Next Thursday, 220 guests will assemble under the crystal chandeliers of the great ballroom at the Trump National Golf Club outside Washington DC for a lavish dinner that organisers have described as ‘the most exclusive invitation in the world’.
The 800-acre venue boasts ‘stunning views of the Potomac River’ – but the most impressive view for the guests, all of them cryptocurrency investors, will be of their host, President Trump.
The 25 wealthiest of them will also attend an ‘exclusive reception before dinner with YOUR FAVORITE President’ followed, the next day, by a ‘VIP tour’ of the White House.
They include Justin Sun, a Chinese billionaire best known for paying $6.2million for a banana at an art auction.
He and fellow guests will doubtless make sure that they royally flatter their host about his recent trip to the Middle East, where he was offered a $400million ‘palace in the sky’ Boeing 747-8 by Qatar‘s ruling royal family. It’s just the sort of jackpot such speculators would admire.
Governments often push the boat out in this way for wealthy people, either to encourage them to invest in their country or to thank them for past generosity.
However, what’s unusual – though ‘outrageous’ might be a better word – about this glitzy night with The Donald is that the guests aren’t being rewarded for services to the US or charity, but for services to the Trump private bank account.
The 220 attending the dinner are doing so purely because they bought a cryptocurrency token called the $TRUMP ‘meme coin’ that the President launched days before taking office (for good measure, First Lady Melania launched her own too).
What is different about a glitzy night with Donald Trump, expected to take place next week, is that the guests aren’t being rewarded for services to the US or charity – but for services to the Trump private bank account
The 220 guests attending the dinner are doing so because they bought a cryptocurrency token called the $TRUMP ‘meme coin’ that the President launched days before taking office
Plane talking: Trump was recently offered a $400million ‘palace in the sky’ Boeing 747-8 by Qatar’s ruling royal family
To get an invitation to the dinner, it’s estimated that ‘investors’ bought around $55,000 worth of the coin apiece, while to qualify for the even more selective pre-dinner reception with the President (and that VIP tour) they had to purchase $TRUMP coins worth $4.3million. (Mr Sun reportedly was the biggest spender, shelling out $19million.)
Like other such tokens, the $TRUMP coin lacks any intrinsic value and its worth is instead defined by what speculators are prepared to pay for it, or ‘hype’ in other words.
That didn’t stop buyers spending $148million snapping up the tokens in a three-week-long contest to win a dinner invitation, pushing the current market value of all $TRUMP coins to more than $2.7billion.
In the process, the investors made millions of dollars for the Trump family as the latter’s businesses own a majority of the coins and they also get a transaction fee each time one of the tokens are exchanged.
It’s just a shame that Justin Sun and the other ‘crypto bros’ won’t be able to celebrate their ‘favourite’ president over a few high-priced late-night drinks at another Trump money-spinner nearby.
But sadly the Executive Branch, a Washington DC private club set up by Donald Trump Jr and a few other investors, isn’t open yet.
It will have a joining fee of up to $500,000 and is intended, say insiders, to offer business and tech moguls the chance to hobnob with members of the Trump administration in privacy.
Since Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, every US president except Trump has agreed to sell his investments before taking office or seal them in a blind trust.
Questions have been raised after Trump’s visit to the Middle East, which included a stop in the United Arab Emirates
Trump insists that it is enough for his sons to run the family business instead but many vigorously disagree.
According to Forbes, his personal wealth has more than doubled to $5.1billion in the past year, half of which has been spent preparing for office or as President.
Even so, what’s happening with the $TRUMP has flabbergasted opponents with Trump facing a rising tide of outrage over allegations of shameless self-enrichment and corruption.
In particular, his critics say he shouldn’t be involved in cryptocurrencies when he has so much power over the controversial industry and when investors can curry favour with him by buying his products.
‘The Trump meme coin is the single most corrupt act ever committed by a President,’ howled Democrat US Senator Chris Murphy last week.
‘Donald Trump is essentially posting his Venmo [a US payment app] for any billionaire CEO or foreign oligarch to cash in some favours by secretly sending him millions of dollars.’
And this week, new concerns were raised when GD Culture Group, a mysterious technology company with ties to China, announced it was buying up to $300million worth of $TRUMP.
Might they expect a quid pro quo for their generosity?
‘The Trump meme coin is the single most corrupt act ever committed by a President,’ howled Democrat US Senator Chris Murphy last week
The same question is being asked about the Qataris over their recent $400million gift of a luxury jet to Trump (which he delightedly plans to accept) and of the various foreign countries – mostly in the Middle East – that are agreeing billion-dollar property deals with the Trumps or investing even more eye-watering sums in their business ventures.
Critics’ anger over the President’s financial conflicts of interests is mixed with a sense of helplessness.
Trump’s Republicans control Congress so, as legal and ethics experts told the Mail this week, almost nothing can be done to stop him, short of a major revolt by his own grassroots supporters.
The first Trump presidency was criticised after it emerged that foreign governments, US officials and others involved with the administration were spending millions of dollars on meals and rooms in hotels owned by the Trump Organization.
But that’s nothing, say opponents, compared with the profiteering taking place now.
During the President’s first term, the Trump Organization agreed to stop doing any foreign deals, but this time round it has lined up a string of multi-million-dollar projects across the world.
The mixing of public office with private benefits is curtailed by the US Constitution’s so-called ’emoluments’ clause, which states that Congress must approve any gift from a ‘king, prince or foreign state’ to an elected US official, including the President.
The tradition was established in 1785 when King Louis XVI of France gave US founding father Benjamin Franklin a diamond-encrusted snuff box bearing a portrait of His Majesty. (Congress allowed Franklin to keep it as long as he promised not to allow any of the 408 diamonds to be taken off the box and sold separately.)
