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COMMENTARY WASHINGTON WEEK ... MAY 30TH, 2025 Washington Week PBS: How Trump is using his power to profit and why no one will stop him PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cYsRyCcTFA Peter Burgess COMMENTARY I have Peter Burgess
How Trump is using his power to profit and why no one will stop him Washington Week PBS 155K subscribers ... 29K views ... 5.6K likes May 30, 2025 Most presidents wait until they leave the White House to cash in, but President Trump takes a different approach. Crypto deals, hotels, golf courses, 747s, everything is on the table. The panel discusses the ways Trump is treating the White House, and Mar-a-Lago, as a place to make sure his children are even richer than he is. Watch the latest Washington Week with The Atlantic here: https://pbs.org/washingtonweek Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2ZEPJNs Follow us on X (formerly Twitter): / washingtonweek Like us on Facebook: / washingtonweek Participants ... The Atlantic ... Moderator Peter Baker ... New York Tims Leanne Caldwell ... Puck Stephen Hayes ... The Despatch Transcript 0:00 So, here's a partial list of deals and moves Donald Trump has done that would have sunk any other president. He's accepted a $400 million plane as a gift from a Middle East autocracy that hosts both Hamas and the Taliban and also may be the home of a new Trump hotel. He's dined with top investors in one of his cryptocurrency projects and reportedly promised to promote the crypto industry from the White House. He's pardoned prominent Republicans in reality TV stars, including a man convicted of securities fraud, who with his wife donated $1.8 million to Trump's reelection campaign for good measure, by the way, he commuted the sentence of the leader of the murderous Chicago Criminalization, the gangster Disciples. Trump's family is charging half a million dollars to join a private club in Washington DC He's building a golf resort in Vietnam, a country seeking tariff relief for $1.5 billion and a Trump skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City, a fact Ho Chi Minh himself would have Undoubtedly found darkly amusing. The Trump Organization 1:00 is planning to build a Trump Tower in Riyadh for good measure. After a dinner at Mar a Lago, Jeff Bezos agreed to pay $40 million to license a documentary about Melania Trump, the most expensive licensing fee ever paid for a documentary. I could go on, but I won't because I want our panel to tell us what this all means. Joining me tonight, Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent at The New York Times. Leanne Caldwell is the chief Washington correspondent for Puck and Stephen Hayes is. The editor of the Dispatch. Uh, thank you for joining me. I want to read you all something, and my colleague David Frum just wrote about uh Trump and his relationship to corruption, quote, Nothing like this has ever been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency. Throw away the history books, discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past. There's no analogy with any previous action by any past president. The brazenness of the self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic 2:00 or a post-colonial African dictatorship. Um, Peter. Agree, disagree? Is there any precedent for what we're seeing in American history? No, I mean there really isn't. Nothing comes close, um, at this point, no, no, they have been presidents who have monetized the presidency on some level or another, used it to benefit their their family businesses or whatever. Certainly there have been family members who tried to trade off their famous president that happens more often than not. It happened in the last administration. Let's face it, Hunter Biden certainly traded off his father's name, but it was, it was Penny Annie compared to what we're talking about now, even if you believe all the worst. Allegations against Hunter Biden. It would be a tiny fraction. What we're seeing now in terms of the scale and scope of the billions of dollars, literally this cryptocurrency thing alone, he's, his family and businesses have got $320 million in fees just in the four months since he started it for creating nothing, by the way, I'm not much of an expert on crypto stuff, but that seems to be you don't actually have anything. There's no actual tower at the end of the day it's just this coin, and he's already made hundreds of millions of dollars, so, um, now the question is, 3:03 what does that do in terms of policy? That's the next question. You can certainly make some connections, right? The guy who shows up at this crypto dinner, Justin's son just had the SEC say, uh, we're going to pause our fraud case against him. So he comes back to the country where he hadn't been in a couple of years after paying tens of millions of dollars for this crypto coin that he's bought. Is there a direct connection? It doesn't look good, obviously, and that's the problem with conflict of interest, even if you, even if you're doing everything on the up and up, the appearance usually makes most presidents say, let's not do that because it might give the wrong impression. Trump has no problem with this. Peter, you're giving me the impression that you have not yet purchased the Washington Week meme coin. I'm a little I'm looking for the discount. I don't know if we're gonna see you back at this table. Yeah, I don't know if we're gonna see you back at this table, um, Leanne, it's, it's, it's interesting, uh, you know, like in Watergate, you know, uh, by August of 1974. Um, Republican leaders House and Senate. Bring Barry Goldwater with them as top cover to 4:04 the White House. Tell Richard Nixon your support is evaporating across Congress. Republican Democrat obviously, but Republican as well, you know, the next day Nixon resigns, even before, you know, impeachment, um, something remarkable has changed in Washington, and maybe it's a tribalism, uh, maybe it's fear, but where is Congress on all of this, as Peter points out, uh, Republicans were very activated by Hunter Biden's activities. No activation here whatsoever. Yes, I remember they were trying to impeach President Biden because of Hunter Biden's activities, um, yes, Republicans are completely silent