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      Trump can complain all he wants – but he can’t stop his own economic mess | Sidney Blumenthal

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      With his usual threats, Donald Trump is trying to ward off the dire reality that he has created and is bearing down on him. He can clamp migrants in foreign gulags, coerce white-shoe law firms into becoming his pro bono serfs and try to simply erase the National Endowment for the Humanities, but he can’t rescind his harm to the economy. Trump can slash the National Weather Service, but he can’t stop the storm he’s whipped up. He’s shouting into the wind at his twister.No matter how much he might lower his draconian tariffs after his 90-day breathing spell, the velocity of damage is just building. It’s not a mistake that can be rectified. There’s no do-over. It’s not a golf game at one of his clubs where he gets endless mulligans and is declared the champion. Nor does Trump really want to draw back completely from his tariffs as if he never had proudly displayed his “Liberation Day” idiot board.When the Walmart CEO inevitably announced that prices would have to be raised as a result of Trump’s tariffs, Trump warned: “Between Walmart and China they should, as is said ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!”Trump has falsely insisted that tariffs are levied on foreign importers. But Walmart demonstrated the indisputable fact that tariffs are price increases passed on to consumers. They are a tax. Trump is furious at the early indication of the renewed inflation and price rises that are coming. His natural response, of course, is an attempt at intimidation.The tariffs are a shakedown by which Trump could exercise his control over corporations that must scrape and bow before him, asking for targeted relief in exchange for, perhaps, payments to his personal political action committee, or, perhaps, throwing money into the kitty of his various financial endeavors, his crypto firm and meme-coin scheme. According to his wishful thinking, businesses should “eat the tariffs” to cover up his falsehood and maintain his popularity. For his sake, shut up and “eat” it. Trump is at war with the corporations’ bottom line.He can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but he can’t fool the bond market any of the time. When Moody’s Ratings downgraded the US credit rating, the Trump White House put out a statement attacking Moody’s “credibility” while blaming “Biden’s mess”. Moody’s reasons were an oblique criticism of Trump’s pending “big, beautiful bill” for massive regressive tax cuts in addition to his tariffs, which have led to the suspension of any further cuts in interest rates from the Federal Reserve.Blaming Biden, in any case, hasn’t been cutting it with public opinion. Only 21% of Americans attributed the state of the economy to Biden’s policies in a poll in early April conducted by CBS News/YouGov. In Trump’s first hundred days alone, he denigrated Biden at least 580 times, according to NBC News. Trump sought to make him the scapegoat for his own policies. But the public is certain that Trump and nobody else owns the economy as he desperately tries to restore it to where Biden bequeathed it to him, with inflation and interest rates falling. And, now, very ill, Biden can no longer serve as a convenient target.Even if, after Trump’s 90-day pause on tariffs, he cuts them in half, the result will be devastating to small businesses, family farms and many large corporations. Nearly 90% of American small businesses rely on imported goods. More than 20% of the US agricultural sector depends upon exporting its products, according to the US Department of Agriculture. US manufacturers rely on imports for more than 20% of machinery, products and components. More than 41m American jobs are linked to imports and exports, one in five, according to the Business Roundtable. That does not include the multiplier effect of millions, if not tens of millions, of additional jobs created as a result.The supply chain has been severely distorted. For 12 hours on 9 May, zero cargo ships – none, not one – departed from China to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the two major US ports for Asian imported goods. The more than $906bn trucking industry, which had finally regained stability after the Covid disruption, faces another shock. “Trump trade war is wrecking hope for 2025 US trucking rebound,” reads the headline on a Reuters story.The uncertainty factor that Trump has introduced has frozen all planning. The auto companies, among others, have given up issuing any guidance to investors. Their earnings are plunging, their suppliers in chaos. Nobody can predictably produce, order or hire, and so businesses are in a state of suspension. The prospect of a slowdown has already depressed oil prices to the point where it will soon not be profitable to drill at all. In April, Trump called critics of his tariffs “scoundrels and frauds”, but retailers do not know how to price goods, how much to raise them to sustain often razor-thin profit margins. They face a Hobson’s choice of pricing themselves out of their markets or absorbing the costs and going bust.The head of Trump’s council of economic advisers, Kevin Hassett, cheerfully announced on 12 April that he expected the gross domestic product to grow by 2% to 2.5% in the first quarter of this year. On 30 April, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that GDP had fallen by 0.3% in the quarter.Even after Trump agreed to drop his 145% tariff on China to 30%, Paul Krugman points out that “we’re still looking at a shock to the economy seven or eight times as big as Smoot-Hawley, the previous poster child for destructive tariff policy”. Krugman states that on the optimistic lower end, “we’d expect Trump’s tariffs after last weekend’s retreat on China to cut overall US trade by roughly 50%. Trade with China, which would have been virtually eliminated with a 145% tariff rate, would fall by ‘only’ around 65% with a 30% tariff.”The result will be devastating, with rising inflation, higher unemployment, shortages, and lower growth and investment. In short, the economy will plunge into stagflation for the first time since the 1970s. Then, the phenomenon was the outcome of the Opec oil shock. This is the Trump shock, not the consequence of an external factor, but entirely self-induced through a delusion. Does he care? “Well,” Trump said, “maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. So maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally.”All of what’s coming was foreseeable. This is not a case in which unintended consequences suddenly emerged without advance warning, like in the 1970s. Here the red lights flashed; Trump raced through them.The uncertainty he’s injected is not a byproduct of happenstance. Uncertainty is the aspiring dictator’s