Corrupt To the Core

Our president likes money. He really likes money. He likes money so much that enriching himself and his family is a core goal of his second presidency. Everything else be damned! America is his breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The desserts come from all over the planet; one delicacy consumed at Mar-a-Lago in January 2025 was sent directly from the United Arab Emirates.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that last January, the largest national wealth fund from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had invested a $500 million to buy 49% of World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company owned by the Trump family. World Liberty Financial didn’t have any products to sell at that time. In fact, it had no financial plan in place. No matter. The contract between World Liberty Financial and the UAE wealth fund was signed on January 16th, four days before Trump’s second term began. The bribe paid off: Trump greenlighted a deal that would allow the UAE to purchase hundreds of the latest generation of AI chips made by NVIDIA during his visit to the country last May [Source: Time]. The terms of the deal did not include keeping the chips out of Chinese and Russian paws.

Article I, Section 9, Part 8 of the US Constitution is known as the Emoluments Clause, and states that “…no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind, whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Meanwhile, our congressman, Juan Ciscomani, a member of the Appropriations Committee and a strong supporter of our armed forces,did not express any concerns about how breaking the Emoluments Clause may risk national security and put our troops at risk.

His silence might have been due to a glowing endorsement from the president, posted on April 27, 2025.

The public praise was all it took to keep Ciscomani in line. Four days before, Trump hosted a private dinner for the top 220 buyers of his meme coin [Source: The New York Times]. The president and his family profit from every $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coin trade. Large investors with legal problems can even purchase a presidential pardon. Take Chengpeng Zhao, founder of cryptocurrency trading platform Binance, who pleaded guilty to money laundering in 2023 [Source: Common Dreams]. He was pardoned after a wealth fund from Abu Dhabi invested $2 billion in Binance using USD1 stablecoin purchased from World Liberty Financial.

Representative Ciscomani didn’t seem concerned about the rule of law or self-dealing by the presidential office. If he found the crypto trading topic too complex and the bribe scheme hard to follow, he should have hired people who could explain technology and ethics to him.

The president’s latest self-enrichment scheme doesn’t even try to hide behind cryptocurrency trading or foreign investment. It is an attack against his own government!  Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion after his tax records were leaked [Source: ABC]. Never mind that, as a candidate, he should have released his tax information. Never mind that he didn’t pay any taxes for a few years. He wants $10 billion and basta!

Ciscomani has enabled the president by ensuring that our government has funds to satisfy the lawsuit. He voted repeatedly against the ACA premium support extension.  One year of ACA premium support would cost $30 billion. And while millions of Americans can no longer afford healthcare, our president wants a third of this money for himself.

It gets worse. The money held by the IRS is our money. We contributed to the system through our paycheck deductions and quarterly tax payments. Donald Trump is suing all of us, effectively stealing our lunch money, breaking our children’s piggy banks, and taking funds we saved for a new pair of jeans.

Our representative has not issued a single peep squeak, even though this type of corruption and self-enrichment is quite easy to understand. Trump is making no effort to disguise it. Perhaps Juan Ciscomani thinks that support for stealing $10 billion from us to enrich Trump is worth the president’s endorsement. He is wrong: having Trump’s endorsement will not protect him from voters this November. He might be able, however, to get a consolation prize for everything he has done to shield his Big Daddy: his own $CISCOMANI meme coin.