When Hillary Clinton was first lady, a furor erupted over reports that she had once made $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures. Even though it had happened a dozen years before her husband became president, it became a scandal that lasted weeks and forced the White House to initiate a review.

当希拉里·克林顿还是第一夫人时，有报道称她曾投资1000美元购买牛产品期货，赚了10万美元，这在当时引发了一阵公愤。尽管发生在她丈夫成为总统的十多年前，这件事还是成了持续数周的丑闻，迫使白宫启动了一项审查。

Thirty-one years later, after dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket — 280 times the Clinton lucre and in this case from a person with a vested interest in policies set by her husband’s government. Scandal? Furor? Washington moved on while barely taking notice.

时隔31年，杰夫·贝佐斯在马阿拉歌庄园的晚餐后同意资助一部关于梅拉尼娅·特朗普的宣传电影，据报道，这部电影将令她将2800万美元直接收入囊中——是希拉里·克林顿发的那笔财的280倍，而且这一次是来自一个可以从她丈夫的政府政策获得利益的人。丑闻？公愤？华盛顿几乎没有注意到这件事。

The Trumps are hardly the first presidential family to profit from their time in power, but they have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House. The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking. The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone.

特朗普家族并不是第一个在执政期间获利的总统家族，但是在将总统职权变现方面，他们做得比任何白宫主人都多。这种将总统职权商业化的规模和范围令人震惊。仅在过去几个月里，特朗普家族及其商业伙伴就通过一种新的加密货币中收取了3.2亿美元的费用，为价值数十亿美元的海外房地产交易做中介，并在华盛顿开设了一家名为“行政部门”的高级俱乐部，每位会员入会费为50万美元。

Just last week, Qatar handed over a luxury jet meant for Mr. Trump’s use not just in his official capacity but also for his presidential library after he leaves office. Experts have valued the plane, formally donated to the Air Force, at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined.

就在上周，卡塔尔移交了一架豪华飞机，不仅供特朗普用于公务，还供他卸任后的总统图书馆使用。专家们估计这架正式捐赠给美国空军的飞机价值2亿美元，超过了此前所有美国总统收到的外国礼物的总和。

And Mr. Trump hosted an exclusive dinner at his Virginia club for 220 investors in the $TRUMP cryptocurrency that he started days before taking office in January. Access was openly sold based on how much money they chipped in — not to a campaign account but to a business that benefits Mr. Trump personally.

特朗普在他的弗吉尼亚俱乐部为220名$TRUMP加密货币的投资者举办了一场专属晚宴，该币是他在1月就职几天前启动的。面见总统的机会被公开出售，取决于这些人出了多少钱——不是捐给竞选账户，而是捐给一家让特朗普个人受益的企业。

来自上海的特朗普总统加密货币投资者路成（音）周五参观完白宫后离开。他在前一天晚上出席了在华盛顿郊外的特朗普国家高尔夫俱乐部举行的专属晚宴。

By conventional Washington standards, according to students of official graft, the still-young Trump administration is a candidate for the most brazen use of government office in American history, perhaps eclipsing even Teapot Dome, Watergate and other famous scandals.

根据研究官员腐败的学者的说法，按照华盛顿的传统标准，仍然年轻的特朗普政府可以入围美国历史上最公然滥用职权的政府，甚至可能超过茶壶山油田丑闻、水门事件和其他著名丑闻。

“I’ve been watching and writing about corruption for 50 years, and my head is still spinning,” said Michael Johnston, a professor emeritus at Colgate University and author of multiple books on corruption in the United States.

科尔盖特大学荣休教授、著有多本关于美国腐败的书籍的迈克尔·约翰斯顿说：“我关注和撰写腐败问题已经50年了，但我仍然感到震惊。”

Yet a mark of how much Mr. Trump has transformed Washington since his return to power is the normalization of moneymaking schemes that once would have generated endless political blowback, televised hearings, official investigations and damage control. The death of outrage in the Trump era, or at least the dearth of outrage, exemplifies how far the president has moved the lines of accepted behavior in Washington.

