The “Businessman’s presidency”

At 7:05 a.m. EST on March 23, 2026, President Donald Trump announced a postponement of planned strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure following what he described as “very good and productive conversations” regarding an end to the war. By 7:07 a.m., a massive trading of oil stocks and futures had begun. However, at 6:48 a.m., just minutes prior to Trump’s tweet, there was also a spike in sales of oil futures.  

Perhaps, or perhaps not, the SEC has placed the suspicious trades under investigation, but the very normalcy of the assumption that there are people who are personally profiting off of a national security crisis signals how openly corrupt the corporate machinations of politics have become.

It goes to the fundamental question as to whether or not having a “businessman presidency” actually is hurting the economy.      

In previous decades, political favors came in exchange for political contributions. That was corruption to be sure, but this is unconscionable. The “haves” have never had it so good.      

One must wonder if the Gipper is rolling in his grave when his beloved GOP chose to award President Donald Trump the inaugural “America First Award” at the National Republican Congressional Committee fundraising dinner on March 25. Louisiana’s own U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the award – a statue of a golden eagle – stands as a token of appreciation for Trump’s leadership, adding that the president has worked to “make America strong again on the world stage to solve all the domestic problems that we are facing in this country.”   

Meanwhile, us commoners, whose tax dollars are funding a $1 billion payoff to a French company to block two offshore wind farms, are struggling to keep our families healthy, fed, clothed and with a roof over our heads.    

Some of Johnson’s own constituents face greater degrees of environmental pollution because the Trump administration has lessened environmental regulations to which politically connected firms developing industrial plants along the Mississippi River must abide.    

And since that tainted water flows south, we suffer here in New Orleans.    

Maybe if the Crescent City made a donation of the estimated $700 million that it will take to repair (just four percent of) New Orleans’ sewer system to a “special interest group,” that would re-regulate those industrial plants polluting Louisiana drinking water – requiring us to build fewer water treatment plants! That’s innovative Infrastructure planning at work!

This article originally published in the March 30, 2026 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.