pre-eminent prerogative. Trump resents any limitation on his ability to act however he wishes. The ultimate privilege of a dictator is to be at liberty to be impulsive. The more unpredictable he is, the more he is regarded as omnipotent.Trump has no real policies. There is no actual analysis, no expertise, no peer review. He brandishes atavistic symbols as primitive representations of his unrestrained power. Lowering or raising the tariffs are functionally equivalent if they are perceived as enhancing the perception of his potency. The merits are of no interest. Policies, such as they are, are measured by how well they gild his lily. The more unpredictable he is, the more he thinks of himself and thinks others think of him as almighty.For Trump, experience is meaningless. He never learns. Even his existential moments are forgotten, like his near-death from Covid. He deduces no lessons. It doesn’t inform his health policies, for example, which he’s turned over to oddballs and snake-oil salesmen led by the chief crank with roadkill in his freezer and a worm in his brain, Robert F Kennedy Jr.Trump’s learning curve is a hamster’s wheel. He goes ’round and ’round, repeating belligerent ignorance unaltered over decades. He’s the hamster who thinks he’s making progress if he receives attention. His solipsism is epistemological. Jared Kushner grasped its essence when he surfed on Amazon to find the one discredited economist, Peter Navarro, to provide sham formulas to justify Trump’s preconceived tariff obsession.Trump’s psychological equilibrium requires the constant rejection of his responsibility for the abrasive reality he churns up. Confronting reality exacts fortitude, both politically and intellectually. He considers that a mug’s game he must resist. His inner fragility is shielded by projecting images of muscular strength, now AI generated videos and pictures of himself produced by the White House communications team as a Jedi, a guitar hero (after Bruce Springsteen called him “treasonous”) and the Pope (the new Pope Leo XIV does not much care for the social Darwinism of JD Vance).Meanwhile, there must be a conspiracy theory to deliver up a scapegoat. That opens the door of the Oval Office for malicious fabulists to whom Trump is particularly susceptible and finds useful as his instruments to terrorize even his own staff. Enter loony Laura Loomer as his virtual national security personnel director with a portfolio in hand identifying six officials on the national security council to be purged, soon to be followed by the defenestration of the national security adviser Michael Waltz, who, rather than the thoroughly incompetent secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, served as the scapegoat for the Signal chat group that invited in Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the Atlantic.A 9/11 truther, Loomer claimed the terrorist attack was “an inside job.” During the 2024 campaign, Trump brought her to the 9/11 memorial service. Loomer said that if Kamala Harris won the White House it “will smell of curry”. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right member of the House from Georgia, assailed Loomer as an “appalling and extremist racist”. “You don’t want to be Loomered,” Trump said. “If you’re Loomered, you’re in deep trouble. That’s the end of your career in a sense. Thanks, Laura.”Trump famously can’t accept the slightest criticism. He is armored against learning in any case. He is incapable of engaging in any self-examination for both emotional and cognitive reasons. It would be too upsetting even to contemplate. His whole being would become paralyzed if he were ever to suffer a bout of introspection. His system couldn’t tolerate it. His brittle peace of mind requires his fabricated self-image to be constantly apple-polished and worshipped.The split between Trump’s anxious need for his cosseted appearance and the terrible reality he’s making is his ultimate credibility gap. He must sustain a completely self-contained inner world or the walls start to close in.Information must therefore be suppressed. When the intelligence community assesses that the Tren de Aragua gang is not being manipulated by the Maduro regime of Venezuela, which is the invented excuse for Trump’s migrant round-up emergency, then fire the intelligence analysts or tell them to redo their report.When the Democrats in the House attempted to bring up a bill to remove Trump’s claim of a national security emergency for his tariffs – another mythical emergency – Republicans moved to block it in the rules committee. No vote, no debate. It’s a disappearing act.If the lying doesn’t work, try intimidation. That is the rhyme or reason behind Trump’s success in imposing his malignancy. But now he’s created a reality he can’t disguise or bully. The planets are hurdling into collision. He’s done it to himself by himself.The passage of his “Big Beautiful Bill”, with its extravagant tax cuts for the wealthy and deep cuts to Medicaid, wounding his white rural base, of which, depending on the county, are 25% to 40% dependent on the federal healthcare program, will spike the inflationary effect of his tariffs as well as the deficit. Republicans no longer uphold the pretense that their tax cut redistribution of wealth upward will actually lower the deficit by reducing revenue. Ronald Reagan’s supply-side economics claims, originally dubbed voodoo economics by George HW Bush, in fact proved Bush prescient. Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, confessed that the supply side charade was a “Trojan horse” for lowering the upper rate and was just a “horse-and-sparrow” theory of “trickle down.” Thus, Trump’s potential legislative success will only deepen his crisis.Donald turns his lonely eyes to the Federal Reserve to bail him out, like his father, Fred Trump, who always arrived in the nick of time to rescue him from his messes. Trump lies in capital letters: “THE CONSENSUS OF ALMOST EVERYBODY IS THAT, ‘THE FED SHOULD CUT RATES SOONER, RATHER THAN LATER.” There is no such consensus. The consensus is to the contrary.Trump’s begging shifts to threats. If Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, doesn’t do what Trump says he will be turned into the scapegoat: “Too Late Powell, a man legendary for being Too Late, will probably blow it again – But who knows???”But Powell is imperturbable. “Higher real rates may also reflect the possibility that inflation could be more volatile going forward than in the inter-crisis period of the 2010s,” he said in his most measured tone on 15 May. “We may be entering a period of more frequent, and potentially more persistent, supply shocks – a difficult challenge for the economy and for central banks.”It’s not Powell who is “too late.” It’s Trump. As Evelyn Waugh wrote in his novel Decline and Fall: “Too late, old boy, too late. The saddest words in the English language.”

      Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      As key Israel allies threaten action over Gaza catastrophe, Washington is largely unmoved

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      As Israel orders Palestinians to evacuate Khan Younis in advance of what it calls an “unprecedented attack” on Gaza, much of Washington remains largely unmoved, even as Canada and European countries threaten “concrete actions” if Israel does not scale back its offensive.Despite reports of growing pressure from the Trump administration to increase aid into Gaza, where widespread famine looms, the White House continues to publicly back Israel. National security council spokesperson James Hewitt told the Guardian in an email: “Hamas has rejected repeated ceasefire proposals, and therefore bears sole responsibility for this conflict,” maintaining the policy stance inherited from the previous Biden administration despite mounting evidence of humanitarian catastrophe.The Israeli military on Monday instructed residents of southern Gaza’s Khan Younis to “evacuate immediately” as it prepares to “destroy the capabilities of terrorist organizations” – signalling plans for intensified bombardment in a war that has already claimed more than 53,000 Palestinian lives, according to Gaza’s health ministry.Despite Israeli promises to “flatten” Gaza, opposition from Congress – and mainstream Democrats more broadly – has been largely muted. While the besieged territory faces what the World Health Organization (Who) calls “one of the world’s worst hunger crises”, more than three dozen members of Congress from both parties recently appeared in an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) video in celebration of Israel’s 77th birthday. In New York, leading mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo held up an Israeli flag in the city’s annual Israel Day Parade on Sunday.This political genuflection comes as a March Gallup poll shows American support for Israel has dropped to 46% – its lowest point in 25 years – while sympathy for Palestinians has risen to a record 33%. Democrats reported sympathizing with Palestinians over Israelis by a three-to-one ratio.On a recent episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Senator Bernie Sanders blamed Washington’s reluctance to change course on the financial muscle of lobbying groups. “If you speak up on that issue, you’ll have super Pacs like Aipac going after you,” Sanders said, noting Aipac’s record $14.5m campaign to unseat Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman after he accused Israel of genocide.A small contingent of progressive lawmakers continue to voice opposition despite being largely iced out from public discourse in Washington. Representative Delia Ramirez of Illinois condemned the “lethal, unaccountable, extremist duo” of Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump. “Americans have said they do not want to be complicit in their barbaric campaigns. It is time for us in Congress to exercise our power and take action. Not one more cent, not one more bomb, not one more excuse,” she told the Guardian.Representative Ilhan Omar similarly decried the latest chapter of the lopsided war on Gaza, calling it “another unconscionable moral stain”.“Despite the fanfare of Donald Trump’s trip [to the Middle East last weak], they’re not closer to a ceasefire,” Omar said. “It is deeply shameful that innocent civilians are continuing to pay the price.”Vermont senator Peter Welch recently led 29 Senate colleagues in introducing a resolution calling on the Trump administration to end the blockade of humanitarian aid. “It’s been over two months since the Israeli government has been using its power to withhold food, medicine, lifesaving cancer treatments, dialysis systems, formula, and more from starving and suffering families across Gaza,” he said.Resolutions, however, are symbolic gestures meant to publicize opinions and do not have the force of law.While the lawmakers voice their concerns, their impact on policy remains limited, representing the growing disconnect between Washington policymakers and public sentiment. That the grassroots movement for Palestinian rights in the US has grown more subdued – in large part due to an aggressive crackdown by the Trump administration against the universities that were host to last year’s protests – may take some of the pressure off for them to act.One insider familiar with discussions between the US and Israel told the Washington Post that the Americans have been hitting Israel with a tougher stance over the last few weeks. Haaretz has also reported growing pressure by the US on Israel to agree to a framework for a temporary ceasefire.“Trump’s people are letting Israel know: ‘We will abandon you if you do not end this war,’” the insider said. Trump and JD Vance both skipped over Israel on recent trips abroad, widely interpreted as a snub of Netanyahu.Netanyahu has announced the resumption of “minimal” humanitarian aid into Gaza, and the UN said on Monday that nine aid trucks were authorised to enter Gaza, a “drop in the ocean” given the scale of desperation.Whether US voices calling for change in US policy and a wind-down of the catastrophic war are just shouting in the void, may become clearer in the coming days. More

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      Trump once condemned Qatar. How things have changed | Mohamad Bazzi