about it. In fact, there's legislation on the Hill in the Senate right now called the Genius Act, which is about crypto that was called for several weeks because once this 5:00 crypto news with the president came out, Democrats demanded that there be some constraints on the administration when it comes to deals like this, uh, they never reached an agreement in this bipartisan legislation is moving forward without those constraints on the administration trying to rein in and make some of this maybe not illegal, but some guardrails around it, but another thing is The president is immune from any sort of repercussions other than congressional impeachment, right? The Supreme Court has already ruled that the president cannot be charged with anything, and Republicans do not have any Motivation, political, or any way to, to uh break with the president on this. This is not something that they think is worth getting in front of the president. I ask you this though, I mean, and I know this probably will sound naive to you, but you said they 6:04 have no political motivation, but what about just being Shocked ethically or morally by this kind of brazen. Business dealing. In the White House. So, yeah, you think, um, that is how it should talk to people all the time and you talk to them privately as well. Is there any private anxiety about this private anger? I mean, privately they're like, yeah, this isn't great. Publicly, you seem you see some who say, you know, well, we would prefer if it wasn't like this, like Senator Josh Howley is one of those people who has said something publicly, but they're not willing to do anything about it and let me flip the question around because even the Democrats aren't really making this much of an issue. And the reason they're not talking to Democrats is first of all, the flood the zone thing is absolutely working. They can barely keep up but also Democrats are telling me, look, everyone knows that Donald Trump is corrupt. It is already 7:02 baked in what people think about him. They also think that all politicians are corrupt and so this is not a political argument that works right now and so they are trying to refocus everything on chaos. on how Donald Trump is not helping inflation and costs and not helping your pocketbooks specifically because they found that people just don't really care and respond to the corruption, I guess one of the things I'm surprised at, Steve, is, is. Throughout American history, there have been consequences for this kind of self-dealing, right? Whether it's Ulysses S. Grant, whose reputation suffered because of a corruption in the cabinet Warren Harding, the teapot Dome scandal, um, up to Watergate, obviously, and, and more minor incidents. This seems completely novel in American history. How do you explain the fact that no one seems to care. I mean, I, I think you know, 8:03 what you read from David Frum was accurate. I agree with, with Peter, this is unprecedented and, you know, during the first Trump term, I think too many of our colleagues said things were unprecedented that weren't in fact unprecedented. This is truly unprecedented. We haven't seen this before, and I think one of the reasons that there's not more outrage is Leanne's last point. There's a general sense, certainly on the Republican side, rank and file Republican voters believe that everybody does this. This is what's been going on in Washington. Remember Donald Trump ran and he was going to drain the swamp. This is the way that people perceive Washington working and Trump just does it with a little, he's a little bigger. That's it with a little more flair. He's a little more aggressive, right, right. And I think that's how you get Republican voters who can rationalize as having talked to some of them about it. And in Congress, you know, I think there's a divide on the Republican side. You have the sort of hardcore mega. Uh, supporters who say this is great. I'm glad he's doing this. I don't care. This is what everybody's done all 9:02 along. And then you have the, I'd say a quiet majority who thinks it's awful, and they will tell you it's awful off the record or in private conversation, but they don't love it. They're not going to step up to do much about it. Are any of them not to be overly cynical now and then making money on any of this? I mean, that, that's a real question, I think, you know, and it's a question about the, the, the tariffs and what he's doing with the tariffs every single day. I mean, if you know. That these things are coming, you know, he announced he wants to now double the steel tariffs, suddenly people weren't expecting this, but if you knew that this was coming and you could potentially place bets that way. It could be profitable, and that's the thing, right? The president may be immune for actions that are officially, you know, part of his job. The people around the bar and normally administrations in fact find you mentioned a couple of examples where presidents themselves didn't get in trouble, but the people around them had done a lot of things. Well, we don't know, right? If somebody playing the market here. They know the president, as you say, is going to say something and it'll tank the market or the other way around. You could time it. There's no regulation right 10:03 now. There's no regulatory authority right now that seems eager to look at that. Why? Well, I want to come back to that point in one minute, but Steve, I want to ask you a question about the foreign entanglements here. It's one thing to have this this guy who's like, you know, got, got pardoned because of some securities thing or or some, some of these other, other characters who make donations to his campaign, but it's quite another thing. To get into bed, um, with Middle East autocracies, communist nations, communist governments from from Asia. There are national security consequences here, yes, huge potential. Talk about that. Well, look, I mean, I remember it wasn't that long ago when people like me were obsessed with reporting on Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, and those were, you know, I suppose if you wanted to to to, I still have problems with them. I thought it was grubby at the time, but at least they were sort of a bank shot to the person who's not still in charge. These