← The Briefing with Jen Psaki
The Briefing with Jen Psaki
'Not on the level': Trump makes sketchy business of second term
00:42:19
Jen Psaki looks at the many ways Donald Trump is using his time in office to enrich himself from the very start of his second term in office.
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From the very beginning, one thing has been abundantly clear about the Trump administration. They're open for business, but doesn't exactly seem like it's the kind of business that's ever really on the level. Trump's inaugural fund raised a record $239 million. And very shortly thereafter, we started seeing the people and groups that donated that money get their money's worth. I mean, one fossil fuel executive donated $4 million to. That same day he got nominated to be Trump's ambassador to the United Kingdom. Financial institutions like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America donated millions of dollars. And shortly thereafter, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ended a case against those same banks for not protecting consumers from fraud in the Zelle banking app. There you go. The SEC dropped an inquiry into the financial company Robinhood after it donated $2 million to Trump's inauguration. A very similar thing happened after a donation from the company Coinbase. Somehow, the Trump administration just happened to drop or pause cases against at least 17 of the corporations that funded his inauguration. Now, I should be clear that there's no direct evidence that any of these donations are linked to the actions that follow them. But of course, this is a pattern that has continued far beyond Trump's inauguration. I mean, right after Trump won the election, crypto billionaire Justin sun decided it would be a good idea to start investing tens of millions of dollars into the Trump family crypto business. At the time, sun was in hot water with the sec. The agency had charged him with fraud related to a large cryptocurrency manipulation scheme. But barely more than a month after Trump was sworn into office. After sun had reportedly invested $75 million into the Trump family cryptocurrency company, the SEC paused its case against him. How about that? We saw an incredibly similar thing happen with another case. Now, as much as all of this resembles a massive pay to play enterprise, the Trump administration, of course, denies that anyone has bought special treatment from the administration. But check this out. The New York Times looked at just the cryptocurrency cases the SEC has handled since Trump took office. Their analysis found that among the cases that were dismissed, the particulars may have differed, but many of them had one thing in common. Guess what it was. I think, you know, financial ties to Donald Trump. Now, even more concerning is that of the nine cases that have not been dismissed by the SEC since Trump took office, there was another parallel. All of the remaining cases are cases with no ties to Trump. More than almost anything else, Trump's second term has been defined by Trump using his powers as president to, to enrich himself. And he has done a bang up job of that. I guess we can hand him that. As of September 2025. 2025 was the most lucrative year of Trump's life. As of September, Forbes estimates that his net worth grew by an eye, popping $3 billion in just a year. $3 billion. So I think it's worth zooming out a bit and just thinking about how much Trump has managed to enrich himself and his friends as president and think about what can be done to stop it. I mean, we saw Trump's family business basically auction off access to the president by promising the top 220 purchasers of their cryptocurrency a seat at a gala with the president in Washington, D.C. we saw Trump turn the White House lawn into a Tesla sales law to help Elon Musk, who is, of course, Trump's biggest donor. Trump has demanded that the Department of Justice pay him a whopping $230 million of taxpayer money as a sort of financial reparation for having been investigated and prosecuted. And back In May, the UAE invested $2 billion worth of the Trump family's cryptocurrency into a company called Binance. And this is quite a story because two weeks later, the White House agreed to allow the UAE access to hundreds of thousands of the world's most advanced and scarce computer chips, despite national security concerns. And just a few months later, Trump pardoned the founder of Binance. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that that pardon came after Binance asked the UAE to specifically use the Trump family's cryptocurrency to make the $2 billion investment in their company. And to be clear, by using the Trump family cryptocurrency for that investment, the Trump family cryptocurrency company will likely get returns of tens of millions of dollars a year. Now, I should note, of course, that the Trump administration, the Trump Family cryptocurrency company and Binance all say that there was nothing improper about any of these deals. And Binance denies that it directed the UAE to use Trump's family cryptocurrency. So I guess maybe it's all just another happy accident or coincidence here. I mean, maybe I should also note that Trump's family's cryptocurrency is co owned by the family of Trump's Middle east envoy, Steve Witkoff, who of course deals with the UAE in his official role. And speaking of Trump's cabinet, there's a lot there because the New York Times reports that Trump's Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, has been pressuring American allies like South Korea and the UAE to invest in American AI data centers, while one of his former companies, which is now controlled by his adult sons, is, you guessed it, getting rich off the construction of American AI data centers. So maybe it's no surprise that Lutnick's 27 year old son, who now runs that company, said in October that quote, we are having our best year ever. I, I'm sure you are. Now again, I should say that Lutnick and his former companies say that there is nothing improper about any of these deals.
