The Ceasefire and the Business of Trump’s Diplomacy

Summary

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The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode Title: The Ceasefire and the Business of Trump’s Diplomacy

Date: October 18, 2025
Host: Evan Osnos
Guests: Susan Glasser, Jane Mayer

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Overview

This episode unpacks the recent Gaza ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas—lauded as a diplomatic breakthrough—and the underlying entanglement of U.S. foreign policy and the Trump family's business interests in the Middle East. The panel, comprising Evan Osnos, Susan Glasser, and Jane Mayer, takes a critical look at what was actually achieved by the ceasefire, the spectacle and transactional style of Trump’s diplomacy, and the unprecedented commingling of private business and public policy in American governance.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Ceasefire: Achievement or Optics?

• Ceasefire Details & Celebration (03:36–04:37)

  • 20 hostages freed by Hamas, 2,000 prisoners released by Israel.
  • Not a peace agreement; “the details on what’s next are fuzzy, to say the least.” — Evan Osnos (01:36).
  • Trump is positioning the deal as a personal triumph, with “giant posters of Donald Trump everywhere in Israel” and supportive rallies (04:39).
  • “It’s not everlasting world peace… What is it specifically? It’s a phase one ceasefire deal.” — Susan Glasser (06:01).

• Spectacle and Personalization of Diplomacy

  • Jane Mayer likens Trump’s style to producing a TV show: “He’s imagined this scene where he’s the Prince of Peace… the picture is the end result.” (06:41)
  • Neither Netanyahu nor Hamas were present at the “peace summit” in Egypt—emphasizing optics over substance (08:20).

2. Unpacking the Realities and Gaps

• Missing Details & Future Uncertainty (08:14–10:16)
  • Governance of Gaza and verification of Hamas disarmament are unresolved.
  • “We still don’t have a full understanding of what is the governance authority in Gaza. Literally, who is in charge?” — Susan Glasser (08:20)
  • Trump’s involvement is framed as decisive, but the actual groundwork for enduring peace is absent.

3. Money, Corruption, and Diplomatic Trade-Offs

• Transactional Diplomacy (10:31–15:39)

  • Trump’s repeated focus on monetary aspects—publicly lauding donors and referencing wealth of Arab leaders.
    • Example: “There was a subtheme here that was really striking… a lot of concentration from Trump on money.” — Jane Mayer (11:18)
  • Steve Bannon’s perspective: Trump’s model of governance mimics Gulf potentates, blending state, family, and business (12:41–14:08).
  • “He sees himself as a potentate. Strong men are what he wants to be.” — Susan Glasser (14:08)

• Rules and American Values Undermined

  • Trump positions the U.S. not as a beacon of the rule of law, but as a kingdom willing to ignore corruption:
    • “We are the new world, not the old corrupt world... our constitution specifically says that the president is not supposed to take emoluments from foreign kings or leaders.” — Jane Mayer (14:08)
    • Trump’s message: “Corruption's fine with us.” (15:20)

4. Concrete Cases: Qatar, UAE, and the Trump Family

• Case Study: Qatar (18:25–22:26)

  • Relationship shift since 2017: from pariah to close partner.
  • Boeing 747 valued at $400M gifted from Qatar to Trump—retrofitted with taxpayer funds, to later become personal property.
  • Additional business and diplomatic entanglements via Jared Kushner and Trump Organization ventures.

• Netanyahu’s Tactics & Trump Leverage

  • Attempted Israeli operation in Qatar created leverage for Trump, facilitating pressure on Netanyahu and shaping the deal.

• Personal, Political, and Business Interests Merge

  • “The press and all of us have a responsibility to explain why that might be a problem… international crony capitalism… they’re strings, they’re hooks that everybody’s got in each other’s pockets.” — Jane Mayer (24:03)
  • UAE investments in Trump-linked crypto startups and access to advanced U.S. tech as further examples (24:35–26:41).
  • “Let’s not put it in normal terms. There’s nothing normal about this.” — Susan Glasser (26:42)

5. Systemic Impact and Future Ramifications

• Erosion of Ethics and Checks

  • Extreme weakening of U.S. anti-corruption safeguards; firing of ethics officers and attacking regulatory acts (28:50).
  • Kushner’s unpaid status excludes him from financial disclosures.

• Global Perceptions: The ‘Family-State’

  • “Chinese described the administration as ‘jia Tianxia'—a family using the state as its possession.” — Evan Osnos (30:57)

• Will This Become the Norm? (32:37–38:08)

  • Has Trump’s approach created a model for future U.S. governance or is it a historical aberration?
  • "It's very hard to get back what has already been lost." — Susan Glasser (33:24)
  • Foreign governments may see financial gifts as investment for future favors (34:28).
  • “The truest things that Trump ever says… are the things that he accuses his opponents of. He’s projecting his own behavior onto them.” — Jane Mayer, in reference to Hunter Biden controversy (36:19).

