It’s a small comfort that Americans seem to finally be catching on to Trump.
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Was it the meme coin? Was it the Trump-branded bibles? Or the sneakers? Or any of the other trinkets? Was it the millions of dollars he is charging the Secret Service for the privilege of protecting him? Or was it the luxury jumbo jet Qatar just gifted the United States so that Donald Trump can be flown around in the kind of gilded luxury he is accustomed to?
We don’t know. In fact, it could be any of the other dozens of big and small ways in which Trump is ripping off or exploiting taxpayers, companies, his supporters, or entire countries.
What we do know is that, finally, Americans seem to have caught on to the people the US president is really looking out for. And it’s not them.
While Trump pretends to be the champion of the little man (as long as that man believes that Trump was cheated in the 2020 election), a new poll shows that Americans believe he puts his business interest ahead of the good of the country.
In addition, more than half of them think that Trump is using the presidency for personal gain.
In light of how brainwashed Republicans are into ignoring reality and facts, getting to 52 percent on that question is remarkable. Conversely, barely one-third of Americans do not think that Trump is using his office for personal gain.
The number of people who think that the president’s business interests and positions are affecting his decision-making process is even more eye-popping.
According to a YouGov poll, a whopping 73 percent of Americans believe that his personal interests are a factor when Trump makes decisions as president, and nearly half believe that this is a major influence.
While we have covered some of the ways in which the president is lining his own pockets with the money of taxpayers and campaign donors, as well as the miraculous $2 billion investment his favored son-in-law Jared Kushner secured from Saudi Arabia (as well as $1 billion each from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates), there may not be a better example of Trump putting Trump first than his recent trip to the Middle East, where the president and his family have extensive business interests.
And this isn’t even about the Qatari jumbo jet the United States took ownership of this week.
Instead, it is about the perfect union of oil-rich countries who have unlimited sums of money at their disposal and want to buy influence and power, and Trump, who is always looking to amass such sums of money and seems eager to wield his power and influence to do so.
For example, Trump’s family business reached a deal recently to build a golf resort in Qatar. It will lease its brand to two projects in Saudi Arabia, where it will also build another Trump Tower. In addition, another hotel and a golf course will be built in Oman.
To the rulers of these countries, throwing a few billion dollars here or there Trump’s way is nothing… especially not compared to the goodwill they can buy with these “investments.”
We saw that last week, when the president heaped praise on the region’s various rulers and announced that the US would involve itself less in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries, which will be music to the ears of authoritarian governments and monarchs who just want to make money, pollute the planet, and abuse a few human rights here and there.
It’s a small comfort that Americans seem to finally be catching on to Trump.
The question now is what they want to do about it.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
