From day one, “Subtle” was banished from Truskmumpia. And mere minutes later, his sister “Subtlety” was deported. No need for either when Donald Trump had neither a passing relationship with them nor the slightest desire to make their acquaintance. Raised by a slumlord father and gifted with millions from the start, he has resided in a world of privilege, so insulated from consequence and really hard work he couldn’t help but bankrupt multiple ventures. So adept at mishandling enterprises, he was able to accomplish the almost impossible: to bankrupt his Atlantic City, N.J., gambling casinos (so very hard to do because gamblers and the many millions who dabble can’t help but continue to dream of winning, while the odds are always in the house’s favor). Then, of course, he authored scams, like Trump University, that couldn’t help but fail because they were built on lies.
The American people elected Donald Trump to the presidency two times, largely because they believed he was a self-made, remarkably successful businessman who, because of his own supposed triumphs, could solve America’s—and their—economic problems. This was an invented reality, as patently false was his image as the assured boss on the show “The Apprentice.” As is so often the case, the truth was hidden from the public with the countless takes it took the out-of-sight producers and the skillful editing required to get his lines right.
Here is some of what The New York Times discovered:
Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help. But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.
And the Times reveals the primal grift:
Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings …
No unsubstantiated gossip, but old-fashioned journalism:
The findings are based on interviews with Fred Trump’s former employees and advisers and more than 100,000 pages of documents describing the inner workings and immense profitability of his empire. They include documents culled from public sources — mortgages and deeds, probate records, financial disclosure reports, regulatory records and civil court files. The investigation also draws on tens of thousands of pages of confidential records — bank statements, financial audits, accounting ledgers, cash disbursement reports, invoices and canceled checks. Most notably, the documents include more than 200 tax returns from Fred Trump, his companies and various Trump partnerships and trusts. While the records do not include the president’s personal tax returns and reveal little about his recent business dealings at home and abroad, dozens of corporate, partnership and trust tax returns offer the first public accounting of the income he received for decades from various family enterprises …
Now, if you are wondering what is really motivating what the mainstream media euphemistically call Donald Trump’s “domestic agenda,” remember where he comes from and how his life differs from the lives most Americans live. And remember how easy it is for him and his confederates to cut social programs and extend tax cuts for the very wealthiest:
The reporting makes clear that in every era of Mr. Trump’s life, his finances were deeply intertwined with, and dependent on, his father’s wealth. By age 3, Mr. Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire. He was a millionaire by age 8. By the time he was 17, his father had given him part ownership of a 52-unit apartment building. Soon after Mr. Trump graduated from college, he was receiving the equivalent of $1 million a year from his father. The money increased with the years, to more than $5 million annually in his 40s and 50s …
This is what it meant to fight for family values in the Trump household:
Fred Trump was relentless and creative in finding ways to channel this wealth to his children. He made Donald not just his salaried employee but also his property manager, landlord, banker and consultant. He gave him loan after loan, many never repaid. He provided money for his car, money for his employees, money to buy stocks, money for his first Manhattan offices and money to renovate those offices. He gave him three trust funds. He gave him shares in multiple partnerships. He gave him $10,000 Christmas checks. He gave him laundry revenue from his buildings.
Much of his giving was structured to sidestep gift and inheritance taxes using methods tax experts described to The Times as improper or possibly illegal. Although Fred Trump became wealthy with help from federal housing subsidies, he insisted that it was manifestly unfair for the government to tax his fortune as it passed to his children. When he was in his 80s and beginning to slide into dementia, evading gift and estate taxes became a family affair, with Donald Trump playing a crucial role, interviews and newly obtained documents show …
All told, The Times documented 295 streams of revenue that Fred Trump created over five decades to enrich his son. In most cases his four other children benefited equally. But over time, as Donald Trump careened from one financial disaster to the next, his father found ways to give him substantially more money, records show. Even so, in 1990, according to previously secret depositions, Mr. Trump tried to have his father’s will rewritten in a way that Fred Trump, alarmed and angered, feared could result in his empire’s being used to bail out his son’s failing businesses.