6. Societal Effects and Closing Reflections

• Potential Backlash and Extremism
  • “Corruption often leads to extremism... the population is so disgusted that they flock to sort of extreme purity.” — Jane Mayer (38:48)
  • Even with a temporary ceasefire, true peace and a stable two-state solution remain elusive.
  • “Do I believe that we are closer to a viable Palestinian state…? I do not believe, sadly, that we are closer to that goal.” — Susan Glasser (39:13)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Press Solidarity:
  "It went from left to Fox News and even to Newsmax... the free press matters and you’re trying to keep us unfree."
  — Jane Mayer (00:21)

• On Trump as ‘Potentate’:
  "He sees himself as a potentate. You know, strong men are what he wants to be."
  — Susan Glasser (14:08)

• On Business and Diplomacy Blending:
  "It’s giving leverage to Donald Trump, not to the United States. He’s enriching himself."
  — Susan Glasser (23:57)

• On Unprecedented Corruption:
  "We’ve never had a corruption like this where the money is going not even to a front group, not even to a campaign fund. It’s going directly into the pockets of the president and his family."
  — Jane Mayer (27:46)

• On the Broader Impact:
  "It makes people incredibly cynical and alienated... if they feel that it’s just a corrupt family or two who are taking everything."
  — Jane Mayer (36:19)

• Warning on the Future:
  "We don’t know where it leads. That’s the thing… tantalizing moments of peace that have not materialized into long-term, enduring settlement."
  — Susan Glasser (39:13)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Press Solidarity & Free Press: 00:01–00:31
• Ceasefire Summary & Trump’s Role: 01:36–06:01
• Analysis of CDiplomatic Showmanship: 06:41–08:14
• Substance of the Ceasefire: 08:14–10:16
• Trump’s Transactional Diplomacy & Corruption: 10:31–15:39
• Qatar, Gifts, and Business Entanglement: 18:25–22:26
• UAE, Tech Deals, Family Business: 24:35–26:41
• Breakdown of Anti-Corruption Mechanisms: 28:50–29:22
• Family-State Model & Global Impact: 30:57–32:37
• Systemic Effects & Potential Backlash: 32:37–39:13

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Conclusion

The hosts emphasize the significance of the ceasefire as a positive step, yet remain deeply skeptical about the durability of the peace and the growing normalization of open conflicts of interest in U.S. policy. They highlight the cynical atmosphere now pervading American politics, the undermining of ethics laws, and the risk that such new standards may reshape the government’s relationship to power, transparency, and foreign influence for years to come.

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End of summary.

Transcript

[Evan Osnos]

The sight of the press corps walking out of the Pentagon.

[Jane Mayer]

Oh, my God.

[Evan Osnos]

Is amazing. And it's a genuine act of solidarity on the part of the press, I think here.

[Jane Mayer]

And maybe even a sign that people are realizing solidarity and saying no are the only winning tactics here. Pretty cool. And it was across the ideological spectrum.

[Evan Osnos]

Very true.

[Jane Mayer]

It went from left to Fox News and even to Newsmax. They're saying something which is the free press matters and you're trying to keep us unfree.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, well, when Pete Hegseth, FOX Weekend News anchor, has lost Fox, you know, it's really remarkable.

[Jane Mayer]

Did you see though, that he is now insisting that this is Hegseth that everybody certify in the Pentagon that they have watched his speech? Yeah, I mean, that is realistic.

[Evan Osnos]

I'm start doing that, guys. I'm going to start asking people to certify that they've read that they've listened.

[Jane Mayer]

To this podcast.

[Evan Osnos]

For nice social occasions. Have you completed your certification?

[Susan Glasser]

When you say that you really enjoyed that column and listened to that podcast, like, I would like to test your comprehension.

[Evan Osnos]

Welcome to the Political Scene from the New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Evan Osnos and I'm joined as ever, by my colleagues Susan Glasser and Jane Mayer. Good morning, Susan.

[Susan Glasser]

Hey, it's great to be with you.

[Evan Osnos]

Hi, Jane.

[Jane Mayer]

Hey, Evan. Hey, Susan.

[Evan Osnos]

Today on the show, Trump the Middle east and the art of the Deal. As you know by now, Israel and Hamas have agreed to the initial phase of a ceasefire deal in Gaza. Earlier this week, 20 living hostages were freed by Hamas as Israel released nearly 2,000 prisoners. It's been a moment of real celebration for a great many people. The reprieve from violence brings immense relief, but the details on what's next are fuzzy, to say the least. This ceasefire deal is not a peace agreement, per the question of what happens to Hamas and how Gaza will be governed is unclear. And there is a lot more than just diplomacy at play. There's real money changing hands in the Middle east and often it seems that money is entwined with our foreign policy. So on today's show, we want to connect the dots a bit, try to follow the money as we say. What's behind this deal and how does the Trump family business, what looks to a lot of people like corruption, shape America's evolving role in the Middle East? Susan, first off, I want to start by taking stock of the ceasefire deal itself. There's been a huge amount of publicity around it. Of course, there was a press briefing on Monday, you'll recall when Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it one of the most important days for world peace in 50 years, to which Trump objected, and he said only 50. He prefers to see this as a step towards what he calls everlasting peace. So lay it out for us. What was achieved here, what is real and what was not achieved.