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So there's that.
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C
But Democrats in the House and the Senate have requested a formal review of the whole thing, as they should. So watch this space. Then of course, there's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen. Bessen secured a $20 billion bailout of the nation of Argentina, using their tax dollars to bail out the Argentinian economy, which just so happens to benefit Besant's allies and their investments. There's that. Then there's Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, who accepted a $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents, allegedly in exchange for future government contracts. Homan denies he took the money, but the whole thing was reportedly on tape. So there's that.
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There is almost always a tape.
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C
And then there was an FBI investigation about it. And once Trump got into office, that investigation seemed to just go away. So there's that. Then there's Trump's DHS secretary, Kristi Noem. ProPublica reported that under Noem's leadership, a firm connected to Noem herself managed to secretly score Tons of money. I mean, a lot from a $220 million DHS advertising contract. Now, that story is wild, and we're going to go deep into it a little later in this hour. But the truth is, I could sit here all day listing one story after another of Trump or one of his allies enriching themselves or their friends this year, often doing so through official acts. Trump is already set to more than triple the size of his foreign real estate empire this term. And we aren't even a year in. In just the first half of 2025, Reuters estimates that the Trump family's cryptocurrency sales would have netted them approximately $463 million. $463 million deposited into what is essentially a black box for directing money towards the president of the United States and his family. Trump has doled out pardon after pardon to one person after another, many of whom just so happen to have found one way or another to give the Trump family oodles of cash. There's that, too. That is all so hard to keep track of that. We have former Biden pardon attorney Liz Sawyer joining us a little bit later to help us understand them all. Now, in one single gift, Trump managed to surpass the dollar amount for all foreign gifts given to all former Presidents combined, a $400 million 747 jet from Qatar. We're going to get more into that a little later on this hour as well. We have a country as we've never experienced grift anywhere near this scale. This is grift that surpasses all grift combined ever in history. But as Trump has fired our nation's inspector generals and gutted the office.
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At.
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The Department of Justice that prosecutes public corruption and ousted the director of the Office of Government Ethics, how should we understand all of this? And what should we as a nation do about it all? We're going to talk about all of that over the next hour. Sky Perryman is the president and CEO of Democracy Forward. Norm Eisen is the former White House ethics czar under the Obama administration. He's also the founder of Democracy Defenders. Both of them have spent this entire year working tirelessly on all of these issues. I'm convinced that neither of you sleep. You don't have to confirm or deny that. But I, I think so many people are grateful for all of the work you all do. Norm, we're trying to kind of take a little bit of a step back. I mean, there's corruption happening every day, but just take a look at what's happened over the course of this year, because some days the news feels so crazy that you don't take a step back and think, my God, this is the most grifty president and White House ever in history. So when it comes to Trump and himself and kind of the money he, he has made in his second term, the total of it stands out. But what stands out to you the most.
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F
Jen? I can't help but think back to when we worked together in the White House when I was.
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C
You wouldn't let me keep a pencil. Someone gave.
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F
I would not. President Obama wanted to refinance his modest family home and we said, no, you're regulating the financial industry in the time of the Great Recession. So when you look at scandal after scandal, it is so important to connect those dots. What stands out to me is both the corruption and the pushback that Democracy Defenders Fund, Democracy Forward and the rest of the litigating organizations in our big coalition have effectuated against that corruption. So you have that plane. It's so tangible. This $400 million golden plane from Qatar.
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C
It'S going to cost money because of.
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E
All the security upgrades.
