Of all the ludicrous promises Donald Trump made while he was running for president, the most absurd was his vow to “drain the swamp” — his shorthand for smashing the culture of corruption that cynics say is Washington’s main feature.

Trump was absolutely right to say that the system is rigged to benefit an elite class. Money and connections matter. The concerns of the “forgotten man” really are forgotten much of the time. Millions of his voters believed that Trump would drain the swamp once and for all. Many of them still do.

But it was no surprise to most of us that Trump would do the exact opposite of what he promised: Trump hasn’t drained the swamp; rather, he’s replenished it.

Trump builds the best swamps. He’s left a trail of slime behind him his whole career. He was an unethical businessman, stiffing his workers, creditors, customers, and the cities and states who OK’d his plans. As a small-time real-estate developer, he knew how to work the levers of government to get what he wanted: zoning abatements, tax breaks, casino licenses, protection. The whole racket.

Trump never intended to drain the swamp, of course. He used the phrase because he knew his only chance of winning was to divert the voters’ attention away from his own shortcomings. He knew voters thought he was dishonest and untrustworthy. The whole “what about Hillary?” ploy was just to remind them that they didn’t trust Hillary Clinton any better. “Whataboutism” is a classic propaganda diversion. He’s still doing it.

The bottom line is Trump is the most corrupt president in our history, and he has surrounded himself with the most unethical group of advisers and cabinet officials America has ever seen. Trump makes Teapot Dome look like a thimble. He makes Watergate seem like the third-rate hotel it was.

The corruption starts with Trump. “Often you see a lot of corruption result from a lack of oversight, but I think this administration is quite different in that Trump really sets the tone for all this,” presidential historian Robert Dallak told Vox. “He encourages it, really. The fish rots from the head, and the stench of this administration starts at the very top.”

According to a poll commissioned by Transparency International, 44% of Americans believe Trump and his advisers are corrupt. No other institution is as corrupt as the White House. A majority of 58% think corruption has gotten worse in the past year.

Most Americans believe Trump has filled the swamp, not drained it.

But enough with generalizations. What are the specifics? What are the swampiest, most corrupt moments of 2017? Here’s my list. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments.

Lobbyists wrote the tax bill. The Republican congressional leadership invited corporate lobbyists to write the huge tax-cut bill that is giving hundreds of billions of dollars to corporations and their owners, and which sets the stage for large spending cuts in programs that tens of millions of Americans depend upon, such as Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare.

Not only are the cuts skewed overwhelmingly to the wealthy and the well-connected, but the process was utterly corrupt. The House and the Senate bypassed the usual procedures of hearings and committee markups that ensure transparency about what’s included in the bill. A democratic process gives the public confidence that laws aren’t being written in secret or rushed through without much thought or public input.

GOP's Next Challenge: Getting Voters to Embrace the Tax Bill

The result was a feeding frenzy by lobbyists, each hoping to extract the maximum benefit for their clients, regardless of the cost to anyone else. By the end, some senators admitted that they had no idea what they were voting for, even though independent experts warned that the bill wouldn’t boost economic growth, or bring back jobs to America, or benefit the middle class very much, or be fiscally responsible.

The essence of corruption is allowing a private interest to control the government so as to claim as many of benefits as possible while shoveling the costs on to others. The tax bill certainly is an epic achievement in the history of corruption.

Top administration officials acted like spoiled aristocrats. Trump’s cabinet is the wealthiest in history, and many of them still act like they own the place. Several top officials are under investigation for wasting taxpayer money on expensive travel or other inappropriate perks.

It seems many of them couldn’t give up the pampered lifestyle of a CEO or a princeling, insisting on flying in military jets or expensive private chartered planes so they wouldn’t have to rub elbows with mere citizens.

In this case, it’s not so much the amount of money (which adds up to pocket change for these billionaires), it’s the attitude of privilege and entitlement that rankles.

One cabinet official, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, was forced to resign after news broke that he wasted more than $1 million on chartered and military flights. That was pretty bad, but the examples that really show the disdain they feel for the people come from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin.

“ It’s hard to say no to a man with nuclear weapons. It’s also hard for a president to say no to a man who could force him into bankruptcy at any time because he can’t pay the loan. ”

Mnuchin requested use of a military jet for his European honeymoon, and took his fashionable but adorably clueless bride on a whirlwind tour of Fort Knox on the public dime, while Shulkin took his wife along on junket to Wimbledon. Strawberries and cream with the Missus is just what the average vet suffering from PTSD and homelessness needs.