[Susan Glasser]

Well, thanks, Evan, because I think it's really important to sort of establish some ground truth here. But I'm glad that we're having this conversation because we can unpack the details, but in a big picture sense. Right. I think Trump in the Middle east, it's sort of one of those decoder rings for understanding the whole Trump presidency. This is. You can do better than study this as a distillation in many ways, as you pointed out in the introduction, the intertwining of the Trump family business interests and the transactionalism of actually being in business with the people, that you're also making diplomacy with the complicated politics not only of the Middle east, but specifically of Donald Trump and Israel and Bibi Netanyahu. That's the backdrop and to this deal and this notion of what kind of a superpower is America anymore? Are we leading? Are we just actually disentangling what's actually going on here? And there's the other element, which is Donald Trump, the puffer, if you will. And you. I love this quote. I'm so glad you started out with Marco Rubio. 50 years. That briefing came after Steve Witkoff, the Middle east envoy, said at a rally in Tel Aviv to celebrate the. The deal and Donald Trump's role in it, that he was the, quote, greatest president in American history, period. Stop. Foot bar none.

[Evan Osnos]

There are seems a little restrained giant.

[Susan Glasser]

Description, giant posters of Donald Trump everywhere in Israel, people at these rallies to celebrate the return of the hostages, booing their own Prime Minister Netanyahu cheering Donald Trump in the Knesset. And so I think you ask what happened here? You know, this is for Donald Trump, first and foremost, what he views as a personal triumph. And he was willing to do something that many American presidents haven't always been willing to do, which was to sort of really twist Netanyahu's arm to exert the enormous leverage that an American president has over Israel, and particularly this Republican American president has over Netanyahu, and say, now's the time. And so it's not everlasting world peace, it's not the dawn of a new Middle east, as Donald Trump says. What is it specifically? It's a phase one ceasefire deal that guaranteed that Hamas was going to return these 20 living hostages. They're still arguing over the return of some of the bodies of the dead hostages. Not all of that has happened yet. That in exchange, Israel was going to withdraw from some of its positions, was going to cease the attacks, civilians would be able to move back to their homes. In many cases, aid would begin to flow again. But we can talk more. Is that everlasting peace, or is it a ceasefire deal?

[Evan Osnos]

Jane, take us to that moment. Susan really correctly identified this as an event that was so focused around Trump himself. Take us back to that moment. At what was described as the peace summit with world leaders in Egypt on Monday. Remember, Trump is speaking in front of a huge banner that said peace. It was striking. To anybody who remembers the Mission Accomplished banner in Iraq, you generally try to avoid standing in front of big announcements of conditions that might be fragile. It felt like not the kind of diplomacy we're used to. What did you make of all of the pieces that were on display in that event?

[Jane Mayer]

Well, yeah, I mean, I think the thing that we all know about Trump by now is that he sees his job in many ways, as sort of producing a TV show. He has got the set there all laid out and the backdrop all laid out. And he always likes to hire people that he says look like they came from central casting. That's the phrase he always uses. And he's imagined this scene where he's the Prince of Peace or the King of Peace in the middle of the whole thing, and everybody else, all the world leaders are paying homage around him, and they're all signing something, and we're not able to see what exactly this document is. But then some reports, you know, zooms in on the wording of the thing, and it's this very vague, lovely, aspirational statement about how we'd like to all see peace in the Middle East. Well, yes, we would, of course. And the details, the fine print, it's not there. It's as if the picture is the end result of what he's aiming for here. Now, I don't want to. This is, what I'm saying sounds very critical. And I just want to say this is an achievement to have a ceasefire. And you got to give him credit, and you have to have a heart of stone not to have been moved by those scenes of the hostages being released and reunited with their families. And thank God that there's some aid coming in finally to Gaza. Okay, so let's not, you know, be churlish about this completely, but the question is as Susan's saying, what happens with stage two here, and the details are just up in the air there.

[Evan Osnos]

And just to be clear, Susan, give us really the concise nuts and bolts here of what happened and didn't happen in the deal.

