The Tribune

There’s a profoundly unsettling aspect to what’s happening in the US these days. Uncertainty and dread seem to shroud numerous volatile situations overseas. The US role in regional international conflicts, long a reliably steadying influence and force, now seems to have developed as an active agitator for ambiguity and confusion.

Domestically, the president is apparently seeking to refresh his sagging personal financial situation by monetising his position as leader of what is still the world’s most powerful nation. As one pundit remarked, “this president is selling access to himself and to his family to an unprecedented, even unimaginable, degree. It’s hard to comprehend that they are getting away with it.

“Such overt, brazen corruption is making Americans reassess their faith in the values and even morality of their electorate. It is, frankly, embarrassing. How can voters continue to support someone who represents such a startling contrast to what we have imagined our exceptionalism to be?”

“I have no idea how to cope with the international situation,” a reliably conservative foreign affairs specialist observed earlier this week. “What in the world is going on? And how do we access accurate information about it? We have a long-lasting, active war in Eastern Europe that no one talks about although people are dying every day. The US has just dropped bombs on Iranian labs hidden in mountains; Israel and Iran have basically opened war on each other, and then, almost overnight, this world flashpoint recedes into the news shadows.”

There is always conflict in the world. We are certain that at some point Iran will have its revenge for the American aerial bombing attacks. It looks like if the Ukrainians can hold out for the rest of this year, perhaps the Russians will agree to settle their war for now. Maybe the Western European nations can muster enough materiel and economic support for the Kyiv regime to keep Putin’s army at bay until some ceasefire can be imposed.

What about the Israeli aggression in its neighbourhood? Are they just going to keep pulverizing Gaza until the northern third of that pathetic territory can no longer sustain the kind of urban environment which could conceal Hamas militants?

It’s as though the world is reeling in shock, stunned momentarily into a kind of inactivity before needing to react again to stunning new developments.

There’s a vacuum in global political leadership. It’s a situation that analysts have long feared would be turned to its advantage by China. But is that happening? Or is the retreat from responsible world leadership by the United States creating a kind of ominous uncertainty whose resolution is nowhere in sight?

At home in the US, president Donald Trump rules the roost. The latest evidence is to be found in his overweening influence in pushing through both the American House of Representatives and the US Senate a large, sweeping, omnibus budget bill that embodies the kind of callous redistribution of government resources to favor the wealthy which have become synonymous with recent Republican administrations but which promise to provoke serious threats to the American social and economic order in the relatively near future.

Even people who believe they are taking the time to grasp what this administration is doing are flummoxed. A local Washington-area Democratic official said on Monday that the Trump administration is upending norms and practices on such a broad scale that opposition can only be described as “ineffectively and episodically reactive.”

In their Project 2025 policy manifesto that appeared in April 2023, the Republicans signalled what they intended. Trump casually disavowed it while he was a candidate. But once he returned to office, the president has followed its guidance pretty faithfully.

Now, there are reports that the Democrats are planning their own blueprint, intentionally mimicking the GOP by naming it Project 2029.

The creation of this document has revealed an elemental split in the Democratic Party between a populist wing that basically wants to cast corporations and billionaires as villains and others who, while they may share those beliefs, are unconvinced that such an approach can produce electoral success.

These “others” are pragmatists who have become advocates of the so-called “abundance agenda”, named for the eponymous book co-authored by Ezra Klein, a columnist for The New York Times whose brainy, dense policy colloquies with other really smart people make good reading but also require careful attention to the dense detail that these conversations cover. It can be hard work to get your mind around it all.

Supporters of the abundance agenda want to work with corporations and cut through regulation in order to solve problems and achieve progressive outcomes more quickly. The party’s long-term success will be achieved by showing that pragmatic liberalism works, they believe.

The populist wing, still led by independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, seeks to directly, by government intercession in the workings of the economy, redistribute power and wealth to the working class and away from economic and corporate elites, and to inspire voters through that struggle.

Klein has said it is imperative for Democrats to admit to voters that the existing system stinks, not just to propose ideas. Saying that the tax system was “rigged” to favor the rich, he noted, made Democratic proposals more popular as they seek to make corporations and the wealthy “pay their fair share.”

“People think that our various systems and laws are broken,” Klein wrote. “If you acknowledge that the system needs to be fixed to work better, then you start in a better place. It is more about convincing people that we are for what is popular, and communicating that to them, than it is about wrapping it up with a new type of tax credit,” which is often the preference of the progressives.

Amid the chaos, some media outlets have again begun to analyse the American president’s finances, which have intrigued people for decades. Trump’s personal wealth is significant, as even his detractors have grudgingly admitted. But investigators have found that there is still some weakness in his personal financial situation.

One focus has been the iconic Doral golf resort to the west of downtown Miami. The New York Times has reported that Deutsche Bank, which held Trump’s mortgage on Doral, hired a specialized firm to appraise the property after Trump’s first presidential term.

Doral was then Trump’s highest-revenue resort, including four courses and 643 hotel rooms. The consultants concluded that Trump had spent $379m buying and renovating the resort, but that it was then worth only $297m.

This appraisal also revealed that while Doral, like several of Trump’s properties, greatly benefitted from customers who wanted to curry favor with him during his first term as president, his own managers believed that even more potential customers stayed away because of him.

Mr. Trump’s public contentiousness had depressed bookings and room rates for six years in a row, including during his first term as president, his own managers told the appraisers. The managers believed that “the Trump brand has negatively impacted” revenues at Doral.

Such a finding contravenes the conventional wisdom that Trump’s many real estate properties were profoundly enhanced by his service as president.

Wherever that truth lies, Trump has cleverly or serendipitously raked in literally billions of dollars from enterprises that exist and have value principally because of the office he holds.

For instance, he has reportedly invested no personal funds in Trump Media, the parent company of the social media site Truth Social that he has used as a primary communications tool since becoming disenchanted with Twitter several years ago. Trump appears to have no responsibilities at Truth Social.

But he received more than half of the company’s stock when it launched operations in February 2022. This is a holding that has fallen in value recently, but is still worth $2 billion. That’s not too bad a return on a reported direct, personal investment of – nothing!

Trump and family members have also entered into a series of lucrative partnerships with investors in crypto coins, meme coins and other ventures that seek to capitalise on Trump’s name and likeness. Trump’s partners have raised or invested most or all of the capital and run the businesses. The crypto coins have recently been worth at least $236m, and meme coins sales have so far totaled $320m, according to published reports.