The Republic for Sale

The President is not governing. He is cashing out.

In the first six months of his return to power, the executive office has been used as a clearinghouse for debts, a bullhorn for self-enrichment, and a shield against judgment—both legal and historical. This is not conjecture. It is the record.

According to a July 2, 2025 investigation by The New York Times, which reviewed more than 2,000 internal Trump Organization documents filed in a civil fraud case against Donald J. Trump, the president returned to office under extreme financial pressure. His Manhattan office tower was generating too little cash to meet mortgage payments. Many of his golf courses were operating at a loss. His licensing revenues had dried up. The once-vaunted business empire, the article noted, had long ceased to be a functioning development company. Instead, it had become something closer to a monetized identity: a name for rent, a signature for sale. And Donald Trump, after hovering his hand over the Bible, remains open for business.

Trump testified in 2023 that he had between $300 and $400 million in cash, but Times reporters found that figure to be highly volatile—driven not by operating profits but by liquidated assets and a $150 million payout from a passive investment. The year 2018 saw his balance drop as low as $52 million—scant liquidity for a man claiming to be a self-made billionaire. The myth was collapsing. He needed a new influx of cash. And so, the presidency became his final pitch. It was a move to enrich and to shield from legal actions, convictions and settlements. And half of the American people were the mark.

Just months after taking the oath of office a second time, Trump and his two eldest sons entered a flurry of cryptocurrency ventures. The most prominent of these, World Liberty Financial, issued tokens that provided the Trump family with at least $236 million in digital holdings. Sales of Trump-themed memecoins—marketed to supporters as limited-edition collectibles—brought in another $320 million, according to the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. These coins had no utility, no underlying asset, and no economic function beyond profit. Yet they flourished under a president whose administration simultaneously pushed for a “hands-off” regulatory approach to crypto markets, effectively monetizing both his political base and his policy posture. He was both overseer and beneficiary—a one-man market distortion cloaked in executive power.

At the same time, foreign real estate licensing deals surged. Since the spring, nine new branding agreements were announced: projects in Vietnam, Serbia, Oman, Qatar, Dubai, and Riyadh, as well as two more in India. Many of these deals were brokered by Ziad El Chaar, a longtime Trump associate and CEO of DarGlobal—a Saudi-linked construction firm with ties to the Kingdom’s sovereign wealth apparatus. These were not traditional developments. The Trumps invested no capital. They assumed no risk. What they provided was the name “Trump,” now once again synonymous with presidential access. These agreements functioned as open channels for foreign entities to enrich the President of the United States without public oversight, without pricing transparency, and without the structural safeguards once known as constitutional limits.

And about Vietnam…

On July 2, 2025—the same day The New York Times published its investigative report—Trump announced a new bilateral trade deal with Vietnam, one that effectively rolled back punitive tariffs in exchange for preferential access for American businesses. But the terms raised alarm among trade experts and U.S. industry groups. The so-called “framework” agreement imposed a flat 20 percent tariff on Vietnamese imports and an escalated 40 percent tariff on “transshipped” goods—a move supposedly meant to combat Chinese manufacturers rerouting through Vietnam. Yet no clear rules of origin were published. No enforcement regime was detailed. What was clear: U.S. corporations, particularly in sectors like footwear and agriculture, would shoulder higher costs while the administration claimed a symbolic win.

What was less publicized, but more telling, was the deal announced just weeks earlier: a $1.5 billion Trump Organization real estate and golf development approved by the Vietnamese government. The project—spanning over 2,400 acres in Khoai Chau district—was greenlit by Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha and would include massive golf courses, commercial space, hotels, and high-end residences. Vietnamese real estate giant Kinhbac City partnered with Trump’s family business in October 2024. The development is scheduled to continue through 2029.

In the midst of trade negotiations meant to ease Washington’s pressure over tariff avoidance and Chinese transshipping, the Trump Organization secured one of the largest foreign approvals in its history. The timing is not just suspicious—it’s clarifying. While the president was imposing steep tariffs on Vietnam’s exports, his business was cutting ribbon on Vietnamese soil. While he was lecturing Hanoi about economic discipline, his name was being printed on golf flags and residential towers. The message could not be more blatant: deal with the United States, enrich the man who runs it.

This blurring of public and private interest didn’t stop at foreign policy. It extended into the very culture of influence—beginning with the return of LIV Golf.

