An Open Letter to Anyone Who Voted to Drain the Swamp

Before You Decide I’m the Enemy

If you voted for Donald Trump, this letter is written for you, not at you. I am not here to call you a name, to tell you that you were fooled, or to pretend I am smarter than you. I think you saw something real. For decades, both parties shipped your job overseas, lectured you about your values, ran up the debt, and got rich doing it. You wanted someone who would walk into that rigged casino and flip the tables. That instinct was not dumb. It was right. The system was rigged. It still is.

So I am going to ask you to do something hard, but not disloyal. I am going to ask you to hold the President to the exact standard he set for himself, the one that made you cheer in the first place. Drain the swamp. Put America first. Don’t let the insiders get rich off the people’s government. Those were his words, and they were good words. The only question this letter asks is whether the swamp is actually being drained, or whether it has simply learned to drink from a new tap.

You do not have to stop supporting the President to ask that question. In fact, asking it is the most pro-Trump thing you can do, because a movement that cannot police its own people gets eaten alive by them. Let’s look together.

— Rob Chavez, June 2026

 

I. He Set the Standard. Let’s Use His.

Start with what the President himself said, because his word is the yardstick that matters here, not mine and not the media’s.

In his address to Congress, Donald Trump threw his support behind a ban on members of Congress trading stocks. He was right to. He understood, and said out loud, that people with inside information should not be allowed to bet on the market they control. That is a swamp-draining instinct, and it is exactly why people trust him.

He also promised, again in his own words, “I will not lay a finger on Medicare or Social Security.” He promised to put the forgotten American first. He promised that the people cashing in on government would finally be stopped.

Hold onto those promises. We are going to measure everything that follows against them, because that is the fair test. Not whether the media likes him. Not whether the left is angry. Whether he is living up to his own word.

II. The Swamp Didn’t Leave. It Changed Tables.

Here is the thing the President’s enemies get wrong, and the thing his truest supporters need to see clearly. The danger is not that Donald Trump woke up one day wanting to betray you. I don’t believe that, and nothing here requires you to believe it. The danger is the oldest one in Washington: the insiders, the lobbyists, the foreign money, and the connected billionaires are very, very good at attaching themselves to whoever holds power, and turning that power into their personal payday. They did it to every president before him. The question is whether they are doing it again now, through his administration, while using his name.

Look at the pattern, and ask yourself whether it looks like the swamp being drained or the swamp being fed.

A crypto billionaire was under federal investigation. He then put tens of millions of dollars into ventures tied to the President’s family. The investigation went away. Whether or not the President directed that, ask the simple swamp test: did a rich insider buy his way out of trouble? It sure looks like it. That is the exact thing you voted to end.

A man convicted of running a money-laundering operation got a presidential pardon, after his company helped steer a multibillion-dollar foreign deal that sent money toward the President’s family business. Again, set aside intent. Ask: is this the swamp being drained, or a connected criminal getting a favor that you or I would never get?

A firm tied to a foreign royal family bought roughly half of the family crypto venture in a deal that routed an estimated $187 million to Trump family entities, and a related $2 billion transaction ran through the family’s stablecoin, the largest crypto deal on record. Soon after, that same foreign government got something it wanted from Washington. Foreign money flowing toward the family, followed by policy flowing toward the foreigner. That is the swamp’s favorite move, and it does not become clean just because it happens under a Republican.

None of this requires you to think less of Donald Trump. It requires you to think less of the people around him who are getting rich, and to want him to throw them out. He ran against exactly these people. They have simply changed which table they sit at.

III. The Stock Trading: His Rule Should Apply in His Own House

The President said members of Congress should not trade stocks on inside information. Good. So apply his own rule, fairly, to his own house.

A government ethics filing, an official document, not a newspaper story, shows that an account in the President’s name made 3,642 individual stock trades in just the first three months of 2026, up to three quarters of a billion dollars in volume, about 60 trades a day. Every president since the 1960s, Republican and Democrat alike, voluntarily put their money in a blind trust to avoid even the appearance of cashing in. This is the first time in modern history an account in a sitting president’s name has been actively trading the market like this. The assets are held in a trust run by his children, and a broker placed at least some of the trades, so who pulled the trigger on each one is a fair open question.

His own son Eric publicly defended the trades. That tells you the family doesn’t deny the trading happened; they defend it. So this is not a media invention. It is on the record, from the government and from the family.

Now look at the timing, and judge it the way you’d judge a swamp creature in Congress. On the morning of March 23, the President posted that the Iran war talks were going well. Oil prices dropped hard. The account in his name had been buying energy and defense companies, the very firms that profit if the fighting drags on. And about fifteen minutes before that same announcement, roughly $580 million in oil futures were sold in a single minute, a bet that prices were about to fall, with no public news yet to explain it.

Could that be coincidence? Maybe. Nobody has proven otherwise, and you should be skeptical of anyone who claims certainty, including the President’s critics. But ask yourself honestly: if Nancy Pelosi’s family account had done this, what would you call it? You would call it exactly what the President himself said should be banned. The fair thing, the consistent thing, the America First thing, is to hold him to the same rule. He should want that too. A leader confident he did nothing wrong puts his assets in a blind trust tomorrow and dares his enemies to find anything. Why hasn’t he?

