During remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) spoke about President Trump's business dealings with Gulf States.
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00:00Thank you, Mr. President.
00:02Mr. President, usually public corruption happens in secret.
00:08The politicians that do it, they know it's wrong to accept money in exchange for favorable
00:14government treatment, and so they hide it until they're found out.
00:18A textbook example would be Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, who in the 1990s was quietly
00:24taking bribes from businessmen who wanted to get licenses for riverboat casinos.
00:28In the late 1990s, Edwards was convicted of the crimes of extortion, racketeering, money
00:33laundering.
00:35The way in which he was doing it was like out of a movie.
00:38In one instance, a businessman handed the governor a suitcase full of $100 bills totaling $400,000,
00:47all in order to get a 6-0 commission ruling in favor of this casino.
00:52Eventually, as with most all corrupt officials who are taking money privately, Edwards
00:58was discovered, he was disgraced, and he went to jail.
01:02As we speak, our president, Donald Trump, is going to the Middle East on a public corruption
01:10tour.
01:11He's no less corrupt than Edwin Edwards of Louisiana.
01:16In fact, he's way more corrupt.
01:19Edwin Edwards took $400,000.
01:21Well, in the Middle East, Donald Trump will cement deals totaling in the billions in exchange
01:32for favorable treatment by the U.S. federal government for these Gulf countries.
01:38The key difference is that Donald Trump isn't hiding it like other corrupt officials are.
01:44He's not ashamed.
01:45He's not doing it in secret.
01:47His corruption is wildly public, and his hope is that by doing it publicly, he can con the
01:54American people into thinking that it's not corruption because he's not hiding it.
01:57But what he's doing in reality is no different than any other corrupt public official who does
02:04it in private, other than the fact that Trump's corruption, his foreign policy corruption, is
02:10just so much bigger in scope and the impact that it has on the American people than anything
02:17a corrupt mayor or a corrupt governor may have done.
02:21Trump's first major foreign trip, and he just landed, is to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE.
02:28Not because these are our most important allies in the world.
02:33Not because these are the most important countries in the world.
02:37Not because he's going there to talk about making the Middle East more safe and more secure.
02:42No, his first trip is to these three countries because these are the three countries that have
02:48agreed to pay Donald Trump money.
02:51Donald Trump is going to collect tribute, and it's all just out in the open.
02:57Frankly, it's pretty easy to see this coming.
03:00Recent former presidents, Republicans and Democrats, have always very seriously and studiously avoided
03:05even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
03:08President Bush placed his assets into a qualified blind trust where investment decisions were made
03:13without his knowledge or input.
03:16Both Biden and Obama divested all of their assets except for cash and mutual funds.
03:22They didn't enter into any new business ventures well in the White House.
03:26In contrast, Trump has refused to abide by these standard ethics rules.
03:30His family runs his business, but nobody honestly believes that the kids are really in charge.
03:35President Trump is still calling the shots.
03:37His interests are not in a blind trust.
03:39He's made no pledge that he won't do new deals, even with foreign entities while he's
03:44in office.
03:45In fact, he is doing deals seemingly every single week.
03:50He's open for business, and every foreign government knows it.
03:53In fact, it appears that right now the Gulf states are trying to outdo each other to up the price
04:01of buying an American president.
04:04And because Trump is greedy and he's insecure, he wants to fit in with the billionaire class,
04:09he is traveling to the region with his hat out for further solicitations.
04:13So let's ask, what is the going rate right now for a Gulf country to buy access to Donald Trump
04:21to get favorable treatment from the federal government?
04:24For Qatar, we recently found out it's a $400 million luxury plane.
04:31This plane has been opulately configured for royal use.
04:36It's not a gift to the U.S. government.
04:38It's a personal gift to the president.
04:43The terms of the arrangement apparently include a stipulation that after Trump leaves office,
04:48it will be transferred to Trump, to his presidential library, which means Trump gets the so-called
04:54floating palace for himself.
04:57This is outrageous.
05:00We've never seen anything like this before in American history.
05:04A foreign government gifting a $400 million luxury plane to the president of the United States.
05:13This is spelled out as blatantly unconstitutional by our founding fathers.
05:20They wrote into the Constitution a specific clause called the Emoluments Clause,
05:24which prohibits federal officeholders from accepting gifts from any king, prince,
05:29or foreign state without the consent of Congress.
05:33Like, how much clearer could it be?
05:35It's unconstitutional.
