The War Is a Product Launch

Corruption of Power GriftMatrix

How the Trump family turned a $200 billion war into the family business

So the Pentagon asked for $200 billion more dollars this morning to keep the Iran war going, and Pete Hegseth’s explanation at the press conference was, and I quote, “It takes money to kill bad guys.”

Two hundred billion. On top of the $800 billion annual defense budget. On top of the $150 billion Congress already gave them last year. While we’re twenty days into a war nobody in Congress voted for, 13 American soldiers are dead, gas prices are through the roof cause the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and over 2,300 people in the region have been killed.

And the president’s sons are about to make a fortune off all of it.

Don Jr. and Eric Trump own pieces of a drone company called Powerus that is actively trying to win $1.1 billion in Pentagon contracts. Their dad banned Chinese drones, which created the demand. Their dad’s Pentagon set aside the $1.1 billion to fill that demand. Their dad started the war that made the demand urgent. And their company signed its merger deal ten days after the first bombs dropped. If you wrote this as a movie pitch, the studio would say it’s too on the nose.

Powerus barely exists yet. It was founded in 2025. It’s bought three smaller drone companies in six months. It just raised about $59 million. And it’s about to go public by merging with a golf course company the Trump brothers already partly own that happens to be listed on Nasdaq. A golf course company. Becoming a defense contractor. Because the president’s kids needed a way to get on the stock exchange fast.

The company says it wants to make 10,000 drones a month. The entire American drone industry makes about 100,000 a year. So either they’re delusional or they know something about future orders that we don’t.

When a reporter asked the co-founder, Brett Velicovich, about the obvious conflict of interest, he said, “There’s no conflict there. Whatever they’re doing, is what they’re doing.” I’ve read that sentence four times and it still means nothing.

Eric Trump’s response was, “I am incredibly proud to invest in companies I believe in. Drones are clearly the wave of the future.” Drones are clearly the wave of the future. That’s like Dick Cheney’s kid saying “bullets are clearly the wave of the future” in 2003.

Bloomberg added up the Trump family’s total drone investments last week and came up with $750 million across three companies. Don Jr. is on the advisory board of another drone company, Unusual Machines, that already won a Pentagon contract to build 3,500 drone motors with 20,000 more expected next year. His venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, has companies in its portfolio that have pulled in over $735 million in government contracts this year. One of them, Vulcan Elements, has 30 employees and makes magnets for drones. It got a $620 million loan from the Pentagon. Thirty employees. Six hundred and twenty million dollars. Eric is also invested in an Israeli drone company called Xtend that just delivered tactical drones to the Middle East during this actual war.

Oh, and Unusual Machines is both an investor in Powerus AND a customer of Powerus. And the investment bank running the deal, Dominari Securities, has both Trump brothers on its advisory board, each holding about 6% of the firm. Every company in this thing is connected to every other company, and every single one of them traces back to the same family.

Don Jr. pretty much said the quiet part out loud when he told people that 1789 Capital “understands what the administration wants to do, because we helped craft some of the messaging.”

He also reportedly helped pick who got the top jobs at the Pentagon after the election, and specifically asked whether candidates wanted to “spend more on drones.” The president’s son screened the people who decide which drone companies get the contracts, and then his drone companies got the contracts.

BUT HUNTER BIDEN’S LAPTOP!

It gets worse. Steve Feinberg, the number two guy at the Pentagon, is the co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, a $65 billion private equity firm. ProPublica reported two weeks ago that at least four companies Cerberus owns or controls have already won contracts under the Pentagon’s $151 billion Golden Dome missile defense project. Feinberg is supposed to have divested from Cerberus when he got confirmed, but his own 2026 ethics filings show he’s still paying Cerberus for accounting and tax services. His deadline to find a new provider got quietly extended with no end date. His excuse, written in his own filing: he’s “been unable to find a company to provide the services that I need.”

The man overseeing a trillion-dollar defense budget says he can’t find an accountant.

And then there’s Jared Kushner. After he left the White House the first time, he started an investment firm called Affinity Partners. Six months later, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, MBS, handed him $2 billion from the Saudi government’s wealth fund. The fund’s own advisors said Kushner’s firm was “unsatisfactory in all aspects” and flagged his “inexperience.”

MBS overruled them. Now Kushner is back as a White House envoy to the Middle East, reportedly trying to raise another $5 billion for his fund while he negotiates with the same governments that are investing in him. Saudi Arabia has been one of the loudest voices pushing Trump to go after Iran, which has been their rival for decades. Kushner’s day job is Middle East peace. His investment fund is bankrolled by people who wanted this war.

That $200 billion request this morning makes all of this very real, very fast. Congress is about to vote on the biggest war spending bill since Iraq. Every dollar runs through a Pentagon led by a guy still financially tied to defense contractors, into an industry where the president’s kids have $750 million in investments, during a war that nobody in Congress authorized.

Rep. Betty McCollum, the top Democrat on the House defense spending subcommittee, said this morning she’s “not writing blank checks to the Department of Defense.” She also pointed out that Congress still hasn’t been told where the last $150 billion went. That’s $350 billion in new Pentagon money with basically no oversight. Just vibes and a press conference quote about killing bad guys.

If any of this bothers you, there’s actually something concrete you can do. Call your members of Congress before the $200 billion vote happens and demand transparency on where the money goes and who profits.

Push them to support the Department of Defense Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act from Senators Warren and Kim, which would limit how much influence contractors have over the military and force the Pentagon to be transparent about who gets paid.

The pattern is always the same. Create the policy, then profit from it. Ban the competition, then sell the replacement. Start the war, then own the supply chain. Get appointed to run the budget, then keep your money in the companies bidding on it. Negotiate peace for the government, then raise billions from the governments on the other side of the table.

The Trump family isn’t running a government. They’re running a business with a military attached.

Sources