Evan McMorris-Santoro
05/13/25
(NOTUS) News that Donald Trump would accept a gifted Boeing 747 from a foreign government to use while in office — and park at his presidential library after he leaves the White House — raised eyebrows in a Republican-controlled Washington that doesn’t do that much anymore, NOTUS’ Hill team reported. The White House comms office and Trump himself took turns defending the idea Monday.
Still, no one really knows what swing voters are going to think of it, in part because Trump is not like any other politician when it comes to just about anything, and in part because this is not a scenario political operatives generally plan for. “The possibility of doing something this brazen is so outrageous that we would never have thought to poll on the subject,” GOP pollster Whit Ayres told me.
There is a group of operatives and academics who have been thinking about political corruption, and how to message on it, for a while now. They gave us some insights from their research, and offered Trump’s opposition a path forward.
The top line from those findings, shared with NOTUS this week, is that corruption really does bother swing voters. But they have become quite cynical about it.
“They’re a little more fed up with the system that they feel like has needed to change for decades … it’s not working for them,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United. “They really are not convinced that anyone is going to do anything about it.”
End Citizens United, a Democratic-aligned group that has tried to make the party smart about this topic, got those swing-voter focus group results months after it published a detailed report sketching out a way back for a party still reeling from Trump’s win. “Calling Out Corruption Should Be Our North Star,” it reads.
Essentially, Muller says, the party that can convince those voters to stop being cynical for just a moment will win in 2026. Both parties have had their shot at this, Muller said: Trump was seen as less corrupt than Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden was seen as less corrupt than Trump in 2020 and in 2024, “frankly, voters didn’t know who to trust on this issue,” she said. Independents came to believe Republicans were more likely to take on government corruption and voilà, Trump 2.0.
“Though the ‘present’ may ultimately be to the Trump Foundation rather than Trump personally, the close connection between Trump and the Foundation means that this raises all the dangers of foreign governments using gifts to gain influence that led the Founders to put this in the Constitution,” Richard Briffault, a law professor at Columbia and one of many distinguished experts dusting off the words “Foreign Emoluments Clause” from their Trump 1.0 file, told us Monday.
Muller did not suggest Democrats take the plane on exactly this way, however.
The focus group participants “very much believe that Trump is out for himself,” Muller said. But “they also believe that he is trying to change Washington.” Despite the presence of Elon Musk and gifts and the rest of it all, these voters “believe he’s not doing the bidding of anyone else.”
Crucial swing voters probably do care about the plane, she advises Democrats. But to get them to believe it’s not just a moment for eye-rolling, Democrats have to tie the plane to Republicans in Congress. They “need to investigate,” Muller said. Congress “needs to ban gifts like this.”
End Citizens United’s new memo calls on them to focus on things like congressional stock trading and “self-enrichment” through the revolving door from government to lobbying.
Trump’s plane could be a real problem for Republicans if Democrats play it right, Muller said.
History suggests it probably won’t be a problem for Trump as much.
“Trump does get a little bit of inoculation, that is true,” Muller said. “His inoculation does not apply to other congressional Republicans, and they’re the ones who are going to have to pass this agenda.”