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Trump believes that being president should remove any barrier to erection of new structures, from arches to paint jobs to statues, no matter the violation of law or taste.
In her 1984 book Missile Envy , Helen Caldicott identified the Freudian motivations behind the impetus of Cold Warriors to build bigger bombs and more powerful rockets. President Donald Trump has tower envy, a neurosis over the feeling that other world leaders have larger buildings. Why does Trump insist on putting his name on variously sized structures, commissioning statues of himself, and undertaking misguided and illegal renovations of existing facilities? The reason comes down to a narcissistic fascination with monuments to power such as those erected by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Romanian dictator Nikolai Ceausescu, but dating to Napoleon Bonaparte and his Arc de Triomphe.
Trump has long aimed for the sky with his towers, his Mar-o-Lago castle, and his unfinished great Mexican wall. He first sought to make his name through a failed project for a 150-story skyscraper on New York’s Upper West Side. But Trump rose to the occasion with the Grand Hyatt Hotel that opened in 1980, and next erected the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue with its gaudy interiors. Perhaps suffering from Stendhal syndrome, a transient paranoid psychosis brought on by exposure to cultural objects, Trump began supplication to Soviet leaders in the late 1980s to unveil a Trump tower in Moscow. Russian operatives have since forced his unconscious to contemplate Russian President Vladimir Putin’s scandalous virility as manifested in the $30 billion Sochi Olympics and a $1.4 billion golden palace. The result is rampant tower envy.
Trump believes that being president should remove any barrier to erection of new structures. These range from arches to paint jobs to statues. Trump is insisting on building “a gold-accented giant victory arch” along the Potomac River, at 250 feet taller than the Lincoln Memorial and the US Capitol. Despite overwhelmingly negative feedback from the public, the “Arc de Trump” gained approval of a commission stacked by Trump loyalists who share his lack of taste, sensibility, and history. Trump commission documents reveal a grotesque, grandiose, disruptive, and unnecessarily impotent structure. The arc may help the president overcome clear feelings of inadequacy like those of Napoleon Bonaparte who died well before his Parisian Arc de Triomphe, at 150 feet, was completed.
Napoleon apparently inspired Trump’s feelings of meager crowd size. Napoleon insisted upon a grand cortege to mark his passage from one palace to another, with immense crowds lining the route. Recalled one observer, “Bonaparte deployed the pomp of royalty … he was preceded by 150 musicians, two thousand guardsmen, gold and silver gleamed on the carriage, the horses decorations and on the guardsmen's uniforms.” (Peter the Great assembled a parade of little people in 1710, but out of jest and love, not out of inferiority.) Trump, however, worries about size, especially crowd size. He ordered government photos retouched to show his inaugural crowd was bigger than Barack Obama’s. He said, “I get the biggest crowd size, and they keep getting bigger.”
He must affix his name to monumentalities to project virility and to deflect attention from corrupt deals with foreign governments, felonies, and alleged pedophilia.
Crowd size envy has its roots in psychological turmoil. Napoleon obviously had the first Napoleon complex. In the search for the source of his many complexes, the doctor who conducted Napoleon’s autopsy in 1821 secretly removed his penis. The member made its way through various collectors, becoming “like a piece of leather or a shriveled eel,” but perhaps bigger than Trump’s who, while tall and obese, is “smaller than average… not freakishly small,” but with “a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool.”
Napoleon commissioned the neoclassicist painter Jacques-Louis David commemorate his inauguration with a canvas over 20 by 30 feet. In 2014 Trump illegally used a Trump Foundation check to pay for a massive portrait of Trump in his golf finery at a Trump golf course that was well hung at the Trump Doral golf course bar. The Trump Foundation was closed over this and other fraud. Tower envy.
To inflate his diminished presidency, Trump paints over federal properties. Ignoring aesthetics, rejecting the will of the people, and breaking the law with every stroke, he ordered the painting of the reflecting pool between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials in blue. It may be that Trump has pool envy. Joseph Stalin never saw the finished “Moscow Pool,” the world’s largest outdoor swimming pool. It arose on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which the militantly atheist Bolsheviks tore down to erect a 430-foot Palace of the Soviets, with a huge Lenin statue on top. That project was abandoned as too costly, and it became a heated outdoor pool. Trump embraced his pool envy by tearing down the West Wing to build a ballroom.
For the reflecting pool paint job, Trump chose the color and contractor without any review, with a company that has worked for Trump at his private golf club given a no-bid contract, with sevenfold cost overruns before the job began. Trump used AI to make the pool great again: On May 1 the mortally obese Trump posted a fake image of himself, shirtless, but with his bulbous belly and breasts airbrushed away, alongside with several other Trump officials and an unidentified woman, but apparently one over 18 years old, as they lounged in the pool. The impotent creature followed by posting a photo of Presidents Obama and Joe Biden, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the pool filled with feces.
The diagnosis of tower envy describes all Trump erections. He must affix his name to monumentalities to project virility and to deflect attention from corrupt deals with foreign governments, felonies, and alleged pedophilia. His masculine maneuvers do not always promise results. After he added his name to the Kennedy Center, performing artists cancelled their appearances in droves. This has required its shuttering for two years for “renovations.” Usually, leaders have the good taste to die before being so presumptuous as to put their name on currency, park passes, centers, institutions, buildings, airports, steaks, and centers for the arts.
Trump has no intention of avoiding newer erections as president, even as these actions violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. Having pocketed money from Middle East leaders, the Trump family is expanding into Tbilisi, Georgia, with a 70-story Trump Tower” becoming the tallest skyscraper in the country; it will dwarf the 70-foot tall aluminum “Kartlis Deda” (Mother of Georgia, 1958) statue located on Sololaki Hill. Then there’s the Trump Tower Down Under, a $1 billion development at 91 floors, to rise with other real estate projects in Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and perhaps the “Gaza Riviera,” if the president can get Jared Kushner and the Israelis to remove all Palestinians.