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      On his tour of the Middle East last week, Donald Trump was treated like royalty by the leaders of the wealthiest countries in the Arab world. The US president was feted in gilded ballrooms, his motorcade was flanked by dozens of men riding white Arabian horses and he was awarded an elaborate gold medal necklace. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates went out of their way to show Trump that they respect him more than his predecessor, Joe Biden.While Trump frequently praised Saudi and UAE leaders during his first term, he was highly critical of Qatar, a small emirate that is rich in natural gas but usually overshadowed by its two larger and more powerful neighbors. In June 2017, Trump said Qatar “has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level” and he supported a blockade against the country, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Qatar’s neighbors accused it of financing terrorism by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and being too cozy with Iran. The blockade, which disrupted the lives of thousands of people across the Persian Gulf, stretched until early 2021.Today, Qatar has emerged as the unlikely success story of Trump’s first state visit of his second term. It was no accident that the Qatari royal family recently offered to donate a $400m luxury jet – a “palace in the sky” Boeing 747 – that the president could use as Air Force One for the rest of his term. The plane’s ownership would then be transferred to Trump’s presidential library, meaning he would be able to continue using the jet after he leaves office. Despite the administration’s convoluted effort to frame this as a donation from Qatar to the US government, it would in effect be a gift for Trump’s personal benefit.It’s yet another way that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and his family business, which has ongoing deals for Trump-branded real estate projects and golf resorts worth billions of dollars in the three wealthy Gulf petrostates that Trump visited last week. So far, neither Congress nor US courts have tried to sanction Trump over the US constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, which forbids the president from accepting gifts or payments from a foreign government without congressional approval.Qatar seems to have won Trump’s respect with its lavish gift and a charm offensive built around its role as a global mediator that is able to bring enemies together. During the first Trump administration, Qatar brokered a peace agreement between the US and Taliban leaders, which was supposed to lead to a phased withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. During the Biden administration, Qatar hosted indirect talks for a prisoner swap between Iran and the US, which included unblocking $6bn in frozen Iranian oil funds – an agreement that Washington later rescinded.But Qatar’s most high-stakes mediation role has been to serve as the main conduit for negotiations between Israel and Hamas, after the October 2023 Hamas attack and Israel’s devastating war on Gaza. The Qataris helped broker a one-week ceasefire in November 2023, and a two-month truce that started this past January and collapsed in March.Yet since the emirate emerged as a primary mediator in Gaza, politicians in both the US and Israel ratcheted up their attacks on Qatar. They accused its leaders of supporting terrorism by hosting members of Hamas’s political leadership in Doha, the Qatari capital, where several settled after they were forced out of Damascus for turning against the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was facing a popular uprising. Throughout the stalled Gaza negotiations, several members of Congress demanded that the Biden administration pressure Qatar to close the Hamas offices and expel its leaders. The Qataris resisted those demands and consistently pointed out that Barack Obama’s administration had asked Qatar in 2012 to establish an indirect channel that would allow the US to communicate with Hamas.After news broke of Qatar’s plan to donate the luxury jet to Trump, some figures in the president’s Maga movement revived complaints about the emirate’s support for Hamas and other Islamist groups. “We cannot accept a $400 million ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits,” Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who last month convinced Trump to fire six White House national security staffers, wrote on X. She added: “I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump. I’m so disappointed.”But most of the Republicans in Congress who had urged Biden to punish Qatar for its support of Hamas have so far stayed quiet about Trump’s decision to accept the $400m plane and cozy up to Qatar’s rulers. That’s partly an indication of how Trump has successfully banished or ignored many hawkish Republicans and neoconservatives during his second term, preferring to negotiate with Iran and other US adversaries. Qatar’s role as a mediator that can resolve regional conflicts is particularly attractive to Trump, who sees himself as the ultimate dealmaker.In this term, Trump has surrounded himself with longtime friends as top advisers, including Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer who is serving as the president’s Middle East envoy and all-around troubleshooter. Witkoff has been publicly praising Qatar’s leaders for their mediation efforts with Hamas since he took office in January – and the envoy’s praise is clearly resonating with Trump, who has dramatically changed his approach toward Qatar. “They’re good, decent people,” Witkoff said of the Qataris during an interview in March with Tucker Carlson, the rightwing media host and Maga figure. “What they want is a mediation that’s effective, that gets to a peace goal. And why? Because they’re a small nation and they want to be acknowledged as a peacemaker.”Witkoff’s comments echoed the strategy of Qatar’s ruler, the 44-year-old Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who took power in 2013 when his father abdicated the throne. The emir has tried to position Qatar as a force in global geopolitics not just for prestige, but also as a way to ensure his ruling family’s survival amid sometimes aggressive neighbors. (Those neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have tried to impose their own foreign policy directives on Qatar, as they did during the blockade that Trump supported in his first term.) Qatar still walks a tightrope of proving itself crucial to the US and western powers by being one of the world’s largest and most reliable suppliers of liquified natural gas, and also maintaining ties with non-state groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban.Qatar has tried to hedge its bets by positioning itself to play an outsize role as a dealmaker, one that a country of its size would not normally take on. That policy began under the current emir’s father, who launched the state-owned Al Jazeera satellite network in 1996 as part of Qatar’s soft-power campaign to increase its influence in the Middle East. And while Qatar directly funded Islamist groups soon after the 2011 Arab uprisings in Syria, Libya and Egypt, the emirate’s leaders became more cautious in recent years and shifted toward cementing their role as global negotiators.For decades, Qatari leaders have also worked to solidify a military alliance with the US. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, they allowed Washington to use Al-Udeid Air Base outside Doha to launch air strikes against Afghanistan. Qatar later invested $8bn to upgrade the base, which has become the largest US military installation in the Middle East, housing up to 10,000 troops. On Thursday, as Trump wrapped up his visit to Qatar, he delivered a meandering, campaign-style speech to US troops stationed at the base. He bragged about economic agreements he had signed with Qatari leaders the previous day, which the White House valued at more than $243bn.Trump also expounded on the value of Qatar’s loyalty: “I don’t think our friendship has ever been stronger than it is right now.” Earlier on Thursday, he praised Qatar’s emir and told a meeting of business leaders: “We are going to protect you.”For Trump, who sees all diplomacy as transactional, that is the ultimate favor he can bestow: US protection for a foreign leader who is trying to resolve regional conflicts – and also happened to offer the president an extravagant gift.

      Mohamad Bazzi is the director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University More

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      ‘Very disturbing’: Trump receipt of overseas gifts unprecedented, experts warn

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      Former White House lawyers, diplomatic protocol officers and foreign affairs experts have told the Guardian that Donald Trump’s receipt of overseas gifts and targeted investments are “unprecedented”, as the White House remakes US foreign policy under a pay-for-access code that eclipses past administrations with characteristic Trumpian excess.The openness to foreign largesse was on full display this week as the US president was feted in the Gulf states during his first major diplomatic trip abroad this term, inking deals he claimed were worth trillions of dollars and pumping local leaders for investments as he says he remakes US foreign policy to prioritise “America first” – putting aside concerns of human rights or international law for the bottom line of American businesses and taxpayers.But quite often, the bottom line also has benefited Trump himself. His family’s wealth has ballooned by more than $3bn, according to press estimates, and the reported benefits from cryptocurrencies and other investment deals such as plans for new Trump-branded family properties may be far larger. Deals for billions more have been inked by business associates close to Trump, meaning that their political support for the White House can translate into lucrative contracts abroad.“When we’re negotiating with other countries, the concern is that our negotiating position will change if someone does a favor or delivers a gift to the president of the United States,” Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer in the administration of George W Bush, said.“Whether it’s trying to resolve the Russia-Ukraine war, or the Middle East or anything else. You know the the impression is given that the position of the United States can be swayed and even bought.”Others argue that the message being sent by the White House is that American foreign policy is being sold to the highest bidder.View image in fullscreen“Trump has put a for-sale sign out front of the White House,” said Norm Eisen, the executive director of the legal advocacy group State Democracy Defenders Fund and a White House “ethics czar” and ambassador to the Czech Republic under Barack Obama. “Of course you’re going to see Qatar and UAE as like a bidding war. Qatar says: ‘I’ll give you a $400m plane,’ and the UAE says: ‘Hold my beer, I’ll give your crypto company $2bn.’”In a particularly eye-catching incident this week, Qatar offered to give the US Department of Defense a $400m Boeing 747-8 that Trump had suggested could be used as Air Force One and then passed on to his presidential library after he leaves office.The plane has become a lightning rod among US Democrats, and critics have argued it violates the emoluments clause of the constitution that prohibits the president from receiving gifts from foreign entities.Trump had called the plane a “great gesture” from Qatar and said that it would be “stupid” for him not to accept the gift. A Democratic lawmaker had called the plane a “flying palace”, and even diehard Maga supporters such as the commentators Laura Loomer and Ben Shapiro have criticised it publicly.Painter suggested that it would be similar to King George III gifting George Washington a copy of the royal stagecoach for his use in office. “You think the founders wouldn’t have considered that a bribe?” he said.But Gulf states have offered other incentives, including a $2bn investment from a UAE-controlled funds into a Trump-linked stablecoin that could incentivise the president to shape foreign policy in favour of Abu Dhabi.An advisory sent to congressional Democrats this week and seen by the Guardian said: “President Trump and the Trump family have moved at breakneck speed to profit from a massive crypto scam on the American people.”The gifts, and in particular the potential gift of a jet, have led to a series of denunciations on Capitol Hill as they seek to build momentum for a legislative push.