[Emphasis added.]
Money is constantly at the heart of what motivates Donald Trump. But a 2018 Newsweek article provides some insight into how the fevered pursuit of money merged with Donald Trump’s racial animus and his deep-seated anger at the United States Department of Justice:
The Trump family was entering a golden age of real estate. Fred Trump’s small family business, begun in the late 1920s and based in Queens, had expanded into a city-wide operation, and his son Donald J. Trump was poised to take over. But the thriving enterprise had a glaring problem: Fred Trump had allegedly been discriminating against black people applying to be tenants at his properties.
In 1973 — a decade after the Civil Rights Act, and five years after the Fair Housing Act — the Department of Justice sued Trump Management for its discriminatory practices, which activist groups had meticulously recorded for years, according to the New York Times. Trump and his father, who were both named as defendants, responded by accusing the Department of Justice of defamation, and filing a $100 million countersuit. The messy legal battle ended with the Trumps signing a consent decree, an agreement that allows both parties to end a dispute without admitting fault.
That is some of the cold cash part of the Donald Trump story, but there is the psychology of it all—the inner impact of that money and what it took to get and keep it. In “The Men Who Gave Trump His Brutal Worldview,” Michael D’antonio writes for Politico:
Fred Trump was a fiercely ambitious man who worked seven days a week and devoted few waking hours to his role as a parent. Although he pushed his son Donald to prevail in every arena—to be a ‘killer’ and a ‘king’—Fred didn’t actually tell the young man how to achieve this destiny. His way of paying attention to his children was to let them watch him at work. As Donald Trump told me in an interview for the biography I was writing about him, he was expected to learn things ‘by osmosis.’ One such lesson came when Donald was seven years old, and his father was brought before a U.S. Senate committee investigating abuses in a housing program for war veterans and middle class families. President Eisenhower had been outraged to learn of the bribes that developers paid to bureaucrats and of the alleged profiteering practiced by Trump and others. Ike called them ‘sons of bitches.’
As federal investigators had discovered, the elder Trump had collected an extra $1.7 million in rent—equivalent to $15 million today—before beginning to pay back his low-cost government loan. He was able to do this because a bureaucrat named Clyde Powell approved the paperwork. Powell, who had never been paid more than a modest government salary, had mysteriously amassed a small fortune. (While it was clear Powell accepted bribes, the sources were never officially identified.) In addition to collecting the extra rent, Trump paid himself a substantial architect’s fee. And he charged inflated rents based on an estimate of construction costs that was far greater than what he actually spent. All of this was legal, even if it did victimize taxpayers, veterans, and other renters … Fred was not inhibited by patriotism when it came to exploiting federal housing programs, even those devoted to veterans. To him the profit motive was supreme.
People must have been thinking a lot about grift and graft and goggling them often enough for Merriam-Webster to ask and answer the question “What’s the Difference Between ‘Grift’ and ‘Graft’?”:
When referring to a person who is in the process of pocketing bribes, gathering ill-gotten gains, or engaging in financial chicanery of some other stripe it is important to use the proper nomenclature to describe them … is there a difference between grifter and grafter? The answer, you will doubtless be pleased to hear, is a resounding ‘maybe.’
A grifter is one who grifts, a verb that we define transitively as ‘to obtain (money) illicitly (as in a confidence game)’ and intransitively as ‘to acquire money or property illicitly.’ A grafter is, similarly, one who grafts, but this word has a considerably broader meaning than does grift, with senses ranging from ‘to propagate (a plant) by grafting’ to ‘to implant (living tissue) surgically.’ Graft may also mean ‘the acquisition of gain (such as money) in dishonest or questionable ways’ and ‘to get (illicit gain) by graft,’ the definitions that are most relevant to the matter at hand.
