It PAYS to be President
It paid quite a lot actually. It also paid to be the son of a president as we learned in the Biden days.
I’m sure we all remember how President Biden-his-time used his son Hunter as his agent to scout for deals to be made in foreign, war-torn lands. An exposé in today’s headlines reveals new details about the selling of the presidency. So, I’m sure when the people who were outraged over the Biden shenanigans find out that access to the president is being sold on a far grander scale by Trump & Sons, renewed outrage and new calls for impeachment of the president and imprisonment of the sons will be equal to all that #NoMoJoe & Son got and deserved. (I can feel the outrage, albeit probably coming at me for sharing the comparable truth.)
Eric Trump was in Dubai on family business. Meeting with a Chinese businessman and his associates on the sidelines of a cryptocurrency conference in May this year, the son of U.S. President Donald J. Trump ran through his usual talking points about the inefficiency of traditional banks and his own famous father’s run-ins with financiers.
Then came the pitch. Buy at least $20 million of “governance tokens” in the Trump family’s crypto business, World Liberty Financial, and become part of a venture that Eric Trump predicted would soon embody the future of finance in America….
At the time, World Liberty was a fledgling business. It hadn’t yet created the cryptocurrency-based finance platform it promised after its September 2024 launch. It still hasn’t.
Even so, the pitch apparently worked. On June 26, an obscure entity called Aqua1 Foundation, which said it was based in the United Arab Emirates, announced it was buying $100 million of cryptocurrency tokens from World Liberty. It was the single largest known purchase of the so-called WLFI tokens at the time….
The Chinese businessman who met with Eric Trump in Dubai was Guren “Bobby” Zhou, who has executive roles in multiple businesses and who is under investigation in Britain for money laundering, according to that nation’s National Crime Agency and a document filed in an immigration case at London’s Royal Courts of Justice.
One of the complaints against cryptocurrencies has long been that they are much easier for criminals to use for laundering money than traditional currency because it’s harder for government to trace the transactions. Cryptos don’t have regulated banks reporting all transactions over $10,000 to the government, plus one of their selling points is that transactions in crypto are designed to be anonymous. Zhou’s massive purchase as an accused money launderer raises the specter that MAYBE presidential crypto is especially enticing to buy in bulk and use for major money laundering.
Oddly Zhou did not respond to a request for comments as to whether any of the money he used to purchase the enormous block of Trump family cryptos came from crime, though the authors of the story did ask.
The side note by Eric Trump that the Trump family crypto business will soon be “embody the future of finance in America” is also interesting because it raises a prospect I’ve already been advancing, which is that perhaps the future digital currency of America—as Trump crashes the dollar’s global trade status by crashing global trade—will be issued by World Liberty Financial or will even be $Trump.
The Dubai meeting, reported here for the first time, was just one stop on a globetrotting investment roadshow the two elder sons of President Trump - Eric and Donald Trump Jr. - embarked on around the time of their father’s election to a second term. In Europe, the Middle East and Asia, they have been promoting World Liberty and other ventures that funnel investors’ cash to Trump family businesses, known collectively as the Trump Organization. The Trump brothers’ efforts have been a whopping success In the first half of this year, the Trump Organization’s income soared 17-fold to $864 million from $51 million a year earlier, according to Reuters….
What a great setup that would to become the Don of money laundering. The team approach exhibited so successfully here by those skilled in these kinds of sales makes Hunter & Pa look like mere pikers, as the Trump family’s gains from selling access to the president approach a billion dollars (and that’s all profit). In fact, due to a certain amount of intransparency, the likely total is over a billion. And, lest you think access to the president is not what these big purchases of Trumpcoins are all about (and there were many other enormous foreign purchases than just the one listed), consider the next part of the story:
meme coins like the $TRUMP coin are essentially collectibles whose value reflects the popularity of the internet joke, meme or personality associated with them….
That’s a ton of money to drop on newly “minted” and completely untested meme coins.
Among the few major buyers whose identities are known—a mix of foreign and U.S. investors—most have histories of legal and regulatory entanglements related to their business endeavors. And as the Trump brothers’ travels over the past year show, foreign investors have been a major target for token sales.