05:36It's illegal.
05:37The founding fathers knew it was an evil to have members of Congress
05:41or the president of the United States accepting expensive gifts from a foreign nation
05:46who, in exchange, want favors from the U.S. government.
05:50Donald Trump's acceptance of the luxury plane from a foreign monarch
05:53is basically the corruption that our founding fathers were seeking to prevent.
05:59But that's not all he's getting from Qatar.
06:01The Trump organization recently signed a $5.5 billion golf course in real estate deal
06:07with Dar Global and Cuttery Dayar, a firm established by Cutter's sovereign wealth fund.
06:13$5.5 billion.
06:16Well, Trump's in office.
06:18It would have been unthinkable for any previous president to enter into a $5.5 billion business deal
06:27with anybody, never mind a foreign government, while they are in office.
06:34And it still should be unthinkable.
06:37Now, Cutter is a U.S. ally.
06:38It's a very important ally.
06:41But they're a complicated country.
06:43They have their own interests, some of which do not overlap with ours.
06:46A foreign government like Cutter should not have a $5 billion chit hanging over the head
06:51of a sitting U.S. president.
06:53And they should not be gifting him a $400 million plane.
06:58That should kind of go without saying.
07:01For Saudi Arabia, the price is also in the billions.
07:04Soon after leaving the White House,
07:06in Trump's first term, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner,
07:11created a private equity firm and got a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia.
07:17The board of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund questioned
07:22whether this was smart to invest that much money in a totally unproven fund.
07:27But the Saudi crown prince himself overruled the board,
07:32undoubtedly seeing the political advantage of investing directly with the Trump family.
07:37But this was only the beginning.
07:39The Trump family has put things into overdrive during the second term.
07:42Within his first three weeks of office,
07:44Trump convened a meeting at the White House
07:47with the head of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.
07:50Not to discuss matters of state,
07:54but to negotiate a deal between the PGA
07:57and the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour.
08:02You want to know why?
08:03To try to bring PGA tournaments back to Trump golf courses.
08:10Convened a meeting in the White House with the Saudis
08:12in order to enrich himself.
08:15In addition to the $5 billion cuttery real estate deal,
08:18the Trump organization is also partnering with a Saudi firm
08:21on a $1 billion Trump-branded hotel and tower in Dubai.
08:28The property's website,
08:30it's just like, this is like unbelievable.
08:33The property's website,
08:34this is a Trump-financed property,
08:38along with a Saudi investment fund,
08:41offers free 10-year golden visas to the United States,
08:46hinting at the opportunity for investors in Trump's property
08:50to buy residency in the United States
08:53and a pathway to citizenship.
08:56For the UAE,
08:58the price is somewhere north of $2 billion.
09:02Last week,
09:03Eric Trump and World Liberty Financial co-founder,
09:06Zach Witkoff,
09:08spoke at a conference in Dubai on crypto
09:11called Token 2049.
09:15As an aside here,
09:16it's just so fantastic and bone-chilling
09:19how transparent these guys are
09:22in their use of public positions to enrich themselves.
09:25I'm going to tell the story of Trump's stable coin
09:28and the corruption with the Emiratis,
09:31but let's just pause for a second
09:32and consider the fact
09:35that the Trump family could have partnered
09:37with anybody in the world
09:39on their new crypto venture,
09:43World Liberty Financial.
09:46But of all the people in the world
09:48to partner with on this new crypto venture,
09:51they chose the son of Trump's Middle East envoy.
09:56Trump's Middle East envoy,
09:58the guy who's making all the decisions
09:59on U.S. policy in the Middle East,
10:01just to make it crystal clear to the Gulf countries
10:04that when they deal with World Liberty Financial,
10:08Trump's crypto venture,
10:09that they are dealing directly
10:11with the people responsible
10:12for making U.S. policy in the Middle East.
10:15It's just stunning.
10:16Literally, the sons of the president
10:18and the sons of the Middle East envoy
10:20running a crypto venture
10:22and then going directly into the Middle East
10:25in order to find their first investment.
10:28And guess what?
10:29Miracle, they found it.
10:31MGX, an investment firm
10:34backed by the Emirati government
10:36at this conference,
10:38announced that they had looked
10:41at all the crypto companies in the world
10:43that they could partner with
10:44to invest $2 billion
10:45in the crypto exchange Binance
10:47and they selected,
10:48wait for it, drum roll,
10:50the company run by the sons
10:51of the president of the United States
10:53and the U.S. Middle East envoy.