I am not sure I get it, but I am definitely talking about propagating ill-gotten gains and not geraniums. As we have seen, thanks to our MAGA Supreme Court, what is legal changes depending on the courts’ ability to re-define words. At one time, a “militia” meant a civilian-led military force that could fight and support our regular armed forces when needed. That is until Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia needed to re-write the Second Amendment to enable anyone to bear weapons of war. Similarly, the once-upon-a-time “binding precedent” meant the Court had to defer to a prior settled opinion. That is until the MAGA justices needed to deep-six precedent and take away a woman’s right to choose.
In 2015, according to Wikipedia, the United States Department of State declared that our Foreign Policy Agenda is “to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community.” Which brings us to Donald Trump’s version of foreign policy and how he managed to personalize and profit from America’s interactions with other nations. First, there is the way the Trump family maximized its ownership of the Trump International Hotel and its other properties at a time when foreign nations were looking to solidify their standing and profit from their relationship with the president of the United States:
Here are some excerpts from the Committee’s report:
Drawing from actual receipts and records and using the most conservative possible accounting methodologies, ‘White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump’ documents how, as President, Donald Trump accepted more than $7.8 million in payments from foreign states and their leaders, including some of the world’s most unsavory regimes.
By elevating his personal financial interests and the policy priorities of corrupt foreign powers over the American public interest, former President Trump violated both the clear commands of the Constitution and the careful precedent set and observed by every previous Commander-in-Chief. Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution forbids the President to accept money payments or gifts “of any kind whatever” from foreign governments and monarchs unless he obtains “the Consent of the Congress” to do so. Yet Donald Trump, while holding the office of president, used his business entities to pocket millions of dollars from foreign states and royalty and never once went to Congress to seek its consent. This report sets forth the records showing foreign government money—and all the spoils from royals we can find—pouring into hotels and buildings that the President continued to own during his presidency, all in direct violation of the Constitutional prohibition.
[Emphasis added.]
As the Committee’s press release notes:
the $7.8 million detailed in this report, based on records for just two years of his presidency, involving four of his more than 500 businesses, is likely just a small fraction of the payments former President Trump received from foreign governments while in office, in violation of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause.
The Committee emphasized:
At the time of his election, Mr. Trump ran numerous businesses centered in the real estate and hospitality industries alongside his three adult children—Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric—who all played prominent roles in those businesses. Mr. Trump refused to divest from these business interests and claimed that ‘the president can’t have a conflict of interest,’ registering a modem echo of the royalist credo that ‘the king can do no wrong.’ This decision raised immediate concern that he would be prejudiced by foreign influence and would not fulfill his oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,’ including the categorical requirement in the Foreign Emoluments Clause that a president seek and obtain Congress’s permission before accepting any payment from a foreign state.
A side note about the Foreign Emoluments Clause: MAGA seeks to simplify and whitewash our history, to banish the darker stains, our hypocrisies and grievous failings. But it is important to acknowledge the remarkable contradictions often present in our complicated American story. Because it was Charles Pickney, the delegate from South Carolina to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, an elitist and committed slave-holder, who was one of those most responsible for making sure the critical Foreign Emoluments Clause made into our Constitution.
On May 1, 2018, several legal experts submitted an amicus brief in a court case that raised the issue of that foreign money and accused President Donald Trump of violating the Emoluments Clause in Crew v. Donald Trump. In their brief, they cited some of the history of the Convention and the adoption of the clause:
On August 23, 1787, Charles Pinckney took the initiative, moving that ‘No person holding any office of profit or trust under the U.S. shall without the consent of the Legislature, accept of any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State.’ As reported by James Madison, Pinckney’s urged ‘the necessity of preserving foreign Ministers & other officers of the U.S. independent of external influence.’
Considering what was required to successfully break away from England and the costs of the Revolution, you can appreciate the importance of ensuring the political and financial independence of their leaders and vigorously guarding against foreign influence and the lure of foreign money. In a letter to Robert Howe, George Washington wrote: “few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”
At the Convention, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts noted: “Foreign powers will intermeddle in our affairs, and spare no expence to influence them.” Alexander Hamilton warned the Convention that “foreign powers also will not be idle spectators. They will interpose, the confusion will increase, and a dissolution of the Union ensue.”