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F
Exactly. And if you look at that story, it's not just that the President inspected the plane, he looked at it before it was given. He's going to be able, in effect, to take it with him. It's going to go when he leaves to his library. He can still use it. He's raiding a key fund, a billion dollars that is supposed to be used for nuclear related issues critical to our nation's security, to retrofit that plane. So the damage is worse. That's why at Democracy Defenders Fund we fil filed a complaint to stop the turnover of this plane. And the story in all of these scandals is the pushback. The crypto is totally outrageous. That's an area where we have alerted the American people to the danger. And I think the American people don't like what they're seeing in the pattern you have, not just Trump, but the people in his administration like Tom Homan there. We filed complaints across the government. We've done FOIA requests, We're prepared to litigate to get that tape. Jen, we want to see the tape.
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C
Did you take the money? Wasn't it like a sandwich bag or a potato chip bag?
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F
Yes, a kava bag.
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Oh, a kava bag. It was like out of a mob movie.
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E
Yes, that whole episode.
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F
And then there's the financial corruption. But all of the other corruption that we work on, the revenge prosecutions where we piloted the theory that has led.
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C
To the disaster, I want to get to that too. I mean, the other thing I think that sometimes we lose sight of, and I wanted to ask you about sky is, you know, the inspector generals, when they were fired in kind of a mass firing, we all covered that, we talked about it, we tried to inform people on kind of the impact. But most inspector generals, nobody could pick out of a crowd, nobody knows who they are. It's the job wasn't really a very known one. What has been the impact of that in terms of the lack of accountability? They're the ones who watch out for corruption in the government.
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Yeah.
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So that's been huge.
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And this was all about how we knew that these calls that the president was making saying government efficiency, this is actually just the exact opposite. Right. Corruption leads to inefficiency and that's what we're seeing in government. And then of course, we know that it leads to just a deep distrust between the government and the American people, which seeing facilitated at Democracy Forward. We just filed another case this week, hot off the presses, around the around the presidents and the administration seeking to further undermine inspector generals and across the government. So, you know, we will continue to push on those things. But what we know about democracies that are in backslide is that often autocratic actors or extreme actors, they go too far when they start engaging in corruption because this is where they lose any type of public appeal. The American people know that it's not right for a president to be able to enrich himself billions of dollars when there are American people and American families right now who aren't sure how they're going to make ends meet through the holidays. And so I think that's the other piece of this work as well. The president's really losing support here.
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C
I think you can see it in the polls. The other piece of this that's really stuck out to me and obviously the Qatari plain is a good example of this. But you're a former ambassador, or maybe you're once and always an ambassador, once you've been one, is just this kind of corruption with foreign governments and like their ability to potentially influence or attempt to influence. How do you see that?
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F
Well, the place where you really see that is when you study these crypto investments because the money is so dark, you don't know where it's coming from.
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G
Where it's coming from.
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F
Even where they're based, there are ties to countries like the uae. And then when you combine the crypto investments with some of the extremely dubious pardons that we're seeing of those also associated with foreign nations. And you fold in the massive real estate deals that are being done with foreign governments. You have to ask the question, is President Trump operating in the interests of the American people or in the interests of his and his family and his cronies? Pocket money?
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E
I have $3 billion that answers that question for you.
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C
Sky, let me just ask. I think everybody's looking for hope out there. You guys have been so tireless in filing lawsuits and holding to account. What have you found works? Is there anything that has surprised you in terms of legal tactics and approaches that have worked over the course of this last? And what does that mean for how you're going to approach next year?
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Yeah, I mean, by and large, and I know this is hard to hear because we see these headlines and we see the Supreme Court issuing orders on the shadow docket, and that can be very disappointing. It's very disappointing to the American people. But by and large, of the nearly 500 federal lawsuits that have been filed, the administration is losing far more than they are winning. They're losing before judges that President Trump himself has appointed, before judges Republicans have appointed, before judges Democrats have appointed. And the vast majority of those cases, the court orders, are staying in place and protecting people. So we know this is a hard time and people are going through so much harm because this is a president and an administration that is not prioritizing their interest. But the harm would be much worse without the legal pushback, without the people pushback. We have been real surprised in seeing just the support that has grown over the past year. The American people are not letting this democracy go down without a fight. There may be powerful institutions that continue to sit on the sideline or that are going to try to fund Trump's ballroom or that are doing all of these types of things that you've said that the people are really stepping up in these ways. We see that in the courts. We see that out there. And so that will be a lot of 20, 26. But then also finding ways to go on offense, which we've done. You know, we've filed these cases to change the conversation, to uncover and shine a light on what the administration is doing. What are they hiding? You know, it's important that the American people know that they are enriching themselves. It's important that the American people know what they're doing on the Epstein files, and they're continuing to cover that up. So the court system has a way of helping change that conversation and shining a light and you'll see us continue to do that in 26.
