Is Team Trump meddling in the Middle East? | Will Bunch Newsletter

Earth Week came early this April! Experiencing Friday’s earthquake at the dog park with Daisy — which I thought was another Biden-in-Delaware F-15 scramble until I looked up and there was no plane — was an unexpected jolt. Returning there Monday for the 90% solar eclipse was a bit of a letdown when the clouds blocked the sun, instead of the moon. But we all needed some cosmic reminders that this thing called life is actually a miracle.

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It’s now been seven years since one of the most iconic political moments of the Donald Trump era: the 2017 photo of the then-newly elected 45th president surrounded by Saudi Arabian royals and oligarchs dressed in traditional garb, all fondling a mysterious, glowing orb.

But for Trump and his family, the afterglow from that encounter — and the beginning of what fictional American emigree-to-the-Arab-world Rick Blaine would have called “a beautiful friendship” with the Saudis — has never dimmed.

This weekend, the endless gusher of petrodollars from Riyadh left their oily mark on the dim jewel of Trump’s fast-fading empire, the Trump National Doral course outside of Miami. There, the Saudi-funded LIV Golf tour brought yet another televised and star-studded tournament to a resort owned by the 45th president’s business arm.

We don’t how much the LIV tour — largely a creation of the massive sovereign wealth fund controlled by the Saudi dictator Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) — paid the Trump Organization for the three-day event. The LIV people insist the money is nominal, but no one would argue that the widely seen tournaments are propping up Trump’s coffers at a time when his hotel brand is in the loo, and the established PGA golf tour is avoiding the ex-POTUS and his 88 felony charges.

The New York Times, in a deep dive this weekend into Trump’s business world and its ties to the MBS regime, reported that Trump’s 15 golf resorts from California to Scotland — including one under construction in Oman in partnership with (surprise!) Saudi business interests — are his last remaining profit center, as the LIV events draw fans and also boost the cache of his private clubs that can charge as much as $400,000 for an individual membership.

It sounds as if the embattled Trump Organization would be running on fumes were it not for the occasional fill-ups from the Saudi pump boys, but of course there’s more to it. As I’ve reported in this space before, the same Saudi wealth fund behind LIV Golf — at the personal urging of MBS himself — also sank a whopping $2 billion into a brand-new investment vehicle created by Trump’s son-in-law and former top White House adviser, Jared Kushner. Today, some Democrats like Rep. Jamie Raskin are calling for an investigation of the Kushner-Saudi dealings, considering both his close work with MBS on U.S.-Saudi relations while in the White House, and his lack of prior experience as an investment banker.

It all looks like textbook corruption, since the Saudis didn’t start doing substantial business with the Trump family until after his presidency — when, among other things, his administration whitewashed any real probe into MBS’ involvement in the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi — and before his current campaign, which has him in a dead heat with President Joe Biden. But in a world on fire, there are even bigger geopolitical reasons to be alarmed over Team Trump’s close ties.

We now know, thanks to reporting by the Times and others, that Trump spoke recently with MBS. Meanwhile, his son-in-law Kushner had a secret-until-recently in-person meeting back in December with another key figure in the region: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime friend of Kushner’s wealthy family. Indeed, Kushner’s biggest White House mission was trying to broker a peace accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

It’s not known what the men discussed. What is known is this: Netanyahu and MBS are both critical to solving the large-scale humanitarian crisis that has also become Biden’s biggest political headache as he seeks reelection: the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Biden’s initial, full-fledged embrace of Netanyahu has alienated critical voting blocs in his Democratic base; in recent weeks, Biden has stepped up his criticism of Israel’s far-right government while pushing for more aid for Gaza and a cease-fire. But any real success depends on cooperation from Netanyahu and the involvement of key regional players — none more powerful than MBS.

But what if the current leaders in Jerusalem and Riyadh thought they could get better deals by waiting nine months and seeing if Trump becomes 47th president? What if Netanyahu, increasingly unpopular and, like Trump, facing criminal charges, thinks that another term for Trump — whose policies were rabidly pro-Israel, even if his personal friendship with the Israeli prime minister cooled after the 2020 election — is his best hope for staying in power?

Cutting deals behind the back of the current president would be almost treasonous, right? Yet we know this has happened before. It took a half-century for the full truth to come out, but it’s now considered historical fact that in 1968, GOP candidate Richard Nixon opened a secret backchannel to our allies in South Vietnam, urging them to hold off on peace talks while Democrat Lyndon Johnson was president and promising them a better deal. It’s still being debated whether Ronald Reagan pulled something similar in 1980 over the Iran hostages, who weren’t freed until minutes after a defeated Jimmy Carter left the Oval Office.

For better or worse, today’s Middle East strongmen hold as much sway as Iran’s ayatollahs did 44 years ago. The longer the war in Gaza drags on, the harder it will be for Biden to reassemble the coalition that gave him a narrow 2020 victory, and that’s not the only way that the U.S. election could be influenced from the other side of the planet. One of the world’s top three oil producers (we’re No. 1) can boost the world price of gasoline by turning the knob on their spigot, which would also hurt Biden.

But who knows? Maybe Trump and Kushner and MBS and Netanyahu are just talking about golf, or the desert heat (amped up by fossil fuels). But the appearance of corruption is corruption, and Team Trump’s megabucks ties with the Saudis look bad — really bad. The only consolation is that the folks setting the price at your gas pump don’t control your choice at the ballot box. At least not yet.