[Susan Glasser]

Yeah, well, to Jane's point, excellent point, about this summit as a visual background backdrop. And in fact, neither the Prime Minister of Israel nor the leader of Hamas was present at the quote, unquote peace summit for Egypt, which was really then about optics. And then we have the question of what, now that the hostages are released, what is the process? Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner, has made an unpaid, you know, brief return to this diplomacy. He's working alongside Steve Witkoff, Trump's Middle east envoy, as well as a family business partner, to continue the negotiations in the Middle East. But the experts that I speak with suggest that the prospects for phase two longer term status negotiations very unclear. For example, we still don't have a full understanding of what is the governance authority in Gaza. Literally, who is in charge of running Gaza right now? We don't know, because Hamas was the governing authority before, to the extent I'm putting that in quotes, because obviously they weren't thinking about governing the place as much as being at war with Israel. We don't know who's the governing authority, what is the power there, what are the positions that Israel in the end, will still occupy in this territory? What will they withdraw from? Will Hamas actually fully disarm itself? Again, major questions. What's the verification process for this disarmament? And as you're looking, by the way, at the news in the coming months, the experts say to me, follow that issue. You know, the fighting over has Hamas really disarmed and will, you know, that actually become the stumbling block and the source of renewed hostilities? And will we see Donald Trump actually just. He's already declared it over and won. He said, this is peace for all time. So that doesn't suggest he's gonna be spending a lot of time sweating the details for the phase two.

[Evan Osnos]

But it may quickly test whether or not he's able to handle a situation in which something that he has attached to himself so personally wrapping himself in the flag of pe. What does he do when that begins to fray?

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, I gotta say, there's one other thing that struck me that I don't see people reporting about, and it's maybe because I'm not a Middle east reporter. I'm someone who focuses on things like corruption and money. But there was a tremendous amount of talk from Trump about money. It was really interesting and different. I mean, whether it was Miriam Adelson being recognized twice at the Knesset by Trump, having her stand up, take a bow, and he talks about how many billions of dollars she has. She's a huge American donor to the Republican Party and a major backer of Netanyahu.

[Chris Bannon]

Look at her sitting there so innocently. She's got 60 billion in the bank.

[Jane Mayer]

60 billion.

[Chris Bannon]

And she loves. And she, I think she's saying no more. And she loves Israel, but she loves it.

[Jane Mayer]

Or him meeting with various Arab leaders and embarrassingly starting to talk about how much money they have. He told a UAE official during a handshake while posing for photos, a lot of cash, unlimited cash. There was a sub theme here that was really striking that you don't usually see in diplomatic breakthroughs, which is a lot of concentration from Trump on money.

[Evan Osnos]

Well, which is interesting because, look, for years, the cliche about Trump is that he's a transactional president. We know that. And in this case, one of the things that's happening is he's basically putting that at the center of the diplomatic discussion and essentially proposing the idea that maybe people have been doing it all wrong before. Susan, I wanna play you a clip of Steve Bannon that I think, in some ways explains a lot about what we're unpacking today. It's Steve Bannon on News Nation earlier this week. Let's listen.

[Jane Mayer]

All of that was about building commercial.

[Evan Osnos]

Relationships between the United States and the.

[Chris Bannon]

Gulf emirates, but also the potential that we could have peace.

[Evan Osnos]

And if we had peace, we have broader commercial relations.

[Chris Bannon]

That is what's underpinning this deal today.

[Evan Osnos]

Susan, words I don't think I've often said. But is Steve Bannon onto something here?

[Susan Glasser]

Well, by the way, Steve Bannon, I think, often is kind of a keen analyst of Trump world. When he's not kind of selling a point of view, he's trying to describe a reality that he has experienced more directly than we have. And the reality is that Donald Trump, you could almost say that he's taken the model of the Gulf Arab Emirates and applied that as his own governance theory of the United States and his own theory of international diplomacy. He looks at the Gulf Arab emirs and he sees, like, I want to be like them. They co mingle, their families, their business, their country's national security. And that to Donald Trump is how he thinks. To Jane's point, right? There's no separation between Miriam Adelson giving millions to Republicans. When Donald Trump looks at her and her role as a supporter of Netanyahu over decades in Israel versus his view of, you know, here's my sons in business in the Middle East. We'll talk about that. Here's my relationship with mbs, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. You know, for him, it's a Stewart of interconnections that is very similar to the approach of a Middle east potentate. He sees himself as a potentate. You know, strong men are what he wants to be.

[Jane Mayer]

Susan. Because in the past, the president of the United States has represented the values of the United States when they go around the world talking about things like rule of law and human rights. And basically, we are the new world, not the old corrupt world. We areour constitution specifically says that the president is not supposed to take emoluments from foreign kings or leaders. We have a different system, and we've been the representatives of a far more idealistic system. And in this case, you have Trump. He's already said to these potentates, we're not going to lecture you about that. They love that. That was in his earlier trip. And he'. Said. And stood up in the Knesset and said basically about Netanyahu to the president of Israel, pardon him.