IV. The Promises Made to You

Two promises were made directly to working and retired Americans. Let’s check them honestly, giving credit where it’s due.

Social Security. Give the President his due here: the dollar amount of benefit checks has not been cut. Independent fact-checkers confirm it, and that promise, on its narrow terms, has held so far. But a promise to protect Social Security was never just about the number on the check. The agency’s workforce has been cut by nearly 7,000 people. Local offices have closed. For a while, seniors couldn’t even apply by phone until public outrage forced a partial reversal. If an 80-year-old in a small town now has to drive an hour to a field office that used to be down the street, the check may be intact but the promise is fraying at the edges. That is worth telling the President, because he can still fix it.

Your wallet. The tariffs were sold as hitting foreign countries. In reality, an American importer pays the tariff and passes the cost to you at the register. The President’s team points, fairly, to cooled inflation and rising wages, and honest people can argue about the balance. But the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, hardly a left-wing outfit, estimates the tariffs worked out to about $1,000 in added costs per household in 2025, headed toward $1,300. Coffee, beef, and groceries climbed. You can support tough trade policy and still want the President to know the forgotten man is the one footing this particular bill.

V. Know Who the Real Enemy Is

Here is what I want you to take from this more than anything else. The enemy was never the working family on the other side of the political aisle. The enemy is the permanent class of insiders who get rich no matter who wins, the lobbyists, the foreign governments buying access, the billionaires whose legal problems melt away when they write the right check. They fed off Obama. They fed off Biden. And the evidence suggests they have learned to feed off this administration too, all while wrapping themselves in a flag and a red hat so you won’t look too closely.

You were right that the system is rigged. You are still right. The only thing that has changed is whose hand is on the lever, and the insiders have followed the lever, the way they always do. Draining the swamp was never going to be one election. It is a fight you have to keep fighting, even, especially, against the people who claim to be on your side while picking your pocket.

The Justice Department unit created after Watergate to prosecute exactly this kind of insider corruption has been cut from 36 lawyers down to two. Ask yourself who benefits when the corruption cops are gutted. Not you. Not the President, if he is as clean as he says. Only the swamp benefits from blind watchdogs.

VI. What Loyalty Actually Looks Like

Real loyalty is not cheering no matter what. Real loyalty is wanting the person you believe in to be his best self, and refusing to let the leeches around him drag his name through the mud. The fan who lets his hero get away with everything is not a friend. He is an enabler.

So here is the ask, and notice that not one piece of it requires you to turn on Donald Trump:

Tell your representatives, Republican and Democrat, that you want the blind-trust standard every modern president honored made into law, for this president and every one after him. If he’s clean, it costs him nothing and clears his name.

Tell them you want the stock-trading ban the President himself endorsed, and you want it to apply to the whole government, top to bottom, no exceptions for the powerful.

Tell them to restore the corruption investigators, not gut them, so the swamp has something to fear again.

And tell the President directly, the way only his supporters can, that you expect him to throw out the insiders cashing in on his name, because they are a stain on the movement you believe in.

You wanted a fighter who would put the people first and drain the swamp. Hold him to that. Not because you’ve turned against him, but because you haven’t, and because the country he promised you is worth more than any one man’s comfort, including his. That is what putting America first actually means.

 

You were right about the swamp. Don’t stop draining it now.

 

Full disclosure. This essay represents the strongest version of a critical case, drawn from documented reporting by Fortune, the Financial Times, CBS News (60 Minutes), CNN, NPR, the Office of Government Ethics, the Tax Foundation, PolitiFact, the Brookings Institution, and others. The Trump administration has denied wrongdoing across all of the matters described. No criminal charges related to these specific matters have been filed against the president. The Pentagon called the Hegseth broker report “entirely false and fabricated.” Benefit levels for Social Security have not been cut, a point fact-checkers confirm. The analyses of trading patterns establish suspicious timing and correlation, not proof of insider trading, a distinction the cited reporters and economists themselves are careful to draw. Reasonable, patriotic Americans weigh these facts differently, and that disagreement, pursued honestly and in good faith, is itself an act of democracy. The goal of this essay is not to defeat anyone. It is to ask every American to hold their leaders to the same standard those leaders set for everyone else.

Author’s Note

This essay was written by Rob Chavez. I developed its argument, set its direction and tone, made the editorial decisions throughout, verified its factual claims against primary sources, and take full responsibility for its content. In drafting and refining the prose, I worked with Anthropic’s Claude (Opus 4.8) as a writing and research tool. The convictions expressed here are my own.

 

 

References

Works Cited for Hold Him to His Word

 

Formatted in Chicago style (notes-bibliography, 17th ed.) and grouped by topic. The principal claims regarding the stock trading, the oil-futures sales, the Hegseth report, the prediction-market bets, and the Social Security and tariff facts have been traced to their originating outlets and to primary government and fact-checking sources. Access dates reflect retrieval in May 2026.