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Sky Perryman, Norm Eisen, thank you for making us smarter and reminding us of the totality of all of the grifter in chief. Really appreciate you both being here.
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F
Thanks, Jen.
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All right, coming up, some of Donald.
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Trump's sketchiest acts of 2025, and there are many. There's competition came with a simple stroke of his gigantic Sharpie. Liz oyer was the U.S. pardon attorney fired by Donald Trump. And we're going to talk about all of the wild pardons we saw from the president since she left. We'll be right back.
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In Donald Trump's first 11 months back in power, he has been on quite a pardon spree. Trump, of course, pardoned more than 1500 of his supporters who faced prosecution for their assault on the Capitol on January 6th. He also pardoned a slate of allies like Rudy Giuliani and others who were involved in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. There are also the pardons that Trump issued while businesses and organizations connected to him benefited financially. One glaring example is Paul Walzack, who pleaded guilty to tax crimes but was pardoned just days after his mother attended a 1 million per person, $1 million, I should say per person fundraising dinner at Mar A Lago for a pact that supports Trump. And of course, CZ Zhao, the founder of the Cryptocurrency exchange binance, who in 2023 pleaded guilty to letting people and terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, Hamas and ISIS launder money through that exchange. He happened to receive a pardon weeks after his company, Binance, announced that an investment fund backed by the government of Abu Dhabi would invest $2 billion in them using a Trump family backed crypto coin. Now, experts say that investment alone could generate tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue for the Trump family and partners. There is, of course, no direct evidence of a quid quo pro with any of these pardons.
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But they do raise a whole lot.
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Of questions, don't they? Then there are the folks who just make the right connection, like Tim Lewicki, who was actually charged by Trump's own DOJ but received a pardon after his lawyer simply asked Trump during a round of golf, you can't make it up sometimes. Or the former president of Honduras, who was sentenced to 45 years for conspiring to traffic hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States. He got a Trump pardon, too, apparently in part by appealing to Trump's feelings of victimhood while claiming that he too was a victim of the Biden DOJ in a letter passed on by longtime Trump ally Roger Stone. So much wrapped up in all of this. Joining me now is Liz Oyer, the former pardon attorney for the Department of Justice. Few people know more about all of this than you, and we're just trying to take a step back and really just reflect on all of this as we also look to the year ahead. I really just skim the surface there. So you're, as I just mentioned, the former pardon attorney. You do so much amazing work on Instagram and social media, explaining to people what all this means, just how absolutely out of the norm is Trump's use of pardon power.
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G
It is shocking what the president has done with pardons in just 11 months in office. He has used the pardon power in ways that no other president has even seriously contemplated. I think this thread running through all of this is that Donald Trump has completely lost sight of the public interest. He's not thinking about the question of how do these pardons serve the American people. He is thinking about it from a perspective that is very transactional. What can I get out of granting these pardons? So he's thinking about ways that he can boost his political power, ways that he can get leverage over other people, ways that he can enrich his family, ways that he can enrich himself. He is thinking about all of this in terms of business transactions, essentially, and the folks who are Benefiting are those who have political or financial connections to Donald Trump, not the types of people who ordinarily would even be considered for this extraordinary type of relief, which is.
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C
An important thing to remind people of. Pardon power is there for a reason. And there are many people who are granted a pardon who deserve it, or there's careful consideration of it. Let me ask you, I mean, we talk a lot about Binance. Binance is one that I think most.
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People have heard of.
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C
Is there an example, maybe when I listed, maybe when I didn't. That really sticks out to you, of what you were just talking about as just kind of outrageous pardoning someone who could benefit him financially?
