The White House, LLC

For years, Republicans have been up in arms about the activities in Ukraine of Joe Biden‘s son, Hunter Biden, when the former was vice president. They unsuccessfully pursued an alleged $5 million bribe reported by a whistleblower who was later convicted of perjury. They were never able to substantiate their accusations. Now, however, Republicans remain silent as Donald Trump shamelessly uses his position as president and the White House itself to enrich himself personally and boost his family’s businesses, both in the United States and abroad. Neither conflicts of interest nor ethical considerations are a deterrent for the businessman who is also the president of the world’s leading power.

Trump’s behavior is unprecedented, except perhaps for his own actions during his first term, when his Washington hotel benefited from his position in the White House. This time around, his brazenness is even greater, as demonstrated by his memecoin, the crypto asset $TRUMP. The president has offered to host the biggest investors in $TRUMP currency at the White House, inviting them to an “unforgettable Gala DINNER with the President.”

The memecoin is an asset with no intrinsic value. It has no asset backing it beyond the price that other investors are willing to pay for it. The Trump family simply presents it as a kind of collectible. Other memecoins have collapsed hopelessly, and $TRUMP was also plummeting after the initial rush until the president offered the top 220 investors a dinner at his Virginia golf club, and the top 25 a visit to the White House. The winners have invested more than $170 million for these privileges.

The president chose as his first international travel destination (with the exception of Pope Francis’s funeral) three Middle Eastern countries where his family has just closed lucrative business deals: Saudi Arabia Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. “Donald Trump is going to the Middle East on a public corruption tour [...] This isn’t America First. This is not what he promised the American people. This is Trump First. He is willing to put our nation’s security at risk, take unconstitutional bribes, just so he can fly himself and his Mar-a-Lago golf buddies around the world in gold plated luxury planes gifted to him by foreign governments,” Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy denounced this week.

A United Arab Emirates fund has agreed to invest $2 billion in a stablecoin (a cryptocurrency pegged to the dollar) at World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm the president owns with his sons Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron Trump, among other partners. The deal, which the then-candidate unveiled in September from his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, represents tens of millions of dollars in profits for the firm.

Over the past year, Trump-branded residential towers have opened in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, through a Saudi partner with state ties. In April, a real estate developer unveiled a Trump-branded luxury residential and golf resort at a $5.5 billion state-owned megaproject in Doha, Qatar, at an event attended by Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, and a Qatari minister. The Trump administration and family’s company has plans for new towers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Abu Dhabi.

In addition, sovereign wealth funds from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have pledged more than $3.5 billion to a venture capital fund led by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

In addition, the Trump administration is in talks with the government of Qatar to accept a Boeing 747 valued at around $400 million to serve as a temporary replacement for the United States’ current Air Force One presidential aircraft, which are more than 40 years old, given the delays in Boeing’s contract to build two new presidential planes.

“Only a fool would not accept this gift on behalf of our country,” Trump argued, despite the fact that its adaptation would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The idea was floated that the plane would later be donated to the Republican presidential library — a sort of repository for presidential historical materials in the U.S. — which would effectively make it Trump’s private plane, although the president has since hinted that it won’t go that far.

Trump, who is known for systematically cheating at golf, hosted a tournament of the LIV Golf League, the Saudi-backed league, at his Doral, Florida, club. The president, who attended the tournament in the midst of the trade war, made money by renting out the course and hosting attendees.

The tycoon has reached agreements to receive multimillion-dollar donations for his library from private companies he had sued. ABC News and its star host, George Stephanopoulos, agreed to pay Trump $15 million, also earmarked for his library fund, to settle a defamation lawsuit.

The social media platform X, owned by Elon Musk, reached an agreement to compensate the Republican with approximately $10 million for the closure of his account on what was then Twitter following the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, despite the lawsuit having been initially dismissed by a lower court. Meta, controlled by Mark Zuckerberg, agreed to pay $25 million for having the president’s accounts suspended. Companies prefer to get along with a president on whose decisions their businesses may depend and whose authoritarian tendencies are liable to make him punish or reward rivals and friends at will.

The curious thing is that the closure of those Facebook and Twitter accounts ended up generating a gigantic business for Trump, who founded his own social network, Truth, and reached an agreement to take it public through a shell company. Despite the company having almost no revenue and generating heavy operating losses, it has a stock market value of around $5.65 billion. The 114.75 million shares owned by Trump are valued at nearly $3 billion. The main value of the company, with relatively low user and audience figures, is its connection to Trump himself, who, in his constant confusion between the public and the private spheres, has made it the preferred communication channel for his announcements on everything from tariffs to foreign policy.

The Trump family’s business ventures continue. The latest is the launch of a club in Georgetown, Washington, that will be called the Executive Branch. It’s a place that seems designed to institutionalize influence peddling. Membership costs half a million dollars.

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