And prefiguring present concerns, Madison acknowledged that: “one of the weak sides of Republics was their being liable to foreign influence & corruption. Men of little character, acquiring great power become easily the tools of intermeddling neighbours.”
So here is the Foreign Emoluments Clause as it ultimately appears in the Constitution:
Which brings us back to Donald Trump’s flagrant disregard for that important piece of our Constitution. The Democratic Committee on Oversight Report explains:
It has been well understood in our history that the Foreign Emoluments Clause prevents the president from accepting any profit, advantage, gain, or benefit derived from private commercial transactions with a foreign government unless Congress consents. The adoption of the Foreign Emoluments Clause reflected a defining and fundamental break from monarchy. In royal society, a king’s private hereditary and commercial interests were coextensive with the wealth of his kingdom. But in American Constitutional democracy, the elected president’s job is to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’ and, accordingly, he or she is limited to a fixed presidential salary and may not collect any outside payments from foreign states or royalty …
Significantly, in October 2019, a group of national security experts submitted an amicus brief in another emoluments case brought by Senator Richard Blumenthal and others against Donald Trump. As if predicting Donald Trump’s recent foray to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates and the deals made by his family members, these experts worried that the president’s broad interpretation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause would “permit a nation that plays a central role in the balance of power in the Middle East, one of the world’s most fraught regions for U.S. national security, to curry favor with the President by purchasing real estate from one of his companies.”
Sadly, these warnings are particularly appropriate in light of Donald Trump’s disastrous business history and his repeated need to come up with additional cash to forestall and/or deal with failure. The Times’ investigation notes:
As the 1980s ended, Donald Trump’s big bets began to go bust — Trump Shuttle, the Plaza Hotel, the Atlantic City casinos. But as he careened from one financial disaster to another, family partnerships and companies dramatically increased their payouts. Between 1989 and 1992, four of the entities that Fred Trump created paid his son today’s equivalent of $8.3 million. And when Donald Trump pleaded with bankers for an emergency line of credit, he used as collateral the stake his father had given him in a group of apartment buildings.
Tax records also reveal that at the peak of Mr. Trump’s financial distress, in 1990, his father extracted an extraordinary sum — nearly $50 million — from his empire. While The Times could find no evidence that Fred Trump made any significant debt payments, charitable donations or personal expenditures, there are indications that he wanted plenty of cash on hand to bail out his son if need be. That was what happened at Trump’s Castle casino, where an $18.4 million bond payment was due in December 1990. Fred Trump dispatched a trusted bookkeeper to Atlantic City with checks to buy $3.5 million in casino chips without placing a bet. With this ruse — an illegal loan under New Jersey gaming laws, resulting in a $65,000 civil penalty — Donald Trump narrowly avoided defaulting on his bonds.
The Trumps turned an $11 million loan debt into a legally questionable tax write-off. By 1987, Donald Trump’s loan debt to his father had grown to at least $11 million. Had Fred Trump simply forgiven the debt, his son would have owed millions in income taxes. They found another solution — one that appears to constitute both an unreported multimillion-dollar gift and an illegal tax write-off. That December, records show, Fred Trump spent $15.5 million to buy a 7.5 percent stake in Trump Palace, his son’s condo tower rising on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Four years later, tax returns and financial statements show, Fred Trump sold that stake for just $10,000. The buyer, other documents indicate, was his son.
[Emphasis added.]
The reality is that Donald Trump had already fallen under the influence of foreign interests—of Russia and fabulously wealthy Russian oligarchs. In 2018, Craig Unger published “House of Trump, House of Putin.” As Dook Snyder notes in his review for The Berkshire Edge, Unger makes some startling claims:
Donald Trump ‘was $4 billion in debt when Russian money came to his rescue and bailed him out, and, as a result, he was and remains deeply indebted to them for reviving his business career and launching his new life in politics.’ Unger describes Trump’s business relationship with Felix Sater and Bayrock real estate development company and claims Sater allowed the Russian mafia to launder enormous amounts of money, perhaps as much as billions of dollars, through Trump-branded real estate.