[Chris Bannon]

You know, whether we like it or not, this has been one of the greatest wartime presidents. This has been one of the greatest wartime presidents. And cigars and champagne. Who the hell cares about that?

[Jane Mayer]

You know, a little bit of corruption. What's a little bit of champagne? What's a little. What are a few cigars? He's saying, corruption's fine with us. This is in one of the few countries in the Middle east with a working democracy that has rule of law and a system that is pursuing Netanyahu on criminal charges. And Trump's saying, forget that stuff.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah, yeah. Trump is saying, look, he is, in effect, seeking to be an American emir. Here we are right about to have a no Kings Day protest, but we may have, in fact, ushered in the United American Emirates. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to unspool the details of how Trump's personal business in the Middle east is, in fact, indistinguishable from some of his diplomatic decisions. The Political Scene will be back in just a moment. Hey, Political Scene listeners, we're planning a special episode in early November, and we need your help with it.

[Susan Glasser]

The 2026 midterms are only a year away. They couldn't be more important. And we want your questions.

[Jane Mayer]

What races are you following? And who are the candidates you're most curious or excited about, and what big.

[Evan Osnos]

Issues are you thinking about? Why big money? Is it the economy? Redistricting, the courts, protest movements? Get specific and we'll do our best to answer them.

[Susan Glasser]

The lines, as they say, are open. Send us a voice memo or drop us a line@the mailnewyorker.com put midterms in the subject line and please tape yourself. We can't wait to hear from you. Literally.

[Jane Mayer]

That's the mailnewyorker.com subject line. Midterms. And thanks.

[Katie Drummond]

What the hell is going on right now? And why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis, and maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week, I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.

[Evan Osnos]

I want a shark that.

[Katie Drummond]

That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.

[Evan Osnos]

So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.

[Katie Drummond]

Week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times, meaning and context. True or false. You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False.

[Jane Mayer]

Tell me more.

[Katie Drummond]

Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.

[Evan Osnos]

Jane, a question about Qatar. It's one of America's key allies in the Middle East. It hosts our largest military base in the region. It was also a key mediator in the talks between Israel and Hamas. But if you go back not Too far, just 2017, in fact, Trump said Qatar has, quote, been a funder of terrorism at a very high level, unquote. So, fast forward to today. Obviously, the relationship is completely unrecognizable from what it was in that moment. Walk us through some of these financial entanglements, shall we say, between the Trump administration, the Trump family, and Qatar.

[Jane Mayer]

Well, you're absolutely right. The tone seems to have sweetened up quite a bit since 2017. And it may be in part because there's also been a kind of sweet flow of money coming from Qatar and gifts that Trump and the Trump family, I mean, most Notoriously, I think everybody has watched agape that the Qatari royal family donated to Trump a Boeing 747 that belonged to the royal family that is valued at something like $400 million, which is a gift that was not run by Congress, which is supposed to give its approval under the Constitution to any g from a foreign leader over, you know, any amount of money. So the emoluments clause again of the Constitution was just ignored. That 400 million turns out to only be the beginning of what the costs are going to be that are associated with this plane. It is estimated that it will cost a billion dollars or so to retrofit it and make it usable by the President of the United States as a new Air Force One. That's taxpayer money that's going to go into that. And most amazingly, this plane is not going to remain Air Force One for whoever the next president might be after the taxpayers have paid to retrofit it. It's going with Trump off to his library where he can use it in perpetuity for his own private uses. So when we worry about corruption, what you worry about is the public till going into private pockets. You're talking, even just in this one deal, about potential a billion dollars of taxpayer money going into a private plane that's going to transport Trump and his family around after he's left the Oval Office. Assuming that he does.

[Susan Glasser]

I'm curious actually, Jane and Evan, what you guys think? From my perspective, it was Netanyahu's very bad tactical error of staging an attack inside Gutter on what he called a Hamas terrorist figure. They that didn't succeed, but really blew back on him. And here's Donald Trump with this financial relationship with the Qataris. That's the moment at which I believe this deal took shape.

[Evan Osnos]

Absolutely.

[Jane Mayer]

And they were upset. It violated their sovereign space. They pushed, very interestingly, they pushed, of course, Trump to push back on Netanyahu. But it wasn't just the Qataris that were doing so. In the background, according to the Wall Street Journal, was Jared Kushner, who's also very involved in a way financially with Gutter. It's put money into his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, and he was there apparently demanding that Trump get Netanyahu on the phone and get Netanyahu to apologize.

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah, the apology was reportedly co written by Jared Kushner. I think this is, and you have.

[Jane Mayer]

This complete point, this complete intermingling, as you've been saying, between the private finances of the Trump family and international diplomacy at the most sort of explosive level.

