This study examines how Donald Trump’s radical right-wing populist leadership impacts the social perception of governmental corruption in the United States. Despite a history of personal and political controversies, Trump successfully neutralizes his own scandals among his electorate by reframing the concept of corruption. Utilizing affective polarization, he shifts the blame onto an internal elite establishment and external enemies, specifically illegal immigrants. To analyze this phenomenon, the research employs a methodological triangulation that combines a qualitative analysis of expert interviews with a quantitative time-series logistic regression. The quantitative component utilizes survey data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) across the 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024 electoral cycles. The findings confirm that during the years Trump won the presidential elections (2016 and 2024), affective polarization significantly increased the perception of systemic government corruption among his supporters. This heightened perception of corruption is strongly amplified when combined with negative attitudes toward illegal immigration and a high frequency of news media consumption. Furthermore, the study demonstrates Trump's success in polarizing the electorate's perceptions of the justice system. By 2024, his followers perceived high levels of governmental corruption even when they evaluated the Supreme Court positively, particularly among those with moderate to frequent media consumption. Ultimately, the research concludes that Trump’s populist strategy effectively constructs an "us versus them" dichotomy that diverts public attention away from his own ethical and legal transgressions onto constructed corrupt elites and external threats. With news media acting as a key catalyst, Trump's charismatic leadership exposes significant vulnerabilities in the democratic control of political corruption when institutional norms are continuously challenged.