- [23:24]
G
Yeah. So in terms of the financial benefits, the Binance pardon, the pardon of CZ is by far the biggest ticket item. But we have seen pardons go to other folks who have donated large amounts of money to Donald Trump. There is a man named Trevor Milton who committed a massive fraud. He promised his investors that he was building the world's first electric powered semi truck. And the whole thing turned out to be a scam. He went through the process of making a promotional video showing that he had a working prototype of this truck. And it turned out that people were actually just pushing this truck down a hill and the whole thing was a fraud. His investors lost nearly $700 million as a result of that fraud. He donated $2 million to Donald Trump and he got a full pardon, which had the effect of wiping out that nearly $700 million debt that he would have had to repay to the victims of his crime. So Donald Trump gets 2 million, he gets out from under a $700 million debt and it's a win win from Trump's perspective.
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C
Yeah, it's just, it's pretty unbelievable every time you hear the details of these stories. I mean, Trump is clearly pushing the envelope here as you outline and educate us all on all the time, as you look to kind of what's next, how he will further push the envelope, what do you worry most, about, like what's on your red Team planning, What's possible that he could try?
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G
Well, he is really undercutting the work of his own Justice Department with many of these pardons in ways that make the American people less safe. The pardon of the Honduran president is an example of that. That's somebody who was put in prison for 45 years because he was trafficking huge amounts of drugs into the United States. And now he's been let out. Nobody knows for sure where he is. And Donald Trump says he cares about stopping illegal drug trafficking, but, you know, that really can't be squared with that particular pardon. Same with the pardon of cz, the Binance founder. The United States government said that his company was endangering US national security by serving as a platform to funnel money to foreign terrorist organizations and to facilitate international criminal activity. So pardoning him, it has precisely the opposite effect that we would want on the safety and security of our country. These pardons, Pardons are very dangerous, and the people getting them are not being vetted. We've actually already seen quite a few of these folks end up back in prison having committed new crimes after receiving their pardons. And Donald Trump has actually pardoned some of them more than once, which is.
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C
That is unbelievable. And that's one of the things you consider and you kind of look at in a typical process. Hopefully there's not going to be a Trump 2.0 version in the future, but you never know. And this kind of opens all of our eyes up to what is possible out there. I know you've expressed concerns about the preemptive pardons that Biden did in January. Is that something you think should still be allowed, or are there other reforms you think should be put in place moving forward? Primarily, of course, of what Trump's been doing to prevent that, this, Billy, from. This power from being abused.
- [26:25]
G
What we really need is more transparency in this area. It's very hard to rein in the pardon power because it's a constitutional power. So it would take a constitutional amendment to limit the president's ability to pardon. But I believe that if there were more transparency, there would be more accountability of the president. If we could trace the money, the flow of money that is underlying a lot of these transactions, the hiring of lawyers and lobbyists, people like Pam Bondi's brother, who has represented some individuals who've been successful in getting pardons. If we could get to the bottom of all of the conflicts of interest and the money, it would be easier to hold the president politically accountable, and it would be very hard for people on both sides of the aisle to rationalize what he's doing with the pardon. So my hope is that Congress will take some measures to require much greater accountability in the activities surrounding the pardon.
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C
Economy that could be on their agenda should they win back the House and the Senate. I guess we will see a year from now. Liz, lawyer, you have done so much to inform people over the last couple of months. Thank you so much for being here and informing us again. Really appreciate it.
- [27:31]
G
Thank you so much.
- [27:31]
E
I Appreciate it.
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C
Okay, up next, we cannot tell the full story of this administration's financial shadiness in 2025 without telling you one story about DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. That's coming up after a quick break.
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ProPublica published quite a scoop about Trump DHS Secretary Christine Ohm that in any era, any other era I should say would be a career ending scandal. But to understand the pattern of corruption of this woman, we just have to zoom out just a little bit. Just for, just for a moment. Because since Noem took over DHS at the beginning of the year, she's become known for appearing to be more obsessed with putting on various costumes than doing her actual job. I mean, she donned a bulletproof vest just to talk to her own agents. She wore a Customs and Border Patrol uniform on Fox News. And of course, she is constantly, and I mean constantly, throwing on a cowboy hat and riding horses, always with plenty of cameras around to capture the moment. But Noem's apparent obsession with image actually goes much further than just putting on costumes because she has directed more than 200 million taxpayer dollars into TV ads to promote her work at DHS. And just to put it in context, that is nearly twice what DHS spent on ads altogether in all of last year. And the content of those ads have already been a scandal kind of in and of themselves.
