Last Friday Donald Trump played his latest round of tariff-a-go-go, dropping a 50% rate on the EU as of June 1st. Stocks plunge. Yesterday, after a ‘very nice’ phone call with EU head, Ursula von der Leyen, the tariffs were delayed a month. Stocks rise. 
The Art of the Deal or just another Presidential Market Manipulation?
How about the $TRUMP memecoin dinner the president hosted at his Virginia golf club on Thursday with lucky big spender bitcoin investors, at least one of whom had been an object of an SEC investigation not too long ago, winning the opportunity to shell out a cool $1.5mil a plate and maybe even a VIP tour of the White House? “To attend the two events, the $TRUMP buyers spent about $148m,” writes Peter Stone in the Guardian, “which will benefit Trump and partners.”
That’s all in addition to the elected President of the United States boasting about the $400 million gift of a jumbo jet/flying palace he received from the gulf state of Qatar. As an Air Force One replacement, apparently, the current one not being up to Trump’s standard. After which, upon leaving office, whenever that might be, 2029? Or possibly a 3rd term, the Qatari gift of aircraft would become part of Trump’s Presidential… wait for it, wait for it… Library.
A firehouse of corruption, you say?
Not so fast.
If the president in question was some sort of scheming striver, that is, using the Oval office to line his pockets in order to claw his way up into the stratosphere of the economic elite. But this is Donald J. Trump, Esq. we’re talking about here. He doesn’t need your money, plebs. Donald J. Trump is already rich, billionaire rich if his accounting claims are to be believed. 
What is even more money to him? What can anyone possibly offer an already rich man with the expectation of getting something in return from him?
The wealthy, you see, are incorruptible.
I mean,
have you been watching our 1%ers recently?
Billionaires, sector-wide, tech, finance, media, untouchable, uncorruptible, cravenly, hand over fist, forking over millions to the vengeful president in order to keep and perhaps even increase their billions. With their safe havens already secured, their compounds, their islands, their yachts and airplanes, they are somehow still angling for more. Why settle for a couple billion when there’s the possibility of hundreds of billions more? Do I hear a trillion?
Personal fortunes cannot be made with a pure heart, clean hands or honourable intentions. You need a ravenous soul. The corruption is built in.
And the whole product that is Donald Trump, from the very beginning, from his first malignant appearance on the scene in the Greed is Good 1980s, was that of the Rich Guy. A pure hustler, backed by family money, itself malevolently made, accumulating an empire built on the appearance of amassing wealth. His acute businessman image manufactured for television a couple decades later when the whole façade had been exposed, bankruptcies, stiffed creditors and, in all likelihood
, nefariously gotten as a foreign asset for serious international motherfuckers.
Donald Trump is about nothing more than dollar signs. $$$$ = status. $$$$$ = more status. $$$$$$ = MOAR status.
In a recent Rolling Stone article, Tim Dickinson and Asawin Suebsaeng write that Trump believes “he was wrong to leave a ton of money on the table as president” his first go-round in the Oval Office. It seems that he’s determined not to make the same mistake this time. It’s all about the Benjamins now.
Of course, the man’s corrupt. How couldn’t he be? If you look into the mirror and all you ever see is green, then every decision you make, every breath you take, will be made based solely on not leaving so much as a crumb on the table. That’s what it takes to become obscenely wealthy.