“This isn’t America first. This is not what he promised the American people. This is Trump first,” said Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut. “He is willing to put our nation’s security at risk, take unconstitutional bribes, just so he can fly himself and his Mar-a-Lago golf buddies around the world in gold-plated luxury planes gifted to him by foreign governments.”But is it illegal? As Qatar would give the jet to the Department of Defense, some experts have said that it may not directly violate the emoluments clause or other laws, even if Trump were to make use of the plane while in office.“Never seen it before,” said Scott Amey, the general counsel of the Project On Government Oversight, a non-profit government watchdog group based in Washington. “Is it allowed? I’m still uncertain.”Past administrations would have run from the perceived conflicts of interest being welcomed by Trump. The former White House ethics advisers described crises such as when a Gulf state tried to present a Rolex to a national security adviser, or when the Boston Red Sox tried to gift the White House chief of staff a baseball bat signed by all the players (the addressee was forced to pay its estimated market value, said Painter). Eisen said that he forbade Obama from even refinancing the mortgage on his house in Chicago because of his capacities to influence the market.“The status quo has been saying no, because it’s an actual and apparent conflict of interest, and it could jeopardize our domestic and foreign policies,” said Amey. ”It certainly doesn’t pass the sniff test for a lot of Americans.”The lavish gifts and other investments come as Trump is reshaping America’s policy in the Middle East, skipping Israel and turning toward the Gulf states in a flurry of deal-making that could benefit both sides handsomely. And Trump’s family and other advisers, such as Steve Witkoff, with interests in the Gulf states are closely involved.View image in fullscreen“When the first Trump administration came in, I saw that people in the Gulf said, ‘Finally, an American administration we understand. He sends us his son-in-law to talk to us,’” said Dr F Gregory Gause III of the Middle East Institute, a former professor of international affairs at the Bush School. “It’s a startling change in American norms … the notion that Trump family private business and US government business walk hand in hand is remarkable.”While potential gifts like a jet cannot be hidden, the potential to move billions of dollars in cryptocurrency secretly has watchdogs, the political opposition and other foreign observers deeply concerned. “We’re talking about billions of dollars, almost infinite money, that can be paid by anyone,” said one senior European diplomat. One little-known China-linked firm with no revenue last year bought $300m of a Trump meme coin this week, raising further concerns of dark foreign money moving into US politics.Senate Democrats have called for rewriting the Genius Act, Trump-backed legislation that they say would provide for far-too-lax regulation of so-called stablecoins, in order to ban him from benefiting. “If Congress is going to supercharge the use of stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies, it must include safeguards that make it harder for criminals, terrorists, and foreign adversaries to exploit the financial system and put our national security at risk,” said the memo.The flood of foreign money has left former officials who used to carefully track the giving of gifts and other goods from foreign government infuriated.The rules can be “annoying and sort of stupid, but it is what separates the good guys from the bad guys, as it relates to corruption and good governance”, said Rufus Gifford, a former head of protocol for the state department, which also tracks gifts to US officials from foreign governments. “And I think that Trump just has no respect for those institutions that have been set up for a very specific purpose, which is to root out corruption.“It is very, very disturbing that a president of the United States could be in a position to profit off the office in which he holds,” he continued. “And that is, again, something that is never supposed to be able to happen. And it’s really quite extraordinary.” More

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      US and Saudi Arabia sign $142bn arms deal as Trump to meet Syrian leader

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      The United States and Saudi Arabia have signed a $142bn arms deal touted by the White House as the “largest defence sales agreement in history” in the first stop of Donald Trump’s four-day diplomatic tour to the Gulf states aimed at securing big deals and spotlighting the benefits of Trump’s transactional foreign policy.During the trip, the White House also confirmed that Trump would meet with Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former rebel commander whose forces helped overthrow Bashar al-Assad in 2024. The informal meeting will be the first face-to-face meeting between a US president and a Syrian leader since 2000, when Bill Clinton met with the late leader Hafez al-Assad in Geneva.Speaking at an investment forum on Tuesday, Trump said that he planned to lift sanctions on Syria after holding talks with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness,” Trump said.Sharaa’s pitch to woo the US president offered access to Syrian oil, reconstruction contracts and to build a Trump Tower in Damascus in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions on Syria.Though the details of the sanctions relief were still unclear, Sharaa’s team in Damascus was celebrating. “This is amazing, it worked,” said Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian writer and activist who is close to the Syrian president. He shared a picture of an initial mockup of Trump Tower Damascus. “This is how you win his heart and mind,” he said, noting that Sharaa would probably show Trump the design during their meeting in Riyadh on Wednesday.The visit was heavily focused on business interests and securing quick wins – often with characteristic Trumpian embellishment – for the administration. