Throughout his presidential campaign, Donald Trump loved to rev up his red-hat-wearing crowds with the refrain “Drain the swamp.” Those people knew that Washington is a marshy swamp filled with a corrupt, pay-to-play political class. Mr. Trump was going to fix that.

But about 15 months into the Trump presidency, the swamp is still teeming with corruption. Mick Mulvaney, the head of the Office of Management and Budget and temporary director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, highlighted that fact at a recent conference of the American Bankers Association.

Mr. Mulvaney is reportedly very close to President Trump. This week, in front of 1,300 bankers and lending officials in Washington, he said that when he was a South Carolina congressman, he would meet only with lobbyists who had contributed to his campaign. “We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” he said. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

You could be an alligator sunning on a rock and not get swampier than that statement. It was precisely that political game that Mr. Trump endlessly lamented on the campaign trail. For example, he said, “Our system is also rigged by the donors giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” But Mr. Mulvaney apparently used his status as a congressman to get money from lobbyists who wanted his ear. If they didn’t give him money, they had no chance. If they did, their chances rose. That is pay-to-play if I’ve ever heard it, and it runs contrary to everything Mr. Trump has said about the swamp.