Tower envy, brute monumentalism, and cheap cover-up are Trump’s go-to aesthetic design.
Another tacky celebration of the Trumpian legacy is his Garden of American Heroes. The garden involves the creation of 250 statues depicting a list of Trumpian “founding fathers,” activists, political figures, businesspeople, athletes, celebrities, and pop culture icons. Trump ordered the garden to be finished before July 4, 2026, on the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence which, like the Bible, he has never read. Some of the funding will come from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), which has a new grant competition to create “up to three statues” at $200,000 per statue, and which “must be life-size and made of marble, granite, bronze, copper, or brass,” but no Botox or orange dyes. Sadly, Elon Musk’s “DOGE” illegally cancelled 1,400 NEH grants, and it remains unclear what impact Trump’s “garden” grants will have on more valuable NEH humanities research programs. In the meantime Trump covered the White House rose garden with concrete pavers because he actually hates gardens.
Trump loves gloss paints and gold accoutrements to distract attention from his infirm, swollen, and discolored appendages; for them he uses concealer and support socks. He ordered covering the blemishes of the 130-year-old Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street from the White House with white paint. White paint white may help make the building appear larger, but still not as large as Ceausescu’s Palace of Parliament, the second-largest administrative building in the world after the Pentagon, with more than 1,100 rooms and a nuclear bunker underneath. (Three thousand workers died during its construction.) Perhaps in response to Ceausescu’s grandiosity, Trump insists on erecting an ever-growing ballroom, now at $1 billion and with a nuclear bunker of its own.
But an authoritarian paint job will destroy the Eisenhower Building’s exterior of granite (quarried in Vinalhaven, Maine, in America, not like most Trump products that are manufactured abroad). Paint adheres poorly to granite, reveals its imperfections, leads immediately to peeling, chipping, staining, and requires forever high maintenance—which is why no one paints granite kitchen counters. But tower envy, brute monumentalism, and cheap cover-up are Trump’s go-to aesthetic design.
If not his own Lenin-like mausoleum, which was constructed with polished, but not painted granite, there will be a Miami-based excrescence, the Trump Presidential Library, perhaps with a mock-up bathroom to display the secret documents he stole from the White House—modeled on the bathroom he used at Mar-o-Lago to hold them. Also to be interred are the 747 jet that the Qataris gave him in return for favors. An auditorium featuring an already completed 22-foot gold statue of Trump will crown the spectacle. As one of his potent progeny, Eric, wrote, “Over the past six months, I have poured my heart and soul into this project with my incredible team… This landmark… will stand as a lasting testament to an amazing man, an amazing developer, and the greatest President our Nation has ever known.” Sculptor Alan Cottrel manufactured the recently-unveiled statue, but was misled about its purposes and meanings, and he gently called it a “cluster f--k.” Contrell was instructed by the statue’s crypo investors “to alter Trump’s appearance… making him thinner and removing his ‘turkey neck,’” which may be a euphemism for some other appendage.
Whatever the size of the gold president, Trump’s Christian nationalist handlers have forgotten the fact that the 22-foot gold erection recalls the biblical story of the golden calf in the Book of Exodus and the punishment to those who embraced idolatry. Even more, the golden Trump will not rise above the largest bronze statues in the world, the 65-feet tall effigies of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il on Mansu Hill in central Pyongyang. One hopes that Trump does not set his eyes upon the 555-feet tall Washington Monument, the world’s tallest stone (marble) obelisk. We have heard that Trump wants to paint it orange.
If you have any doubt, remember after 9/11 Trump instinctively ejaculated on that day that one of his buildings had become the tallest in downtown Manhattan.
"President Trump's deal to take a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny—not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice," said the head of one watchdog group.
With preparations to refit a Qatari jet to be used as Air Force One "underway," a press freedom group sued the U.S. Department of Justice in federal court on Monday for failing to release the DOJ memorandum about the legality of President Donald Trump accepting the $400 million "flying palace."
The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), represented by nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight, filed the lawsuit seeking the memo, which was reportedly approved by the Office of Legal Counsel and signed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously lobbied on behalf of the Qatari government.
FPF had submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the memo on May 15, and the DOJ told the group that fulfilling it would take over 600 days.
"How many flights could Trump have taken on his new plane in the same amount of time it would have taken the DOJ to release this one document?"
"It shouldn't take 620 days to release a single, time-sensitive document," said Lauren Harper, FPF's Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy, in a Monday statement. "How many flights could Trump have taken on his new plane in the same amount of time it would have taken the DOJ to release this one document?"
The complaint—filed in the District of Columbia—notes that the airplane is set to be donated to Trump's private presidential library foundation after his second term. Harper said that "the government's inability to administer FOIA makes it too easy for agencies to keep secrets, and nonexistent disclosure rules around donations to presidential libraries provide easy cover for bad actors and potential corruption."
It's not just FPF sounding the alarm about the aircraft. The complaint points out that "a number of stakeholders, including ethics experts and several GOP lawmakers, have questioned the propriety and legality of the move, including whether acceptance of the plane would violate the U.S. Constitution's foreign emoluments clause... which prohibits a president from receiving gifts or benefits from foreign governments without the consent of Congress."
Some opponents of the "comically corrupt" so-called gift stressed that it came after the Trump Organization, the Saudi partner DarGlobal, and a company owned by the Qatari government reached a deal to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar.
Despite some initial GOP criticism of the president taking the aircraft, just hours after the Trump administration formally accepted the jet in May, U.S. Senate Republicans thwarted an attempt by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pass by unanimous consent legislation intended to prevent a foreign plane from serving as Air Force One.
