Policy / February 2, 2026
The bribes of his first term have given way to billions in bribes.
Donald Trump speaks to reporters and members of the media at Mar-a-Lago on February 1, 2026 in Palm Beach, Florida.
(Al Drago/Getty Images) Donald Trump doesn’t tend to regret, but he does when he thinks about how modest his corruption was during his first term. When he was first elected president in 2016, Trump was primarily a real estate mogul and television personality who licensed his brand for money. He retained both his trademark properties and practices during his first term, which meant businessmen and foreign governments could indirectly enrich his coffers by staying at Trump-branded hotels. Foreign governments also paid bribes to the president by granting trademarks to the Trump Organization. Although both practices clearly violated the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, corruption continued with impunity during Trump’s first term; as might be expected, the Supreme Court refused to re-examine the case.
It is now clear that, overall, the corruption of Trump’s first term amounted to tens of millions of dollars rather than billions. It’s not that Trump was any less greedy; he simply lacked the imagination and connections to understand how the presidency could actually be exploited on a large scale. But his four years of absence allowed him to rebuild his business empire, moving into areas such as social media (with Truth Social) and cryptocurrencies (with World Liberty Financial, founded in September 2024 and of which the Trump family owns 75%). During these years, the Trump family also deepened its ties with the wealthy elites of Middle Eastern petro-states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These changes allowed Trump to go from being a relatively lowly crook to his current position as perhaps the most corrupt elected official in human history.
In an interview last month for The New York TimesAsset deplored that he did not make any deals as president during his first term. He changed his position on that, he said, because “I found that no one cared. I have a right to do it. You know, George Washington, when he was president…had two offices. He had a business office and a president’s office, and he did both. It’s OK to do that.” (Trump has used this phrase about Washington for many years; it won’t shock anyone to discover that it’s absurd.)
The New Yorker has calculated that Trump’s business deals leveraging his presidency have earned him more than $4 billion. SATURDAY, The Wall Street Journal reported on how a particular set of transactions, involving World Liberty Financial, has all the hallmarks of an open-and-shut corruption case. According to the newspaper,
Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants of an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to buy a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency business for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter. Buyers would pay half up front, netting $187 million for the Trump family entities.
The deal with World Liberty Financial, which was not previously announced, was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son. At least $31 million is also expected to go to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff, co-founder of World Liberty who weeks earlier was named U.S. envoy to the Middle East, according to the documents.
Spearheading the financial deal was Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who oversees a $1.3 trillion fund combining personal and government funds. Tahnoon is the brother of the president of the United Arab Emirates, and is also his brother’s national security advisor.
The World Liberty Financial deal had an added layer as MGX, a hedge fund led by Tahnoon, purchased $2 billion in stablecoin (a cryptocurrency tied to a fiat currency, in this case the US dollar) from the Trump family company which was used to invest in Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange. This $2 billion was used by World Liberty Financial to invest in U.S. Treasury bonds, which yield about $80 million per year. Indeed, this purchase gives World Liberty Financial a substantial and secure nest egg.
Current number
Binance was founded by Changpeng Zhao, who was convicted of money laundering in 2023 and now resides in the United Arab Emirates.
As a result of these trade deals, Tahnoon and Zhao achieved much-desired political victories from the U.S. government. Under Joe Biden, the United States was reluctant to allow the United Arab Emirates access to American AI chips, fearing that the oil state was too close to China. When Trump returned to the White House, Tahnoon pushed both for access to American chips and for an accelerated program that would make it easier for the UAE to invest in the United States. He was able to make his case in meetings with Trump and a half-dozen cabinet officials. (Former national security officials told Newspaper they were stunned by the level of access Tahnoon had received. Under the Biden administration, visiting foreign officials typically met with their U.S. counterparts.) In May, both of these policies were adopted. In October, Trump pardoned Zhao.
It is obviously impossible to prove that there was a quid pro quo. The White House says Trump was not involved in the World Liberty Financial deals, which were overseen by his sons. Witkoff, whose own son is also active in World Liberty Financial, also denies any involvement. In other words, Trump and Witkoff want us to believe that the extremely lucrative deals their sons make, which enrich them personally, have nothing to do with their actions as public officials.
It would be incredibly foolish to take these denials literally. As ethics lawyer Kathleen Clark told the Newspaper“It certainly looks like a violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause, and more to the point, it looks like a bribe.”
Trump’s assertion that “no one cared” about what he did during his first term is not just an indictment of his own disregard for anti-corruption norms. It is also a harsh judgment on the entire political system. The Supreme Court effectively rendered moot the Constitution’s emoluments clause. Republicans are completely in thrall to Trump and unwilling to show the kind of patriotism their party showed when Republican Party leaders broke with Richard Nixon over his crimes. The Democrats, with some noble exceptions like Senator Elizabeth Warren, are particularly reluctant to make corruption an issue because it appears to have little political influence.
The sad truth is that Trump is corrupt on a scale that dwarfs anything ever seen in an advanced democracy. He is taking advantage of the presidency to make billions. “Nobody Cares” could serve as an epitaph for the Trump era and could also, if Trump goes unpunished, be the epitaph for American democracy.
Damn Lord Jeet Heer is national affairs correspondent for The nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, Time of the Monsters. He also writes the monthly column “Morbid symptoms.” The author of Art lovers: the adventures of Françoise Mouly in comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: reviews, essays and profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American perspective, The guardian, The New RepublicAnd The Boston Globe.