[Evan Osnos]

I think what's happening here, I think Susan's right to identify the key juncture in this process was when Netanyahu initiated this attack inside Qatar. It created an opportunity for Trump to put pressure on Netanyahu in a way that he previously hadn't. Lot of social capital in Israel, Trump does. And he was able to squeeze the Prime Minister at that moment. And then there was one more little step, which is that when Hamas seemed open perhaps to some kind of deal, Trump did a very Trump thing, which is that he declared total victory and he pretended as if it was a done deal. And that actually had the effect of sort of pushing these players closer than they might not otherwise have been. And part of the reason why all that was happening was cuz you had these other deals which we haven't even mentioned, which is things like the fact that Qatar is going to build an Air Force facility in Idaho. So they have some skin in the game. And then of course you also have never leave out the family business, the Trump family real estate business, nominally led by Eric Trump, who has signed a deal to develop a big golf course and luxury villa. So you have all of these pieces in Qatar. Yeah, in Qatar you have this kind of Gordian knot.

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, but actually I have to say, to play devil's advocate here, you might argue as Bannon is arg, that all of these commercial ties are helpful in giving leverage to the United States. So I think what we have.

[Susan Glasser]

No, I'm sorry, it's giving leverage to Donald Trump, not to the United States. He's enriching himself.

[Jane Mayer]

Exactly. And I think what the press and all of us have a responsibility to do is explain why that might be a problem. To have him becoming independently rich through this kind of international crony capitalism that is the old world Bakshis style of the Middle East. And they're strings, they're hooks that everybody's got in each other's pockets at this point, whether the Trump family is. There's no doubt it's getting rich. The question is, is it working for the American public or is it working for the Trump family?

[Evan Osnos]

Great point. And Susan, we've only talked about Qatar. We really haven't said as much about the uae. Earlier this summer there were a couple of giant multi billion dollar deals. The New York Times has done a deep dive on the question of how these were seque for people. Just to remind us of the basics here, Steve Witkoff's son Zach announced that one of Sheikh Tahnoon's investment firms would put $2 billion into World Liberty Financial. This is the crypto startup founded by the Witkoffs and Trump. And then a couple weeks later, the White House agreed to let the UAE buy hundreds of thousands of the world's most advanced chips, which of course are very valuable in the AI race. So we're seeing foreign investment here as certainly a piece of, piece of the puzzle. When does a business deal with the Trump family cross unmistakably into political corruption? Is there a way to separate these things? Is that a plausible defense and is it fair?

[Susan Glasser]

It's just quite simply unprecedented. And the idea that we have conflict of interest laws in this country which would say a mid level government bureaucrat can't take lunch from Sheikh Taknun. Okay, let's be real about that. And yet somehow you think it's legal that they can give $2 billion to the family of the President of the United States. Time to coincide with the official very first foreign trip of Donald Trump's second term in the presidency of the United States. Like, come on.

[Alex Schwartz]

Right?

[Susan Glasser]

Like, this is like, it's not only doesn't pass any kind of a smell test for what would be legal for any other person except for this particular president, but it is a scale of corruption and the hollowing out of any notion, you know. Right. Like, how can we ever talk to anyone else in the world about the rule of law and financial transparency and you know, like, come on, like, I think in fact, we're kind of made stupefied by the scale of what's happening here.

[Evan Osnos]

That's a great way to put it.

[Susan Glasser]

Let's not put it in normal terms. There's nothing normal about this. This is so improper, so contrary to the spirit of any kind of public corruption laws we have in this country and the fact that it's commingled with incredibly high stakes geopolitical diplomacy that has to do with the national security of this country going forward amid the AI race with these super very hard to manufacture and to obtain high tech chips that are gonna power the next stage of the world economy. This was like the subject of major legislation in Congress during the previous administration, during the Biden administration. And here Donald Trump just lets the UAE have it without any kind of proper national security vetting process, as far as we can tell, without Congress's sign off, like there's no transparency around what's driving it, what's powering it. And I think that's why I keep coming back this stew of conflict of interest and interconnected deals as being the paradigm for the Trump Presidency.

[Jane Mayer]

Absolutely. And I mean, just to put down just a very basic marker, this is the first president who has not divested himself from his business while he's being President of the United States. We've had corruption in this country before and scandals before. We've never had a corruption like this where the money is going not even to a front group, not even to a campaign fund. It's going directly into the pockets of the president and his family.

[Evan Osnos]

I think it's easy for people to lose sight, as you guys are saying, because when this is all done, essentially semi out in the open, it begins to take on the air. Well, why is there anything to hide? It's worth reminding ourselves. Talk to anybody who works on the Hill and they'll remind you that the rules about corruption are in fact so stringent that there are rules around whether you can be sitting down or standing up when you eat food. Because that's the kind of fine grained effort that's been assembled over the decades to try to prevent people from being bought off with big fancy meals.

