'Not a good look': How the Trump family’s 'culture of corruption' is staggering
New Republic staff writer Timothy Noah said a hot mic moment recently exposed one more example of corruption under President Donald Trump. A conversation between Trump and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto involved a region that was “not safe, securitywise,” according to Subianto, who then asked: “Can I meet Eric?”
Trump replied, “I’ll have Eric call. Should I do that? He’s such a good boy. I’ll have Eric call.”
Subianto ended the conversation with a: “we’ll look for a better place.”
The Trump family’s real-estate firm The Trump Organization has two Trump-branded real-estate projects underway in Indonesia, and the discussion of business deals is “not a good look,” say ethics researchers. But that’s par for the course in Trump’s family, whose wealth has exploded because of Daddy Trump’s White House job.
“If we lived in normal times, this scandal would already have a nickname and the Justice Department would be investigating,” said Noah. “But these are anything but normal times, and even to suggest an investigation would get an attorney working in the Justice Department’s public integrity division fired — that is, if the Justice Department still had a public integrity division; the 36-person division has been shrunk down to two. Americans are consequently either unaware of or resigned to the most outrageous instance of government bribery since Teapot Dome.
Noah cites The Financial Times reporting Thursday that the Trump family has reduced its equity stake in WLF from an initial 75 percent to 38 percent, and questioned how much the family made from its sale of 37 percent of World Liberty Financial.
“All of this would be profit because it doesn’t appear Trump invested a dime to acquire his shares. What was the sale price? We don’t know. Trump reported $57.3 million in income from WLF last year, but it will be months before we learn his (much greater) income from WLF in 2025.”
Also, nobody is revealing who exactly bought that 37 percent from the Trump family, or whether the buyer paid market price or got extra generous in order to quietly steer the U.S. president through a lavish buyout.
“The culture of corruption surrounding President Donald Trump and his family is so all-encompassing that it’s starting to resemble what water looks like to a fish,” said Noah. “Presidential politics is by far the most lucrative business venture of Trump’s career. A mere 19 months ago, Trump’s net worth was $2.6 billion and the hundreds of millions he owed in civil penalties prompted me to speculate that … president was headed for bankruptcy. Today, Trump is worth $7.1 billion and most of the civil penalties have been tossed out. Nobody gets that rich that fast in real estate.”
Noah adds that World Liberty Financial “is increasing Trump’s net worth by billions of dollars while Trump moves aggressively to ease restrictions on cryptocurrency.” The United Arab Emirates’s $2 billion purchase of a World Liberty Financial stablecoin preceded Trump removing Biden-era limits on UAE’s purchase of U.S.-produced AI computer chips.
“The UAE paid Trump $2 billion to turn a blind eye to legitimate national-security worries,” said Noah, and the corruption keeps racking up as the family gets wealthier. Even Barron Trump is in on the act with Trump’s former social media manager Jake Advent grooming him to sit on TikTok’s board after Trump approved TikTok’s transfer to American ownership last month.
“Barron’s sole qualification for this assignment is that he’s 19 years old. But within the Trump nepocracy, that’s more than enough,” said Noah.
Read the New Republic report at this link.