At the time Donald Trump was one of the few real estate developers willing to take cash for his properties, and the Russian oligarchs were flush with billions that they had accumulated from buying up at rock-bottom prices—with the help of Vladimir Putin—all of the once Soviet government-owned industrial assets, cleaning the cash by buying and selling real estate. This relationship was the culmination of a well-thought out, long-term effort. Unger writes:
President Trump has been a person of interest to Soviet and Russian intelligence for more than forty years and was likely the subject of one or more operations that produced kompromat (compromising materials) on him regarding sexual activities … [and] for decades, Russian operatives, including key figures in the Russian Mafia, studiously examined the weak spots in America’s pay-for-play political culture—from gasoline distribution to Wall Street, from campaign finance to how the K Street lobbyists of Washington ply their trade—and, having done so, hired powerful white-shoe lawyers, lobbyists, accountants, and real estate developers by the score, in an effort to compromise America’s electoral system, legal process, and financial institutions.
How bad is this? And why is the Foreign Emoluments Clause so important? Unger reminds us that former director of national intelligence James Clapper suggested that, in effect, Trump is an intelligence ‘asset’ serving Russian president Vladimir Putin, or, even worse, as Glenn Carle, a former CIA national intelligence officer, told Newsweek, ‘My assessment is that Trump is actually working directly for the Russians.’
I bring this up because it is just one critical piece in the Trumpian puzzle—his concern for money supersedes all else. Patriotism, politics, morality—everything falls by the wayside in the pursuit of profit. You might quarrel with his emphasis on what Putin and Russia might have done, but Unger’s prediction about what Trump would do to America seems prophetic:
the Russian Mafia and Russian intelligence operatives successfully targeted, compromised, and implanted either a willfully ignorant or an inexplicably unaware Russian asset in the White House as the most powerful man on earth. In doing so, without firing a shot, the Russians helped put in power a man who would immediately begin to undermine the Western Alliance, which has been the foundation of American national security for more than seventy years; who would start massive trade wars with America’s longtime allies; fuel right-wing anti-immigrant populism; and assault the rule of law in the United States.
[Emphasis added.]
Undermine the Western Alliance—check! Start a massive trade war with America’s longtime allies—check! Fuel right-wing anti-immigrant populism—check! Assault the rule of law in the United States—check! As for grift and graft, Unger claims “that President Trump has allowed Trump-branded real estate to be used as a vehicle that likely served to launder enormous amounts of money—perhaps billions of dollars—for the Russian Mafia for more than three decades.”
Now this, of course, seems a major escalation of the slumlord success of father Fred, their collaboration with the Mafia-influenced building trades, and the inflation of real estate valuations for securing financing and loans and the under-estimation of those holdings for tax purposes. But really this is just how he and his extended family do business.
Let’s start with Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner. In 2018, the world was rightfully outraged by the Saudi government’s brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. As the Post reported:
On 2 October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a US-based journalist and critic of Saudi Arabia’s government, walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he was murdered … Saudi officials said the journalist was killed in a ‘rogue operation’ by a team of agents sent to persuade him to return to the kingdom, while Turkish officials said the agents acted on orders from the highest levels of the Saudi government. As a prominent Saudi journalist, he covered major stories, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rise of the late al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, for various Saudi news organisations.
For decades, the 59-year-old was close to the Saudi royal family and also served as an adviser to the government. But he fell out of favour and went into self-imposed exile in the US in 2017. From there, he wrote a monthly column in the Washington Post in which he criticised the policies of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the son of King Salman and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler. In his first column for the Post in September 2017, Khashoggi said he had feared being arrested in an apparent crackdown on dissent overseen by the prince …
The Post reported, “Turkey had told U.S. officials it has audio and video recordings from inside the consulate that proves a team of Saudi agents had killed Khashoggi and dismembered his body.”
