Emboldened President Jumps Ethical Barriers

Qatari Jet Deepens Corruption Concerns

In partnership with

Morning! As usual, we’ll get started after the ads below. ⬇️

ADVERTISEMENTS FOLLOW

Learn AI in 5 minutes a day

This is the easiest way for a busy person wanting to learn AI in as little time as possible:

  1. Sign up for The Rundown AI newsletter

  2. They send you 5-minute email updates on the latest AI news and how to use it

  3. You learn how to become 2x more productive by leveraging AI

END OF ADVERTISEMENTS

Today’s front page story is an analysis by Charlie Savage of the second Trump administration’s increasingly corrupt attitude to doing business. It’s no coincidence it appears next to an image of Trump meeting the Saudi Crown Prince in Riyadh yesterday.

The first time around, people raised concerns about special interests and governments buying meals and booking rooms at his hotels.

“Mr. Trump’s second term is making those concerns look trivial,” sniffs the second paragraph.

Now he’s accepting a $400 million luxury jet from the Qatari royal family in the latest example of “an increasingly no-holds-barred atmosphere in Washington under Trump 2.0,” Mr. Savage writes, particularly because Mr. Trump will take ownership of the plane through his foundation when he leaves office.

The second Trump administration is showing striking disdain for onetime norms of propriety and for traditional legal and political guardrails around public service. It is clearly emboldened, in part because of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year that granted immunity to presidents for their official actions and because of the political reality that Mr. Trump’s hold on the Republican Party means he need not fear impeachment.

The piece then lists examples of this kind of thing. Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee “raked in $239 million from wealthy business interests hoping to curry his favor or at least avoid his wrath.” As Mr. Savage reports, “there is no way to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on dinners and events, and the committee has not said what will happen to leftover funds.”

I have a very good guess for you, though. They went into Donald’s pocket!

Then there’s the meme cryptocurrency which allows investors around the world to enrich him. His family’s reserve of the coin is worth billions on paper. This month, Mr. Trump auctioned off face-to-face access to himself through sales of the coin, announcing that top buyers would get a private dinner at one of his golf courses and that the largest holders would get a tour of the White House. Coincidentally in April, the Trump administration disbanded a Justice Department unit dedicated to investigating cryptocurrency crimes. And there’s more.

Earlier, Mr. Trump had also ordered the department to suspend enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it a crime for companies that operate in the United States to bribe foreign officials.

And Attorney General Pam Bondi, herself a former highly paid lobbyist for Qatar, narrowed enforcement of a law requiring lobbyists for foreign governments to register such relationships and disclose what they are paid.

The administration hasn’t made its legal analysis of the jet agreement with Qatar public, but apparently Ms. Bondi has signed a Justice Department memo blessing the plan as lawful. I bet she did.

The Times does its best to qualify what is essentially a story saying Donald Trump is the most corrupt president of the United States ever. It mentions Senator Robert Menendez who resigned from office after being convicted of taking bribes, and of course, there’s Hunter Biden. But. Trump’s “openness” in the way his family is “unabashedly leveraging his position to accrue personal benefits” are “remarkable.”

We have a rehash of his sons’ recent trip to the Middle East, their new club in Washington D.C., and how Trump has pressured major law firms to donate tens of millions of dollars in pro bono services. Amazon paid $40 million to stream a documentary — as yet unmade — about Melania Trump. Meta paid $25 million to the nonprofit that will build and run Mr. Trump’s — as yet unbuilt — presidential museum. Corporate owners of media organizations are also settling lawsuits with Mr. Trump that many media lawyers have considered winnable, including ABC, which paid $15 million. Paramount, which needs Trump’s approval for a sale to a Holywood studio, is considering a similar settlement with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump’s plans for the Qatari plane are unclear either while in office or afterwards.

On Monday, Mr. Trump also signaled that he viewed Qatar’s offer of a plane as something of a quid pro quo, emphasizing that the United States had provided security to the Gulf country and “we will continue to.”

He added that he considered the gift “a very nice gesture” from the Qataris. Only a “stupid person,” he said, would turn down a “free very expensive airplane.”

So there we have it. It’s nice to see other media outlets taking a measured response to all this:

But the thing is, we’re all so exhausted at this point, just from reading the newspaper, that we’re likely to switch off and shrug our shoulders and ignore it. That, I would say, is a horrifically bad idea. In Russia it has led to the death of opposition leaders and the continued enrichment of Vladimir Putin. In Saudi Arabia they cut people up who disagree with the leadership. Trump’s corruption is outrageous and we should all talk about it and be shocked and angry. Only then we can watch the NBA playoffs in peace.

Say, is there a story that might cheer me up a bit?

Oh, sure. Read Pete Wells’ profile of Marcela Hazan who literally died in 2013. 👇🏻 I didn’t interview her in 2008 and had a nice time writing about it. This country loves a cultural touchstone, basically. You don’t actually need to cook any of her recipes. My favorite detail about Hazan is that she loved Jack Daniels and smoking Marlboro Lights. Her husband was also a jerk, in my experience. But a guy who understood how to market his wife to the world. And good for him.

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.

Standard disclaimer: I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each weekday morning at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). If you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll also send you a notification when I’m “going live.”