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The proportion of Americans who believe that there is widespread corruption within the U.S. government has hit a record high for the second year in a row in President Donald Trump’s second term.
Gallup polling released Wednesday reveals that 89 percent of Americans say there is “corruption widespread throughout the government” in the U.S. This is the highest level of perceived corruption among the public since Gallup began surveying this question in 2006.
This metric has skyrocketed under the latest Trump presidency. Since 2010, the proportion of Americans who believed there was far-reaching government corruption remained relatively steady, hovering between 72 and 79 percent for 15 years. In 2024, 73 percent of Americans said there was widespread corruption. This rose to 79 percent in 2025, and 89 percent this year — surging 16 points in just two years.
Perceptions of corruption have risen among Democrats and independents since Trump’s election, going from 57 percent to 91 percent among Democrats and 78 percent to 90 percent among independents between 2024 and 2026. It has even remained relatively steady among Republicans, despite the party change in the White House, falling from 87 percent to only 83 percent — within the margin of a rounding error.
According to Gallup, no other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country has had a level of perceived corruption higher than the U.S. since 2025.
The rise in perceived corruption comes amid a corresponding rise in blatant corruption within the Trump administration.
Week after week, new stories of overt self-dealing, alleged bribery, abuse of power, and enrichment schemes for corporations and the wealthy emerge from the Trump administration or from other Trump allies. Many Trump administration officials are seemingly being enriched at taxpayers’ expense — like Trump’s $15 million profits from the oil and gas stock prices rising amid his war on Iran, which has cost taxpayers tens of billions at the gas pump and through Pentagon funds.
Some Democrats have tried to hold the administration responsible for its corrupt dealings. But Democratic lawmakers also benefit from some forms of corruption and, in years past, have avoided backing anti-corruption measures like a stock trading ban among members of Congress.
Meanwhile, basic measures to help Americans avoid being taken advantage of by corrupt actors, like crackdowns on scammers, have not been a priority for lawmakers or regulators in the second Trump administration.
In fact, the Trump administration has totally gutted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is supposed to fight exploitation of consumers — perhaps because, through his fundraising apparatus, cryptocurrency schemes, and otherwise, Trump himself has been accused of running multiple scams directly on the American people, netting him and his campaign committees billions of dollars.
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