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, of course, they have pretty much fired or defanged every kind of ethics officer in the government and disassembled anti corruption unit in the Justice Department. And Trump has attacked the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. So the mechanism that we've had for policing this, not to mention the press that covers it, are all being tremendously weakened. And then you have Jared Kushner, an unpaid volunteer, and when you're an unpaid volunteer, those government strictures do not cover you.

[Evan Osnos]

That's an important point.

[Jane Mayer]

And yeah, for that reason also, he doesn't need to fill out a financial disclosure, so nobody can see exactly what the details are.

[Evan Osnos]

So in a sense, if you decide that politics or diplomacy is an extracurricular activity, Susan, that means that you're not subject to ethical requirements and disclosures.

[Susan Glasser]

That's what I'm saying. Like, let's just pull back here and say, like, they've done a remarkable job of getting all of us to just somehow, you know, not be bowled over day in and day out by the scale of what's happening here. And you know, I remember, Gene, you remember in Washington in the 1990s, there was a big scandal in the Clinton administration about the possibility that foreign money had made its way through straw donors into the Clinton campaign. Campaign. And you know, it's illegal for foreign interest individuals entities to contribute money to our campaign system here. We have literally billions of dollars directly going to the president's family. So I think that's very important. Number One, number two, we started this conversation here, Jane, talking and walking us through kind of gutter and the Trump family. That's part of why Donald Trump was. Was willing to kind of knock heads in Israel, right? The Republican Party. He styled himself as the most pro Israel president in American history. That's not necessarily true, but it gives him enormous leverage over Israel. But remember, Benjamin NETanyahu can't give $2 billion directly to the Trump family.

[Evan Osnos]

You mean because Israel is a democracy.

[Katie Drummond]

Exactly.

[Evan Osnos]

And therefore is subject to different pressures. You know, I'm reminded, guys, as we talk about this, of something very early on in the first Trump term, when the Chinese national were struggling to understand what this new American counterpart was. And they ended up settling on an ancient Chinese term that you haven't heard very much in years, which is they said, you have to understand this administration as a jia Tianxia, which means a family that is using the state as its possession. This is like a term that had never really been applied to the American side, but now it turns out to be prophecy. All right, we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, what is at stake in the longer term here when diplo and personal financial interests become indistinguishable? The political scene will be back in just a moment.

[Alex Schwartz]

Hi, podcast listeners. I'm Alex Schwartz, one of the hosts of the New Yorker's flagship culture podcast, Critics at Large, along with my colleagues Vincent Cunningham and Nomi Frye. We're doing a live taping of our show with the wonderful Padma Lakshmi as part of this year's New Yorker Festival on Friday, October 20th, 24th. And we would love to have you there. We're going to be talking all about taste. Where does it come from? How do you form it? Can you change it? What is cultural? What is inherited?

[Katie Drummond]

All of it.

[Alex Schwartz]

You can get tickets and learn [e-mail] Festival. We can't wait to see you there.

[Evan Osnos]

Susan. For people who may have missed it, there was a tiny but quite revealing moment during the peace event in Egypt the other day when Trump was caught on a hot mic. He was talking to the president of Indonesia, and the president of Indonesia was heard to say quite clearly, he asked quite plaintively if he could meet Eric, presumably Eric Trump, who manages the family business. This is not normal. Let's just describe it that way. So are we watching essentially now the creation of a new era in America's diplomatic toolbox, its vocabulary. Is the next president gonna come in and carry this on, or is this gonna be seen as A perversion from our usual habits.

[Susan Glasser]

You know, I come back to Jane's point that Donald Trump has acted actually already pretty systematically to unravel the legal and administrative mechanisms of policing public corruption in the United States and done so much to undo the framework of laws and policing that were built up in the wake of Watergate and other scandals in our history. We've had, you know, crooked Democrats and Republicans in Washington. You learn that pretty quickly the second you get there. But A, there's the scale of it, and B, there's the undoing that has already occurred. And, you know, we started this discussion today thinking about our colleagues in the Pentagon press corps and that it's very hard to get back what has already been lost. And I think that is an important framework for thinking about. Not only is it very unrealistic to think that we're just going to snap back to a world of these public corruption laws and things like that, but almost the opposite metaphor, right? And that's my issue with a lot of the Trump stuff, is that where people are still waiting or wondering like, can we just go back to our things? And. And we're not going to go back to the status quo. Anti. And I think not only does that apply here, but the question that we should have is how far down the road to becoming a kind of corrupted oligarchy model of a state are we going to go? And there's a lot more road to run on for not only this Donald Trump, but the future Donald Trumps. It's not limited to a particular party, but I think you could imagine this kind of corruption at different levels of our government, first of all. Second, of all, these foreign countries, for them, the stakes are so enormous of these deals that they want to do with the United States that of course, they're willing to pay a $400 million jet is nothing. If you think that Donald Trump is going to hand you benefits in the future AI world economy that you could not obtain at any other price anywhere else.

