Eric Lipton
speaker
759 appearances
6 recordings
4 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 5 Aug
Eric Lipton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And how are those choices influenced by the fact that money is flowing from those governments personally to the pockets of the President of the United States? that creates an appearance of corruption that really undermines the legitimacy of government in a way that is, for any person, would be disturbing.
And it's happening again and again and again in front of us at a scale that's much worse than the first term.
Yeah, no, it's really interesting just because this nation for decades now has been the promoter of what is called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. I mean, we were effectively punishing people. companies and governments in nations around the world, if there ever was any type of a government contract that involved a payment to an executive, you know, abroad, basically.
And it was the United States was trying to enforce its value system across the world for decades now in Africa and Europe. And, you know, and Trump has basically announced that, you know, FCPA is, you know, it's the lingo in D.C. that they're not really going to do Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement anymore.
I mean, I think the United States was successful in a way. I mean, you know, there's still parts of, you know, particularly like, you know, Democratic Republic of Congo, which I've spent some time writing about and where it's still overt and companies, the American companies left DRC mining companies because they were so concerned about the corruption and being accused of it.
But the United States to some extent has succeeded in really discouraging that kind of corruption. And so when you say Europe and Canada and other nations are like, they're, you know, they're reacting like, how is this possible? Because the United States actually successfully created a norm that now Trump is exploding. And it, it, So, I mean, to some extent he's benefiting.
Yeah. I mean, I think that if the United States is saying that it is okay to be completely transactional and to be accepting multi-billion dollar payments from foreign governments as you're making critical foreign policy decisions, It just opens up the world to a kind of a family oligarchical –
you know, global governance that isn't transparent, that doesn't have any accountability, that is profiting a very, very thin, you know, it's like the Turkey's government or, you know, the kind of, you know, where you're both the financial leaders and the government leaders.
And it just, the United States worked so hard for so many decades to create a world order where that was not, you know, we were trying to move beyond that. And it's, you know, The consequences of this could last a really long time if the one nation that just imposed this new value system globally says, okay, we're done with that.
We don't really agree and we're going to start taking payments and making decisions. So yeah, it's potentially enormously consequential to the whole world order, honestly, unfortunately. Yeah.
Unless he gets called on it and challenged, particularly by his own party. I was up on Capitol Hill last week. Yeah, good luck with that. I was on the Senate side and I spent my entire day, I spent like 10 hours right where the senators walked out of the chambers. I was focused almost entirely on Republicans. And I ended up speaking to over 25 U.S. senators in the course of a day.
I just spent the whole day there as soon as they were walking out and pestering them. And I only found two. I was asking each one of them about the Trump meme coin.
And, and is it, you know, that he's selling access to a dinner with, with, for 220 buyers of his meme coin, whoever spends the most money on his meme coin, they can have dinner with him and 25 of them can have a VIP reception and 25 of them will get a white house tour. And, and so, you know, was that, is that acceptable to you?
I was asking the U S senators this, and there was only two of them that were willing to, to give any, most of them gave the answer. I don't know enough about it. you know, the Republican, or I don't do walk and talks. I don't do walk and talks, but I will never sit down with you. Right. Yeah. And yeah, so I think that what's the lasting implication of this?
I mean, I think it really is going to depend upon a kind of a, you know, a rejection of this approach. And if that doesn't happen, then maybe it is normalized. But so far, I mean, the Cutter, You know, 747, you're you're hearing resistance from Republicans in the Senate in particular.
And if it really does start to go forward, there could be a significant backlash there that each step that seems more outrageous there. There's you know, there there's a certain hints of. of maybe he's gone too far. And so to answer your question, how normalized this becomes, it really depends upon if it becomes normal. And if as an American public, we begin to accept it.
And as Susan says, one of the challenges that we face as reporters is that even when we write these stories and we try to make sure that they're understandable, plain language, and that they're distinct, I don't sense that they're resonating as much. I mean, the American public is sort of like, well, there's nothing we can do about it.
I don't feel like the public is as engaged or as outraged by some of the things that are happening. And that's also part of the normalization. So if both the Republicans in Congress and the American public is just going to sort of let this become normal, then it does become normal.
No, I think that the partisanship has really undermined accountability. It makes it hard to have accountability when all of these investigations, whether led by Democrats or Republicans, that the other side is immediately dismissing them as witch hunts that are politically driven. And the Congress used to be made up of Democrats and Republicans, more so at least,
I mean, like a Frank Wolf was a Republican that I can remember, or Tom Davis is a Republican. I mean, these were, you know, the conservatives, but- Partisans, but not ideologues. They were value-based Republicans. Even Orrin Hatch was a value-based Republican. And, you know, Chuck Grassley is, you know, a value-based Republican. you know, to some extent.
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