Republicans see Trump as unusually resistant to bribery

Between 2012 and 2016, Americans got a lot more cynical about the government.

To be specific — and to indicate that your likely immediate reaction to that bit of data was accurate — this increase was measured at the time of each year’s presidential election. In 2012, an already-high 6 in 10 Americans thought that at least half of those working in government were corrupt. By 2016, 7 in 10 did.

The biggest jump in this sentiment, measured in the American National Election Studies poll conducted around the election, was among Republicans. Overall, the assumption of corruption rose 9 percentage points. Among Republicans, it jumped 13 points.

(As used here, “leaners” are independents who say they generally vote with the indicated party.)

It is impossible to assume that this shift is unrelated to the emergence of Donald Trump in national politics. Trump’s first bid for the presidency, after all, was heavily centered on elevating cynicism about the system, excoriating legislators as corrupted by money — something that he insisted he’d seen firsthand. That he ended up running against someone deeply enmeshed in the political system worked to his advantage: he was the outsider who’d clean things up, which Hillary Clinton (in his presentation) was part of the problem.

In the years since, the assumption that government officials are corrupt has held relatively steady. It is higher among political independents (as you might assume) and among those who don’t have a college degree.

Notice, though, how partisan views shifted in 2020. Below, you can see the percentage of each group (by party and education) that thinks most or all members of government are corrupt. The year 2020 is indicated with a vertical line; notice where the percentage jumps or sinks that year.

Relative to 2016, Republicans (and leaners) and independents were less likely to see members of government as corrupt; among Democrats (and leaners), the percentage increased another 6 percentage points. In 2020, Democrats (and leaners) were as likely to view half of the government as corrupt as were Republicans.

What changed? The person in charge of the government.

Last month, YouGov dug into the question of corruption more specifically. If offered a bribe, they asked U.S. adults, how likely would various political actors be to accept? Mayors and members of Congress were most likely to be viewed as likely to take a bribe. Supreme Court justices and the president were least likely to.

There was a wide partisan divide on those last two, however, as you can see above. And the relative skepticism about a president taking a bribe diverged slightly when YouGov asked about a specific president: Trump.

When asking a similar question in January (just before inauguration), YouGov found that about 45 percent of Americans thought it was very or somewhat likely that Joe Biden would take a bribe, about equal to the percentage who said Donald Trump would. Partisans rejected the idea that their own party’s president would take a bribe while independents were more likely to think that Trump would.

In August, the percentage of Americans who thought Trump was at least somewhat likely to take a bribe jumped over the 50 percent mark. While the percentage of Democrats and independents who thought he would jumped, the percentage of Republicans did held steady.

The effect is not only that Republicans view Trump as less likely than any other group or listed individual as likely to accept a bribe, it’s that they purport to view him as less likely than any theoretical president to do so. Seven in 10 Republicans say it is not at all likely that Trump would take a bribe, compared to only a quarter who say the same of presidents in general. They see Trump as more resistant than other presidents to the temptations of bribery.

Some of this is simply partisanship, obviously. When a prominent conservative podcaster declares “we DO NOT CARE” about a credible report of a prominent administration official taking a bag of cash, it’s a reflection, in part, of rejecting attacks on members of one’s own team.

But there is evidence in the numbers above that there’s space for Democrats to run as anti-corruption candidates, as political scientist Adam Bonica argued over the weekend. There are a lot of people who see rampant corruption in government, including a lot of people who aren’t already Democrats. Whether it’s possible for the Democratic Party to reinvent itself as that — given the inherent skepticism independents have about the parties — is another question entirely.

Photo: Apple CEO Tim Cook sets up an engraved glass Apple disc on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, Aug. 6, 2025. (White House/Flickr)