[Evan Osnos]

Jane, what is interesting here is to bring us back to where we started, which is that some people will say, okay, all of that's true, Susan. Everything you just described is a fact. But he was able to make a deal that nobody else was able to make. So is this, in fact, the vindication of raw power politics of acknowledging that in the end, people are motivated more by money than by principle? And what I hear Susan saying, which really resonates with me, is that it's not so much that I think we can all agree that when you hang it on the question of peace in the Middle East. That's a pretty fragile ingredient in legitimacy for your deal. But the bigger issue is also what does it do across the government, down through the layers. If you're somebody who is at the state level, if you're at the local level, if you're another country, it just begins to change the whole ecology of politics in a way that basically says anything goes.

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, and if you take it down even further to the citizen level, I think what it does is it makes people incredibly cynical and alienated and disenchanted with our system if they feel that it's just a corrupt family or two who are taking everything. I mean, and that's the opposite of what the idealism of sort of American law and principles. I have to say a couple things else that strike me about this. Just listening to being reminded by Susan and you of the conversation between, between the Indonesian presidents wanting to talk to the son of the president, it just made me think, so what was all that concern about Hunter Biden? And you know, and in a way, I think the truest things that Trump ever says and the most revealing things he says are the things that he accuses his opponents of. He's projecting his own behavior onto them. And you're now looking at him carving up the world diplomacy with his sons and his son in law and his daughter. Ivanka was there too, very much in the way that he accused Biden of doing. And it's as if his projections are his dreams. In some ways it's so interesting. It's a pitiful picture. I don't think it has to be like this forever. We're about to see whether there's a gigantic protest this weekend, the no Kings Day. I don't think most Americans want a king. I think they remember there's a reason why we don't have one. We shall see. But on the flip side, you know, you're asking, where does this go? Well, if this really became the model that it is in some parts of the world, the old world, the corrupt world, the Middle east world, those sons are the next rulers. That's what you worry about.

[Evan Osnos]

Susan, I wanna give you the last word in just a second, but I am reminded these days that we are living through a pattern of backlash politics, actually, where whatever one administration or one figure typifies it tends to empower somebody who follows, who is trying to undo those things or is speaking in opposition to those. It's quite noticeable and I don't know where this particular Call it sort of the aesthetic of flamboyant self dealing, what that leads to. But I'm not convinced necessarily that it leads to another Trump like figure. It might in fact lead to something that is a backlash against it.

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, actually, if you look in places that like say Afghanistan, what it's often led to corruption, often leads to extremism. You see the rise of groups like the Taliban because the population is so disgusted by the corruption that they flock to sort of extreme purity in things like the Taliban. So put it this way, it's not a healthy cycle.

[Susan Glasser]

Look, we began and ended by, it's a great thing to have these hostages home, to have the bombs not dropping on civilians anymore in Gaza, but we don't know where it leads. That's the thing that we, I think it's just so important to underscore, like in our lifetime, again and again and again, we've experienced this horrific cycle of violence, tantalizing moments of peace that have not materialized into long term, enduring settlement. And if you ask me today, after two years of this horrible war between Israel and Hamas, do I believe that we are closer to a viable Palestinian state that can coexist in peace and harmony and democracy with Israel? I do not believe, sadly, that we are closer to that goal.

[Evan Osnos]

Well, we will be returning to this subject, but I am very pleased to have a chance to be with you guys to, shall we say, learn that the dark arts of the deal on this case, everything that is both out in the open but also behind the scenes. And it's great to explore it with you. Thank you, Jane and thank you, Susan.

[Jane Mayer]

Great to be with you guys as always.

[Susan Glasser]

Thank you so much. That was really interesting.

[Evan Osnos]

This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. I'm Evan Asanos. We had research assistants today from Alex d', Elia, our priority. Our producer is Nora Richie, mixing by Mike Kutchman. Steven Valentino is our executive producer and Chris Bannon is Conde Nast's head of Global Audio. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. We'll Be back on November 7th with your 2026 midterm questions. Thank you so much for listening. Foreign.

[Katie Drummond]

I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's global Editorial director.

[Evan Osnos]

I'm Michael Kolori, Wired's Director of Consumer Tech and Culture.

[Susan Glasser]

And I'm Lauren Good.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm a senior correspondent at Wired.

[Susan Glasser]

And our show Uncanny Valley is about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.

[Katie Drummond]

And right now, Silicon Valley and Washington have never been more intertwined. So each week we get together to talk about a big story, often at the intersection of tech and politics.

[Evan Osnos]

Right? So whether we're talking about Trump, Coin, Doge, or Elon Musk, we will always explain how these Silicon Valley forces are.

[Susan Glasser]

Affecting Washington and how they affect you.

[Katie Drummond]

Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.

[Jane Mayer]

From prx.