what were clearly partisan campaign commercials to bolster his image in the 2026 mid-term elections;
  • The insertion of national guard units in enforcement of illegal immigration laws in a number of major American cities, some of which experienced deadly violence;
  • Other questionable actions taken to promote his imagery and greatly exaggerate his prominence in American politics, such as:
    • His action or intent to rename the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Ontario, the defense department, the Kennedy Center, and Dulles airport and his refusal to provide funding for such institutions as the Kennedy Center if his name isn’t featured prominently in the name.
    • His rampage through the nation’s capital, creating monuments to his presidency and himself, Trump-centric parades, programs and even a cage match on the White House ground, many of which may violate law and use of government funds, and restrict public access to public spaces. Some of them are his heroes’ garden; tournament golf course, a huge gilded ballroom in place of the East Wing of the White House, the bulldozing of the Rose Garden replaced with a concrete patio replete with tables and beach chairs and umbrellas; the failed attempt to redo the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool; the demolition of the White House south lawn for a new helipad; remodeling of the Lincoln Bedroom, the Oval Office, a promenade and the Cabinet room, all without an accounting or approval of funding from Congress and the intermingling of public and private funds from donors who have interests before the Federal Government.
    • Cutting down more than 400 trees and the destruction of a cherished, inexpensive public golf course and park for a new, exclusive championship tournament golf club, again without clearance or funding from Congress.
    • Slashing the budget of the Park Service to pay for his new capital monuments.
    • The construction of a huge triumphal arch that will obscure the line between Arlington Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, again without congressional oversight or funding, in defiance of hundreds of memorial experts and architects, and the attorneys general of both Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a new book, Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People and an earlier book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is co-founder and former Board chair of the Congressional Institute. Johnson is retired. He is married to Thalia Assuras and has six children and six grandchildren.