10:57$2 billion.
10:58Now, World Liberty's role
11:03in this transaction
11:04is not that complicated.
11:05It's kind of similar to a bank.
11:07MGX, this Emirati firm,
11:09deposits $2 billion with the firm
11:12and in return receives the stable coin
11:14to be used on these crypto exchanges.
11:16The firm holds on to these dollars,
11:19invests them,
11:20and keeps the profits for themselves.
11:23So the Trump-Witkoff company
11:25just gets basically a gift of capital.
11:29And if they just use that $2 billion
11:31to invest in treasury bonds,
11:34it would profit around $85 million a year
11:39from these investments alone.
11:42And the money goes directly to Trump,
11:45just directly to Trump.
11:46It's literally not complicated.
11:48Emiratis, World Liberty Financial,
11:51Donald Trump.
11:51This isn't 1990s Louisiana.
11:55Nobody's hiding it.
11:56On World Liberty's website,
11:59they say,
12:01an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump
12:03owns 60% of the equity in the company.
12:07And because of this deal,
12:11Trump and Witkoff can further capitalize
12:14because Trump's stable coin
12:15just became the fifth most valuable stable coin
12:20in the world
12:20because of the Emirati investment.
12:25And if the plane and the real estate deals
12:27and the private equity fund investment
12:28and the stable coin weren't enough for you,
12:31Trump has found one last way
12:32for Gulf money to flow seamlessly into his pocket.
12:35It's called the Trump meme coin.
12:37What's the business model here?
12:40Trump gets a huge payment
12:41whenever he releases a batch of these meme coins,
12:43which, by the way,
12:44have no underlying value
12:45other than just the demand
12:48that people have for Trump's coin.
12:52And then each time a Trump coin is bought or sold,
12:56a small fee is routed directly
12:57to the company owned by Trump.
12:59According to one analysis,
13:01nearly $325 million in fees
13:04have been accrued since the coin was launched in January.
13:07Just three months, four months,
13:09four and a half months,
13:11$325 million worth of fees.
13:16Trump hides the buyers of the coin.
13:19In this way, the meme coin
13:20is kind of a little bit like Louisiana corruption.
13:23But we know that the majority of the buyers
13:26aren't Americans
13:27who want to help Trump make this nation great again.
13:31The majority of the buyers of Trump coin
13:32are super rich foreigners,
13:34princes, oligarchs, authoritarians,
13:36who are buying the coin
13:38in order to get in good with Trump
13:39or to get something in exchange.
13:42Now, one great thing about buying the coin
13:46is that you get access to Trump and the White House.
13:48And again, they're not hiding this.
13:51Two weeks ago, Trump announced
13:53that he would host a private dinner at the White House
13:55with seats reserved exclusively
13:57for the top 220 Trump coin holders.
14:01In two days since the announcement,
14:03Trump's company made $900,000 in fees
14:07because everybody, mostly foreigners,
14:09many of them probably in the Gulf,
14:11were buying up the coin as quickly as they could
14:13in order to get one of these seats.
14:18If a mayor of a small town
14:20was selling meetings at City Hall
14:23for $1,000, he would be run out of town on a rail.
14:27But that's exactly what Donald Trump is doing
14:30in the Middle East and all over the world
14:31as foreign buyers line up to buy the meme coin
14:35guaranteed private access to Donald Trump
14:38at the White House.
14:41You cannot make this up.
14:44Now, the obvious question for the average American
14:46is, okay, what does this mean for me?
14:49Like somebody living in New Britain, Connecticut,
14:51you might think it's kind of gross.
14:53That Trump is lining his pockets as president,
14:55but they want to know,
14:56how does this actually affect me?
14:59Well, the most simple way to think about this
15:01is that if the guy that you elected to protect us
15:03and make our lives better
15:05is spending most of his time
15:07alternating between playing golf
15:09and cutting deals for himself,
15:10he's not protecting you.
15:13He's not spending any time
15:14trying to lower costs or defeat our enemies.
15:16Corruption, it can be a full-time job for Donald Trump.
15:19And that's a pretty lousy deal
15:20for the American people.
15:21But more importantly,
15:22when our foreign policy is for sale,
15:25we are less safe.
15:27Let me give you an example
15:29relative to the trip that Donald Trump is on right now.
15:32These countries aren't padding Donald Trump's pockets
15:34because they like him.