It was quite fortuitous that Prince Salman and the Saudis had a highly influential friend in the White House to help forestall any serious and punitive reaction from Washington. Because as The New York Times had reported, Saudis had successfully wooed Jared Kushner:
Senior American officials were worried. Since the early months of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, had been having private, informal conversations with Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the favorite son of Saudi Arabia’s king.
The Times continued:
Given Mr. Kushner’s political inexperience, the private exchanges could make him susceptible to Saudi manipulation, said three former senior American officials. In an effort to tighten practices at the White House, a new chief of staff tried to reimpose longstanding procedures stipulating that National Security Council staff members should participate in all calls with foreign leaders. But even with the restrictions in place, Mr. Kushner, 37, and Prince Mohammed, 33, kept chatting … The exchanges continued even after the Oct. 2 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was ambushed and dismembered by Saudi agents … As the killing set off a firestorm around the world and American intelligence agencies concluded that it was ordered by Prince Mohammed, Mr. Kushner became the prince’s most important defender inside the White House, people familiar with its internal deliberations say. Mr. Kushner’s support for Prince Mohammed in the moment of crisis is a striking demonstration of a singular bond that has helped draw President Trump into an embrace of Saudi Arabia as one of his most important international allies.
And then, lo and behold, after leaving his job as advisor to the president, Jared Kushner reported that he had received an investment of $2 billion from the Saudis:
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s former White House adviser and his son-in-law, defended on Tuesday his business dealings after leaving government with the Saudi crown prince who was implicated in the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi … After Kushner left the White House, he started a private equity firm that received a reported $2 billion investment from the sovereign wealth fund controlled by Prince Mohammed, drawing scrutiny from Democrats.
Kushner, speaking at a summit in Miami on Tuesday hosted by media company Axios, said he followed every law and ethics rule. He dismissed the idea of there being any concerns about the appearance of a conflict of interest in his business deal. ‘If you ask me about the work that that we did in the White House, for my critics, what I say is point to a single decision we made that wasn’t in the interest of America,’ Kushner said. He said the sovereign wealth fund, which has significant stakes in companies such as Uber, Nintendo and Microsoft, is one of the most prestigious investors in the world.
He also defended Prince Mohammed when asked if he believed U.S. intelligence reports that the prince approved the 2018 killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist. The prince has denied any involvement. ‘Are we really still doing this?’ Kushner at first said when he was asked if he believed the conclusions from U.S. intelligence. Kushner said he had not seen the intelligence report released in 2021 that concluded the crown prince likely approved Khashoggi’s killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. ‘I know the person who I dealt with. I think he’s a visionary leader. I think what he’s done in that region is transformational,’ Kushner said.
From the “if the shoe fits” school of thought, I saw this report from The New York Times: “Hundreds Join Trump at ‘Exclusive’ Dinner, With Dreams of Crypto Fortunes in Mind.” So, as soon as I figure out what crypto is all about, I will try to deal with it.
In the meantime, then there is Qatar, a country known to have a series of relationships with a variety of organizations and movements believed to have ties with terrorists. You might be wondering why in the world Qatar would be giving a $400 million jumbo airliner to Donald Trump for free. But a look back at recent history offers a clue. Because, in fact, Snopes reported:
Trump was speaking on June 9, 2017, at a news conference with Romania’s then-President Klaus Iohannis. The full text of his statement is available on the White House’s archived website for the first Trump administration. During the news conference, the U.S. president addressed a recent trip he made to Saudi Arabia where he spoke at the Arab Islamic American Summit. He then claimed Qatar funded terrorism (emphasis ours):
‘I addressed a summit of more than 50 Arab and Muslim leaders — a unique meeting in the history of nations — where key players in the region agreed to stop supporting terrorism, whether it be financial, military or even moral support.’
The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level, and in the wake of that conference, nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior. So we had a decision to make: Do we take the easy road, or do we finally take a hard but necessary action? We have to stop the funding of terrorism. I decided, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, our great generals and military people, the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding — they have to end that funding — and its extremist ideology in terms of funding.’
