It’s probably for the best that the Trump family doesn’t bother to hide its corruption. At least we get advance word of their next grift rather than having to guess. This time around, it’s drones, because of course.
President Donald Trump’s Large Adult Sons are getting into the war business. Pretty convenient when your daddy can start a war and you can profit, right? And pretty convenient when your daddy runs the government, so now the government will buy your drones, because of course.
As Bloomberg reported Thursday, the U.S. Air Force will buy an undisclosed number of drones from Powerus, a company backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump,
This whole thing got sleazy even before we learned of that deal. Rather than the oldest Trump sons investing directly in Powerus, they are instead taking their golf club company, Aureus Greenway Holdings, and merging it with Powerus. Presumably, Powerus will not build drones and design golf clubs, so calling it a merger is a bit of a fiction. Aureus raised money for this merger with help from Dominari Securities, where the Trump brothers are also shareholders.
Initially, Don Jr. and Eric tried to sell the Powerus drones to Gulf countries currently under attack after their daddy started an unnecessary war in Iran. Sure, that is unethical as hell and essentially pressures those countries to line the Trump family’s pockets, but that’s just how things are these days, right?
Even in light of this corrupt contract for a secret number of drones from a company backed by the president’s oldest sons, the company is ridiculously pretending its selection is based on merit.
Attribution: APA drone hunter intercepts a target drone during drills in the Kyiv region of Ukraine in March.
“They’re not going to pick a system because of who’s on an investor list,” said Brett Velicovich, the president of Powerus. “They’re picking because they need it now.”
Uh huh, sure.
But also, we need to buy drones from Trump’s nepo-baby sons ASAP, per Velicovich, because “we are in an arms race, and America will lose if we don’t build fast.”
Sure, brah. Sure. Definitely tell the American people we should be grateful to shower even more money on the Trump family. Secret money.
According to the Large Adult Sons themselves, they are just private businessmen, but they also get to engage in conflicts of interest this time around because people didn’t praise them enough for their “restraint” during Trump’s first term.
Awww. Sorry that you are just widdle guys and needed to enter into full-blown corruption because you didn’t get enough snuggles last time, and therefore you get to increase your fortunes wildly. Just before the 2024 election, both Large Sons had estimated net worths of around $40-$50 million each. About a year later, Eric was up to $400 million, and Don Jr. was sitting at around $300 million.
There’s no longer any attempt to explain or justify these massive conflicts of interest. Instead, the boys just give comments like Eric’s vague statement: “I am incredibly proud to invest in companies I believe in. Drones are clearly the wave of the future.”
This is corruption, but it’s also nepo-baby behavior in action, and that’s a thing the Trump family knows and loves.
Amazon appears to be readying itself to bribe the Trump administration—just as it did with the “Melania” movie—by floating an “Apprentice” reboot starring Don Jr.
If there’s anyone more viscerally unpleasant to build a show around, we’re not aware of them. Junior’s aggressive, sweaty, bullyboy behavior will not play well, but that’s not the point.
These guys are criminally grifty failsons who, if daddy wasn’t made of money and wasn’t president, wouldn’t have jobs. That’s just as true for the next Trump generation, with Trump granddaughter Kai Trump, an objectively mid golfer using grandpappy’s name to get herself elevated to an LPGA tourney she had no business being in.
Our tax dollars are propping up the least talented, most corrupt people.
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