然而，关于特朗普重新掌权以来华盛顿发生了多大的变化，一个标志就是：曾经会引发无休止的政治反击、电视转播听证会、官方调查和止损操作的赚钱计划已经变得正常化。在特朗普时代，愤怒的消失——或者至少是缺乏——体现了这位总统在多大程度上改变了华盛顿公认的行为准则。

Mr. Trump, the first convicted felon elected president, has erased ethical boundaries and dismantled the instruments of accountability that constrained his predecessors. There will be no official investigations because Mr. Trump has made sure of it. He has fired government inspectors general and ethics watchdogs, installed partisan loyalists to run the Justice Department, F.B.I. and regulatory agencies and dominated a Republican-controlled Congress unwilling to hold hearings.

特朗普是第一位被判犯有重罪的当选总统，他抹去了道德界限，废除了约束其前任的问责机制。不会有官方调查，因为特朗普已经确保了这一点。他解雇了政府的监察长和操守监督员，任命忠于党派的人执掌司法部、联邦调查局和监管机构，并主导了一个由共和党控制、不愿举行听证会的国会。。

Paul Rosenzweig, who was a senior counsel to Ken Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton and later served in the George W. Bush administration, said the lack of uproar over Mr. Trump’s ethical norm-busting has made him wonder whether longstanding assumptions about public desire for honest government were wrong all along.

保罗·罗森茨威格曾是肯·斯塔尔的比尔·克林顿总统调查团队的高级法律顾问，后来在乔治·W·布什政府任职。他说，特朗普违反道德规范的行为没有引起人们的强烈不满，这让他怀疑，长期以来关于公众希望有一个诚信政府的假设是否一直都是错误的。

“Either the general public never cared about this,” he said, or “the public did care about it but no longer does.” He concluded that the answer is that “80 percent, the public never cared” and “20 percent, we are overwhelmed and exhausted.”

“要么是公众从来就不关心这件事，”他说，要么是“公众曾经关心过，但现在不关心了”。他总结说，答案是“80%是因为公众从未关心过，20%是因为我们已经不知所措、筋疲力尽”。

“Outrage hasn’t died,” Mr. Rosenzweig added. “It was always just a figment of elite imagination.”

“愤怒并不是消失了，”罗森茨威格还说。“其实是它一直都只是精英们凭空想象出来的。”

The White House has defended Mr. Trump’s actions, brushing off questions about ethical considerations by saying that he was so rich that he did not need more money.

白宫为特朗普的行为进行了辩护，称他非常富有，不需要更多的钱，以此搪塞有关操守的问题。

“The president is abiding by all conflict of interest laws that are applicable to the president,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. “The American public believes it is absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency. This president was incredibly successful before giving it all up to serve our country publicly.”

“总统遵守所有适用于总统的利益冲突法，”白宫新闻发言人卡罗琳·莱维特说。“美国公众认为，任何有关总统以权谋私的说法都是荒谬的。这位总统在放弃一切、通过公职为国家服务之前，曾经取得了令人难以置信的成功。”

But saying that he is abiding by all conflict of interest laws that are applicable to the president is meaningless since, as Mr. Trump himself has long noted, conflict of interest laws are not applicable to the president.

但是，说他遵守所有适用于总统的利益冲突法没有意义，因为正如特朗普本人长期以来指出的，利益冲突法不适用于总统。

Moreover, he has not given it all up; in fact, he is still making money from his private business interests run by his sons, and independent estimates indicate that he has hardly sacrificed financially by entering politics. Forbes estimated Mr. Trump’s net worth at $5.1 billion in March, a full $1.2 billion higher than the year before and the highest it has ever been in the magazine’s rankings.

此外，他并没有放弃一切；事实上，他仍在通过儿子们经营的私人生意赚钱，而且独立评估显示，他从政几乎没有在经济上做出牺牲。《福布斯》估计，今年3月特朗普的净资产为51亿美元，比去年整整高出12亿美元，是该杂志排名中最高的。

The president’s sons scoff at the idea that they should limit their business activities, which directly benefit their father. Donald Trump Jr. has said that the family restrained itself during his father’s first term only to be criticized anyway, so it made no sense to hold back anymore. “They’re going to hit you no matter what,” he said last week at a business forum in Qatar. “So we’re just going to play the game.”

