They’re Not Even Hiding It Anymore

Corruption of Power GriftMatrix

Eric Trump told CNBC that critics “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. Eight foreign countries. Government meetings. Billion-dollar groundbreakings. An 80-story tower going up in Dubai. The tallest building in Australia. A $1.5 billion golf resort in Vietnam that the Vietnamese prime minister personally attended the ribbon-cutting for, after fast-tracking the permits in under a week when a normal approval process takes two to four 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. Then Eric flew to Hanoi and broke ground on a golf complex with the prime minister standing next to him, cheering. Vietnam’s tariffs got paused for 90 days. Trade negotiators are now 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 without a court ever ruling on the actual merits. The Supreme Court called them moot after Biden won and let everyone go home. 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 every conflict as it happens – their report on the eight countries is public and detailed. Watchdog organizations like the Brennan Center have been pushing legislation called the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Enforcement Act, which would create a statutory definition of emoluments broad enough to include commercial transactions, require disclosure, and give Congress and state attorneys general the actual authority to sue.

But it has not passed. It needs 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’s website has an action center. If your member of Congress is on the House Judiciary Committee or the Senate Foreign Relations 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.

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