The President’s Own Statements and Promises

“Trump Stock Trades Fuel Accusations of Corruption and Profiting off Presidency.” PBS NewsHour, May 2026. (Notes that Trump endorsed a congressional stock-trading ban in his address to Congress while not calling for one covering the presidency.) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-stock-trades-fuel-accusations-of-corruption-and-profiting-off-presidency.

Jacobson, Louis. “No Direct Benefit Cuts to Social Security and Medicare, but Some Changes Could Have Impacts.” PolitiFact, February 19, 2026. (Documents Trump’s “I will not lay a finger” pledge and assesses it.) https://www.politifact.com/.

Presidential Stock Trading and the Iran Conflict

U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Periodic Transaction Report (OGE Form 278-T) for Donald J. Trump, covering the first quarter of 2026. Released May 14, 2026.

Roytburg, Eva. “While Trump Insisted the Iran War Would End ‘Soon,’ an Account in His Name Was ‘Selling America.’” Fortune, May 18, 2026. (Documents the 3,642 trades; notes assets are held in a trust controlled by his children and that a broker acted as agent.) https://fortune.com/2026/05/18/trump-stock-trading-iran-war-conflict-of-interest-ethics/.

“Trump Ethics Filing Reveals Thousands of Trades Tied to U.S. Stocks.” NBC News, May 2026. (Notes Eric Trump’s public defense of the trades.) https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/trump-ethics-filing-reveals-thousands-trades-tied-us-stocks-rcna345197.

Roytburg, Eva. “Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman Calls It ‘Treason’: $580 Million in Suspicious Oil Futures Traded Minutes Before Trump’s Iran Reversal.” Fortune, March 24, 2026. https://fortune.com/2026/03/24/paul-krugman-treason-oil-futures-trading-trump-white-house.

“Trades Made Before Trump Delayed Plans to Attack Iran Raise Insider Trading Concerns.” NPR, March 26, 2026. (Krugman states the activity cannot be directly traced to the administration.) https://www.npr.org/2026/03/26/nx-s1-5759311/trades-made-before-trump-delayed-plans-to-attack-iran-raise-insider-trading-concerns.

The Hegseth Report and Foreign-Linked Dealings

“Pete Hegseth’s Broker Looked to Buy Defence Fund Before Iran Attack.” Financial Times, March 30, 2026. https://www.ft.com/content/744ea8dc-6d93-4fe9-a5e3-36de4f5d06db.

“Pete Hegseth’s Broker Attempted to Make Defense Investments Before Iran War: Financial Times.” CNBC, March 31, 2026. (Quotes Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell calling the report “entirely false and fabricated.”) https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/31/pete-hegseth-defence-investments-iran-war-pentagon.html.

Public Citizen. “Conflict Coin: How the Trumps’ Billion-Dollar Crypto Stake Depends on a Company That Helped Iran Evade Sanctions.” 2026. (Documents the ~$187 million routed to Trump family entities in the Emirati stake sale and Trump’s own financial-disclosure figures.) https://www.citizen.org/article/trump-crypto-world-liberty-financial-binance-iran-sanctions/.

“What Is Donald Trump’s Net Worth?” The Week, February 2026. (Documents the $2 billion MGX investment into Binance via World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin and the pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao.) https://theweek.com/politics/donald-trump-net-worth.

Prediction-Market Bets

“Suspected Insider Accounts Net $2.4 Million on Polymarket Iran War Bets with 98% Win Rate, Firm Finds.” CBS News (60 Minutes), May 2026. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/betting-on-iran-war-insider-trading-concerns-prediction-markets-60-minutes/.

Tariffs and Household Costs

Schulze, Elizabeth. “Trump’s Tariffs Cost American Households $1,000 Last Year: Research Group.” ABC News, February 10, 2026. (Tax Foundation analysis; also notes cooled inflation and the White House response.) https://abcnews.com/Business/trumps-tariffs-cost-american-households-1000-year-research/story?id=130003484.

Social Security and the DOGE Cuts

“What President Trump Has Done with Social Security So Far.” Kiplinger, January 20, 2026. (Workforce reductions, office and phone-service changes, partial reversal.) https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/social-security/what-trump-has-done-with-social-security.

“DOGE Is Disrupting Social Security.” Brookings Institution, March 26, 2025. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/doge-is-disrupting-social-security/.

A Note on Verification

The central factual claims in this essay have been traced to their originating outlets and, where possible, to primary government documents (the May 14, 2026 OGE filing; Trump’s own financial disclosures via Public Citizen) and nonpartisan fact-checkers (PolitiFact on Social Security). This essay deliberately cites no single net-worth total, since such figures are estimates of largely private, crypto-linked holdings that vary by source and date. The trading analyses establish suspicious timing and correlation, not proof of insider trading, a distinction the reporters and economists cited are themselves careful to make.

 

Rob Chavez  June 2, 2026

© 2026 Rob Chavez. All Rights Reserved.