Many think that when it comes to Trump-Pence, Trump is the entertainment arm of the duo. But Mike Pence has his moments. Speaking at a stopover in Chesterfield Mo today, he, according to a local NPR report,* asserted that the Trump-Pence campaign would have a narrow focus on (oddly broad) issues like national security and “the integrity of the President’s office.” As a strategy, this approach is a natural for The Donald and his side-kick Mikey. It eliminates the need to dig around in the policy weeds – a really good idea for a candidate who rather obviously doesn’t know how to “pull dem weeds.”

But the real kicker was the effort by Pence to draw a contrast between Trump and the woman he has, on the basis of cooked-up evidence, dubbed crooked Hillary, insisting that the major part of their joint campaign’s “narrow” focus would be its emphasis on integrity. After what we’ve seen of Trump, that bit of boilerplate would always have been amusing, but it’s a real knee-slapper when you hear it uttered only a few days after allegations of illegal campaign contributions and potential quid-pro-quo bribery on the part of Donald Tump have started bubbling up.

It seems that a Trump “charitable” foundation contributed about $25,000 to the campaign of the Florida Attorney General, Pam Bondi, in 2013. The grisly details are summarized in The Hill:

In September 2013, the Florida attorney general’s office announced that it was considering joining a New York state inquiry into Trump University and the flood of consumer complaints from people who felt that they were ripped off by the so-called “university.”

In roughly the same time period, Bondi spoke personally with Trump and solicited a political contribution from him. These facts are all explained in strong detail in an Associated Press report from June of this year.

On Sept. 17, three days after a spokesman for Bondi told the Orlando Sentinel that her office was, indeed, considering joining the Trump U. investigation, a $25,000 check was cut by Trump’s foundation and sent to a committee associated with Bondi’s campaign.

According to a Sentinel report from the time, it was one of the biggest contributions the campaign committee had received. We’ve since learned, thanks to The Washington Post, that the Trump Foundation is a small organization with “no paid staff and relatively little money for a superwealthy man’s personal charity.”

And after the check arrived, Bondi’s office decide not to pursue a case against Trump U., saying there were insufficient grounds to join the New York state probe.

There’s more. Were there no appearance of bribery, tax-exempt charitable foundations can’t legally contribute to political campaigns – and if they do so by mistake they shoudn’t try to cover it up which seems to have happened in this case (Trump paid a $2,500 fine to the IRS). But there’s still more. Over the past few days, Trump has attempted to make light of this story and claimed that he never talked to Florida AG Pam Bondi. That is, as TPM reports, until today:

We’ve been talking over the last couple days about the apparent contradiction between Donald Trump’s statement that he never talked to Pam Bondi about his contribution or Trump University. Now Politico has gone to Trump for clarification. And Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks says there’s no contradiction. “His comments were in reference to any discussion about Trump University — not the donation,” Hicks told Politico.

Yeah, sure. And I want to sell you some beach front property in South Dakota. This is, after all, the guy who, as Hill consultant Jim Roberts observes, “has made it clear he expects favors for his political donations. ‘When I want something I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass.'”

Yet little Mikey, the so-called “happy warrior” (wasn’t that label also applied to Al Smith, a presidential candidate who lost badly?) has the chutzpah to get up before a Missouri audience and feed them blather about how he and his fellow-candidate are going to stand up for integrity? And will Missourian GOPers fall for it? You can bet that they want to.

Of course, I may have gotten it wrong. Maybe Pence didn’t really mean to say that he and Trump were going to campaign on the promise of preserving the integrity of the presidency, but perhaps he was talking about the “aesthetics” of the presidency, as in physically “looking presidential,” an issue that seems to preoccupy The Donald.

*I’ll update with a reference when one becomes available.

UPDATE: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that “Pence summed up a Trump presidency as one devoted to security and American integrity and not beholden to special interests.”

UPDATE 2: It looks like Bondi wasn’t the only politician who likely made big bucks off efforts to investigate – or not- the Trump U. scam. Officials in Texas, including Governor Abbott may be implicated in a similar bribery scandal.

Update 3: The Bondi scandal is even worse than it originally appeared. And these degenerates want us to believe they even know what integrity means?

Steve Benen remarks today that:

It took a surprisingly long time, but Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) yesterday finally agreed to forgo a donation from disgraced former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. The Missouri Republican gave the contribution he received from Hastert to a local charity.

Benen may be surprised by Blunt’s reluctance to return Hastert’s money, but I’m not. Actually, I agree with Blunt’s earlier position. If politicians felt they had to give back tainted money, they’d all be broke.

Money from Wall Street? Fossil fuels? Real estate developers? Communications? You name it, and if you look carefully enough, you’ll find lots of dirty deeds behind the dough – and, even worse, there’s usually an intent to influence the politician who is the recipient. Do you really think that money cajoled from ruthless corporate favor seekers is somehow nastier because the person who extracted it sexually abused children? Nobody says Blunt should give back his Montsanto money although it reeks of corruption.