Clearly, Qatar has worked so very hard to repair and bolster its relationship with Donald Trump and banish any mention of terror from his lips. The Washington Post reported that a member of the Qatari royal family invested $50 million in Newsmax, the right-wing television network owned by Christopher Ruddy, longtime friend of Donald Trump. Newsmax was outstripping FOX in its fiercely pro-Trump coverage:
Newsmax had been looking for outside investors to better compete with its much larger rival, Fox News, according to people who spoke at the time with its founder and CEO, Christopher Ruddy. Before and after the investment, senior newsroom leaders urged Newsmax staff to soften coverage of Qatar, current and former employees said.
How much is good press worth these days? And is Donald Trump’s silence on Qatar’s relationship to Hamas worth a $400 million jet?
Snopes had this to say about the plane:
On May 11, 2025, ABC News reported the Trump administration’s Department of Defense was going to receive a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the Qatari royal family as a gift that would be worth $400 million. According to The Washington Post, anonymous officials reportedly said the plane would require billions of dollars in retrofitting to meet U.S. Air Force requirements.
Former U.S. officials also reportedly told the Post the jet would need to be rebuilt to meet U.S. security standards for transporting the president …
According to ABC News, the plane would be transferred to the U.S. Air Force, which would modify it for use. By January 2029, after Trump’s second term ends, it will be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation. Snopes previously reported that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Qatar’s gift would be ‘accepted in full compliance with all applicable laws,’ and that ‘President Trump’s Administration is committed to full transparency.’
According to The Washington Post:
Trump has praised Qatar, a close U.S. partner in the Middle East that has sought to boost its influence with Washington, for offering the $400 million plane to his administration. Details of the transaction remained unclear. But members of Congress, among other critics, have denounced the arrangement as a ‘bribe’ and warned that Trump’s pursuit of the extravagant Boeing 747 is a clear violation of the Constitution, which prohibits federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign governments without lawmakers’ approval …
Earlier this month, the Air Force informed lawmakers that Boeing’s ongoing construction of a new presidential aircraft could be complete by 2027. Trump has indicated repeatedly that he is unwilling to wait. He told reporters last week that the Qatari plane might be transferred to his presidential library for his continued personal use after he leaves office.
By the way, Jared Kushner is not the only Trump family member making deals in the Middle East. On March 29, 2025, Reuters reported:
Real estate developers Qatari Diar and Dar Global (DARD.L) will announce a deal on Wednesday to build Qatar’s first Trump-branded real estate project, a source with knowledge of the plans told Reuters on Tuesday. The Trump International Golf Course and Trump Villas will be part of the Simaisma beachside development 40 minutes north of the Qatari capital Doha, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The $5.5 billion Simaisma development, led by Qatari Diar, is designed as a 7 km-long mega entertainment resort district, anchored by an 18-hole golf course and a Land of Legends theme park. Wednesday’s deal will come amid a visit to the Gulf by Eric Trump, the son of U.S. President Donald Trump and a Trump Organization executive.
Dar Global, the international arm of Saudi Arabia’s Dar Al Arkan Real Estate Development Company (4300.SE), has already unveiled several projects in partnership with the Trump Organization. These include plans for a Trump tower in Dubai launched on Tuesday and two more in Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah and Riyadh, as well as real estate projects in Oman.
But the Trump golf course and villas will make up the first Trump-branded project in gas-rich Qatar. In a coup for Doha, President Trump is set to visit Qatar in the coming weeks in his first major foreign trip, which is also set to include stops in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Trump has suggested that he would sign major investment agreements in all three countries.
Yes, indeed White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt assured Americans that Qatar’s gift would be “accepted in full compliance with all applicable laws.” But just as Kristi Noem imagined that habeas corpus allowed Donald Trump to deport people without due process, Karoline Leavitt probably forgot about the Foreign Emoluments Clause. Or hasn’t read it. And just hasn’t noticed Donald Trump’s great gift.
