Hours before Donald Trump was to sign the first executive order governing artificial intelligence development, Trump talked with tech leaders, all big contributors to Trump campaigns, who opposed it. Trump demurred and canceled the public signing.
An hour before Trump was about to order renewed military strikes last week against Iran in the stalled war and strangled shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz, Gulf nation leaders – the same Gulf leaders who have been exceptionally generous business partners with the Trump family and businesses — asked Trump to back off for fear of retaliation in their own countries. Trump did as he was asked.
Just days before Trump allowed tobacco companies to sell flavored vapes, including to minors, a Reynolds American subsidiary donated $5 million to a super PAC backed by Trump bringing to $8 million the total donated by the subsidiary to MAGA, Inc. Two days after the donation, officials from Reynolds American and Altria, another tobacco company, lunched with Trump at his golf club in Jupiter, Fla., to express dissatisfaction with the way the Food and Drug Administration was regulating the industry, The New York Times reported.
There’s a building case about “pay-to-play” allegations about Donald Trump running a government by and for those who contribute to his family or causes in which Trump trades benefits, pardons, and policy decisions for cash – and loyalty to the point of law-breaking.
Congressional Democrats have launched investigations into whether presidential pardons and commutations were granted in exchange for large campaign donations or the hiring of Trump-aligned lobbyists, an inquiry that will boom if Democrats take the majority of at least one house of Congress in November. Trump’s special, personal, self-aggrandizing projects like the White House ballroom, the remake of the Kennedy-Trump Performing Center for the Arts, a Triumphal Arch and others spurred by donated millions by the wealthiest corporations and corporate leaders are drawing an increasing volume of ethics complaints.
Following the Trump model, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made a $5 million donation last month to a group supporting House Republicans just before he was interviewed by a Republican-majority House Oversight Committee about Jeffrey Epstein ties.
Financial gain aside, why aren’t more in Congress or in positions of power questioning just how Trump makes decisions and issues orders that reset our daily regulations? Does Trump lack the advisers or expertise to run the government? Just who is making the decisions, whether for war, health or AI?
Killing an AI Executive Order
The AI decision seems a good place to dig down, since it is seen as central to the next chapter in our economy and that of the world.
As we all understand, a totally unregulated industry is growing by leaps into an information abyss in which even the industry leaders readily acknowledge that they do not know exactly how machines learn, or what restraint or lack of restraint machines can understand in taking over human tasks.
What business understands is that there is a race on for development and that there are huge profits to be made for technology companies and huge displacements of workers on the horizon to make work less human-dependent – another perceived source of profit. On the government level, the race is seen as beating China and other nations towards control of the most popular and effective AI tools.
Strategically, then, business and government, or at least this government, are aligned on seeking regulation-free development for “innovation,” regardless of its effect on jobs, daily living, health benefits, income and lots more.
While states, including California, are moving to consider or adopt limits on AI development and worker replacements, the Trump government is chary about any national regulation except that which would quash Democratic state rules. The order that Trump was considering – not a law – was a voluntary system under which companies would provide the government with an early look at frontier AI systems — up to 90 days before public release — so agencies could test the models for dangerous capabilities, identify vulnerabilities, and prepare defenses before hackers or foreign adversaries could exploit them, according to a draft viewed by The Washington Post.
But even that was too much for industry leaders including SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, crypto leader David Sacks, and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, among other huge Trump donors, who warned Trump that the proposed vetting system could inhibit AI development. So, hours before a public signing ceremony last week, Trump called it off, saying he “didn’t like” the draft of the order.
As The Post noted, the incident underscored the immense influence that Silicon Valley leaders maintain in the Trump administration.
An OK for Flavored Vapes
As for the vapes, which even this government’s strange health policies have previously identified as a continuing health risk, the corporate lean was in the opposite direction – not only for unregulated vaping but for okaying flavored vapes that would appeal to the young.
The New York Times traced the donations and meetings with tobacco industry leaders that preceded the Trump decision, showing that the action followed direct, personal lobbying between high-paying donors and Trump. Those donations came to light in recent, required federal elections filings.
At a lunch with tobacco industry officials, Trump interrupted the conversation to call Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA commissioner, finally reaching Makary’s boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Times sources said Trump criticized FDA regulation e-cigarettes, and within the week, the FDA issued new guidance that could pave the way for major tobacco companies to begin selling flavored vapes.
Flavored vapes are seen as a road to profit in the billions and to rebut sales of illegal Chinese e-cigarettes. The new policy, which bypassed normal FDA review, also could allow higher nicotine levels in nicotine pouches. It includes a pledge to prioritize efforts to stop the import of illegal foreign vapes.
Four days later, Dr. Makary resigned, telling associates he could not in good conscience remain the head of an agency that backed such a policy.
It could be coincidence of the timing of donation, personal lobbying and policy rather than any required proof, but it serves as another milestone in the emerging pay-to-play legend that Trump is building. A spokesman for the White House said that the donation had nothing to do with the administration’s shift in vape policy.
MAGA Inc. , which raises money to support Trump-aligned candidates, collected $9.6 million last month. The super PAC received contributions of $1 million each from a division of the private prison firm Geo Group, the Republican megadonor Marlene Ricketts and two other donors.
A year ago, the Trump administration withdrew a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes, an initiative the Biden administration had already mostly abandoned. Trump’s team also set aside a Biden-era proposal to sharply restrict nicotine in cigarettes, an effort meant to speed the transition away from a product known to be deadly. The new guidance on flavored vapes could help companies like Reynolds gain market share considered central to the survival of the industry as cigarette sales wane.
The question is whose interests are Team Trump serving?