15:35They are paying him in order to get things
15:37from the federal government,
15:39from the U.S. government,
15:40without having to make any actual policy concessions
15:43that would benefit the U.S. people.
15:46Before anybody could begin to process
15:49the brazen corruption of the UAE-Trump-Witkoff crypto deal,
15:53reports very quickly emerged
15:56that the Trump administration
15:57was considering changing regulations
15:59to make it easier for the country of UAE
16:03to purchase highly advanced semiconductors
16:06from U.S. manufacturers.
16:08This was a huge priority of the Emiratis.
16:13But the restrictions are on the UAE for a reason.
16:18The UAE has a very troubling
16:21and very close security relationship with China.
16:25And so the reason why we didn't allow U.S. companies
16:28to sell semiconductors directly to the UAE
16:31is because we believe that it would very easily
16:33become a conduit to China getting their hand
16:36on these advanced semiconductors
16:37and being able to leapfrog the United States
16:40in the business of advanced AI.
16:44But all of a sudden, once the cash payment to Trump
16:47through the crypto venture was announced,
16:49Trump signaled that he was willing
16:50to throw our security concerns out the window
16:53and transfer this sensitive technology to the UAE,
16:56even though it's likely that China
16:58will get their hands on this technology,
17:00allowing China to put themselves in a position
17:03to leapfrog us in the race for advanced AI.
17:06That would be a disaster for the American people.
17:08But that's what's happening.
17:11We might hand AI leadership to China
17:14because that's the price of Trump getting paid.
17:17And as long as he gets paid,
17:18he doesn't seem to care about the impact
17:21on regular Americans.
17:24The White House is open for business.
17:27And the Trump family is proudly advertising
17:29to the world where to send the check.
17:31They aren't trying to hide it.
17:34A $400 million luxury plane
17:37gifted to the President of the United States
17:39right as he is going over to negotiate
17:42potentially sensitive security arrangements
17:44with the Gulf countries.
17:46Every American, every Republican,
17:48every supposed national security advocate
17:51in the Senate should be outraged by this.
17:54We can look the other way
17:56or we could join together,
17:59Republicans and Democrats,
18:00to stand up for this country
18:01and do something about it.
18:04I've joined with Senators Schatz and Coons and Booker
18:07to introduce a resolution
18:08condemning the acceptance of the plane.
18:13It's a blatant violation of the Emoluments Clause.
18:15We could stand together as a Senate
18:17to vote for that resolution.
18:18I've introduced legislation
18:20to make it illegal
18:21for presidents or members of Congress
18:23and their family members
18:25to profit off of crypto coins
18:26while they hold federal office.
18:28We could join together in that effort.
18:30I will personally seek to block
18:33any arms sale
18:34that is announced as part of this trip
18:38with a country
18:40that is personally investing
18:42in Donald Trump and his family.
18:45I will force a full Senate debate
18:47and a vote on these sales.
18:48Foreign leaders need to know
18:49that there will be a price
18:50for participating in the corruption
18:52of the American presidency.
18:57This level of corruption
18:59is so gross
19:01that even Trump's most hardened
19:03MAGA sycophants
19:05are turning against him.
19:07I didn't think I'd see the day,
19:09but people like Ben Shapiro
19:10and Laura Loomer,
19:11who fawn over Trump,
19:13can't believe he is so crass
19:15as to think that it's okay
19:17to accept planes
19:19as a gift
19:20in exchange
19:22for U.S. national security concessions.
19:26This isn't America first.
19:28This is not what he promised
19:29the American people.
19:31This is Trump first.
19:33He is willing to put
19:34our nation's security at risk,
19:37take unconstitutional bribes,
19:38just so he can fly himself
19:40and his Mar-a-Lago golf buddies
19:42around the world
19:43in gold-plated luxury planes
19:46gifted to him
19:47by foreign governments,
19:48all while at the same time
19:50he tells Americans
19:51that they should be okay
19:53buying fewer school supplies
19:56for their kids
19:57or fewer birthday presents
19:59for their grandchildren
20:01because he's driving prices up
20:04for non-billionaires
20:06in this country,
20:06all while at the same time
20:08he's kicking 13 million people
20:11off of their health care.
20:13Trump lines his pockets,
20:15he corrupts our foreign policy
20:17to enrich himself
20:18while driving up prices
20:20and stealing health care
20:21from average Americans.
20:22It's a national security disaster
20:24and it's a moral abomination.
20:27I yield the floor.