"Although President Trump characterized the deal as a smart business decision, remarking that it would be 'stupid' not to accept 'a free, very expensive airplane,' experts have noted that it will be costly to retrofit the jet for use as Air Force One, with estimatesranging from less than $400 million to more than $1 billion," the complaint states.
As The New York Times reported Sunday:
Officially, and conveniently, the price tag has been classified. But even by Washington standards, where "black budgets" are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites and lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of Mr. Trump's pet project are inventive.
Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon's most over-budget, out-of-control projects—the modernization of America's aging, ground-based nuclear missiles...
Air Force officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of the Qatari Air Force One with the transfer from another the massively-over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the Sentinel.
Preparations to refit the plane "are underway, and floor plans or schematics have been seen by senior U.S. officials," according to Monday reporting by CBS News. One unnamed budget official who spoke to the outlet also "believes the money to pay for upgrades will come from the Sentinel program."
Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, said Monday that "President Trump's deal to take a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny—not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice."
"This is precisely the kind of corrupt arrangement that public records laws are designed to expose," Chukwu added. "The DOJ cannot sit on its hands and expect the American people to wait years for the truth while serious questions about corruption, self-dealing, and foreign influence go unanswered."
The complaint highlights that "Bondi's decision not to recuse herself from this matter, despite her links to the Qatari government, adds to a growing body of questionable ethical practices that have arisen during her short tenure as attorney general."
It also emphasizes that "the Qatari jet is just one in a list of current and prospective extravagant donations to President Trump's presidential library foundation that has raised significant questions about the use of private foundation donations to improperly influence government policy."
"Notably, ABC News and Paramount each agreed to resolve cases President Trump filed against the media entities by paying multimillion-dollar settlements to the Trump presidential library foundation, with Paramount's $16 million agreed payout coming at the same time it sought government approval for a planned merger with Skydance," the filing details. "On July 24, the Federal Communications Commission announced its approval of the $8 billion merger."
His most dangerous crime is not simply corruption or obstruction, nor even incitement of insurrection: It’s the deliberate attempted destruction of American democracy itself.
When historians look back on this era, they’ll inevitably ask how a nation built on principles of democracy, justice, and equality allowed one man to commit such a broad range of crimes and abuses, and whether President Donald Trump is indeed the most dangerous criminal in American history.
To fully grasp the gravity of Trump’s actions, consider the extensive categories of his criminal and potentially criminal conduct, each more disturbing than the last.
First, there’s the relentless financial corruption. Trump has long played fast and loose with the law when it came to his finances. In New York, his company was convicted of tax fraud and financial manipulation designed to deceive lenders and inflate his wealth. Trump University was shuttered after a $25 million fraud settlement, its “students” left feeling defrauded.
His charitable organization, the Trump Foundation, was dissolved following revelations that funds intended for charity were instead used to benefit Trump personally and politically, and to pay off Pam Bondi in Florida where he and Epstein were living (she was AG for almost a decade and never went after Epstein).
If America is to survive as a free nation, we must confront the reality of Trump’s actions.
But Trump’s shady financial dealings didn’t begin or end with these public scandals. For decades, he was closely associated with New York’s organized crime families. Trump Tower itself was built using concrete provided by mob-linked companies.
Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor and attorney as I detail in The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink, was a notorious fixer and lawyer for mob figures such as Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano.
Trump’s casinos also regularly skirted the law, drawing scrutiny from federal investigators for potential money laundering linked to organized crime, and his former casino manager recently revealed to CNN that Trump and Jeffrey Epstein once even showed up together with underage girls in tow (the White House denies the story).
Trump’s long relationship with Epstein further exposes his moral bankruptcy and possible criminality. The two were close associates and owned residences near each other in New York and Palm Beach, socializing together frequently.
Trump famously described Epstein as a “terrific guy” who enjoyed the company of beautiful women, some “on the younger side.” Multiple reports suggest Trump knew about Epstein’s exploitation of minors, yet Trump continued their association until public scandal made it inconvenient.
Then there are Trump’s questionable international relationships, with none more alarming than his mysterious affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s first administration consistently favored Russian interests, dismissing election interference findings from American intelligence agencies, undermining NATO, and, in his second administration even withholding military aid from Ukraine, thus benefiting Putin’s geopolitical ambitions.
While the full nature of Trump’s entanglement with Putin remains hidden, Trump’s obsequious behavior toward the Russian dictator raises serious questions about financial leverage or compromised loyalties. For example, the only major country in the world Trump chose not to impose tariffs on this year was Russia.
Trump’s disturbing Russian connections also include his 2016 campaign manager and close confidant, Paul Manafort, whose career was dedicated to installing pro-Putin autocrats and corrupt oligarchs across Eastern Europe, including Ukraine and Albania. Heidi Seigmund Cuda writes about his recent Albania connection in her great Bette Dangerous Substack newsletter.
Manafort was convicted of multiple felonies, including tax and bank fraud, stemming from his shady dealings overseas, actions intimately connected with Putin’s broader geopolitical ambitions, for which Trump pardoned him.
Trump’s choice of Manafort to lead his 2016 campaign wasn’t coincidental; it signaled to Moscow an openness to influence, further raising troubling questions about Trump’s susceptibility to foreign manipulation and complicity in Manafort’s criminal schemes.
Trump’s election interference is equally alarming. It began with hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to manipulate public perception during the 2016 campaign, for which he was convicted of felony election manipulation charges in Manhattan last year.
More brazenly, Trump attempted to subvert democracy in Georgia when he lost the 2020 election by demanding of Georgia’s secretary of state, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
His attempts to cling to power by any means necessary reached a terrifying crescendo with the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election, ultimately joined by over 100 Republican members of Congress. This led to a federal indictment, making him the first former president charged with seeking to destroy the very democratic system that put him into power.
