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| |  Illustration by Nikki Ernst for POLITICO | In all of American history, only about a dozen people have been convicted of treason, according to the FBI. But if American voters, pundits and politicians are to be believed — and that last one is a shaky proposition, it must be said — the country, and the halls of power in Washington in particular, suffers from an infestation of traitors. Nancy Pelosi is a traitor. Mitt Romney is a traitor. Ilhan Omar is a traitor. Mike Pence is a traitor. Gen. Mark Milley is a traitor. And Donald Trump? A traitor on par with Benedict Arnold and Jefferson Davis, blared the LA Times in a letter to the editor that, in our time of toxic politics, managed to make the invocation of perhaps the most famous traitors in history seem utterly anodyne. It would be easy to wave these indictments away as petty intra-party squabbles and partisan sour grapes. But thanks largely to Trump’s bursting the thermometer of political discourse, gone are the days when our political rivals were political rivals. Now there’s only us Americans and those traitors. According to America, America has been betrayed from within. The numbers tell the damning story of America’s social breakdown: The trend line for trust in government is subterranean; something like one in four of us — about 82 million people — think it will soon be necessary to “take up arms” against it. Trust in the courts has hit rock bottom and fired up a jackhammer. And 71 percent of Americans feel that “interpersonal confidence” has worsened in the past 20 years — a statistic of especially grim relevance when ringing someone’s doorbell or pulling into a driveway can get you shot dead. To try and make sense of all this, POLITICO Magazine commissioned a special collection of stories exploring the rise of what we might call “betrayal politics.” From a multi-million dollar embezzlement scandal that rocked a small Illinois town to the parade of backstabbing that was the Trump administration, from Benedict Arnold to the death of bowling leagues, these stories give us insights into the psychologies, ideologies and hunger for raw power that define our moment — and, improbable as it sounds, offer us a modicum hope. Fellow Americans, assorted traitors: Welcome to the Betrayal Issue. We begin with a tale from Ronald Reagan’s hometown, where a betrayal of astonishing proportions forced a reckoning over the government’s failure to protect its citizens. It all started in the spring of 2012, when the city’s well-liked comptroller, Rita Crundwell, was arrested. Over the course of some 20 years, Crundwell had stolen nearly $54 million from the city’s coffers to spend on jewels, cowboy hats and hundreds of horses, among other luxuries. But, in a strange way, there’s a positive side to Crundwell’s betrayal. After she was found out, the city introduced more transparency into its government. Voters threw out the entire city council. A new mayor was elected. And a combination of asset seizure and lawsuits recovered millions of stolen dollars. That “Rita money,” as locals call it, helped smooth streets, renovate the library, replace pipes and ultimately reinvent Dixon as an artsy town of thriving small businesses, surrounded by farms and state parks. “Strangely enough, this renaissance really got going because of Rita Crundwell,” writes Kathy Gilsinan. Read the story.
| | | |  | “Old dudes are eating Jell-O, everyone is talking about how great they are. I don’t really need to be there for that.” Can you guess who said this about Congressional Democrats? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**
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Illustrations by Taylor Callery for POLITICO | How Trump Betrayed Politics … You could view former President Donald Trump’s life as a series of betrayals: Cheating on his wives, screwing over workers, stabbing his own cabinet officials in the back — not to mention the betrayal of American democracy he committed on Jan. 6. But he isn’t just a betrayer, writes biographer and longtime Trumpologist Gwenda Blair: He has turned betrayal into an asset, and a galvanizing political movement. “There’s a perverse symmetry to it all,” she writes. “You’ve been betrayed, says the Betrayer-in-Chief. Who better to offer you retribution than an expert?”
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| People are still bandying about this week’s CNN town hall with Trump. And they won’t be ready to stop talking about it anytime soon. You could lose yourself in a thousand think pieces and hot takes, or you could read these talking points and drop them into a conversation to sound like a reporter on the media beat. (From POLITICO’s Adam Wren) — If someone rolls their eyes about CNN engaging in the town hall at your weekend brunch, tell them, “Two things can be true at once: Yes, an interview with the GOP frontrunner is newsworthy and worthwhile journalism; but that doesn’t mean the town hall in front of a stacked audience that seemed freshly imported from Mar-a-Lago was the best format for CNN to choose.” — If it was a raw grab for ratings, it was CNN good, but not Fox News good. The town hall scored 3 million viewers at its peak, which was CNN’s second best town hall since 2016 (the first was Joe Biden in 2020, which drew more than 3.4 million voters). It was also roughly the same nightly viewership Tucker Carlson had before he got fired last month. But it trailed some Fox News-hosted town halls with Trump in 2020. — Mention how unflinching CNN’s Oliver Darcy was about the external and internal blowback to the town hall in CNN’s own Reliable Sources newsletter. “It's hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” he wrote. — Pay close attention to whether E. Jean Carroll, who had just won a $5 million judgment against Trump in a defamation lawsuit hours before the town hall began, sues Trump again for his criticism of her in the town hall, where he called her a “whack job.”
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Illustration by Giulio Bonasera for POLITICO | Great American Betrayals … Ever since Benedict Arnold tried to hand West Point over to the British, betrayals have charted the course of American history. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison betrayed their anti-constructionist ideals. Southern secessionists in Congress betrayed their country. Politicians betraying constituents, senators betraying presidents, political candidates betraying the military — it’s all part of the American story. “Some prominent cases speak to the fragility of our union,” writes Joshua Zeitz, “but they also might just offer a bit of hope that, as it has in the past, the U.S. will persevere.”
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POLITICO illustration/Photos by iStock | How to Fix America’s Trust Problem … In his now canonical 2000 book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Harvard political scientist George Putnam diagnosed the erosion of U.S. “social capital,” or the networks of sociability, trust and solidarity that hold communities together. People were more isolated, less trusting. A curious statistic summed it all up: At the turn of the 21st century, more Americans were going bowling, but fewer were in bowling leagues. They were bowling alone. The tanking of social trust in America continues. But when it comes to our historic lack of trust in government, Putnam tells Ian Ward, there’s reason for cautious hope: “If Biden keeps his word and the economy rises over the next couple of years, that’s going to give a big upward boost to trust in government. So I can easily imagine that by 2025, trust in government is moving up, but I can’t imagine trust in other people moving up for 50 years.”
| | | **Who Dissed answer: That would be Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who made the comment to a small group of Republican lobbyists at a reception in Washington, explaining that she was no longer a Democrat — which some voters considered a betrayal. politicoweekend@email.politico.com | | | | Follow us | | | | |
