Corruption on an unprecedented scale is the beating heart of President Donald Trump’s administration. The rest is a distraction.
The latest bribe paid to Trump comes from YouTube. Trump filed a bogus lawsuit against the company that pivoted on the ridiculous claim that YouTube was a secret agent of the Biden administration. YouTube agreed to pay him $22 million, and Trump dropped the lawsuit. The money will go to the charity that is building a lavish new ballroom for him at the White House.
Then there was The Wall Street Journal story about “Trump Rx,” a new federal website to facilitate Americans buying discounted prescription drugs directly from pharmaceutical companies—with outside companies setting up the infrastructure to manage the transactions. Trump strong-armed Pfizer into agreeing to discount billions of drugs that can be funneled through the site.
Who is one of the top outsiders who will set up the transactions? Donald Trump, Jr. He sits on the board of one of the most prominent of these companies—BlinkRx—and is convening a meeting in December with Big Pharma and Trump administration regulators—presumably to talk about sports, girls, and that sort of thing.
It’s a fair question today to ask who hasn’t paid off Trump. Elon Musk’s X, ABC, CBS, Facebook, and Amazon all paid millions for Trump’s personal benefit.
What about Apple and Nvidia? Apple only gave him a gold bar valued at possibly $1 million. But then again Trump owned stock in both Apple and Nvidia as he helped them to billions in tariff savings and chip sales involving China.
And what about Rupert Murdoch? Trump is suing his Wall Street Journal for reporting about his dirty doodle to Jeffrey Epstein. Is Murdoch going to pay him off too?
He would be better off fighting back. Those who pay Trump will have to keep paying. Those who fight him beat him.
Consider the recent example of The New York Times. Trump sued The Times for a comical $15 billion for writing about his failed business career and his resurrection through The Apprentice. A Bush-appointed judge threw his case out of court with head-snapping rapidity, characterizing the complaint with words like “vituperation,” “invective,” “tedious,” and “tendentious.” Trump can try to refile, but when Trump filed a similar suit against The Times in 2018, he not only lost but was ordered to pay The Times’ legal fees.
Others have beaten Trump too. He tried to extort money from big law firms. They beat him. He tried to coerce Harvard University. Harvard beat him. ABC finally stood up to him, and now Jimmy Kimmel is back on the air. Governors in Oregon and Illinois have beaten back his planned military deployments in their states. Trump’s victims should follow Trump’s advice: “Fight, fight, fight!”
Yet the payoffs continue. Maybe for some there’s just too much to gain. His enablers make billions. Just think how directly CBS got a multi-billion deal approved in exchange for its bribe.
But the greatest beneficiary in the bribe-a-thon is definitely Qatar. Its gift of a big, shiny $400 million plane worked magic on Trump who will fly on it for life—it’s going to his library when leaves office. He can use it to visit the new Trump resort in Qatar that’s being built using Qatari government money.
Trump is paying back Qatar in spades. When Israel bombed Qatar, the U.S. cast an unprecedented vote against Israel and in favor of Qatar, the host of Hamas negotiators. He then issued an unprecedented written security guarantee to Qatar promising that the United States would defend that country from attack—by anyone for anything.
With Qatar pushing him, Trump just did something good: he forced Benjamin Netanyahu, temporarily, to end Israeli attacks in Gaza.
And, lest we forget, Trump just granted Qatar the right to maintain a military facility in Idaho. Is it a “base?” It’s a Qatari “facility” within an American military base. It will be manned by Qatari planes and Qatari pilots. Call it what you want, but it is a post for their air force in our country.
Trump’s latest moves confirm his bribery and extortion machine continues to dominate U.S. government policy. Will his supporters call him out for it?
Thomas G. Moukawsher is a former Connecticut complex litigation judge and a former co-chair of the American Bar Association Committee on Employee Benefits. He is the author of the book, The Common Flaw: Needless Complexity in the Courts and 50 Ways to Reduce It.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.