As the world awaits photographs of Jeff Bezos nobody asked for, and the president goes intergalactic on the Tweet Machine about another stunning development in The Russian Connection, it's easy to lose sight of anything else. But don't miss the latest indication that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was involved in the atrocity murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And don't miss out on a stunning takedown of the corrupt American system of campaign finance from freshman Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Yes, our large adult president was right when he identified Washington, D.C., as a Swamp in need of Drainin'. Unfortunately, it seems he just bought the deed and planted some new fauna. The American system of campaign finance is rotten to the core, and the ethics policies governing the behavior of public officials are pathetically weak. It was bad enough before the Supreme Court threw open the floodgates with its Citizens United decision—thanks, Anthony Kennedy—which unleashed a deluge of cash, much of it totally unaccountable in the form of "dark money." But now it's fully out of control, as AOC sought to demonstrate in a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing Wednesday:

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When folks say the system is rigged, they aren't lying. The people who pay the campaign bills make the rules, and many of our elected officials follow them just long enough to sneak through the "revolving door" and get a payday all their own. You do the work your friends in Big Pharma or oil and gas want, and then you get a cushy job lobbying for them. Sometimes, as AOC pointed out, you can make some money on the side while you're still in the saddle.

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And it's even more egregious for the President of the United States, to whom—as discussed in the clip—basically no ethics statutes apply. To the extent they do anything to curb the rampant cronyism in Congress, they are non-existent in the White House. Donald Trump has taken full advantage, bringing his particular business model south from New York to run his shady business empire and the government simultaneously.

Remember the news about Khashoggi? The U.S. intelligence community long ago assessed that the Saudi Crown Prince was responsible, but Trump has repeatedly downplayed it on the basis the Saudis spend a lot of money on American weapons and create jobs in the process. Of course, Trump lied about how much money and how many jobs. But the larger question is whether that's really why the president is looking the other way, or whether he has an incentive to because, as we know full well, the Saudis are putting money in his pocket through his hotels. Essentially, the question is whether the president has put the national interest up for sale.

Anyway, this exchange runs parallel to the introduction of HR 1, the first bill House Democrats put into consideration on re-taking control of the chamber. It's a sweeping anti-corruption measure aimed at getting the money out of politics and fighting back against (almost entirely Republican) assaults on voting rights. It is an attempt to restore the integrity of American democracy, if not democracy itself. While plenty of Democrats have scooted through the revolving door down the years, only one party has proposed anything resembling a solution to this. Rest assured it will not get a vote in the Republican Senate controlled by Mitch McConnell, democracy's greatest enemy in this perilous age.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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