Question: Paraphrasing here, CTObserve (@observe_ct) on X/Twitter quoted from Bertrand Russell — “...Fascism, however, may come from the big-business interests” — and, citing the recent Donald Trump mega-fundraiser, asked: “Are these same factors are still in play?”

Answer: With the rate of Trump lies actually accelerating these days, it’s impossible, for now, to know whether the presumptive GOP nominee is telling the truth about his alleged $50.5 million record haul last weekend at the event hosted by Trump’s Palm Beach neighbor, billionaire investor John Paulson. But it is clear that a growing number of millionaires and billionaires are learning to stop worrying and start loving a looming dictatorship. The gross and transparently transactional nature of all this is not secret. Although there’s no transcript of the event, attendees said Trump promised to keep their taxes low and extend his billionaire-friendly 2017 tax cuts slated to expire next year. Favoritism for the rich and contempt for the working class, voiced at a Florida fundraiser (and secretly taped by the help) is what cost Mitt Romney in 2012. Middle-class voters would be wise to pull an encore in 2024.

It probably won’t shock you that a) last week’s question about U.S. aid to Israel drew a robust response and b) opinions were sharply divided. A lot of you are mad that America continues to arm Israel after thousands of children have died in the six-month assault on Gaza, and are aiming your disappointment at President Joe Biden. Wrote Claire Gawinowicz: “Unless Biden stops sending weapons to Israel, I will vote ‘uncommitted’ in the primary on April 23.” But Caryl Levin wrote that eliminating Hamas must remain the top priority. “To me, the world’s opprobrium is antisemitic,” she wrote. “Show me another country which would have behaved differently if its citizens were massacred.”

📮This week’s question: As noted below, some are making the case for a statue in Philadelphia for local basketball legend Dawn Staley, which would also rectify a lack of monuments to this city’s remarkable Black women. Which other living Philadelphians are statue-worthy (and not just athletes)? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me your answer. Please put “Philly statue” in the subject line.

As an opinion journalist and sports fanatic, few issues leave me as conflicted as new stadiums and arenas. I especially love the coolest ballparks, and I’ve been blessed to see the very best of the new (Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, San Francisco’s Oracle Park) and the old (Wrigley, Fenway, Dodger Stadium). I’m also a fan of the downtown, sports-bar vibe that was lost when the Phillies in 2000 rejected a site about 45 seconds from my then-workplace to stay in South Philly. On the other hand, my progressive hackles are always raised over sports deals that use public dollars, either from taxes or for new infrastructure, to enrich billionaire owners when local schools or bridges are crumbling.

Which is a long set-up to explain why I was an agnostic when my beloved (on the court, anyway) Philadelphia 76ers announced a plan to leave South Philly’s ancient Wells Fargo Center (just kidding, it opened in 1996, with a major $400 million renovation finished LAST YEAR) for a new arena in Center City’s struggling Fashion District that would open in 2031. The team’s fabulously wealthy owners, investment bankers Josh Harris and David Blitzer and businessman David Adelman, say they’re footing the $1.3 billion tab for bringing the NBA to the heart of the city, and the shopping district never got off the ground thanks to the pandemic ... so, what’s not to like?

A lot, actually, starting with the very real traffic and crowding concerns of the adjacent Chinatown neighborhood, given that the idea that far-flung Sixers fans will suddenly embrace mass transit is something of a pipe dream. What’s more, critics who’ve watched the three key owners flourish in the worlds of predatory capitalism have legitimate reason to question whether the arrangement of the developers buying the land, giving it to the city, and making payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs), is the best deal for Philadelphia. (The developers say doing it their way will provide schools and City Hall $1 billion ... OK, but whatever happened to the old-fashioned idea of just paying your taxes?) But the clincher is that the owners of the Wells Fargo Center and the NHL’s Flyers, Comcast Spectacor, have unveiled a redevelopment plan for the parking lots and land around the facility that looks pretty darned impressive. This would bring new residents, workers and a sense of vitality to a part of Philly that needs a boost more than Market Street. Given the hurdles in Center City, it would make so much more sense for the Sixers to stay there instead of the colossal waste of two separate arenas. If the owners have $1.3 billion to burn, can’t they just give Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid a raise?

If you’re like me, you probably vaguely remember there was a night early in the 45th presidency when Donald Trump abruptly decided to fire a ton of cruise missiles somewhere into the Middle East (did it really matter where?) and all the TV news anchors went ga-ga about how “Trump became president tonight.” Well, the target was an obscure airfield in Syria, the trigger was an alleged chemical attack by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and the night was April 6, 2017. Three days later, I was still gob-smacked by the TV celebration of the anchors and their ex-general commentators. “The pundit class who’d made their bones jabbering about Iraq and Afghanistan from the safety of a soundproof studio — and who for 76 days had been baffled by this strange new commander-in-chief and his pre-dawn tweets — had found their comfort zone, and the relief was palpable.” I wrote. “Everybody knew their marks. Finally, unexpectedly but happily, they were putting on the show that they know how to produce.” Read the rest: “Cable TV president launches cable TV war — and the reviews are boffo!”

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