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I'm Kristi Noem, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security.
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B
Thank you, President Donald J. Trump, for securing our border.
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E
And if you are wondering who exactly the target audience is for that, Dee just spent $30,000 to run that ad, the one I just showed you. Specifically in the ad market, where Mar A Lago is now, as much as spending tens of thousands of dollars to make sure your ad plays on the TV near the President, is a bizarre waste of taxpayer money. $30,000, it turns out, is a drop in the bucket compared to the more than $200 million DHS has spent this year making and making and airing ads. And the rest of that money is where the story gets truly bonkers. I mean, since March, we have known that DHS skipped the normal competitive bidding process when giving out the contracts to make and air. DHS claimed that because Trump declared an emergency at the southern border, they didn't have to waste time getting competitive bids. And that brings me to the first part of ProPublica's Big Scoop. Because it turns out that the majority of that no bid contract money, 143 million taxpayer dollars, went to this kind of mysterious LLC in Delaware. An LLC that was created just days before it got that no bid contract just stays. And the man who owns the home that that LLC list as it's addressed did not respond to ProPublica's questions. Now, when asked why the agency chose that LLC, DHS said, quote, the results speak for themselves, and then proceeded to claim that Trump has made the border the most secure it has been in American history. Not exactly answering the question. So DHS gave a $143 million no bid contract to a brand new LLC that no one seems to know anything about. That is obviously a scandal enough to begin with. Then there is this. This is an ad Kristi Noem shot on October 2nd. Which, by the way, was the second day of the government shutdown. So while hundreds of thousands of federal workers went without pay, including the nearly 50,000 TSA workers that work under Noem, Noem donned a cowboy hat and had a production company film her writing Horseback with Buffalo. And whether or not you care about the very weird content of the ad, you should care about who made it. Because according to ProPublica's new reporting, that ad was made by a company called Strategy Group, which is run by a man who is not only the husband of GNOME's chief DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin. Yes, she's a something, but also has personal and business ties to Gnome herself. And the company's name, Strategy Group, does not appear on any of the public documents about the contract. Instead, the group listed on the contract is the mysterious Delaware LLC that DHS gave that $143 million contract to. I should say the DHS said in a statement to ProPublica that it does all of its contracting by the book. Okay, but the office in charge of funding ad contracts at DHS is the Office of Public affairs, which is run by none other than DHS spokesperson Trisha McLaughlin. And when she was asked about why DHS ended up using her husband's company, Strategy Group, to make that ad, she replied with this. We don't have visibility into why they were chosen. I don't know who they're a subcontractor with, but I don't work with them because I have a conflict of interest and I fully recuse myself. My marriage is one thing and work is another. I don't combine them. Well, Tricia, they seem pretty freaking combined right now, don't they? I mean, her husband, the CEO of Strategy Group, Ben Yoho, did not respond to ProPublica's questions. So not only did DHS give a $143 million, no bid contract to an unknown LLC, but that unknown LLC then hired someone tied to Gnome, someone literally married to the nomad in charge of giving out DHS ad contracts. And believe it or not, this is not the first scandal about GNOME and this company, the Strategy Group. See, back when she was governor, Noem's office hired Strategy Group to make these ads yet again. A lot of costumes going on here. This is Noem dressed as a state trooper, a construction worker, a nurse, an accountant. Here's Noem dressed as an electrician, a welder, a dentist, and my favorite, a plumber. There were a lot of these ads, millions of dollars worth, paid for by South Dakota taxpayers. Those Ads were the result of a bidding process, and the state says the process was done by the book. But ProPublica reports that a former official from Nome South Dakota governor's office has since alleged that the bidding process was rigged. The former official said that a top GNOME aide told them the governor would be angry if Strategy Group didn't win the contract. And then contemporaneous text Messages reviewed by ProPublica corroborated that account, showing that senior NOME administration officials pushing for Strategy Group to get the contract. There's all that. Nome, of course, denies those allegations. I should note that MSNBC has not independently verified ProPublica's reporting.
