Good morning. There are two Donald Trumps: the candidate, and the president.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump the candidate spent much of his campaign presenting himself as a champion of peace, arguing that his opponents had delivered a world of \u201cdeath and destruction\u201d. He vowed to restore order, promising to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine on his very first day in office.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump the president is a different story. While he took credit for pushing Israel and Hamas towards a ceasefire as he entered office in January, he was widely criticised for allowing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abandon that agreement and relaunch the war in Gaza for a further seven months. He has also authorised US bombings in Yemen and Iran, is threatening war with Venezuela, and has demanded concessions from Ukraine that have shocked European allies.<\/p>\n
So which Trump is real? A peacemaker whose deals cut through diplomatic deadlock, or a president who talks of peace while pursuing power and profit? For today\u2019s newsletter, I spoke to Mohamad Bazzi, director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and an associate professor of journalism at New York University. That\u2019s after the headlines.<\/p>\n
In depth: \u2018One quick way to please Donald Trump is by enriching his family business\u2019Volodymyr Zelenskyy (left) and US special envoy Steve Witkoff. Photograph: Markus Schreiber\/Reuters<\/p>\n
Allegations that the Trump administration had shared elements of a 20-point peace plan with Russia before fully presenting it to Ukraine drew widespread condemnation. But what stood out most to me was how Trump defended his special envoy, Steve Witkoff<\/a> (pictured above). When a leaked recording appeared to show Witkoff advising a Russian official on how to appeal to Trump, the president brushed it off as simply \u201cwhat a dealmaker does\u201d.<\/p>\n Supporters point to the renewal of the Gaza ceasefire in October and a series of peace initiatives elsewhere, from Thailand and Cambodia to Armenia and Azerbaijan, and even India and Pakistan, as evidence that Trump\u2019s outsider approach has delivered breakthroughs. Critics counter that this logic reduces diplomacy to leverage alone, sidelining questions of sovereignty and international law.<\/p>\n Mohamad Bazzi told me there is something darker beneath these truces. The issue, he argues, is not that Trump and his inner circle operate a business mindset in one lane and diplomacy in another, but that the two have fused in a way that is dangerous for democracy.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to keep up with all the ways that Trump and his family have been profiting from the presidency,\u201d Bazzi says. \u201cA lot of the deals that have emerged are with international players \u2013 whether they\u2019re companies, billionaires, governments \u2013 that want to make nice with the US president. They\u2019ve seen that one quick way to please Donald Trump is by enriching his family business.\u201d<\/p>\n A family affair<\/p>\n Every US president since the 1970s has voluntarily adhered to rules designed to prevent conflicts of interest, typically by placing their businesses into blind trusts and stepping away from direct management, Bazzi says. But things have been astonishingly different with Trump, who argues that he is not directly involved with his business because his children manage the Trump Organization. This argument persists despite the fact that profits from the family business flow straight back to him.<\/p>\n Bazzi pointed to the Trump Organization\u2019s increasing number of real estate deals with companies in Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia<\/a>, Qatar and the UAE. These companies, he says, have connections to their respective countries\u2019 sovereign wealth funds or, in some cases, to their royal families. Bazzi says that these partnerships involve billions of dollars\u2019 worth of real estate transactions and new golf course developments.<\/p>\n \u201cIn many of those cases, the Trump Organization isn\u2019t putting up its own capital. They are branding deals where the Trump Organization leases the Trump name to these developers and they put in all the capital and investment to create these developments. The Trump family gets a licensing fee as well as a 20- or 30-year operating licence to manage these sites,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n Recent disclosures showed Dar Al Arkan, a publicly traded Saudi real estate developer, paid the Trump Organization $21.9m (\u00a316.4m) in license fees<\/a> in 2024 for projects in Dubai and Oman.<\/p>\n The Trump family business also ventured into crypto, launching a dollar-sign Trump meme coin days before his second inauguration. According to Bazzi, this coin\u2019s value is purely speculative, but has still proved to be profitable for the family. \u201cUltimately, Trump and his family are raking in millions of dollars in fees as the coin is being traded back and forth. And so the crypto ventures provided the Trump family with new ways to profit from being in office,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The prodigal son<\/p>\n