Money From the People Backing the Killing Certainly Influences Him
There is a terrible war in Sudan that includes intentionally slaughtering massive numbers of civilians. The group doing the slaughtering is funded by the United Arab Emirates. Both the U.S. and Britain have good relations with the UAE and apparently value those relations above pressuring them to stop funding the slaughter. While the reluctance of the U.S. to apply pressure might be the same regardless, it’s also true that a company close to UAE leaders gave a Trump family business a half a billion dollars. That’s exactly why this kind of corruption is so damaging.
David Cay Johnston has been reporting on the corruption of the Trump administration here on DCReport, via his Reality Check series and on it’s Facebook page. One of the biggest ways Trump family finances have been entangled in international relations was when the UAE invested a half a billion dollars in their crypto venture. The Wall Street Journal had a lengthy investigation of this particular scandal. The deal was not directly from the UAE government but from firms controlled by the brother of the UAE president. He also happens to be their National Security Advisor and leads their giant national wealth fund. So their government did not directly buy favor with Trump but did so behind the thinnest veil of indirectness. He certainly has a huge reason to be happy with both the country and the royals running it.
The deal also enriched Steve Witkoff who is the U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East and is U.S. Special Envoy for Peace Missions. Basically he and Jared Kushner are the point people on relations with the region. Kushner had previously benefited from UAE royal investments when they put $1.5 billion into his company. Actually now he’s up to $6.2 billion from investments by Mideast government connections. So Trump and all his key people involved in relations with the area have enormous reason to treat these royals as good, and beneficial, friends.
And maybe to also fear them. Can these investments be withdrawn if U.S. actions toward the UAE aren’t to their liking? How much of a blow to the Trumps crypto project and to the finances of Witkoff and Kushner would that be? That’s not clear from reporting on the deal itself.
When that deal was done the UAE seemed most interested in being allowed to buy specialized chips for use in A.I. systems. They had been blocked by the Biden administration for security concerns. Trump changed that policy and the UAE got the chips.
But were the royals playing a longer game? Wanting a general influence with Trump for future issues? Now the issue is that the UAE have been the major backers of these rebels killing civilians. Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times reported on how this militia has already overrun one city killing 60,000. Now they’re poised to overrun a larger city. They are, “particularly notorious for savagery … systematically killing men and boys over the age of 10 and gang-raping many women and girls.” The royals do not want pressure to back off on their support.
Frankly it’s not likely that Trump would put any focus on an issue like this even if it weren’t for the investments. It’s not the kind of thing that would interest him. He invaded Venezuela and took out Maduro because he wants to be seen as almost the ruler of all the Americas, and to get some of their oil wealth. In Iran he thought he could say they were on the verge of nuclear weapons. (Informed sources disagreed. Even Fox News had to acknowledge that.) He thought he could “solve” the Iran problem with one wave of bombings and be a hero. In each of those cases there was something in it for him. Regarding internal strife in Sudan? There’s nothing in it for him.
Britain too has been reluctant to pressure the UAE, as the Guardian has reported. They apparently have their own reasons for coddling them.
So the influence buying investments may make no difference in this case, but that’s the point. We don’t know. When a president or other key decision makers have their personal interests tied up with things they decide on, we can’t know. And of course it’s safest to assume these stakes do affect decisions. That’s true both in international relations and in domestic issues. How does Trump make decisions that might affect Intel and other companies he’s taken a big stake in? How does he make decisions about whether crypto is being regulated safely given his big stake in that?
There are also unforeseen costs U.S. interests might pay. To be clear, the major victims in this are the citizens in Sudan who may be about to lose their lives. It feels dismissive to follow that with “but”, but there are U.S. interests involved too. What other decisions will be made that will be different because of this influence? Which decisions will be bad ones? It’s in part our meddling in the Middle East for decades that made it easy for radical and militarized groups to gain support in hating us. Sometimes bad decisions take a long time to fester and become very costly. That’s a mistake we’ve made repeatedly in the region. Decisions based on, “What’s it going to cost me personally” completely leave out the wise, far sighted considerations of what would be best for the nation, both near term and very long term.
Trump’s personal history makes his corruption in office unsurprising, as any voter who cared about such things could have known. The Republicans standing in the way of controlling him, or of investigating and prosecuting him, are the ones truly to blame. They may get voted out but they’ll never pay any price for all the damage and harm. The “standing in the way”, though, can be ended, if we voters choose to end it.
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