Trump’s abuse of presidential authority is chillingly unprecedented. Robert Mueller’s investigation laid out multiple instances where Trump criminally obstructed justice, brazenly interfering with federal investigations. He solicited foreign interference from Ukraine in the 2020 election, a move that led to his first impeachment.
Trump’s presidency was also marred by repeated violations of the Emoluments Clause as he profited directly from foreign governments funneling money through his hotels and golf clubs. He pitched Teslas from the White House in flagrant violation of the Hatch Act (penalty: five years in prison). Even after leaving office in 2021, Trump illegally retained classified documents and obstructed federal efforts to retrieve them, leading to further federal charges.
One of the most grotesque and morally bankrupt chapters of the Trump presidency unfolded in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, when Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly made the political calculation that the virus was “only hitting blue states” and disproportionately killing Black Americans so it could be weaponized.
According to reporting at the time, Kushner convened a secretive White House task force of mostly male, white, preppy private-sector advisors who concluded that a robust federal response to minimize deaths would be politically disadvantageous. Their analysis was clear: Since it was primarily Democratic governors and Black communities suffering the early brunt of the pandemic (New York, New Jersey, Washington), Trump could politically benefit by blaming local leadership and withholding meaningful federal aid.
It was a cynical—and deadly—strategy to let the virus burn through the opposition’s voter base that ultimately led to an estimated 500,000 unnecessary American deaths and gave us as the second-most Covid-19 deaths per person in the world.
This approach not only explains the administration’s chaotic and insufficient response to testing, supplies, and coordination, it exposes a level of callous—morally, if not legally criminal—political calculus rarely seen in modern American history since the days of the Trail of Tears.
Leaked documents and internal communications at the time confirmed that federal resources were distributed unevenly, often favoring Republican-led states.
Trump also regularly lashed out at Democratic governors like Gretchen Whitmer and Andrew Cuomo while ignoring their pleas for ventilators and personal protective equipment. As the death toll mounted, Trump publicly minimized the virus, holding rallies and rejecting masks, while privately admitting to journalist Bob Woodward that Covid-19 was “deadly stuff.”
This wasn’t just negligence: It was targeted neglect driven by racism and partisanship, carried out in the middle of a once-in-a-century public health emergency.
Beyond these abuses of power, Trump openly incited political violence. His rhetoric fueled vigilantism and violent confrontations at rallies.
Most infamously, on January 6, 2021, he incited an insurrection designed to halt the peaceful transition of power in a stunning betrayal without precedent in American history. He encouraged extremist and white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers, effectively endorsing domestic terrorism.
Right up until he took office and corruptly shut them down, investigations continued into potential wire fraud and misuse of funds from Trump’s “Save America” PAC, alongside scrutiny into financial irregularities involving his Truth Social platform.
Investigations into obstruction, witness intimidation, and potential bribery—now blocked as the Supreme Court has put him above the law, or shut down by his toadies—further compound his record of potential crimes.
Yet Trump’s ultimate crime goes beyond mere lawbreaking. He has methodically eroded democratic institutions, weaponized disinformation to undermine public trust, and attacked the traditionally nonpartisan independence of the judiciary, intelligence agencies, military, and law enforcement. His assaults on the press are right out of Putin’s playbook. Trump’s relentless assault on truth and democracy normalizes authoritarianism and political violence.
Thus, his most dangerous crime is not simply corruption or obstruction, nor even incitement of insurrection: It’s the deliberate attempted destruction of American democracy itself. This crime, far more profound than any individual act, threatens the survival of the republic itself.
If America is to survive as a free nation, we must confront the reality of Trump’s actions. He isn’t merely a criminal; he’s become the most dangerous criminal in American history precisely because his actions imperil the very foundations of our democracy.
Allowing such crimes to go unpunished risks setting a precedent that future would-be autocrats may follow, forever tarnishing the promise of American democracy. Once he’s out of power, our nation’s new mantra must become, “Never forget, never forgive, never again.”
"We deserve to know who is paying for access to our president, and what steps you took to ensure that the funds you receive are legitimate and legal," said the congressman.
Calling U.S. President Donald Trump's recent dinner with cryptocurrency investors "the latest in a bewildering gamut of schemes" aimed at making a profit off the presidency, Rep. Jamie Raskin is demanding the White House release the names of those who attended the event—warning that Americans currently don't know whether foreign governments, criminal enterprises, or other groups may have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for Trump's meme coin.
Trump held an "intimate private dinner" with the top 220 holders of his $TRUMP cryptocurrency memecoin, which has no underlying value but nonetheless reached $14 billion in market value after the president announced its release just before his inauguration.
The coin quickly collapsed and lost 90% of its value, but surged by more than 50% after Trump announced the May 22 dinner at his golf club outside Washington, D.C.
Little is known about many of the top purchasers of the coin, according to an analysis by The Washington Post, which found 28 untraceable "ghost wallets" were behind some purchases. About half of the top 220 owners received coins from crypto exchanges that reject U.S.-based customers, suggesting they could be foreign buyers.
"A close analysis of the top buyers on the 'leaderboard' on the website of $TRUMP shows that a majority of the attendees appear to be foreign nationals who purchased the token through offshore cryptocurrency exchanges that prohibit U.S. customers from participating," wrote Raskin (D-Md.). "Analysis reveals that 161 of the 220 top buyers, or 73% of the invitees, are likely foreign nationals. Among the top 25 'VIP' guests who were offered additional private access to you, including a 'VIP White House tour'—and who each spent between $1.25 million and $16 million on $TRUMP tokens—23 out of 25 are likely foreign individuals or entities."
The congressman also asked what steps the White House had taken to determine the source of funds used by purchasers to pay for the coin, noting that if the money came from foreign governments, the purchasers could be seeking to influence the president.