总统的儿子们不认为他们应该限制直接有利于父亲的商业活动。小唐纳德·特朗普曾表示，家族在父亲的第一个任期内很克制，结果还是遭到了批评，所以再克制下去没有任何意义。“无论如何，他们都会打击你，”他上周在卡塔尔的一个商业论坛上表示。“所以我们就该怎么做怎么做。”

There have been some burgeoning signs of public pushback in recent days. The gift of the Qatar plane seemed to break through to the general audience in a way that other episodes have not. A Harvard/CAPS Harris poll released last week found that 62 percent of Americans thought the gift “raises ethical concerns about corruption,” and even some prominent right-wing Trump supporters like Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer voiced objections.

最近几天，公众开始出现一些反对的迹象。卡塔尔赠送飞机一事似乎以一种其他事件没有的方式触动了普通大众。上周公布的哈佛大学/CAPS哈里斯民意调查显示，62%的美国人认为这份礼物“引发了对腐败的道德担忧”，甚至本·夏皮罗和劳拉·卢默等著名的特朗普右翼支持者也表示反对。

卡塔尔移交了一架豪华波音747飞机供特朗普使用。

But while several dozen demonstrators protested outside Mr. Trump’s golf club the other night, Democrats are split about how much to focus on Trump’s profitmaking, with some preferring to concentrate on economic issues. Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, has been leading the charge the other direction, making floor speeches and leading news conferences denouncing what he calls “brazen corruption.”

但是，尽管数十名示威者前几天晚上在特朗普的高尔夫俱乐部外抗议，但民主党人在特朗普牟取利益的事应该引起多少关注上存在分歧，一些人更倾向于关注经济问题。康涅狄格州民主党参议员克里斯托弗·墨菲一直力主从另一个方向发起攻击，他在议会发表演讲，主持新闻发布会，谴责他所说的“无耻的腐败”。

“It is unlikely he is going to be held accountable through traditional means,” Mr. Murphy said in an interview. “There are going to be no special counsels; there’s going to be no D.O.J. action. And so it’s really just about public mobilization and politics. If Republicans keep paying a price for the corruption by losing special elections throughout the next year, maybe that causes them to rethink their complicity.”

“他不太可能通过传统方式被追究责任，”墨菲在接受采访时说。“不会有特别检察官；司法部不会采取任何行动。所以真的只是关乎公众动员和政治了。如果共和党人在明年的特别选举中继续为腐败付出代价，也许会让他们重新考虑自己的共谋行为。”

Mr. Trump had long promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington after years of corruption by other politicians. When he first ran for president in 2016, he excoriated the Clintons for taking money from Saudi Arabia and other Middle East monarchies with an obvious interest in currying favor in case Hillary Clinton won the presidency. But that money went to the Clinton Foundation for philanthropic purposes. The money Mr. Trump’s family is now bringing in from the Middle East is going into their personal accounts through a variety of ventures that The New York Times has documented.

特朗普长期以来一直承诺，在其他政治人士多年的腐败之后，他将“抽干华盛顿的沼泽”。2016年第一次竞选总统时，他痛斥克林顿夫妇从沙特阿拉伯和其他中东君主制国家接受资金，显然是为了讨好希拉里·克林顿，以备她赢得总统宝座。但这笔钱都捐给了克林顿基金会，用于慈善目的。根据《纽约时报》的记录，特朗普家族现在从中东带来的资金正通过各种投资进入他们的个人账户。

Mr. Johnston, the corruption scholar, said the Trumps represent “an absolute outlier case, not just in monetary terms” but also “in terms of their brazen disregard” for past standards. “While we might disagree as to the merits of policy, the president and figures in the executive branch are expected to serve the public good, not themselves,” he said.

腐败问题学者约翰斯顿说，特朗普家族“绝对是一个孤例，不仅在金钱方面”，而且，也是在“他们公然无视”过去的标准这方面。“虽然我们可能会对政策的优劣持不同意见，但我们都认为总统和行政部门的人物应该是为公众利益服务，而不是为他们自己，”他说。

Mr. Trump made a nod at those standards in his first term by saying he would restrict his family business from doing deals overseas.

特朗普在第一个任期内对这些标准表示认可，称他将限制家族企业在海外的生意往来。

But since then, he has been convicted of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records and held liable in civil court for fraud while the Supreme Court has conferred immunity on him for official acts. In his second term, Mr. Trump has dispensed with self-imposed ethical limits.