Lobbyists are running the executive branch. When he was first in office, Trump made a big show of signing an order that would limit the revolving door that facilitates the capture of government by corporate lobbyists, but his administration has quietly gutted the ethics rules by granting waivers.

The results are predictable. Lobbyists are regulating the very industries they just left and to which they will soon return.

“Activist investor” Carl Icahn was Trump’s special unpaid deregulation czar even though he personally profited from discarding rules on renewable fuel standards. The New Yorker figured that Icahn made at least $500 million on paper before he stepped aside.

Another billionaire (or at least millionaire), Wilbur Ross, is the Commerce secretary. Ross failed to divest his interest in a shipping firm that helps Russia avoid sanctions until the ugly truth came out. Ross, following Trump’s lead, refused to divest many of his core holdings when he joined the government, ensuring that everything he does will be tainted with the perception or reality that his profit comes before the nation’s welfare.

Trump picked as his drug czar a congressman who helped drug companies avoid scrutiny as they pushed opioids. Trump promised that his choice as head of the Health and Human Services Department, who was a former executive of a big drug company, would lead the charge to lower drug prices. Yeah right.

More than 130 lobbyists have been hired to work in the administration, and 36 of them have blatant conflicts of interest, working on the same issues they were lobbying on, in violation of Trump’s ethics rules.

Trump uses the presidency to attack private companies. The president has called for boycotts of companies he doesn’t like, such as CNN and the “failing New York Times.” His tweets about companies such as Lockheed Martin LMT, +2.09% , Boeing BA, +6.83% , General Motors GM, -0.37% and Ford F, -2.25% have sent stock prices plunging. He vaguely threatened to give “such troubles” to Amazon.com AMZN, +2.49% (founded by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post), and complains constantly that “Amazon Washington Post” should be forced to pay taxes.

Trump’s war with CNN has spilled over into the federal government’s review of a proposed merger between AT&T T, and Time Warner US:TWX (which owns CNN), raising the specter of the president using his power to improperly influence the Justice Department to satisfy a personal grudge.

Trump used the presidency to enrich himself and his family. No president has ever mingled his private and public duties the way Trump has. Every recent president has divested his wealth into a blind trust, so that there would be no question about whether his decisions benefit his own bank account or the United States of America.

Trump has trashed that tradition. He has not divested his interests, nor has he detailed what those interests actually are. Nor has he been reassuring in any way.

Trump’s businesses receive income from the U.S. government and from foreign governments. His businesses seek favors from governments of all kinds, from city hall and Capitol Hill to the Great Hall of the People. Trump promotes his businesses from the Oval Office, and his advisers do the same.

He’s given his sons (who technically run his companies) access to the inner circles of the U.S. government and introduced them to foreign leaders who can do them business favors. He’s hired his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, to high positions in his government, but allowed them to maintain their outside business interests.

A president who is also a businessman has an advantage no competitor can touch. People who want favors from the government can do business with Trump to grease the skids. When Trump wants something — such as copyright protections for his brands in China — he can use the carrots and sticks of the United States government as negotiating tools.

And, perhaps most troubling, those who can make or break Trump’s businesses (by extending a loan, or calling one in, for instance) can extort favors from the U.S. government.

It’s hard to say no to a man with nuclear weapons. It’s also hard for a president to say no to a man who could force him into bankruptcy at any time because he can’t pay the loan.

It’s important to note that Trump’s conflicts of interest aren’t just theoretical; they are real. Foreign diplomats really do curry favor by staying in his hotel (what I’ve called “stay to play”). The Trump Organization really does want favors from foreign governments, such as approval for new projects, relief from regulations and taxes, and protections for its intellectual property. The White House really does advertise Trump’s businesses, and those of his daughter. The Trump Organization really does sell access to top officials to members of Trump’s golf courses. Jared Kushner really was desperate to seek the assistance of foreigners to avoid bankruptcy.

The Founding Fathers contemplated these problems. They wrote into the Constitution a prohibition on federal officials receiving anything of value (an “emolument”) from a foreign government without the permission of Congress. And they prohibited any federal employee from receiving payments from a state or local government. They realized no one can serve two masters.

But the Founding Fathers didn’t contemplate that a corrupt president would be protected by a obsequious Congress that trembled in fear of the mob that still believes Trump wants to drain the swamp and make America great. He doesn’t. Our president serves only one master: himself.

Either Trump goes, or our democracy does. Or is it already too late?