Reuters interviewed half a dozen foreign crypto entrepreneurs who met with the Trump brothers. Five of them said they sought out the younger Trumps for business opportunities because of their proximity to the 79-year-old president and hopes of cashing in on his political and financial power….
Dorji Rabten’s Seoul-based venture investment firm, Oddiyana Ventures, bought an undisclosed amount of WLFI tokens in January. Rabten said he never met the Trump sons, but the family’s involvement was central to his investment. “In the first very moment where we saw the project, we thought it’s going to be very huge, obviously, given the fact it’s a president’s sons taking up that project….”
Association of some kind with the president is clearly key to these astronomical purchases of an untried currency, especially one issued by a brand-new financial company founded by a man who is truly infamous for the many business people he has stiffed as well as his many successful bankruptcies, which he once described as just another legal form of finance (as he moves the assets he wants to keep to a new corporation before he lets the old corporation crash).
Sounds like a lot of emphasis on rubbing elbows with the president to me, which may explain why the president says he has been doing so much handshaking that his shaking hand is bruised all the time. The people interviewed here weren’t even shy about mentioning their foremost desired association with the president outright. Remember how upset everyone was with Hunter for his privilege, saying he was only able to get his plush job and swing big deals because he was the president’s son? I sure do. I trust they are equally outraged about how the Don’s sons are able to swing deals, according to those they dealt with, only because they are the president’s sons.
Equal, or really greater, outrage would only be fair when you consider that the accomplishments of Creepy Uncle Joe’s drug-sniffing son are embarrassingly trite compared to the enterprising sons of Trump! Now these guys are dealers … and not in drugs. Then, of course, like Hunter their success is only due to their association with daddy.
“These people are not pouring money into coffers of the Trump family business because of the brothers’ acumen,” said Washington University law professor Kathleen Clark, who specializes in government ethics and was commenting on Reuters’ findings. “They are doing it because they want freedom from legal constraints and impunity that only the president can deliver.”
Can you imagine how useful the president’s power of the pardon might be for people showing loyalty to the presidential coinage? We’ve already seen how readily the president wields that power to get convicted criminals off the hook. Of course, as with Hunter, no laws are technically broken until prosecutors can prove that special access was actually given or that the son’s expressly promised or strongly implied privileged access to the president and his favor would come to those who bought the coinage. I would think, however, such access would be tacitly apparent via the way the offers were made at grand dinners attended by the president and by how he always favors those who are loyal to him.
Regardless, the combined power of the pardon with the new discovery of absolute presidential immunity for anything done as an official action, means even brazen promises should be no problem. There is always a way to wrap these things in official actions.
None of the more than a dozen people Reuters spoke with who had met with the Trump brothers or their partners recounted any of them explicitly offering presidential access or favors in return for investing in their family businesses.
Did anyone think the Trump team would openly admit to that and put the combo protection of pardon and immunity needlessly to test? Such direct wording is not how those used to running this kind of business operate. They use more the type that says, “That’s a beautiful family you have. It would be a shame if something were to happen to them.” Better still, keep it positive: “I’m sure the president would be very appreciative of your large investment in his new digital currency.”
As recently as 2021, Donald J. Trump, speaking to Fox Business, criticized cryptocurrencies as a threat to U.S. dollar supremacy and said bitcoin “seems like a scam.” Three years later, his take on crypto had changed.
No doubt! He’s making bank … but not in the same ways that most owners of Bitcoin and certain other cryptos do. Not even close. He’s found a whole new way to profit off of crypto … by capitalizing on the political and financial powers of the presidency, itself.
The link for the full article is in the headlines list below, and it has a lot more to say that is worth reading for anyone who formerly found the Hunter tales newsworthy, including about the family’s plans to make this venture useful as US currency (well timed for the dollar’s demise under the man who gets to appoint the next comptroller-in-chief of the US dollar).
The venture has yet to unveil what it heralded last year as its core business: a peer-to-peer financing platform capable of challenging traditional banks.