"I write today to demand that you release the names of all the attendees at this dinner and provide information about the source of the money they each used to buy $TRUMP coins, so that we can prevent illegal foreign government emoluments from being pocketed without congressional consent," wrote Raskin. "Publication of this list will also let the American people know who is putting tens of millions of dollars into our president's pocket so we can start to figure out what—beyond virtually worthless memecoins—they are getting in exchange for all this money."
The Trump Organization, the president's family business, operates the meme coin along with a company registered in Delaware and run by Trump ally Bill Zanker. The two companies own 80% of the 1 billion $TRUMP coins, have received $312 million from crypto sales since Trump took office, and profited from the coin sales at the dinner, in which buyers were not subject to disclosure requirements as they would be for campaign donations.
Raskin pointed to one attendee and buyer whose identity is known—Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun—as more evidence of corruption at the dinner. Sun was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission last year for illegally distributing billions of crypto assets and concealing payments to celebrity endorsers to promote his cryptocurrency. The charges were dropped after Sun purchased $75 million in another Trump crypto venture. Sun reportedly bought $23 million in $TRUMP coins.
When asked last week whether the White House would release the names of dinner attendees, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she would "raise that question" but claimed the event was one that Trump attended "in his personal time" and not in an official capacity.
Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, applauded Raskin for opening the investigation. During both of Trump's terms, CREW has demanded accountability for Trump's alleged violations of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which bars presidents from accepting gifts from foreign governments.
"Your White House has repeatedly promised a presidency that is the 'most transparent and accessible' in American history," wrote Raskin to the president. "But so far, you have failed to deliver, refusing to divulge even the names of the largely foreign attendees at your world-famous crypto dinner. The American people deserve better and, given our constitutional strictures against foreign government money going to our president, this is a matter of great urgency and importance. We deserve to know who is paying for access to our president, and what steps you took to ensure that the funds you receive are legitimate and legal, rather than the proceeds from foreign states or monarchs or illegal activities."
The gift is just the most visible part of a new ethos of self-dealing, with lines between public purpose and private enrichment not just blurred but erased.
Eight years ago, the lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Washington became the symbol of influence peddling. Tourists giddily mingled with lobbyists and campaign donors. The cheapest cocktail went for $24. How quaint.
This term, Donald Trump Jr. announced that he is opening a private, members-only club in Georgetown called Executive Branch. Members of the Trump administration, CEOs, and tech executives are among those who have signed up. The membership fee is currently $500,000.
That is the context for the controversy now erupting over Qatar’s gift of a roughly $400 million airplane for use as the new Air Force One, a 747 that would be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library when he leaves office, potentially making it available for his personal use (although he denies he would use it). It’s outlandish on its own terms. And it is just the most visible part of a new ethos of self-dealing, with lines between public purpose and private enrichment not just blurred but erased.
Out of today’s scandals come tomorrow’s reforms.
Days before his return to office, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency token, $TRUMP, which immediately enriched him by an estimated billions of dollars (although the coin’s worth has since dropped). Since crypto is a purely speculative vehicle, this gave “investors” a chance to send funds straight to Trump, without disclosure or pretense. Sure enough, the United Arab Emirates, another country where he visited this week, gave him... sorry, “invested” $2 billion.
Trump’s family enterprise already owns a crypto mining company, World Liberty Financial, which benefits from his shift from skeptic to deregulator.
Then there are the transactions that all seem to end up with the first family being paid—starting with the $28 million paid by Amazon to First Lady Melania Trump for a documentary.
Now, let’s not romanticize a past golden age of government ethics. The White House saw the Crédit Mobilier scandal of the 1870s and Teapot Dome in the 1920s. Lyndon Johnson used the Federal Communications Commission to give preferential treatment to radio stations he owned. In more recent decades, presidents of both parties conducted a grueling schedule of nearly nonstop campaign fundraising. (My old boss Bill Clinton certainly got grief when party donors slept in the Lincoln Bedroom.) Hunter Biden was accused of peddling influence for personal gain before his father pardoned him on the way out of office.
What’s different here is that the funds are flowing not to a political party or campaign but to the officeholder as an individual. The transaction is direct, naked.
The founders were very concerned about an individual using the power of the presidency to enrich themselves and their family members. They focused sharply on the risks of corruption and were well aware of the myriad ways the system could be abused. And they were especially worried that foreign governments could influence American presidents.
At the Constitutional Convention, Gouverneur Morris feared the possibility of the president receiving foreign bribes: “One would think the King of England well secured against bribery. Yet Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV.” The founders wrote anti-corruption protections into our Constitution.
Article I of the Constitution forbids any officeholder from accepting any gift or title from any “King, Prince, or foreign State” without congressional consent. It’s called the Foreign Emoluments Clause. At the Virginia ratifying convention for the Constitution, Edmund Randolph made clear how viscerally the framers recoiled from the possibility of foreign funds. He described “an accident, which actually happened, [which] operated in producing the restriction. A box was presented to our ambassador by the king of our allies. It was thought proper, in order to exclude corruption and foreign influence, to prohibit any one in office from receiving or holding any emoluments from foreign states.”
Trump said, “I would be a stupid person” to turn down the $400 million plane. But remember that the Emoluments Clause is in the part of the Constitution making clear Congress’s power—it’s not up to the president to decide.
In his first term, Maryland and the District of Columbia sued, alleging that Trump illegally profited from foreign and domestic officials who visited his hotel. We agreed. That case got tied up in court, and in 2021, the Supreme Court ultimately dismissed it since Trump was no longer president.
So what lessons can we learn from this, and what ironclad rules could prevent future presidents from profiting so brazenly from office?
To start, Congress should make clear it does not approve of this massive foreign gift to our president. More comprehensively, Congress could pass legislation to fully enforce the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause and remove the procedural hurdles that derailed lawsuits in Trump’s first term.
