Nicholas Kristof
What Trump Is the
Best at, Hands Down
Feb. 11, 2026
President Donald Trump leaves the Abu
Dhabi International Airport in May.Credit...Altaf Qadri/Associated Press
President Trump is
unrivaled in American history in one respect: None of his predecessors ever
cashed in on the presidency as he has.
The Teapot Dome scandal
under Warren Harding? Richard Nixon’s slush funds during Watergate? Those seem
like junior high school by comparison with the present culture of corruption.
The fire hose of
disclosures has been overwhelming. A Times editorial estimated conservatively that the Trump family has
made more than $1.4 billion in documented gains by exploiting the second term
of his presidency. (Others offer higher figures.)
And all that pales beside the latest
bombshell: a $500 million secret deal backed by a government leader in the
United Arab Emirates, just four days before Trump was inaugurated for his
second term.
Here’s what we know.
The Wall Street Journal
broke the story, reporting that
on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, the Emiratis purchased 49 percent of a
Trump family cryptocurrency company for $500 million. It’s difficult to see why
anybody would pay so much for a fledgling company — unless the
point was to enrich the Trumps.
Most of the money in
effect went to the Trump family, but some found its way to the family of Steve
Witkoff, a co-owner of the venture. Trump had selected Witkoff to become the
United States’ special envoy to the Middle East.
The purchase was backed
by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the national security adviser of the
Emirates. Known as “the spy sheikh,” Sheikh Tahnoon is a brother of the
president of the Emirates.
On top of that, an
Emirati-backed fund deposited $2 billion into World Liberty, generating a
revenue stream expected to amount to at least tens of millions of dollars a
year in additional profits.
The Emirates had long sought large
numbers of advanced computer chips from the United States, but American
security officials had denied permission for fear that some would end up in
China, with which the Emirates has close ties. The concern was that the
transfer of chips could undermine America’s leadership in A.I. development.
However, soon after the
infusion of cash from the Emirates into Trump family pockets, the Trump
administration approved the export of hundreds of thousands of advanced chips
to the Emirates.
A masterly New York
Times investigation last year found that the American chip negotiations
intersected with World Liberty business. There wasn’t evidence of an explicit
quid pro quo — “You write me a check, and I’ll give you chips” — but the
investigation raised fundamental questions about whether American national
security decisions were shaped by Trump’s business interests.
The latest revelations
make the picture even more troubling. The sums were invested in secret, and to
me at least they look less like an arms-length business transaction than a
money transfer. The transaction also raises two fundamental questions:
First, did the Emirati
decision to enrich the Trump family lead the administration to approve chip
sales that put at risk American competitiveness and national security?
Second, did the Emirati
investments buy Trump’s silence about the Emirates’ role in backing a militia
that the United States accuses of committing genocide in Sudan? Hundreds of
thousands of people have died there, and vast numbers have been raped, yet Trump
has averted his eyes — and in the face of that silence, the killing, rape and
torture continue.
Senator Chris Murphy of
Connecticut called the Emirati investment in World Liberty
“mind blowing” — a “secret deal to make Trump rich in exchange for national
security favors.” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts suggested that
administration officials “sold out American national security in order to
benefit the president’s crypto company.”
Together with
Senators Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Andy Kim of New Jersey and Elissa
Slotkin of Michigan, Warren called for the chip sales to the Emirates to be
canceled. But these senators are all Democrats, and Republican leaders are mum.
(If it had been $500
million in cash delivered to the White House in paper bags, like the $50,000
reportedly handed to Tom Homan in 2024 as part of a mysterious F.B.I. sting —
he denied it — that might capture the public imagination. But it would be less
practical: I calculate that in $100 bills, the sum of $500 million would fill
450 standard grocery bags full of cash. Sadly, my editors wouldn’t let me
expense $500 million to fact-check this.)
And that doesn’t include
the extras. “World Liberty has earned the Trump family at least $1.2 billion in
cash in the 16 months since its launch, not counting paper gains of at least
$2.25 billion from various crypto holdings,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
The White House and
World Liberty dispute the accusations of graft. They argue that Trump himself
was not involved in decisions about World Liberty (Eric Trump signed the
transaction documents) and that the investments had no connection with the
approval of chip sales to the Emirates. The White House counsel, David
Warrington, said that Trump followed ethical principles and that to suggest
otherwise would be “either ill-informed or malicious.”
The White House also denied that there
was anything untoward about Trump’s pardon in October of Changpeng Zhao, the
founder and owner of the overseas crypto company Binance, after Binance heavily backed a
World Liberty product and enormously increased its value.
During my career, I’ve
seen mind-boggling corruption in many places. The former Indonesian first lady,
Madame Tien, known as “Madame Tien Percent.” A Chinese friend, the son of a
Politburo member, who told me that he was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars
a year to do no work for a company, so it could use his name to win land deals.
I never expected to see anything like this in America — yet that is what
happens under authoritarian leaders.
Let’s step back for a
moment. When President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, his Justice
Department investigated whether he could accept it. The
Constitution and statute law ban any official from accepting a gift or
emolument from any foreign state. The Justice Department cleared the Nobel
Prize only because it was not granted by Norway itself but by a private
Norwegian group — and the lawyers made clear that
if the money came from the government, a president could not accept it.
If accepting a
state-funded version of the Nobel Peace Prize would be unconstitutional, how
can it be legal for this president to rake in vast amounts of cash in effect
from a foreign leader? When will we rebel against this culture of corruption?