Occasionally you find folks like the Bernie bros (and sisters) who say they won’t vote for a politician, in this case Clinton, because she took Goldman Sachs money or some such. While the desire for purity is understandable, sane folks know that unilateral disarmament is suicide. (And why is it usually the left that is determined to jump off a cliff?) Until the system changes, and the Blunts of the political world are barred from receiving, say, AT&T’s nearly unlimited financial blessings, politics will operate on tainted money.We just have to vote for politicians whom we trust to try to work for change in the way we finance our politicians.

In the meantime, can we call Blunt’s change of heart the Kander effect? You can’t blame him for not wanting to let his unexpectedly strong Democratic challenger use his name in the same sentence as the words “convicted sex offender.”

Republican Senator Roy Blunt was in the news recently because he made it known that he had no intention of returning money donated to his campaign coffers by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert who, although now retired, is mired in an emergent scandal:

“Returning donations gives some sense that you are going to look at the behavior of everybody who gives money to a campaign,” Blunt, R-Mo, told reporters during his weekly press call. “I don’t know if I have time to do that, and I would expect not to be returning donations to anybody.”

Hastert allegedly resorted to illegal means to pay off a blackmailer who had the goods on him for the sexual abuse of a student back when he was a highschool wrestling coach. Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, while withholding judgement, described the money as tainted, while the Democratic Party immediately claimed that keeping it was in some way corrupt.

I have to say that for the first time in just about ever, I’m with Blunt. Money is money, and as long as it isn’t taken in return for political favors – which is clearly not the case with Hastert’s donation – it doesn’t represent corruption. Like Blunt, I see no reason for politicians to be held accountable for the personal lives of their donors.

But, I have heard folks object, in 2006 Blunt not only got rid of $8,500 from lobbyist Jack Abramoff by donating it to charity, but was emphatic that other politicians should either return the money or similarly donate it. But, I respond to those folks, the situations are very different. Abramoff was a lobbyist who was convicted of buying favors from politicians. Keeping money he donated left the donee, by implication, very suspect. Especially a donee like Blunt, who, as one of the GOP moneymen in the House at that time, essentially a “liason” to K-street lobbyists, was already somewhat tainted by association with Abramoff. So, see – not the same thing at all.

But what boggles my mind is that anyone would be debating whether or not Roy Blunt should return paedophile Dennis Hastert’s piddling little gift, but nobody would think to demand that he return the massive amounts that he collects from representatives of the communications, energy, tobacco, etc. industries, industries to the welfare of which he devotedly ministers. In a sane world, soliciting and accepting money and returning favors to the donors is corruption pure and simple.  And there’s no doubt that Blunt is really good at getting those corporate dollars. Similarly, there’s no doubt that he’s one of the most reliable go-to boys when it comes corporate favors.

Everybody knows that Senator Blunt, selected in 2010 by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) as one of Wasington’s most corrupt politicians, might have a difficult time passing the smell test. It’s difficult to even keep count of the questionable favors Blunt has done for his corporate cronies. The industries noted above reward his hard work very reliably, though he isn’t averse to taking on any entity willing to pay. Most of us remember his attempt to slip an unrelated rider meant solely to benefit Montsanto into some sundry piece of legislation – which is why Mother Jones dubbed him Montsanto’s man in Washington. Or, to take a more recent example,  consider his work on behalf of the for-profit education sector. Just a couple of months ago he managed to make an ass of himself by blaming students of predatory institutions like Corinthian Colleges and Vatterot College – both big campaign contributors – for borrowing to finance their educations.

But enough about ol’ Roy’s dirty deeds. Nobody cares. Unless you can get secret surveillance video of Roy hammering out the quid pro quo in person, it doesn’t seem to count as corruption. At least not in the same  way that taking money from a sex abuser who told the FBI some fibs in order to hide the fact he was paying off a blackmailer inspires the indignant pointing of fingers.

In a 2014 Politico article, Zephyr Teachout, author of the excellent Corruption in America, notes the flaws in such a restrictive definition of corrupton as regards quid pro quo:

In McCutcheon v. FEC, the landmark case that threw out aggregate limits on campaign spending last week, Chief Justice John Roberts made clear that for the majority of this current Supreme Court, corruption means quid pro quo corruption. In other words, if it’s not punishable by a bribery statute, it’s not corruption.

This is a reasonable mistake to make at a dinner party. But it’s a disastrous mistake to make for democracy, when the stakes are so high. Essentially, Roberts used a criminal law term-of recent vintage and unclear meaning-to describe a constitutional-level concept. It is as if he used a modern New York statute describing what “speech” means to determine the scope of the First Amendment.

It is misunderstandings of this sort, and the promulgation of same by a frequently ideologically befuddled conservative Supreme Court majority that is responsible for the success of money grubbers like Blunt. To be clear, it has also forced politicians who would prefer not to grovel for dollars to do so in order to compete, since only patsies advocate unilateral disarmament. But no matter who the offender is, we all pay the price. As Teachout concludes in her book’s introduction:

What America now faces, if we do not change the fundamental structures of the relationship of money to legislative power, is neither mob rule nor democracy, but oligarchy.

So let Blunt keep Hasterts offerings. But, please, let’s do something about the money he takes in from AT&T, Goldman Sachs, Montsanto, Murray Energy, et al.