Then it would be time to recognize that we have relied on common sense or self-restraint from previous chief executives. The Brennan Center’s task force of Republican and Democratic former senior officials recommended that presidents be required to put their businesses and assets into a blind trust, a proposal that is part of the Protecting Our Democracy Act that fell to a filibuster in 2022.
Even those protections may be inadequate. Neither the founders nor later generations of lawmakers profited from meme coins.
Out of today’s scandals come tomorrow’s reforms. For now, all of our astonished outrage is a good start.
In case you haven't noticed, the bribes Trump is taking are getting bigger and bigger.
Trump is overplaying his hand.
Not just by usurping the powers of Congress and ignoring Supreme Court rulings. Not just abducting people who are legally in the United States but have put their name to opinion pieces Trump doesn’t like and trucking them off to “detention” facilities. Not just using the Justice Department for personal vengeance. Not just unilaterally deciding how much tariff tax American consumers will have to pay on almost everything they buy.
Polls show all these are tanking Trump’s popularity.
But one thing almost all Americans are firmly against — even many loyal Trumpers — us bribery. And Trump is taking bigger and bigger bribes.
It was reported over the weekend that he’s accepting a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane worth at least $400 million from the Qatari royal family, for use during his presidency and for his personal use afterward.
Trump just can’t resist. He’s been salivating over the plane for months. It’s bigger and newer than Air Force One — and so opulently configured that it’s known as “a flying palace.” (No report on whether it contains a golden toilet.)
Apparently he’s been talking about the plane for months. In February, he toured it while it was parked at Palm Beach International Airport.
He’s tried to redecorate the White House into a palace but that’s not nearly as satisfying as flying around the world in one, especially once he’s left the White House (assuming he will).
Attorney General Pam Bondi said it’s perfectly legal for him to accept such a bribe, er, gift.
Hello?
The U.S. Constitution clearly forbids officers of the United States from taking gifts from foreign governments. It’s called the “emoluments clause.” (See Article I, Section 9.)
Anyone viewing Bondi as a neutral judge of what’s legal and what’s not when it comes to Trump can’t be trusted to be a neutral judge of Bondi. Recall that she represented Trump in a criminal proceeding. Presumably he appointed her attorney general because he knew she’d do and say anything he wanted.
Oh, and she used to lobby for Qatar.
So, what does Qatar get in return for the $400 million plane? What’s the quid for the quo?
This week Trump takes the first overseas trip of his second presidency. He’ll land in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, followed by a visit to Qatar, and then to the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E).
That’s a big boost for Qatar right there.
Trump also just did what Qatar has been wanting done for years — announcing that the Persian Gulf (as it’s been known since at least 550 B.C.) will henceforth be known as the Arabian Gulf.
Trump’s company has just announced a new golf resort in Qatar, reportedly partnering with a company owned by the royal family.
Qatar is also pushing the Trump regime to lift sanctions on Syria.
The payback could be any number of things. The only certainty is that you and I and other Americans won’t necessarily benefit.
This week’s trip to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E. is as much a personal business trip for Trump and his family businesses as a diplomatic trip.
Eric Trump, who officially runs the family business, has just announced plans for a Trump-branded hotel and tower in Dubai, part of the U.A.E.
The Trump family’s developments in the Middle East depend on a Saudi-based real estate company with close ties to the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia has a long list of pressing matters before the United States, including requests to buy F-35 fighter jets and gain access to nuclear power technology.
Trump’s family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, announced that its so-called “stablecoin” — with Trump’s likeness all over it — will be used by the U.A.E. to make a $2 billion business deal with Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world. The deal will generate hundreds of millions of dollars more for the Trump family.
I had assumed that Trump’s undoing would be his unquenchable thirst for power. It may yet be, but I’m beginning to think his insatiable greed will do him in. America’s Grifter-in-Chief knows no bounds.
"This is spectacularly corrupt, a level of greed and depravity that is breathtaking, even for Trump."
U.S. President Donald Trump—no stranger to allegations of blatant corruption—faced an onslaught of criticism on Sunday in response to ABC News reporting that his administration is preparing to accept "what may be the most valuable gift ever extended to the United States from a foreign government."
Ahead of Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, sources told ABC that the administration "is preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar—a gift that is to be available for use by... Trump as the new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation."
The unnamed sources also explained that "lawyers for the White House counsel's office and the Department of Justice drafted an analysis for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth concluding that is legal for the Department of Defense to accept the aircraft as a gift and later turn it over to the Trump library, and that it does not violate laws against bribery or the Constitution's prohibition (the emoluments clause) of any U.S. government official accepting gifts 'from any king, prince, or foreign state.'"
"Even in a presidency defined by grift, this move is shocking. It makes clear that U.S. foreign policy under Donald Trump is up for sale."
ABC's revelations about the $400 million "flying palace" follow The Wall Street Journal reporting earlier this month that "the U.S. government has commissioned L3Harris to overhaul a Boeing 747 formerly used by the Qatari government... into a presidential jet."
The White House, Boeing, and L3Harris declined to comment on the Journal's report. Similarly, on Sunday, the White House, Justice Department, and a spokesperson for the Qatari Embassy did not respond to ABC's inquiries.
However, as The Associated Press reported Sunday:
Hours after the news, Ali Al-Ansari, Qatar's media attaché, in a statement said, "Reports that a jet is being gifted by Qatar to the United States government during the upcoming visit of President Trump are inaccurate."
"The possible transfer of an aircraft for temporary use as Air Force One is currently under consideration between Qatar's Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Department of Defense," the statement said. "But the matter remains under review by the respective legal departments, and no decision has been made."
