America First? No, It's Trump First.
Matt Bernardini examines the myriad ways in which Donald Trump is using his Presidency to enrich himself.
For ten years now Donald Trump has run his campaign on the slogan “America First,” with the goal purportedly being to focus on bettering the lives of American citizens before anyone else. But if it wasn’t clear after his first term, Trump’s first month in office this time round shows that the phrase “Trump First” would be more apt. The President intends to turn the United States of America into a subsidiary of the Trump Organization. To help out, he has enlisted the richest man in the world to make massive cuts to crucial sectors of the government like cancer research, banking regulators, climate change and much more. All the while, Trump is already showing that he intends to make most of the country suffer, so he can line his own pockets.
In past Presidencies, the commander-in-chief had to divest from their business interests (see Jimmy Carter’s peanut farm). This made corruption and self enrichment less direct. Normally, a President or Vice President might have some family members get a job purely as an act of nepotism. See Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Hunter Biden. However, now Trump 2.0 has created a pipeline of money flowing right into his own pockets while in office.
The first and most egregious example is Trump’s meme coin, called $Trump, which he launched just days before taking office. The entities behind the coin have received more than $100 million in trading fees, despite the price of the coin slumping from its initial high. And Trump doesn’t appear to be the only head of state to realize that crypto is a quick way to get rich at the expense of the citizenry. Argentina’s ultra right-wing President Javier Milei recently did the same by launching a coin called LIBRA. After exploding and reaching a market value of $4 billion, it crashed by over 90% and Milei has since distanced himself from the project. While Trump’s coin hasn’t experienced quite the same drop, the song is the same. The man at the top gets rich, while most of his supporters get duped into losing money.
And when he’s not making money via speculation, Trump is planning to realign the world’s borders according to his own financial interests. Many people who were rightly angry at Joe Biden’s enabling of the Israeli government’s slaughter in Gaza, sat out the election because they saw no difference between Trump and Biden. And yet, as bad as Biden was, Trump appears ready to take things to a whole new level all for his own personal interests.
Earlier this month, while sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump stunned the country by announcing that the US would take over Gaza and the Palestinian population would be moved out. Human rights groups were quick to condemn the statement, which was shocking even for Trump.
“It would move the US from being complicit in war crimes to direct perpetration of atrocities,” Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch said in a statement. “Governments should together make clear their strong opposition to Trump’s call for forced displacement in Gaza and take action to prevent further atrocities against the Palestinian people.”
Yet aside from Trump’s racism there was something else behind this statement. His own personal profit.
"We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal. And I don't want to be cute. I don't want to be a wise guy,” Trump said. “But the 'Riviera of the Middle East,' this could be something that could be so, this could be so magnificent."
The President of the United States intends to ethnically cleanse an entire region, simply to advance his own business interests. And the Wall Street Journal just reported that Kushner and Trump’s Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff have discussed bringing together real estate executives to decide how to carve up Gaza. Of course the discussion took place at a business gathering sponsored by Saudi Arabia. Kushner has said on and off for the past year that Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable.
And Gaza is not Trump’s only Middle East real estate conflict of interest. Since 2021, the Trump Organization has signed agreements with a Saudi Arabian real estate company to develop Trump-branded properties in Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Combine that with Kushner’s new developmental projects in Serbia and Albania, and the corruption could be mind boggling.
“Taken together, these new companies and developments send a clear message that Trump has no interest in mitigating corruption during his second term, the legal pressure group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington concluded. “In fact, he’s only opened up new, more secretive avenues to accept illegal emoluments and other payments from wealthy interests.”
All of this and I haven’t even gotten to Russia and the war in Ukraine yet. For years, Trump has been openly sympathetic to Vladimir Putin for reasons that, to many, are still unclear, beyond his affinity for dictators. We know Russians have contributed a lot of money to Trump’s businesses via condo purchases, and they also twice interfered in presidential elections to bolster his candidacy. And now Trump seems ready to give them a chunk of Ukraine, all the while still telling Kyiv that he wants a slice too.
Over the last couple of weeks, Trump has repeatedly attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and said that his country is responsible for the war. He has also called Zelensky a dictator, which you know is false because if he actually was, Trump would be singing his praises. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top aides also recently held talks in Saudi Arabia with Russian officials about the war, without including anyone from Kyiv.
And Trump has also made sure in any discussions with Ukrainian officials that they know he must get a cut. Washington has proposed a deal that would give the United States access to Ukraine’s deposits of critical minerals including aluminum, gallium and titanium. In total Ukraine would send $500 billion worth of rare Earth elements to the US.
Put simply, Trump has found yet another way to turn a complex issue into one of his own business ventures. Unfortunately, most people know by now that Trump’s business ventures inevitably collapse, leaving behind a plethora of people holding the bag. Let’s just hope all of America isn’t next.