are just open and and aggressive what do you mean by that go into that a little bit. Well, I mean, you know, the, the 11:01 $400 million plane that you mentioned. I mean this is Donald Trump is accepting this. He's celebrating it. He's got his people on his staff who are justifying it, rationalizing it, saying we'd be crazy not to do this. That's far worse than anything we reported on with respect to the Clinton Foundation back in 2016, 2015, 2016. Maybe you could help me understand something about the Trumpian mentality. I want to watch something. Thing. This was from a meeting, President Trump had in the Oval Office with the President of South Africa, uh, a little while back, a little while ago. Let's just watch this for a second. I'm sorry, I don't have a plane to give you, I would say if your country offered the United States Air Force a plane, I would take it. He's serious. Yeah, I think he's serious. Is he serious? He's not smiling. No. What's the, what's the thought process there? Why would he, why would he do this in the Oval Office. 12:01 I mean, it seems. Degrading to the United States, the richest country in the world, to say, Pay me tribute in your, give me old planes, and I'll take them. I, I don't understand. Yeah, I mean, look, I think he, he likes it when people sort of kowtow to him and go in and kiss the ring. I think that's exactly what was happening there. And, and, you know, it's part Peter alluded to this earlier. Part of what makes it hard to keep up with is that is the volume of it and that it is so out in the open, and you know, you, you have talked to Republicans on the Hill and they will say, hey, you know, the Hunter Biden stuff was all hush hush, and you know, they have these payments for his bad art that he got and we had to subpoena people to find out about this. Trump's doing it in the open, so it must be justifiable. You're actually seeing Republicans make those arguments and I think it's a strength of Trump. They're literally comp ing it to France giving us the Statue of Liberty. Yes, like 13:00 the airplane equates the Statue of Liberty. I mean, you know, there is something interesting here that in journalism, obviously a lot of the energy of investigative journalism goes into exposing the cover up, but Leanne, there's no Cover up here there's just business. Yeah business that would have been considered scandalous in any other administration. And when Donald Trump Jr. goes overseas to help ink these deals. They're very open about it, um, and. Yeah, and there are, and no investigations on the Republican side into this. There are a couple of letters and inquiries from the Democratic side in Congress into into this, but you know, Republicans are still investigating President Biden's administration. Um, the oversight committee in the House just opened another investigation into the auto pen and so they are still obsessed with that while all of this like you 14:00 said, is completely out and just do 2 seconds for all the normal people at home who don't follow the scandal, what the auto pen scandal is. I look into camera and talk to about the auto pin for a minute. The fact that President Biden, Republicans say was so incapacitated that staffers were running the government using his signature with an auto pen, right, which is not actually scandalous because presidents often use auto pens to sign vast numbers of. Produce 0 facts on this. This is simply them trying to say, well, he's so doddering he must have had AIDS autoen, they have no idea. And doesn't matter that there are no facts behind it, but they are subpoenaing people to come in. Peter, one more angle on this that I'm interested in, uh, Congress is obviously not providing muscular oversight now, but they used to be in government, various bodies within the executive branch that would provide self oversight. I want to read you something 15:01 that you want to read something that you just wrote. Um, Mr. Trump, uh, the first convicted felon elected president has erased ethical boundaries and dismantled the instruments of accountability that restrained his predecessors. There will be no official investigations because Mr. Trump has made sure of it. He has fired government inspectors general and ethics watchdogs installed partisan loyalists to run the Justice Department, FBI, and regulatory agency and dominated Republican controlled Congress unwilling to hold hearings. Talk about the changes that have been made in the Inspector General. System, uh, in the last 5 months. Yes, I mean, these are the mechanisms of accountability of a normal government, right? And he has made very clear by firing the people who held jobs like that, uh, by putting people in like Pam Bondi and Cash Patel at the Justice Department and the FBI, what his expectations are, his expectations are you're going to go after my enemies and you're not going to go after my friends, and he's done that to the pardons. He's done that through um retribution time and time again. What happened in his first term when a special counsel was appointed by his own deputy attorney general. 16:00 And he then spent the rest of his term and ever since then, you know, lambasting Rod Rosenstein for doing that for appointing Bob Mueller to look into things. That is not going to happen in this term, and that's what's so different like under Reagan when they investigated people in the Reagan administration under Clinton when they investigated people in the Clinton administration. There were multiple special counsels. Any time you had a cabinet officer or somebody in there, even the president, do something that was questionable. There was this expectation that you would have a Justice Department appoint special counsel, independent counsel, whichever the structure they use because. didn't trust the government to investigate itself and people wanted to have, you know, independent investigation. There's no expectation that that's ever going to happen in the next 4 years, and he fired the special counsel and imposed in place, put him into place, uh, an ally and the special counsel's office who's only I think out of law school 3 years. So there was a system here. There's a that will never be used under the next, uh, in this administration. Right.

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