The Atlantic

05/07/2025

Frum: In President Trump’s first term, he directed money to himself in a way that had never before been seen by an American president—never remotely. Like, not in the same neighborhood. He would stay in his hotels, so the Secret Service would pay him money to protect him. He would make clear to anyone from foreign nations that if they wanted his attention, they had better stay overnight at his hotel and hold their events in his hotel. At the beginning of his presidency, when he won by surprise in 2016, a number of the Persian Gulf states, which had planned events at other hotels in early parts for Christmas 2016, hastily rebooked at the Trump Hotel to gain favor. He also moved a lot of party money—not only public money, but if you were a Republican and you wanted his endorsement, you would have an event at his hotel.

That’s a lot of money. On the other hand, it’s like something you’d expect from, like, a crooked governor, not someone who controls the United States. And it looks like in his second term, he thought, You know, if I ever get another chance, this time I’m going to think big. And it looks as if through his various mysterious crypto ventures, hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, are moving from all kinds of people all over the planet to himself and to his family. And again, this is shadowy. It can’t be very precise, but it looks like vastly more money than in the first term has already moved into his hands in the second.

Applebaum: It is really an extraordinary transformation. I can only attribute it, one, to greater preparation. This time, his family and some of his business contacts were prepared for him to win and had a set of plans ready to go, you know, should he become president.

Also, it’s true that, as you say, in the first term, there were these small violations. There was another incident when Mike Pence went many miles out of his way to stay at a Trump Hotel in Ireland. I mean, there are all kinds of things like that that happened, and there was really no resistance. Nobody ever said, You’re breaking the law. Nobody stopped him. It wasn’t even really a major topic of concern among the many things that people were concerned about.

But you’re right—this time around, it’s very, very different. I mean, there are about four different kinds of things happening, and this is one of the reasons it’s so hard to keep track of. One is violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. This is essentially the clause that says the U.S. president isn’t supposed to benefit in any way from relationships with foreigners. Clearly, Trump benefits directly from relationships with foreigners.

You know, he was just at his golf course a few weekends ago, where a tournament was taking place that’s sponsored by state-owned Saudi companies. The head of the Saudi sovereign-wealth fund, which is one of the sponsors, was actually there. So he would’ve met many Saudi people who are his investors, essentially, and clients who, of course, are also interested in his Middle Eastern policy and in American foreign policy. So you could argue that they were there if—maybe it’s touchy to say they were trying to buy American foreign policy, but they were certainly trying to influence it. Why else? Why else would they be? Why else would they be there?

Secondly, there are conflicts of interest, and this, again, is on a scale that we have never seen before. Elon Musk has been put in charge of—with his group of DOGE, whoever they are, engineers and internet trolls, have been in charge of—taking over and managing regulatory bodies who regulate Musk’s own companies. He’s also got control and the power to hire and fire people at agencies that subsidize his companies.

So in other words, he can determine government policy towards his own companies. He can direct money towards his companies if he wants to. He can eliminate regulations of his companies if he wants to. And he is somebody who has been found in violation of all kinds of regulations—pollution regulations, other kinds of legal issues have plagued a lot of his companies from the beginning. And he now has been given a mechanism to escape that. And I should say, he’s just the most egregious version of this. There are many people throughout this administration who have kept their private interests, who haven’t recused themselves from investment issues, you know, who have nevertheless kept their jobs.

Thirdly, there are legal changes. There are laws that were on the books that the Trump Department of Justice or the Treasury Department will not enforce. There’s something called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This was designed to forbid U.S. entities from bribing companies abroad. That law is now not being enforced. There’s also a Corporate Transparency Act, which was designed to force the owners of shell companies and anonymous properties to register their names so that when someone bought, for example, an apartment in a Trump building, we would know who the real owner was—you know, is it Joe Smith down the street, or is it a Kazak billionaire who’s interested in having influence on the U.S. government? And they have now said they will not be enforcing that law either.

And then finally, there is outright corruption. So Trump has created a cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, which appears to be attracting investors who have a direct interest either in escaping a regulation or, in some cases, a lawsuit or an indictment by the federal government, or who have some interest in influencing Trump or his family in some other way. And as you say, there may be hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into this project and into others. We have no clear way to keep track of it. We don’t know the exact relationship between those investors and decisions made by the Treasury Department or the Justice Department. And it is, again, corruption and self-dealing on a scale that we’ve never seen in American history. And this really puts this administration in a completely different league.