TRUMP CORRUPTION INDEX

The Barr Gets Even Lower: This Week in Trumpland Corruption

This week takes us from the attorney general’s pressure campaign against a Fox News personality to more weirdness with Trump’s wall

Photo illustration. Source: State Department

Is there enough graft, double-dealing, and self-interested chicanery in the Trump administration to publish this column every week? Only time — and Trump — will tell. (But we feel pretty confident.) Presenting this week’s installment of the Trump Corruption Index.

The muzzler-in-chief

CNN correspondent Brian Stelter reports in his new book, Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, that Attorney General William Barr met last year with Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch to ask that he “muzzle” Andrew Napolitano, the network’s senior judicial analyst and one of its most vocal critics of the Trump administration. Stelter cites an anonymous source in saying that Trump “was so incensed by the judge’s TV broadcasts that he had implored Barr to send Rupert a message in person.” Sure enough, Napolitano soon after saw his daytime slot disappear and was notably absent from any impeachment coverage.

• Corrupt-o-meter (out of a possible five emojis): 📺📺📺🦊🦊