- [36:00]
C
But if this reporting is accurate and.
- [36:02]
E
It'S very detailed, and a company run by someone with personal and business ties to Noem herself has managed to score government contracts, huge ones, from Noem's agency with no bidding process and literally zero transparency, that should at least very much be a call for an investigation from somewhere. If not cause for NOME to be forced to ride off in the sunset on one of those horses.
- [36:39]
C
Remember that $400 million jet from Qatar? Donald Trump received the so called palace in the sky as a gift from the Middle Eastern oil kingdom of Qatar. He also said he plans to use it as a future Air Force One. Yes, that was a thing that happened this year, if you can believe it. And yes, it still sounds as crazy. It's as crazy as it sounds.
- [36:57]
E
Still is.
- [36:58]
C
Now, to be clear, this didn't just happen to just fall into Trump's laugh. Reportedly, it was his administration that first approached Qatar about acquiring the jet. And I spoke to Senator Adam Schiff about that story when it first broke. Here's our conversation.
- [37:13]
E
You asked the Inspector General at the Defense department to investigate DoD's role in facilitating this outrageous gift. You're asking them a lot of interesting questions, information you want. Walk us through what you're requesting from them and what you hope that they.
- [37:29]
C
Will turn up through this process.
- [37:34]
D
Well, this acquisition of this $400 million plane really stinks to high heaven. Everything is wrong about this deal. And, and apparently, even if you accept the administration's own account of this, it was offered directly to the Trump Foundation. They checked with their own counsel. And that would be illegal. It would violate the emoluments clause, be unconstitutional. So basically, they decided to launder it through the Defense Department to see if they could use the Defense Department, the Air Force, as an intermediary and launder this deal to see if they could somehow make something unlawful, unconstitutional. Now, somehow Copacetic, but it does nothing of the sort. It simply embroils the Defense Department in this scheme. And one of the things that, you know, I'm demanding to know from the DoD, and we'll find out these answers, whether we get it from the DoD or other sources, that is, what is it going to cost to retrofit this thing? How long is it going to take? And if this plane isn't going to be ready for two or three years, until Trump is basically on the way out the door. Basically, what this is all about is getting a $400 million aircraft for Donald Trump when he leaves the presidency. That's really what this is about. And I was struck in listening to your opening discussion about the fact that not only is this the first major trip of Donald Trump during his presidency, it was the first major trip of Donald Trump during the first Trump administration. And why go to the Gulf in both cases? Why make that your first presidential major visit? It's a little bit like that famous bank robber said when he was asked, why do you rob banks? Because that's where the money is. Donald Trump is going to the Gulf, not because it's the most important region for the United States of America, but because that's where the money is. And that's where the money is for Trump and his family. It's where the golf deals are. It's where the stablecoin deals are. It's where, you know, the enrichment of the family is. And meanwhile, the rest of the country is left in the lurch. We're paying more for our airfare. We're paying more for our baggage fees. But Donald Trump doesn't like having to ride around in Air Force One because the plane is getting too old for him. He wants this palace in the sky.
- [39:56]
E
He seems emboldened. I think it's safe to say. Not exactly an outrageous thing to say. I mean, he did some of this in his first term, certainly plenty of it.
- [40:05]
C
But I've been thinking about this Supreme.
- [40:07]
E
Court ruling on immunity and how much it may have emboldened him. And I know you think about this a lot. You and I have talked about this a lot, and what it could prompt. Do you think that that ruling has prompted him to be even more brazen in the second term?
