Donald Trump’s New Reality Show: Let’s Make a Deal and Get Rich
It’s easy when you don’t care what anybody thinks.
According to the New York Times, “The Trumps are hardly the first presidential family to profit from their time in power, but they have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House.”
OK, let’s acknowledge that members of the Biden family made big money peddling Joe’s name where it would do some good. And while we’re at it, let’s acknowledge that no one at the Times would be caught dead wearing a MAGA hat even if it’s in a cave in Fiji at two in the morning during monsoon season — but that doesn’t mean the newspaper of record isn’t on to something. So, here are a few specifics:
The Trump family and its business partners reportedly have pulled in $320 million from a shiny new cryptocurrency venture, brokered real estate deals overseas worth billions, and are launching an exclusive club in Washington—charmingly named the “Executive Branch”—where membership costs a cool half a million dollars. Yes, $500,000 just to join. No word yet on whether that includes valet parking.
Oh, and here’s another juicy tidbit: After a cozy dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Jeff Bezos—who, as a businessman, doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of the president — allegedly agreed to bankroll a film about Melania Trump, a cinematic masterpiece expected to funnel $28 million directly into her bank account.
And just when you think the curtain’s closing, enter Qatar, stage right. The Gulf nation is gifting Trump a luxury jet valued at $200 million. Not just for his use now, mind you, but also for his presidential library after he leaves office—assuming there’s a runway long enough to accommodate both the plane and his ego.
For context, that $200 million is more than the total value of all foreign gifts ever given to previous American presidents — combined.
Even a Trump pal like Tucker Carlson is raising an eyebrow about that gift from Qatar. On a podcast, he admitted, “Well, it seems like corruption, yeah.”
Michael Johnston, a corruption expert with five decades in the trenches, told the Times, “I’ve been watching and writing about corruption for 50 years, and my head is still spinning.” If a man who’s studied the dark underbelly of politics for half a century is stunned, maybe—just maybe—we should all be paying a bit more attention.
And yet, amid all this, what’s curiously missing? Outrage. There’s a vacuum where moral indignation used to live. Why? Maybe because after we’ve lived with Donald Trump for so long, we’ve developed a sort of political PTSD. Nothing shocks us anymore. Nothing sticks. Nothing matters. The abnormal has become normal.
The Times puts it this way: “The death of outrage in the Trump era, or at least the dearth of outrage, exemplifies how far the president has moved the lines of accepted behavior in Washington.” Translation: He’s broken so many rules that we’ve forgotten what the rules even were.
As for the official spin, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, offered this gem: “The president is abiding by all conflict of interest laws that are applicable to the president.” You have to admire the precision. Not “all conflict of interest laws,” but only those “applicable to the president.” And who determines what’s applicable? You guessed it.
Leavitt also said, “The American public believes it is absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency.” Maybe some of the public believes that. Or maybe some of the public doesn’t care—as long as the trains run on time, the stock market behaves, and the southern border remains pretty much closed.
What’s perhaps most remarkable isn’t the scale of the profiteering—but the transparency. Trump isn’t hiding any of it — at least not that we know of. The deals, the gifts, the money—it’s all out there, right in front of us, like a storefront display window in midtown Manhattan. He’s not even pretending. Could it be because he doesn’t care what any of us think?
We know the answer to that, don’t we?
I've been feeling and noticing Bernie's bullet points myself- my female intuition, too, kicked in- doesn't this behaviour progressively become pathological? To where one goes 'off the rails?' I pray this scenario does not play out, for everyone's sake.
What happened to Bill Bennet? You know, the morality czar - or something like that. Didn't he write a book during the President Clinton years titled something like "Where's the Outrage?" or maybe Bernie lifted it - "The Death of Outrage."