Amid the uncertainty, a range of people across the internet blasted the supposed plan, slamming it as "indefensible," "incredibly illegal," and "comically corrupt." Some critics pointed out that the reporting comes after the Trump Organization, the Saudi partner DarGlobal, and a company owned by the Qatari government last month reached a deal to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar.
Journalist Mike Rothschild said that "this is spectacularly corrupt, a level of greed and depravity that is breathtaking, even for Trump. Air Force One—the people's plane—is going to be a flying palace donated by Qatar. No American should accept this."
Some critics highlighted security concerns. One legal expert declared, "An emolument and security risk all wrapped up in one!"
Robert Weissman, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a statement that "Trump's plan to accept a luxury plane from Qatar is blatantly unconstitutional, a textbook violation of the emoluments clause. The concern with foreign gifts is that they can sway a president's policy and predilections—and there's little doubt that Qatar wants to gift Trump a 'palace in the sky' for exactly that reason."
Weissman continued:
"The legal counsel who advised that this gift is OK because Trump will take personal control of it (through his library) only after leaving office should resign immediately, in shame and disgrace. The situation is no different than if the Qataris gave $400 million in cash to Trump and told him to keep it under his bed until 2029, when he could spend it freely. Except possibly it's worse, because he will use the plane in the interim, at great cost to the U.S. taxpayer, who will have to upgrade it.
Even in a presidency defined by grift, this move is shocking. It makes clear that U.S. foreign policy under Donald Trump is up for sale. The juxtaposition with cancelled foreign aid grants and programs for poor and vulnerable people—cancellations that will cost millions of lives unless reversed—could not be starker or more morally grotesque.
"Is taking a gift from a foreign government this big a bribe or bad judgment? Or just Trump?" Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) asked on social media. "Wish the MAGA movement cared about ethics in their president."
Congressman Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) said: "The level of corruption from President Trump and his White House is unlike anything we have ever seen in American history. It is appalling and criminal. Openly taking bribes."
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) noted that the reporting comes amid issues at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
"While ordinary Americans' flights are grounded because of problems at the FAA, Trump is taking a $400 million bribe in the form of a 'palace in the sky' from a foreign government," Casar said. "Over and over: He gets paid. Everyone else gets screwed."
This article has been updated with comment from Ali Al-Ansari, Qatar's media attaché.
"The overwhelming support for impeachment shows that the American public is not willing to accept King Trump," said Alexandra Flores-Quilty, Free Speech for People campaign director.
The nonprofit Free Speech for People is leading a new nonpartisan campaign to drum up support for U.S. President Donald Trump's removal—"Impeach Trump Again"—and reported Thursday that the effort has already garnered over 100,000 petition signatures.
The campaign is calling on Congress to launch an impeachment investigation into Trump and says that the signature numbers signal "widespread support" for a probe.
"The overwhelming support for impeachment shows that the American public is not willing to accept King Trump," said Alexandra Flores-Quilty, Free Speech for People campaign director, in a Thursday statement. "We need bold leaders in Congress willing to stand up and hold Trump accountable for his abuses of power and initiate an impeachment inquiry."
The petition, which was launched on Inauguration Day, calls on Congress to initiate an impeachment investigation into Trump based on potential violations of the U.S. Constitution's emoluments clauses, his pardoning of insurrectionists who took part in the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, and his "unlawful" and "corrupt" campaign practices.
Free Speech for People also launched a campaign to build public support for Trump's impeachment on the day of his inauguration back in 2017.
The emoluments clauses require that Trump "fully divest himself from any businesses receiving profits, gains, or advantages, beyond his official compensation, from the federal government or the individual states," according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Trump's business empire—which, as far as the public knows, he has not divested from—now includes not only real estate, but also a social media platform and a cryptocurrency token.
The campaign also lists other alleged impeachable offenses.
Trump was impeached twice by the House of Representatives during his first term, but in both cases he was acquitted by the Senate. Both chambers of Congress are now controlled by Trump's Republican Party.
"Far from expressing contrition for cashing in on the presidency, Donald Trump has made explicit his intent to expand his commodification of federal office if re-elected."
Democrats on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Friday published a staff report detailing how, while in office, former U.S. President Donald Trump—the 2024 Republican nominee—used his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. to enrich himself with hundreds of illegal or questionable payments from federal and state officials, job-seekers, and presidential pardon recipients.
The report—titled Room Rates May Vary: How Donald Trump Violated the Constitution by Fleecing Taxpayers With Unlawful and Exorbitant Hotel Charges—was released by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who in 2021 managed Trump's historic second impeachment for inciting the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
"Trump has used the presidency—and his yearslong pursuit of it—as the world's greatest get-rich-quick scheme."
Offering "a glimpse into President Trump's domestic emoluments rackets," the publication accuses the former president of violating the Constitution's Domestic Emoluments Clause "as he used the Secret Service as his personal ATM and repeatedly took payments that raise the specter of pay-to-play corruption from individuals who sought and, in many cases obtained, favors from the commander-in-chief."
"From the time he became a candidate and launched his campaign as ' the greatest infomercial in political history,' Donald Trump has used the presidency—and his yearslong pursuit of it—as the world's greatest get-rich-quick scheme," the report states.
"Earlier this year, the Democratic staff of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability released a staff report documenting the nearly $8 million former President Trump received through just four of his businesses and over just parts of a two-year period from at least 20 foreign governments that sought—and in many cases received—favors from the Trump administration," the report notes.
"This figure is clearly just a fraction of the total amount of unconstitutional foreign emoluments President Trump collected while in office—a total that still needs to be fully accounted for," the paper contends.
As Common Dreams reported in January, documents from Trump's former accounting firm reviewed by the committee revealed that businesses owned by the former president received payments from at least 20 foreign governments during his White House term, including over $5.5 million from China, $615,422 from Saudi Arabia, $465,744 from Qatar, and $303,372 from Kuwait.