但从那以后，他因伪造商业记录而被判34项重罪，并因欺诈在民事法庭上被判负有责任，而最高法院却给予他公务行为豁免权。在第二个任期内，特朗普取消了自我道德约束。

“He’s not trying to give the appearance that he’s doing the right thing anymore,” said Fred Wertheimer, founder of Democracy 21 and a longtime advocate for government ethics. “There’s nothing in the history of America that approaches the use of the presidency for massive personal gain. Nothing.”

 “他不再试图给人一种他在做正确事情的感觉，”民主21组织的创始人、长期倡导廉政的弗雷德·韦特海默说。“在美国历史上，没有任何事情能与利用总统职位谋取巨额个人利益相提并论。没有。”

Congressional Republicans spent years investigating Hunter Biden, the son of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., for trading on his family name to make millions of dollars, even labeling the clan the “Biden Crime Family.” But while Hunter Biden’s cash flow was a tiny fraction of that of Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, Republicans have shown no appetite for looking into the current presidential family’s finances.

国会共和党人花了数年时间调查拜登总统的儿子亨特·拜登利用自己的家族地位赚取大量金钱，甚至给这个家族贴上了“拜登犯罪家族”的标签。但是，尽管亨特·拜登的现金流跟小唐纳德·特朗普、埃里克·特朗普和贾里德·库什纳相比只是个零头，共和党人对调查现任总统家族的财务状况并没有表现出任何兴趣。

“The American public has had to inure itself to the corruption of Donald Trump and his presidency because the president and his Republican Party have given the American public no choice in the matter,” said J. Michael Luttig, a conservative former appeals court judge who has become a critic of Mr. Trump.

“美国公众不得不习惯于唐纳德·特朗普和他的总统职位的腐败，因为总统和他的共和党让美国公众在这件事上别无选择，”已成为特朗普批评者的保守派前上诉法院法官迈克尔·卢蒂格说。

Mr. Trump evinces no concern that people funneling money into his family coffers have interests in government policies. Some of the crypto investors who attended his dinner on Thursday night acknowledged that they were using the opportunity to press him on regulation of the industry. According to a video obtained by The Times, he reciprocated by promising guests that he would not be as hard on them as the Biden administration was.

特朗普似乎丝毫不担心那些向他的家族金库输送资金的人与政府政策有利益关系。周四晚上参加他晚宴的一些加密货币投资者承认，他们正在利用这个机会，就行业监管问题向他施压。根据时报获得的一段视频，作为回应，他向嘉宾们承诺，他不会像拜登政府那样严厉对待他们。

One guest at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., that night was Justin Sun, a Chinese billionaire who became one of the largest holders of the $TRUMP memecoin after buying more than $40 million, earning him a spot in an even more exclusive private VIP reception with the president before the dinner. The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023 accused Mr. Sun of fraud, but after Mr. Trump took over the agency put its lawsuit on hold even as it dropped other crypto investigations.

当晚来到弗吉尼亚州斯特林特朗普国家高尔夫俱乐部的其中一位嘉宾是中国亿万富翁孙宇晨，他购买了价值4000多万美元的$TRUMP加密货币，成为该币最大的持有者之一，这让他有资格参加晚宴前与总统举行的一场更高级的私人贵宾招待会。美国证券交易委员会曾于2023年指控孙宇晨欺诈，但在特朗普接管后，该机构搁置了诉讼，同时放弃了其他加密货币调查。

As for Mr. Bezos and Qatar, each has reason to get on Mr. Trump’s good side. In his first term, Mr. Trump, peeved at coverage in The Washington Post, which is owned by Mr. Bezos, repeatedly pushed aides to punish his main firm, Amazon, by drastically increasing its U.S. Postal Service shipping rates and denying it a multibillion-dollar Pentagon contract. Mr. Trump denounced Qatar as a “funder of terrorism” and isolated it diplomatically. He has not targeted either Mr. Bezos or Qatar in his second term.

至于贝佐斯和卡塔尔，他们都有理由与特朗普搞好关系。在第一个任期内，特朗普对贝佐斯旗下的《华盛顿邮报》的报道感到恼火，多次敦促助手惩罚贝佐斯的主要公司亚马逊，大幅提高其美国邮政服务的运费，并否决了一项价值数十亿美元的五角大楼合同。特朗普谴责卡塔尔是“恐怖主义的资助者”，并在外交上孤立了它。在第二个任期内，他既没有针对贝佐斯，也没有针对卡塔尔。