Trump previously denounced Qatar as a ‘funder of terrorism’ – but this week visited the nation and met with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani
But a snuff box, even a jewelled one, pales beside the gilded 747 – a mansion with wings boasting a master bedroom, a guest bedroom, two full bathrooms with showers and ten giant-screen TVs – that Trump felt it appropriate to accept.
And unlike Louis XVI’s little keepsake, the Qatari gift comes from a controversial ally, which is friendly with the likes of Iran, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
During his first term, Trump himself denounced Qatar as a ‘funder of terrorism’.
Dubbing him the ‘Emir of America’, cynics have suggested that it will probably take the rest of the Trump presidency just to make sure the huge plane is clear of bugs and booby traps.
The White House insists Trump won’t keep the plane outright – and therefore isn’t acting unconstitutionally – pointing out that it has been given to the US government and will become part of the official Air Force One fleet.
When he leaves office, say his spokesmen, the plane will be donated to Trump’s ‘presidential library’.
But critics say that even if it sits on the ground and is only used as a drinks party venue, it will still remain in Trump hands.
His US Attorney General Pam Bondi declared the gift ‘legally permissible’, yet her analysis may be a little undermined by the fact that she was once a paid lobbyist for the Qataris, who were charged $115,000 a month for her work in the run-up to the country’s 2022 World Cup.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi declared the gift ‘legally permissible’, yet her analysis may be a little undermined by the fact that she was once a paid lobbyist for the Qataris
Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W Bush administration, drew up the most recent guidelines on outside interests for public servants.
Recalling that the only such controversy during the Bush era was when a national security adviser had to hand over a Rolex watch he was given by the Saudi government, he told the Mail it was both unprecedented and ‘quite shocking’ what Trump has been able to do.
He believes Trump’s financial conflicts of interest are the worst in Washington since slave owners occupied the White House.
Trump, says Painter, has ‘crossed a line’ by ‘taking a $400million plane from a foreign government that was bankrolling Hamas for a decade’.
Richard Briffault, a government ethics expert at Columbia Law School, agreed with the view that Trump was flouting the constitution by accepting the Qatar plane.
‘It’s almost impossible to keep track of the number of ways he and his family are exploiting their position for personal gain,’ he told the Mail.
Be they jumbo jets or the buying of Trump’s opaque cryptocurrency, gifts needn’t have a direct ‘quid pro quo’ attached, said Prof Briffault. ‘Gifts often elicit a sense of gratitude and obligation… and so there’s a sense that [Trump is] now favourably disposed to Qatar and other countries, enterprises and businesses that invest in him.’
The crypto investors who’d ‘bought access’ to Trump next week had done so by ‘putting money in his pocket’, he adds.
However, while the flying palace may be the most visible example, it’s hardly the only one – and not even the only one involving the Qataris.
Two weeks ago, it was announced that the first foreign deal secured by the Trump Organization since he had returned to the Oval Office would be the building of a luxury resort and 18-hole golf course outside the Qatari capital, Doha.
The so-called Trump International Golf Club & Villas scheme will be developed by Qatari Diar, which happens to be owned by the Qatari government.
Coincidence?
There are no coincidences in the Trump clan’s fiercely transactional world of mutual favours, say opponents. For the record, last week Trump also visited two other Middle Eastern countries – Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – where his sons, Donald Jr and Eric, recently flew in to announce billion-dollar developments: a luxury residential tower in the Saudi city of Jeddah and a top-class hotel in the UAE’s Dubai.
‘Challenge everything, stop at nothing,’ boasts the brochure for the new $1billion, 80-floor Trump International Hotel and Tower planned for Dubai, where units went on sale for up to $20million each, following a huge party there where the guest of honour was Eric Trump.
And it’s not just property. The state-controlled UAE investment fund recently bought $2billion of a new cryptocurrency issued by a Trump company, Liberty World Financial. The Gulf states have also committed more than $3.5billion to a private equity fund run by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
Perhaps it is not surprising then that even the President’s flagship economic policy of tariffs has been touched by accusations of profiteering.
Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt was dismissive of criticsof his gift from the Qataris and says Trump ‘only works with the interests of the American public in mind’.
In the past few weeks, Vietnam – which was one of the countries hit hardest – announced various measures to curry favour with the Trump administration and get a better trade deal.
They included a plan to expedite a Trump Organization scheme –its first in the country – to build a $1.5billion development that will include hotels, resorts and golf courses.
Meanwhile, there are signs that some of Trump’s usual supporters aren’t happy about the Qatari jet. MAGA firebrand Laura Loomer intoned that the US cannot accept presents from ‘jihadists in suits’.
Even the Trump-loving hosts of Fox & Friends – the President’s favourite morning TV show – felt they had to quiz his press chief, Karoline Leavitt, about the wisdom of accepting such a gift.
‘Do you worry that, if they give us something like this, they want something in return?’ she was asked. Leavitt was dismissive, assuring the hosts that Trump ‘only works with the interests of the American public in mind’.
And the UK, with whom Trump agreed the first post-tariffs trade deal last week, hasn’t escaped the controversy.
The Starmer government has been accused of trying to ingratiate itself with the President over a forthcoming golf tournament in Scotland.
It was revealed two weeks ago that – at the repeated request of Trump – British government officials have asked senior executives at the R&A, which organises The Open, whether they would host the championship at his Turnberry golf resort in 2028.
Funnily enough, Trump used a saying from American golfing legend Sam Snead to defend his acceptance of the Qatari plane.
‘When you’re given a putt, say ‘Thank you very much’, pick up your ball and you walk to the next hole,’ he told reporters.
As long as his Republican lackeys in Congress cravenly refuse to challenge him, it appears he’ll be able to just keep on walking.