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed pledged to invest $600bn in the United States during a lunch with Trump, including $20bn in artificial intelligence data centres, purchases of gas turbines and other energy equipment worth $14.2bn, nearly $5bn in Boeing 737-8 jets, and other deals.But details of the specific commitments remained vague, the numbers put out by the White House did not total $600bn, and some of the programs began under Joe Biden’s administration.The White House called the arms deal the “largest defence sales agreement in history” and said that it included plans for more than a dozen US defense companies to sell weapons, equipment and services in the areas of air force advancement and space capabilities, air and missile defense, as well as border and maritime security.The US president was feted with a royal guard as he arrived in Riyadh on Tuesday. Royal Saudi Air Force F-15s escorted Trump’s Air Force One jet as it arrived in Riyadh and Trump sat with Salman in an ornate hall at the Royal Court at Al Yamamah Palace with members of the US and Saudi and business elite. Among them were Elon Musk, prominent figures in AI such as Sam Altman, as well the chief executives of IBM, BlackRock, Citigroup, Palantir and Nvidia, among others.When Salman pledged that Saudi Arabia would invest $600bn in the US economy, Trump smiled and joked that it should be $1tn.The trip is part of a reordering of Middle Eastern politics dominated by Trump’s “America first” platform of prioritising domestic US economic and security interests over foreign alliances and international law. Critics have said that the dealmaking empowers Trump and a coterie of businessmen around the president, and the US president’s family has business interests in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, giving this administration an unprecedented conflict of interest.The most glaring example of the new commoditisation of American foreign policy under Trump has been the proposed gift from the ruling family of Qatar of a luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet that the White House said could be converted into a presidential plane and then be given to Trump’s presidential library after he leaves office.The gift has provoked anger from congressional Democrats, one of whom described it as an “aerial palace” and said it would constitute “the most valuable gift ever conferred on a president by a foreign government”.Trump has defended the offer, saying in a post it would “replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction” and called Democrats asking for an ethics investigation “World Class Losers!!!”The meeting between Trump and Salman was characterised by smiles and friendly backslapping, a sharp contrast to past summits when the Saudi leader was mired in controversy over the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.While his administration touted big deals, Trump also admitted that his geopolitical goals of Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic recognition of Israel would take time due in large part to the Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza.“It will be a special day in the Middle East, with the whole world watching, when Saudi Arabia joins us” in the Abraham accords, the Trump administration’s framework for Arab states to recognise Israel, he said. “And I really think it’s going to be something special – but you’ll do it in your own time.”Trump is also due to visit the United Arab Emirates on Thursday before continuing on to Qatar this week.His negotiations in the region have been characterised by big-ticket investment deals, and those appeared to play a role in his reversal of US policy on Syria as well.Sharaa, who is keen to normalise relations with the US, has reportedly offered Trump a number of sweeteners including the Trump tower in Damascus, a demilitarised zone by the Golan Heights that would strengthen Israel’s claim to the territory it has occupied since 1967, diplomatic recognition of Israel, and a profit-sharing deal on resources similar to the Ukraine minerals deal.The idea to offer Trump a piece of real estate with his name on it in the heart of Damascus was thought up by a US Republican senator, who passed on the idea to Sharaa’s team.“Sanctions in Syria are very complicated, but with Trump, he can [get] most of them lifted. It is a great opportunity,” Ziadeh said.The trip is also extraordinary for Trump’s decision not to visit Israel, the US’s closest ally in the region, due to the war in Gaza and Trump’s fraught relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu. Hamas released the last remaining American hostage, Edan Alexander, on the eve of Trump’s visit to the Middle East, in an effort to push Trump to pressure Netanyahu to end the war.Netanyahu doubled down on the war on Tuesday in a show of defiance, saying that any ceasefire would only be “temporary”.“In the coming days, we will enter with full force to complete the operation to defeat Hamas,” he said. “Our forces are there now.”“There will be no situation where we stop the war,” he added. More

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      Trump’s border intimidation is coming for US citizens too – ask streamer Hasan Piker | Owen Jones

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      Where are all the free speech warriors on the right now? Hasan Piker, a popular streamer with 4.5 million followers across YouTube and Twitch, who has been hailed by mainstream publications such as the New Yorker and New York Times as the left’s answer to the deluge of rightwing internet influencers, says he was detained and questioned for hours by border control agents as he re-entered the US (Piker is a US citizen). It is an instructive moment. Countries that behave like this towards political commentators and dissenting voices who are their own citizens are either nakedly authoritarian, or well on the way.Piker was reportedly interrogated at length not just about Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah, but his views on Donald Trump. The 33-year-old pundit – an unapologetic champion of the Palestinian cause – stuck to a message of opposing “endless bloodshed” and siding with civilians. That the biggest progressive streamer in the US was subjected to this