MS NOW’s Ari Melber asked Krugman, the winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, to explain “the cost to the rest of us, the public, if the government is corrupt or captured, separate from the morality?”

New financial disclosure forms show Trump’s income surged to over $2 billion in 2025, with $1.2 billion coming from crypto earnings.

Krugman pointed to the idea of “crony capitalism” under Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and recalled a phrase common among his parents’ generation: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

“It’s where success in business depends on having the right connections and having the favor of the leader, supreme leader, whatever and that’s extremely destructive,” he noted.

“It does mean that all of the incentives on business are to curry favor, not to actually be good at your business,” he continued. “And it’s especially bad if what it takes to curry favor is just who is best at funneling money to the president’s family and his friends.”

Krugman argued that, under Trump, there has been an “abrupt collapse” of economic norms that reward productivity and the creation of real value “as opposed to just making the White House happy.”