They’re Not Even Hiding It Anymore

By Rachel Hurley March 9th, 2026 Updated September 27th, 2026

Eric Trump told CNBC the banks that cut his family off “didn’t give us much of a choice.” That’s the whole confession right there. He said it smiling.

While we were watching Donald Trump ramble to the press, Don Jr. and Eric were on planes. Officials from eight foreign countries. Government meetings. Billion-dollar groundbreakings. An 80-story tower going up in Dubai. A planned tower pitched as the tallest building in Australia. A $1.5 billion golf resort in Vietnam that the Vietnamese prime minister personally attended the groundbreaking for, after his government rushed it from first paperwork to shovels in the ground in three months - when experts told the New York Times that usually takes at least two years.

The Trump Organization made at least $87 million in international business income in 2024 alone. These are not passive investments sitting in a blind trust. These are active, expanding, foreign-government-assisted deals being cut by the president’s sons while the president is threatening or rewarding those same countries with tariffs and trade agreements.

Vietnam was facing a 46% tariff under Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement. A week later, Trump paused it - along with almost every other country’s - for 90 days. Six weeks after that, Eric flew to Hanoi and broke ground on a golf complex with the prime minister standing next to him, cheering, while Vietnam’s trade negotiators were in Washington. That’s the whole story in three sentences.

The Serbia situation is even less subtle. That one was Jared Kushner’s deal, but Don Jr. flew to Belgrade in March 2025 to meet with President Vucic directly. Kushner’s firm wanted to demolish a bombed-out Yugoslav military complex, a nationally protected war monument, to build a luxury hotel.

The director of Serbia’s cultural heritage agency was arrested and admitted in court to forging the official document that stripped the building’s protected status. An actual cabinet minister was charged with abuse of power and forgery. Thousands of Serbians took to the streets. Kushner eventually pulled out. But the mechanism was working exactly as designed: a foreign government committed what amounted to fraud to clear a path for a deal connected to the American president’s family. Because that is what it now costs to curry favor with Washington.

Trump himself explained the logic to the New York Times. “I found out nobody cared, and I’m allowed to,” he said. That quote should be on a plaque somewhere.

The legal term for this is “emoluments.” The Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, Article I, Section 9, says that no federal official shall accept any profit, gain, or advantage from a foreign government without the consent of Congress. The founders were so worried about this specific scenario that they put it in the Constitution. Not in a law. In the Constitution. And yet here we are.

The problem with the Emoluments Clause is that it has no built-in enforcement mechanism. The founders assumed that Congress would be the check. That assumption relied on Congress caring more about the institution than the party.

Three lawsuits were filed during Trump’s first term - one by CREW, one by state attorneys general, one by congressional Democrats - and all three were eventually dismissed on procedural grounds before any court decided whether Trump actually broke the clauses. The Supreme Court called two of them moot after Biden won and let everyone go home. The third - the congressional Democrats’ case - had already been thrown out because an appeals court said members of Congress didn’t have standing to sue. So the legal strategy of “sue and wait” produced exactly nothing.

What’s actually available right now is not satisfying, but it’s real. CREW tracks and documents these conflicts as they happen - their report on the eight countries is public and detailed. Watchdog organizations like the Brennan Center have pushed for laws such as the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Enforcement Act, introduced in 2021, which would have created a statutory definition of emoluments broad enough to include commercial transactions, required disclosure, and given the House, the Senate and the Office of Government Ethics the actual authority to sue.

But it never got a vote. Bills like it need pressure. House Judiciary Democrats opened an investigation in May 2025 into the Qatar jet situation - the $400 million plane Trump accepted from a foreign government - and more oversight pressure from constituents makes a difference in whether that goes anywhere or quietly dies.

The most concrete thing: contact your representative and senators directly, specifically about emoluments enforcement legislation. The Brennan Center’s report “Codifying the Constitution’s Emoluments Clauses” lays out exactly what Congress would need to pass. CREW runs petitions you can sign. If your member of Congress is on the House Judiciary or Oversight Committee, or the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, they have direct oversight jurisdiction over this and your call is not going into a void.

The deeper issue is that the normalization is the strategy.

When foreign governments fast-track permits, forge heritage documents, and stand next to the president’s son at groundbreakings, it looks transactional because it is transactional.

The Trump family has made the calculation that the volume of it - the sheer number of deals, the number of countries, the relentlessness of it - eventually makes people tired. Scandals work on the assumption that the thing being revealed is a departure from normal. When there’s a new one every week, the category of “departure” stops existing.

Eric Trump called it retribution. Don Jr. called it a monster they created. Trump himself said nobody cared.

Sources

Correction, September 27th, 2026: This essay first said Vietnam’s tariffs were paused after Eric Trump broke ground there - the 90-day pause came six weeks before, and it covered almost every country. It said Eric Trump told CNBC that critics “didn’t give us much of a choice” - he was talking about the banks. It said the Vietnamese prime minister went to a ribbon-cutting after permits were fast-tracked in under a week, when approval normally takes two to four years - it was a groundbreaking, three months after the paperwork was filed, and experts told the New York Times that usually takes at least two years. It said the Supreme Court called all three emoluments suits moot - it did that to two, and the third had already been thrown out for lack of standing. It said the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Enforcement Act would let state attorneys general sue - it was a 2021 bill that never got a vote, and it would have let the House, the Senate and the Office of Government Ethics sue. And it named the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - the Senate’s emoluments bills and resolutions went to the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Update, September 27th, 2026: A few lines now match their sources more closely - the sons met officials from eight countries, the Gold Coast tower is still a plan, the emoluments suits ended before any court decided whether Trump broke the clauses, and CREW tracks these conflicts and runs petitions - and two source links now go to the right CREW reports.