The New York Times published a shocking story about the enrichment of the Trump family by two big deals that were supposed to be unrelated but probably were not.
Trump selected his close friend Steve Witkoff as his Middle East envoy, although Witkoff has no prior experience as a diplomat. Witkoff is a real estate lawyer and a developer, also a billionaire. Witkoff is also Trump’s special envoy to Putin. Witkoff’s son Zach is a partner in the crypto business with Eric Trump and Don Trump Jr. They are partners in World Liberty Financial.
This summer, Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy, paid a visit to the coast of Sardinia, a stretch of the Mediterranean Sea crowded with super yachts.
On one of those extravagant vessels, Mr. Witkoff sat down with a member of the ultrarich ruling family of the United Arab Emirates. He was meeting Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a trim figure in dark glasses who controls $1.5 trillion of the Emiratis’ sovereign wealth.
It was the latest engagement in a consequential alliance.
Over the past few months, Mr. Witkoff and Sheikh Tahnoon had become both diplomatic allies and business partners, testing the limits of ethics rules while enriching the president, his family and his inner circle, according to an investigation by The New York Times.
At the heart of their relationship are two multibillion-dollar deals. One involved a crypto company founded by the Witkoff and the Trump families that benefited both financially. The other involved a sale of valuable computer chips that benefited the Emirates economically.
While there is no evidence that one deal was explicitly offered in return for the other, the confluence of the two agreements is itself extraordinary. Taken together, they blurred the lines between personal and government business and raised questions about whether U.S. interests were served.
In May, Mr. Witkoff’s son Zach announced the first of the deals at a conference in Dubai. One of Sheikh Tahnoon’s investment firms would deposit $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency start-up founded by the Witkoffs and Trumps.
Two weeks later, the White House agreed to allow the U.A.E. access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips, a crucial tool in the high-stakes race to dominate artificial intelligence. Many of the chips would go to G42, a sprawling technology firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, despite national security concerns that the chips could be shared with China.
Those negotiations involved another key White House official with ties to the tech industry and to the Middle East: David Sacks. A longtime venture capitalist, Mr. Sacks serves as the administration’s A.I. and crypto czar, a newly created position that has allowed him to shape tech policy even as he continues to work in Silicon Valley.
This story must have rattled Trump because a few days after it appeared, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against The New York Times, for defamation.
Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC commented that this may be the most ridiculous lawsuit ever filed and explains the dubious mega deals that enriched the Trump and the Witkoffs.
O’Donnell naturally wonders what Republicans would say if Biden were involved in a deal like that. Yet they are silent about Jared Kushner getting a $2 billion investment from the Saudis and the Trump sons getting another $2 billion.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Voters should consider that making a guy known for the “art of the deal” president would come with consequences, and some of those consequences may not be good for America and its people. When that president also puts assorted billionaires in his government, there could be devastating, even dangerous consequences for the country, to our standing in the world, our reputation and even our national security. There’s a saying that if you’re a hammer, everything is is a nail. If you’re a businessman, everything is a hunt for profit with self-dealing implications. Business people are not statesmen, and they are not scholars. They look for return on investments like a hound dog follows a scent, and some of them are ethically challenged. They do not have all the answers. In fact, they may not even know what questions to ask.
Our president is a man with multiple bankruptcies who is using the office to enrich himself and his family. He has manipulated the government into authoritarianism so he can do as he pleases with us. His authoritarian realignment without checks and balances gives him maximum opportunity to expose us to maximum risk. Our country is not his priority. His interests, especially wealth and power, are his main focus. As educators we have all witnessed the mess that wasteful, fraudulent market based education has caused public education What DJT and his team are doing is similar, but worse, because the future of our country depends on their decisions. Unfortunately, the consequences could be catastrophic.
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Anyone who supports high tariffs is not in favor of free markets. Anyone who supports a masked army of federal thugs arresting and imprisoning people for being brown doesn’t believe in freedom or small government. Anyone who supports pressuring networks to fire comedians does not believe in free speech.
It’s long past time to take back the Republican Party from the morons.
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put toothpaste back into the tube?
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Yeah. Perhaps. But parties have turned around in the past. Perhaps we need to go through the worst, as Germany did, before a correction is made.
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There is no Republican Party left in any meaningfully historical sense. They are no longer the party of small government, but of over arching fascistic invasion telling you what to think and even what is funny. They no longer are conservative of environmental health as was Teddy Roosevelt and, yes, Richard M. Nixon but the party of dirty coal effluence, scientific denialism and wanton habitat destruction. And arguably worst of all, the once staunchly anti-Soviet party now flacid lackies for a poisoning Russian mobster elf, a realty alone that would make Ronald Reagan viscerally despise Epstein’s bestie. All the greatness MAGA has barfed onto our democracy is only getting stinkier.
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Important point about Putin.
I never expected to see the party of Reagan spread the red carpet for the leader of Russia.
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add that to my list:
I never thought communism in the Soviet Union would crumble in my lifetime.
I never thought there would be any sort of settlement between the IRA and Britain
I never thought apartheid would pass without violence
I never thought republicans would vote for a populist tyrant
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DJT really got played by Putin. DJT rolled out the red carpet and planned to dish up a fancy lunch, but Putin left before the luncheon. The whole show was an embarrassing debacle for the poor little wannabe dictator.
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Yes, and after Trump treated Putin like royalty on American soil, expecting to get a ceasefire in Ukraine, Putin flew home and intensified the nightly drone attacks on Ukraine, its infrastructure, its government offices, its civilians. He even sent Russian drones into Poland and Russian jets into Estonian air space.
He treats Trump as a stupid cipher and Trump keeps accepting Putin’s contempt.
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Emolument, Shmolument clause. We don’t need no stinkin’ Constitutional limits on how much wealth our Kleptocratic leader Trump & his cronies milk from our country & economy for their own enrichment.
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When Trump leaves office, his family will be many billions wealthier.
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