Trump Returns from Money Tour, But He Won't Get the Plane
Taken in by the lavish royal treatment has us wondering what he's promised them.
“My goal is to keep foreign money out of American politics,” Trump said at the October 2016 debate for the presidency. “Hillary Clinton’s goal is to put the Oval Office up for sale to whatever country offers the highest price.”
What a difference a few years make, as Trump, in his first foreign trip since retaking the presidency, again goes first to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) because that’s where the Trump family has megadollar deals in the works and where influence into the White House is up for sale. Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy is the most outspoken of the very few in Congress who have anything to say:
”Let's be clear what this trip is about. This is Trump's corruption tour of the Middle East. He is going to the Gulf in order to collect tribute. What's happening here is an extraordinary level of corruption. “
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the family agreed not to sign any new international deals while he was in office. This time, they issued an ethics statement that said only that they would have “no new transactions with foreign governments”. Just two weeks before papa’s trip, the Trump Organization signed onto a deal to develop in Qatar a $5.5 billion golf and resort. The deal is with a Qatari company called Qatari Diar which happens to be owned by the Qatari government. So much for their ethics statement.
They are doing much the same in Oman (not on the president’s itinerary) – a luxury hotel and golf combination. It’s on government-owned land and the government will get a share. In Dubai (UAE) there is to be the 80-story $1.15 billion Trump International Hotel and Tower, but this time seemingly built by a non-government company. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi (another of the seven emirates) announced it would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins as currency, for which the Trump company takes a fee.
Trump can rebut this by saying that … Continue reading