The new report continues:
This follow-up report is based on a single set of records: guest logs for a single Trump property, Donald Trump's Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., covering just an 11-month period between September 2017 and August 2018 (excluding July 2018). Thus, the results would presumably represent less than one-quarter of Trump's ill-gotten gains from a single hotel over the course of his four-year term. While this is an exceedingly small window into the opaque web of more than 500 corporations, limited liability companies, and trusts that Donald Trump carried with him into the presidency, it is enough to reveal hundreds of unconstitutional and ethically suspect payments he accepted while in office from domestic sources—including a federal agency, numerous federal and state officials, and individuals who sought, and frequently obtained, federal offices as well as presidential pardons from him.
"The Constitution makes clear: Beyond a salary, the president may not receive any additional payments from federal or state governments," Raskin said in a statement. "This is a non-waivable prohibition against exploiting the office to convert and pocket public funds."
"While we still do not know the full extent of the unconstitutional payments Trump pocketed while fleecing American taxpayers, one thing is certain: We must put legal barriers in place now to prevent the kind of ripoff corruption our Founding Fathers so strongly opposed," Raskin added. "Given the need to enforce the U.S. Constitution against both foreign and domestic emoluments corruption, in the coming days, I will work with my Democratic colleagues on a legislative fix and hope that my Republican colleagues will join us in this effort."
The report notes that "Trump was very clear that he did not believe that the Constitution's prohibitions on either foreign or domestic emoluments applied to him. For example, in 2019, when public outrage forced him to reverse his plan to hold the following year's G7 summit at his 'foundering Doral resort,' he publicly denigrated what he called the 'phony Emoluments Clause.'"
"And far from expressing contrition for cashing in on the presidency, Donald Trump has made explicit his intent to expand his commodification of federal office if re-elected—including by gutting the federal civil service and replacing professional, expert, nonpolitical federal employees with a cadre of yes-men, sycophants, and loyalists," the paper adds.
Raskin said that "Trump
has made clear that he will not only refuse to divest from his businesses in a possible future presidency, but he will seek to multiply opportunities to commodify the Oval Office for his personal enrichment by turning thousands of civil service jobs into patronage positions—all with the attendant payoff possibilities from supplicant job-seekers and the prospective blessing of his hand-picked Supreme Court justices."
Donald Trump reported making more than $1.6 billion in outside revenue and income during his four years as President of the United States, according to a review of his financial disclosures by CREW. While Trump publicly took credit for donating his taxpayer-funded salary, that ended up being less than 0.1% of the revenue and income he disclosed during his presidency. Far from being a sacrifice, the donation was merely a fig leaf to cover up four years of brazen corruption.
Despite seeing a major dropoff in hospitality related revenue in 2020 due to the pandemic, in total Trump disclosed at least $1,613,583,013 in revenue from the Trump Organization and other outside income. Trump disclosed a high end of $1,790,614,202, but it is impossible to know exactly how much he pocketed as president, as some of his assets list a vague "Over $5,000,000" in yearly income and because of the structure of Trump Organization businesses, reported revenue does not necessarily reflect his personal income from them. One of the reports also included 19 days of revenue and income before Trump assumed the presidency.
A major part of his Trump Organization revenue came from the marquee properties that he often visited during his presidency. The Trump Hotel in DC, his now "home" Mar-a-Lago and his golf courses Doral, Bedminister and Trump National Washington brought in a combined $620,709,659 over the last four years. He paid a combined 399 visits to these properties as president. With the pandemic shuttering hotels and golf courses, the Trump Hotel dropped from $40 million a year in revenue to $15 million from 2020 through the end of Trump's presidency and Doral, which saw regular revenue in the mid-$70 millions, only tallied $44 million. Mar-a-Lago, however, saw a slight uptick to $24 million, as the president continued to visit during the pandemic. The Virginia-based Trump National Washington, which the president spent many weekends at during the pandemic, did not see a dropoff from the previous three years.
The argument could be made that Trump needed the presidency to keep his struggling business empire above water and the profits flowing into his pockets.Maybe the most notable foreign properties in Trump's portfolio are his three European golf courses--Turnberry and Aberdeen in Scotland and Doonbeg in Ireland--which the famously debt-laden developer bought in surprising cash deals and which have hemorrhaged money every year he has owned them. But while the courses have lost money, Trump still disclosed $138,726,106 in revenue from them over the last four years, this despite revenue dropping by nearly two-thirds in 2020.
What remains to be seen is whether he'll be able to keep the grift going post-presidency. Members of Congress, his administration, political supporters, special interests and foreign governments flocked to his properties in numbers never seen before. He also, over and over again, directed government spending to his properties, from his insistence on doing government business at Mar-a-Lago to Mike Pence staying at Doonbeg when he had meetings all the way on the other side of Ireland to his attempt to host the G-7 Conference at his struggling Trump National Doral property.
The argument could be made that Trump needed the presidency to keep his struggling business empire above water and the profits flowing into his pockets. The Trump Hotel in DC defied all expectations to quickly turn a profit despite charging well above most other DC hotels. People who wished to influence the president--lobbyists, politicians, foreign and state governments--paid a premium to see and be seen at the Trump Hotel, rubbing elbows with the president and his closest advisers. With Trump out of power, although threatening America with another run, it remains to be seen whether his businesses will still be seen as a new breed of corporate and foreign lobbying. In the wake of his attempted insurrection, many companies cut ties with his businesses. Only time will tell if that holds.
When Trump failed to separate himself from his businesses--and in fact used the presidency to increase his business earnings--he made it clear that his top priority was his personal profits. In that regard, the Trump administration was a ringing success.
However, as Trump constantly reminded us, he did donate his official yearly salary. All $400,000 of it.