That’s not an answer to the question. How did any of these presidents profit, financially or not, from their actions regarding Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis? What was the quid pro quo they received?
Well, the question primarily seemed to contest the scope of corruption, so I responded in view to that.
The big banks were one of the top donors to Obama's 2008 campaign. The fact that none of the banks were prosecuted or even held accountable for the crisis raises big questions how much the campaign funding influenced the way the bailout was structured. It also doesn't help Obama that he was famous for going after private funding after backtracking on his pledge not to do so.
Bush's story is similar but with energy companies the most famous being Halliburton who funded his election campaign and turned out to be the biggest beneficiaries to profit from the Iraq war. It probably wouldn't have upset people as much had it not been that the Bush family had close ties to this company and where Dick Cheney also happened to be the CEO. It was a big scandal at that time you can go read back on, but as is with many of these scandals everything seems to be forgotten or forgiven with time. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same with Trump 20 years from now.
- Bush invaded Iraq because an oil company funded his campaign?
- Obama bailed out banks (a thing every government worldwide was doing) because banks funded his campaign?
There’s no evidence of these claims, compared to the evidence of a fucking private jet being bought for Trump in comparison. Also Trump has enriched himself, personally, more than any president in history by quite some margin, using the office of President. I just wanted to show what you’re equivocating about, here.
If you follow the way the private jet thing is done, it is structured as a gift to the government and not the president. It is perfectly legal and you won't be able to find any "proof" of corruption over it. This is how most corruption is done, in an underhanded manner, but everything by the book, with enough plausible deniability.
In many cases corruption is only known to the perpetrator, because it is a matter of intent. One can always proffer a different reason for what they are doing than what they actually intended and when those reasons later turn out to be false, you may never really know whether they acted in good faith in the first place.
So corruption largely comes down to perception end of the day. It is ultimately a matter of trust and when that trust is eroded, the perception of corruption grows. There's no smoke without fire. When we see smoke in a building, we do not go searching for proof of fire, we just gtfo because the risk is too much. We should do the same when we see red flags in people in powerful positions.