experience is emblematic of a phenomenon that requires an accurate and insistent description: it is the biggest assault on free speech in the west since the height of McCarthyism seven decades ago.When foreign-born citizens – including green card holders – began to be detained by US authorities over their opposition to Israel’s genocide, it should have been clear that this was just phase one: US citizens would be next. Sure, Piker wasn’t arrested, but the authorities are pushing the boundaries bit by bit. The numbers of foreign visitors entering the US are falling as it is, undoubtedly driven by fears of a punitive border regime. But Piker’s detention sends a message to Americans with dissenting opinions – not least opponents of Israel’s genocide. The threat of being stopped at the border and subjected to lengthy interrogation simply because of what you think is straightforward political intimidation. It won’t stop there.That the vice-president, JD Vance, railed against Europe for a supposed war on free speech underlines what a sham this favoured narrative of the right always was. Weeks later, his boss announced that universities allowing “illegal” protests would be starved of federal cash – with Columbia University losing $400m despite having clamped down on pro-Palestinian protests – and dissenting students would be variously expelled, arrested, imprisoned or deported. Alas, it was under the Biden administration that the McCarthyite blacklisting-style campaign began, with defenders of Palestinian rights being variously deplatformed, fired and threatened.Indeed, Vance could have noted how European countries such as Germany have assaulted free speech by silencing pro-Palestinian activists: from imposing crippling restrictions on protests and violently assaulting demonstrators to shutting down conferences, sacking people who speak out and now seeking to deport activists, too. Alas, it’s not really free speech that Vance is interested in, but rather advancing far-right politics.If we’re going to discuss who is being stopped at the border, let’s discuss the astonishing 23,380 US citizens who serve in the IDF, according to figures quoted in the Washington Post a year ago. Many of them are undoubtedly committing unspeakable war crimes in Israel’s genocidal onslaught. Yet they are being waved through the border. And that really sums it up. If like Piker, you speak out against genocide, you are liable to be treated as a criminal as you enter your own country. If you’re a US citizen serving in a foreign army committing heinous atrocities, you’re more likely to be treated as a hero. The world is turned on its head.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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      ‘Just wildly illegal’: top Democrats push to censure Trump’s plan to accept Qatar jet

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      Top Democrats in the US Senate are pushing for a vote on the floor of the chamber censuring Donald Trump’s reported plan to accept a $400m luxury jet from the royal family of Qatar for use as Air Force One and later as a fixture in the Trump’s personal presidential library.Four Democratic members of the Senate foreign relations committee said on Monday that they would press for a vote later this week. They said that elected officials, including the president, were not allowed to accept large gifts from foreign governments unless authorized to do so by Congress.Cory Booker from New Jersey, Brian Schatz from Hawaii, Chris Coons from Delaware and Chris Murphy from Connecticut cast the reported gift of the Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a clear conflict of interest and a serious threat to national security.“Air Force Once is more than just a plane – it’s a symbol of the presidency and of the United States itself,” the senators said in a joint statement. “No one should use public service for personal gain through foreign gifts.”News of a possible gift of the luxury jet prompted immediate scathing criticism from senior Democrats. Though the Qatari government has stressed that no final decision has yet been made, Trump appeared to confirm it on Sunday when he commented on social media that the transfer was being made “in a very public and transparent transaction”.The plan appears to be for the 13-year-old plane to be fitted out by the US military for use as Air Force One and then, when Trump leaves the White House, for it to be put on display in his presidential library – in effect being handed to Trump for his own personal use.The reported arrangement comes as Trump sets off for a tour of the Middle East, including Qatar. Another of the countries on the tour, the United Arab Emirates, has also become embroiled in controversy over potential conflicts of interest involving Trump.Last week it was revealed that an investment firm based in Abu Dhabi had injected $2bn into a stablecoin venture launched by Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto company as an investment into the crypto exchange Binance.Senate Democrats are also gearing up to challenge Trump’s conflicts of interest under congressional rules governing the sale of military weapons to foreign countries.Murphy, the senator from Connecticut who has been at the forefront of sounding the alarm over conflicts of interest in the second Trump administration, has said he will use his powers to challenge arms sales as a way of forcing a full debate and Senate vote on both the Qatar plane and UAE stablecoin issues.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe said on social media that he would object to “any military deal with a nation that is paying off Trump personally – we can’t act like this is normal foreign policy”.He added: “UAE’s investment in Trump crypto and Qatar’s gifting of a plane is nuclear grade graft.”In an earlier post on Bluesky, Murphy described the idea of Qatar handing over the jet as being “just wildly illegal”.Trump has so far brushed aside the Democratic fury. He praised Qatar’s offer on Monday as a “great gesture” and said he would “never be one to turn down that kind of offer”. More