There is one reason, and one reason alone, that President Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. are unlikely to face consequences for anything that happened in the campaign, emails about Russian government opposition research on Hillary Clinton, possible collusion and rumored pee tapes aside: Playing by the rules in late capitalism is for suckers.

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Clutch your pearls all you want as you watch the various bemonied members of the Trump inner circle skate back and forth over that amorphous demilitarized zone dividing the unethical from the illegal and the immoral from the amoral, but the truth is that very wealthy people very rarely face consequences for doing so – there's a reason that Bernie Madoff and Martha Stewart, for instance, are so notable for their guilty verdicts. Meanwhile, the rest of us mostly stay in the safe zone with our piddling little money woes like "rent" and "health insurance" and "healthy food with which to feed our children."

And that studied movement outside of the social and legal norms with which most Americans are forced to contend is among the things most attractive about Trump to his base: The people who arguably feel they've been hurt the worst by playing by the rules hired as their leader a man who never has played by them, doesn't want to and offered to throw them out entirely.

"I like money. I'm very greedy. I'm a greedy person," Trump said back in January 2016 at an Iowa event. "I shouldn't tell you that, I'm a greedy – I've always been greedy. I love money, right?" In other circumstances, that might've been gauche to admit, or at least cited as evidence of his inability to control his verbal diarrhea. Greed is a character flaw, a venal sin, the underpinnings of the tenth commandment we're told not to violate; greed is, contrary to Gordon Gekko, not good.

But Trump was cheered, over and over, as he used versions of the line again and again throughout the primaries. He voters ate it up, in part because of what normally came next.

He continued in Iowa: "But, you know what? I want to be greedy for our country. I want to be greedy. I want to be so greedy for our country. I want to take back money."

He didn't offer to reform, he didn't seek forgiveness for his sins, he didn't offer to be a better man; he simply offered that the rules by which he wouldn't play would be in service to country instead of self. (And, as president, it's increasingly arguable that he doesn't see much of a distinction between what's good for self and good for country.)

So taking meetings with Russian operatives for opposition research? Sure, why not; especially with Donald Trump Jr.'s defenders pointing to Hillary Clinton's campaigns alleged meetings about Ukrainian intel on Paul Manafort. He was pushing the edge of the rules that all the rich people don't abide by, they're saying, so what's really wrong with that? Would you, John Q. Voter, want to have to obey some arcane rules that never get enforced anyways if you could win and face no consequences?