The White Tablecloth Theory of Dirty Politics applies here.
By David Korn
The only time I ever worked on a political campaign, decades ago, I did opposition research on a Republican senator from New York named Alfonse D’Amato. He had a scandal-ridden background, most notably due to his proximity to a kickback scheme in Long Island in which public employees were forced to pay 1 percent of their salaries to the local GOP machine. (He denied wrongdoing.) He also was tied to a corruption scandal involving federal contracts doled out by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. (He denied wrongdoing.) He also had been chummy with at least one mob-related crook—and maybe more. (He denied wrongdoing.) Add to all that, a string of other sleazy controversies.
But none of this ever stuck to D’Amato, who cultivated the reputation of a street-savvy, give-you-a-wink rogue. Through his 18 years in the US Senate, he survived various allegations and investigations and was reelected twice. He was pure Teflon. It took me a while to figure out why.
I finally got it and derived the White Tablecloth Theory of Dirty Politics. If you’re out at a nice restaurant, sitting at a table with a white tablecloth, and you spill your red wine, everyone notices. There’s a big ugly stain that’s hard to ignore. But if the tablecloth is already dirty and marred by previous wine spillage and you knock over your glass, well, one more stain doesn’t matter. It blends right in.
Trump has engaged in record-setting levels of corruption, as he mixes his business interests with his day job. It’s as if the presidency is a mere side hustle to his main gig of maximum personal enrichment.
D’Amato had so many stains on his record that by the time I started digging and finding additional ones, it just didn’t matter. The new revelations hardly stood out; they became part of the existing mélange. This dynamic continued throughout his political career. With his image as a guy who played perhaps a bit too loose and too fast, yet another disclosure of improbity didn’t change anything.
He was nothing compared to Donald Trump. But watching the president these past few months, I kept thinking of the Tablecloth Theory. Trump has engaged in record-setting levels of corruption, as he mixes his business interests with his day job. It’s as if the presidency is a mere side hustle to his main gig of maximum personal enrichment. His trip to the Middle East this past week was more a venture of Trump, Inc. than a presidential mission. His Trump Organization is developing projects in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—the three nations on his Mideast tour—while hooking up with firms tied to these Arab governments.
His family business is also cutting lucrative crypto deals with Arab partners. As my colleague Russ Choma recently reported, Eric Trump, who runs the Trump Organization now, was recently in Dubai and announced that
MGX, a UAE-based investment fund, would invest $2 billion in crypto exchange Binance using a “stablecoin” created by the Trumps’ crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. The deal could net the Trump family hundreds of millions, as the transaction lends enormous credibility and liquidity to their crypto business. MGX isn’t just any UAE-based investment fund. It’s chaired by Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser and brother of the Emirates’ ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Let’s not forget the Saudi investment fund that kicked in $2 billion when Jared Kushner started his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, which subsequently attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in backing also from Qatar and the UAE.
Never has a president been so financially intertwined with foreign governments. No wonder he praised Mohammed bin Salman, the murderous ruler of Saudi Arabia, as a “gentleman.” After all, he’s helping Trump and his family make millions. And, as we all know, Trump agreed last week to accept a $400 million gift airplane from Qatar. Any slice of this would have been unthinkable for an American president in the past. But not with Trump. The latest grift is just another drop on an already huge pile of grift.
Remember how the media and the right went nuts when President Bill Clinton hosted coffees at the White House for Democratic donors? Now Trump is using access to the White House as a way to line his own pockets.
Which includes the new crypto ventures he recently started, and there’s not just one. He and his family own a 60 percent stake in World Liberty Financial (WLF), which was launched in September. It manages two digital currencies: $WLF1, which is known as a “governance” token, and $USD1, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. Whenever either coin is purchased, used, or transferred, WLF gets a fee. So, anyone—a foreign official, an oligarch, a crook, an overseas or domestic corporation seeking preferential treatment, an office seeker, a pardon seeker, a Trump buddy—can put moolah right into Trump’s grubby hands and curry favor with him by purchasing or using either of these coins. Best of all, these transactions can be anonymous. Ca-ching! There’s never been an easier way to bribe a president—or for a president to collect bribes.
Then there are the meme coins that both Trump and his wife, Melania, set up around the time of his inauguration: $TRUMP and $MELANIA. They, too, generate income from transaction fees. The early action on these coins brought in at least $350 million for Trump and $64 million for Melania. More recently, Trump established a contest with the prize of a White House visit for whoever buys the most amount of his pump-and-dump meme coin. Remember how the media and the right went nuts when President Bill Clinton hosted coffees at the White House for Democratic donors? Now Trump is using access to the White House as a way to line his own pockets. And his social media company is looking to go public. Even though it loses a ton of money, Trump stands to gain $3 billion from that deal.
Don’t forget that as president, Trump is in charge of regulating—or not regulating—the crypto industry, and the decisions his administration makes on this front could lead to greater riches for him and his clan.