LIV Golf—a Saudi-funded sports league accused of “sportswashing” since its inception, held tournaments at Trump Doral and Trump Bedminster during his first post-presidency years. Now, back in office, Trump has renewed those hosting relationships, even as he uses his public platform to push for a PGA–LIV merger, which could reunify the world’s top golfers on his properties. Neither Trump nor the Saudi Public Investment Fund have disclosed how much is being paid. And now, with the LIV tournament secured, he paid off a $114 million mortgage in June 2025—clearing the Trump Organization’s debt on 40 Wall Street, a flagship New York tower.

And then there is Trump Media. Truth Social’s parent company, in which the president holds a majority stake, is a publicly traded firm with a valuation that peaked near $2 billion—despite generating under $5 million in annual revenue. Trump invested nothing. He performs no official duties. But he drives value with every post, speech, or outburst. This is not democratic communication. It is a stock-price tether. A feedback loop between outrage and profit. A new category of conflict: presidential market manipulation.

Despite repeated ethics warnings, Trump has refused to place his assets in a blind trust. He continues to direct his sons in private business negotiations. Key financial details of his foreign licensing arrangements remain undisclosed. According to Times reporting, the Trump Organization relies on shell LLCs to obscure licensing payments and avoid financial transparency. The presidency is not a public trust. It is a pass-through.

Meanwhile, the federal government itself is being turned inward. The IRS—under Trump-appointed leadership—has failed to finalize a $100 million audit concerning his Chicago tower. The Department of Justice has reversed course on multiple investigations. Prosecutors have faced retaliation. Journalists have been threatened. Legal pressure has been redirected, retooled, and repurposed to serve the president’s personal grievances.

James Madison, in Federalist No. 51, stated that “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” It was precisely because they knew men were not angels that the founders built a system to constrain ambition.

What they could not have predicted is a citizenry so exhausted by scandal and a Congress so defanged by partisanship that they would sit idle as a man used the presidency to refinance his empire.

This is not corruption as lapse. It is corruption as ideology. This is what it looks like when the presidency is not a role but a racket—when the flag becomes a marketing campaign, and the daily outrages he and his minions spray like a firehose deflect from the illegal acts behind the curtain. This is the Presidency as the ultimate three card monty game. Played like only a gifted grifter could.

There is no ambiguity here. The violations are specific. They are documented. They are ongoing. Foreign emoluments. Conflicts of interest. Obstruction of justice. Coordinated regulatory capture. The knowing, repeated use of public authority for private benefit.

If these actions do not rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” then the phrase has no meaning. And the republic has no immune system.

We are not witnessing the decline of a man. We are witnessing the collapse of restraint. The end of shame as a limiting principle. The selling of state power as a franchise model.

And so we must ask: What happens when a man builds nothing, sells everything, and reaches for the highest office not to serve, but to survive?

The answer is here. You are living in it.

He is not leading the nation. He is liquidating it.

And if Congress does not act, it will not be remembered as a branch of resistance—but as the co-signer.

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Coda: “For The Love of Money”, The O’Jays

If any song needed to be reclaimed, it's this.

The O’Jays didn’t write a celebration of wealth. They wrote a cautionary tale. A funk psalm about how the dollar corrupts. It was a warning, drenched in gospel harmonies and streetwise cynicism. Not a call to arms, but a call to watch yourself. Because once money enters the bloodstream, the soul starts to fade.

But Trump didn’t hear that. Or didn’t care. He heard the beat, not the burden. Like so many others before him, he confused rhythm for endorsement. Just like Reagan with “Born in the U.S.A.” or any number of politicians who hear a catchy line and never make it to the second verse.

Money, money, money, money, money

Some people got to have it
Some people really need it
Listen to me y'all
Do things, do things, do things, bad things with it
You want to do things, do things, do things, good things with it
Talk about cash money, money
Talk about cash money, dollar bills y'all, come on now
Yeah, yeah

For the love of money
People will steal from their mother
For the love of money
People will rob their own brother

For the love of money
People can't even walk the street
Because they never know who in the world they're gonna beat
For that lean, mean, mean green
Almighty dollar, money

For the love of money
People will lie, Lord, they will cheat
For the love of money
People don't care who they hurt or beat
For the love of money
A woman will sell her precious body
For a small piece of paper it carries a lot of weight
Call that mean, mean, mean, mean, mean green
Almighty dollar

I know that money is the root of all evil
Do funny things to some people
Give me a nickel, brother can you spare a dime?
Money can drive some people out of their minds

Trump blasted it out to the nation like a mission statement.

I guess the irony was lost on him.

If, that is, he even knows what irony is.