This president has his hand in so many cookie jars that it's easy to miss one or two or even ten instances of grifty
behavior, behavior of the sort that would surely have gotten any other president impeached (and probably removed). Here
are a few current ones that are getting a little attention, and should really be getting a LOT of attention:
Stocks and Bonds: Donald Trump, who has always been known as a real estate developer, is
very interested in the stock market these days.
According to his financial disclosures for 2025, the people managing his investments made 191 different transactions on
his behalf, or about one every other day. That includes some very timely investments, such as
multi-million-dollar investments in Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix, which are in the middle of a merger that will
have to be approved by the Trump administration.
Trump spokespeople claim that his investments are managed by third-party financial institutions. They describe an
arrangement that would be a blind trust, and yet they do not use that phrase. For us, this brings to mind the occasion
when NFL QB Aaron Rodgers answered questions about being vaccinated by saying, "Yes, I am immunized." It turned out that
meant he had burned some sage or something, and NOT that he had been vaccinated.
So, we are suspicious of the financial arrangements that Trump's people describe, and we are VERY suspicious of claims
that Trump has no way to signal what to invest in and would never dream of doing so, even if he could. The one thing we
can say for certain is that if Barack Obama or Joe Biden was investing in companies that had business before their
administrations, it would trigger cases of apoplexy on the right (and, in some cases, on the left) that would make
Hillary's e-mails look like child's play.
The Price of Peace: In order to bring peace to Israel, Trump and his team have cooked up
an idea for what they call the "Board of Peace." The notion for this body is that it will oversee Gaza, and will impose
its plan on that region, as it sees fit, without input from Palestinians. Nothing colonialist about that. No sir,
nothing at all.
We concede that sometimes these sort of entities are needed, and that they work out OK. After World War II,
both Germany and Japan were temporarily governed by arrangements like this. That said, this is not 1945,
and the U.S. is not trying to stamp out the remnants of a brutal fascist regime in Gaza. Further, the membership
of the Board does not exactly say "serious effort at peace." Here are the members who have been announced
already:
Former British PM Tony Blair
Canadian PM Mark Carney
World Bank head Ajay Banga
Trump
Secretary of State Marco Rubio
Deputy NSA Robert Gabriel
Trump envoy Steve Witkoff
First Son-in-law Jared Kushner
Billionaire businessman Marc Rowan
Argentinian President Javier Milei
The list starts out OK, then goes off the rails. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey
and Vladimir Putin of Russia have also received invites, but have yet to respond. Except for el-Sisi (and he's a maybe),
none of those make us feel any better about the project. Invites have also gone out to currently unnamed officials in
Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
So, what's the grifty angle here? Well, Trump envisions his peace board lasting a very long time. And those who have
been favored with an invite will get to serve for 3 years. Any nation that did not get an invite, or that wants to be a
permanent member of the peace board, can make their dreams come true for the
cool sum
of $1 billion. Footage
has already leaked
of Trump announcing to the leaders of the world what the fee will be:
It is not unreasonable to expect participating nations to foot some portion of the bill for these sorts of efforts. However,
throwing the opportunity open to anyone willing to pay certainly does nothing to make the proposition look legitimate. Also
not good is that the Trump administration is not answering questions about where the money will go, or what it will be used
for. It is not hard to imagine that the President is drooling about yet another pot of gold that he thinks will be placed at
his disposal, this one to be used to develop Trump International Resort, Golf Course, and Spa — Gaza.
Greenland: Anytime the Trump administration does anything wacky, you have to at least keep your
eyes peeled for the profit angle. And we don't mean the national profit angle (though that may be present, too, given that
everything is transactional with Trump). We mean the personal profit angle. So it is with Greenland.
For some reason, Trump has many more billionaire "friends" these days than back when he was a real estate developer and
reality TV star. Funny how that works. One of those "friends" is Ronald Lauder, whose last name may clue readers in to
the fact that he's one of the heirs to the Estée Lauder fortune. Lauder's money may come from cosmetics, but
lately he's been doing a little land speculation, having acquired significant mineral rights in two places, Ukraine
and Greenland. He's talked to Trump several times about the amazing opportunities for moneymaking in those places. Oh,
and in a completely unrelated note, Lauder has donated at least six figures, and very likely seven figures, to Trump's
various PACs and projects (remember, many of the inaugural and/or ballroom donors remain unknown).
Surely, Lauder's lobbying is not the sole driver behind the Greenland madness. But could it be a piece of the puzzle?
Definitely.
And that's this week's Grift Report. How long until we'll have enough material for another one? Probably about a week.
Sigh. (Z)
This item appeared on www.electoral-vote.com. Read it Monday through Friday for political and election news,
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