- [40:25]
D
Absolutely. I mean, let's not forget, this is a convicted criminal who's now the President of the United States. You give a convicted criminal immunity, and you make him the most powerful person in the world. And he's going to abuse that power in innumerable Ways, you know, if we were concerned in the first Trump administration that Gulf nations were trying to endear themselves to Donald Trump by buying whole suites at his hotels, whole floors at his hotels, that is chicken feed compared to the open graft that is going on now. And we can thank John Roberts for that. You know, the most significant decision of his tenure as Chief justice is this terrible immunity decision. And to hear the Chief justice the other day bemoan the state of the rule of law in America. Well, thank you for that opinion. That told Donald Trump that he can get away with just about anything. And of course, the people around him know they'll get a pardon from him on their way out the door, so they also feel immune. But in terms of your question earlier about what can be done about this, you know, among other things, among the litigation and other efforts to try to stop and expose this graft, we need to make the Republicans wear this corruption like an albatross around their neck. It will drag them down along with Donald Trump and making them pay a political cost for going along with this open graft, this $400 million latest, you know, corrupt gift from a foreign power trying to curry favor with the president. Making them own it is a powerful way to hold them accountable.
- [42:08]
E
It is quite a glaring, glaring grift here. There have been some. Now, comments are one thing, actions are another, let's be honest.
- [42:17]
C
But Senator Ted Cruz, who I suspect.
- [42:20]
E
You don't agree with that often, but he said this plane poses significant espionage and surveillance problems, which I'm betting you agree with.
- [42:28]
C
I mean, part of this is having.
- [42:30]
E
To retrofit, remove potentially foreign entities from a plane. You're the former chair of the House Intel Committee. Talk us through, help people understand what that looks like. And I assume you agree with him. What does that mean?
- [42:44]
D
Well, you know, gutter is very sophisticated in terms of electronic surveillance. They've had the money to invest in it. They can buy very sophisticated eavesdropping equipment, and they have. Could they put that in the aircraft? Of course. And even if they hadn't, we couldn't accept that as a, as an understanding. We would have to strip that airplane apart to determine whether they've embedded any bugs in that aircraft. Now, maybe for an administration that uses signal to conduct military operations, they don't care, but they should care. We should care. So you're going to have to strip that aircraft down to do that kind of sweep. You're going to have to build in a lot of upgrades to make it the kind of flying fortress that you need for a president. And then, of course, we haven't even talked about what it's going to cost to cancel the contracts that exist for the Boeings that are made in America that are to be used for this purpose if they indeed get canceled. So this is going to be a costly venture for the taxpayer. It's just going to be an amazing gesture, as Donald Trump says, or offer for him personally. And that's what this is all about.
- [43:58]
E
Do you think I am not Pollyannish? You definitely are not. There has been a bit of an outcry from more Republicans in the Senate and otherwise than I've seen about a lot of things. How have you heard privately from them about a willingness to, say, support this.
- [44:12]
C
Effort to get the DoD IG to look into this or other efforts to.
- [44:17]
E
Stop Trump from attempting to get this $400 million plane?
- [44:24]
D
I have not. And to be frank, I really don't expect to. It's one thing to express an occasional public misgiving. It's another to put your name on something that is a direct affront to Donald Trump. You see how personally stung he is when journalists raise this apparent cor act of his. It ishis reaction is proportionate to the size of the gift. The bigger the gift, the more irate you get from Donald Trump when you question him about it. So, no, I don't expect Republicans to voluntarily support Democratic efforts to investigate or oversee this, but we are going to try to force votes on this. We'll have to be creative about how we can do this, but we will force Republicans to to vote on this. And I have to think those that are in vulnerable races are not going to want to defend this and are not going to want to see those votes. So I have to imagine some of those Republicans are hoping this whole problem goes away, that maybe UAE reconsiders or somehow the deal falls apart because they don't want to go down on that ship, so to speak.
- [45:30]
E
It's quite a campaign ad. I can visualize with a $400 million cuttery plane just flying next to a person running for office. Senator Adam Schiff, thank you so much. Really appreciate you joining us.
- [45:44]
C
My thanks to Senator Adam Schiff for that conversation. He made such an important point heading into 2026 about needing to make Republicans pay a political cost for Trump's corruption. We'll be right back after a quick. That does it for me. I hope all of you are enjoying a wonderful holiday season with your loved ones. We'll see you back here in the new year. In the meantime, stay right where you are. Because there's much more news coming up on Ms. Now, Tyler Redick here from 2311 Racing.
- [46:18]
A
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- [46:39]
D
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