Traditional banks that own and manage the dollar and its daily creation. Sounds like the dollar replacement I predicted on the level of being, at least, a plausible outcome. That is, of course, assuming the whole scheme doesn’t collapse. It wouldn’t be the first Trump full flush if it did.
For its part, World Liberty conveys the impression of a presidential connection.
And, as I say, conveyed impressions are the trade language of dons everywhere.
On the “Meet our team” section of its website, the firm displays a portrait of President Trump, labeling him a “co-founder emeritus.” The other co-founder emeritus shown is Steven Witkoff, a billionaire real estate investor and President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East and for peace missions. (A small footnote says both men were “removed upon taking office.”)
Removed from direct governance; but it would certainly be easy for Trump to influence or control his adoring sons, and both founders still will enjoy the profits … at least, once out of office, if not a lot sooner.
Don Jr., Eric and their younger brother, Barron Trump, are presented as co-founders, as are Witkoff’s two sons, Zach and Alex. Zach Witkoff has been a ubiquitous presence with the Trump brothers as they have traveled the globe to tout tokens.
Undoubtedly, Joe Biden, if he is still cognizant of life around him, now wishes his team had been that ample in number of those with whom he had strong family ties … and perhaps wishes his team had been a little less drug-addled and clumsy with its laptop.
“Without the Trump name, you wouldn’t see World Liberty Financial raising this kind of money,” said Santa Clara University finance professor Seoyoung Kim, who specializes in crypto analytics. Kim said she saw nothing of particular value in the technologies and services announced by World Liberty, describing its value proposition as “being part of the club….”
All of this adds a lot of value, as well, to a Mar-a-Lago club membership, lest you miss first word of the opportunities.
“It is an incredibly exciting time,” Eric Trump told Fox Business on August 13, a day after the deal with Alt5 Sigma was finalized.
I’m sure Hunter was excited for years about the deals that could be made by trading on the family name when daddy was prez. It is, indeed, an incredibly exiting time for those who can make such big plays and have an easy pardon at their disposal if ever needed by a man never shy in issuing them, no matter how it looks.
The Trumps’ cash income from crypto doesn’t even include the value of the vast crypto assets the family has amassed in the past year.
Those assets include $TRUMP meme coins and World Liberty tokens the family still holds.
There’s more info in the story about the family’s presidential-size growth in fortune far beyond the additional billion mentioned above and about the many massive foreign interests with ties to the family fountain of fortune via cryptocurrencies as well as about sudden DoJ pauses in cases involving crypto kings. One such case was paused just shortly after the alleged criminal bought $75-million in World Liberty tokens, which, under World Liberty’s cash distribution agreement with its co-founders, would have sent $56 million to the Trump family.
That, of course, proves nothing; but it certainly gives you a place to sniff in want of proof!
An SEC spokesperson declined to comment. The investigation remains paused.
There is much more to read in the exposé.
“Peace, peace and there is no peace”
Now that the Peace President has delivered his pitch for the Nobel Prize many times over, boasting about how he accomplished peace in Israel via a deal greater than any other president has done before, the peace deal in Gaza fell apart today. Who could have seen that coming. Israel resumed powerful bomb strikes after Hamas fired on IDF forces in Rafa and after Israel discovered Hamas playing tricks on the return of hostages.
Ah well, what is a Middle East peace deal without continued machine-gun fire, resumed heavy bombing and failure to fulfill the promises? Who, except all of us, could have seen that the president’s deal might literally blow up “before the blood on the signatures stops dripping.” (See “Peter Thiel, the Antichrist, and the Peace President.”)
Failure to deliver
Meanwhile the latest government shutdown by irresponsible legislators on both sides is delivering by not delivering airline passengers. Over 7,000 flights were cancelled today, and the FAA announced more imposed ground stops are likely because the air-traffic controllers just missed their first check. It turns out that, while they are deemed “essential workers,” paying them is essential to keeping them. A great many just left their post to remind the government that it abolished slavery more than a century ago; so, no pay, no work.
Welcome to America. It was a great country while it lasted.