The family that grifts together stays together
During President Donald Trump’s first term, Don Jr. was arguably the most high-profile of his misbegotten offspring, complete with a nice big role in Russian interference in the 2016 election. And who can forget Ivanka Trump, with her daddy claiming that she somehow created 14 million jobs? Well, now it’s Eric’s turn to shine. And he’s going to shine by … having his daddy set up his deals. During the recent Middle East “peace summit,” Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto was caught on a hot mic asking Trump, “Can I meet Eric?” This led to Trump positively gushing, “I’ll have Eric call. Should I do that? He’s such a good boy. I’ll have Eric call.” The pair also talked about looking for “a better place.” Eric, of course, is in charge of the Trump Organization’s two big development projects in Indonesia. For some reason, we’re still pretending that Trump is not involved with his family’s private business and keeps everything in a trust. But it’s so obvious that Trump is open for business that Subianto, while at a peace summit in his official capacity, didn’t even hesitate to approach Trump to ask for a personal business introduction to one of his adult sons. The Trump Organization is also doing a $1 billion development in Saudi Arabia, which “in a nod to the US president’s New York real estate background will form part of a larger scheme dubbed ‘Manhattan.’” And we can’t forget the endless crypto grifting, can we? Or Trump making sure that he got the presidential seal in the picture when pimping Eric’s book, which of course we all totally and completely believe Eric wrote himself, right? But Eric’s explanation of the hot mic moment, such as it is, is that he is indeed a good boy. So, a world leader asked your dad, the president, at an official event, to put him in touch with you, the president’s son, to do a deal with the president’s personal family business. This is magnitudes worse than any of the frenzied accusations the right lobbed at Hunter Biden. But according to Eric, this is totally fine and not at all unethical because “I’ve never met the president of Indonesia.” Eric also insists that the entire exchange between his dad and Subianto actually shows that “there’s a huge wall” between Trump’s presidency and his businesses. Eric. Do we have to spell it out for you again and again? The Indonesian president asked your dad, the president, while at an official “peace summit,” to meet you, the person heading up the Trump Organization’s developments in Indonesia. And your dad—again, the president—fell all over himself, agreeing to set up a meeting. That’s not a wall. It’s no wonder, though, that the Trump family wants to vibe with Subianto, who has been credibly accused of war crimes, so much so that he was discharged from the military. He commanded the country’s special forces and ordered student activists to be kidnapped, and he was barred from even coming to the United States for years due to his record of human rights violations. Huh. Come to think of it, he’d fit right in at the Trump administration.