The Grift That Keeps on Flying

Trump’s Middle East tour is a billionaire roadshow wrapped in foreign policy drag, complete with palace parties, AI power plays, refugee racism, and a $400 million jet full of emoluments.

Good morning! Somewhere over the Arabian Peninsula, there’s a jet slicing through the clouds, carrying a convicted felon, two dueling tech lords, and an entire administration’s worth of ethical rot. That’s not the premise of a dystopian novel, it’s just another Tuesday in Trump’s America.

President Trump has kicked off his first major international trip of the term in the Middle East, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. But don’t confuse this with diplomacy. This isn’t about strategy, stability, or global order. It’s a roadshow. A branded caravan of grift. And riding shotgun is none other than Elon Musk, alongside fellow techno-mogul Sam Altman, each presumably plotting to outmaneuver the other for a bigger slice of the AI-for-oil-and-data pie.

The official purpose? Trillion-dollar economic and defense deals. But the unofficial itinerary reads more like a personal treasure hunt. Trump’s sons have already announced mega-projects on all three stops, Qatar gets a Trump International Golf Club and luxury villas courtesy of a deal with Qatari Diar (a state-owned firm, naturally); Saudi Arabia is rolling out a 47-story Trump Tower in Jeddah; and Dubai gets the gold-plated crown jewel: an 80-story Trump hotel boasting the world’s “highest infinity pool,” unveiled by Eric Trump just days before dad’s arrival.

And let’s not forget the pièce de résistance: a $400 million Boeing 747-8 gifted by Qatar to serve as a new “Air Force One” for Trump, before being transferred to his “presidential library” as a token of, let’s say, enduring admiration. Legal scholars are howling about emoluments, but as usual, the soundproof walls of Trump’s jet are thick enough to muffle the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Musk, now posting from his white nationalist alter ego “Gorklon Rust”, has taken the opportunity to reinforce the administration’s racial priorities with a tweet mourning “so many crosses,” amplifying the idea that white South African farmers deserve American asylum over, say, Afghan interpreters who bled for our troops. It’s not subtle. Neither is the administration’s policy, delivered with puffed-up pomposity by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, who announced that Afrikaners assimilate better because… well, you can guess why.

About those Afrikaners. According to the administration, roughly fifty white South Africans have been granted expedited refugee status. They are expected to settle in the U.S. this summer under a special exception carved out of Trump’s otherwise draconian immigration policy. The reasoning? They’re “at risk” in South Africa, despite the South African government stating plainly that they are not and, more importantly, they are deemed culturally fit to “assimilate.” That is, they’re white, fluent in English, and, in the administration’s view, unlikely to question the creeping authoritarianism already underway. These aren’t war refugees or stateless victims; they’re ideological imports, fellow travelers in the myth of white victimhood. While Afghan allies are deported, while Venezuelan families are detained or dumped in El Salvador, the Afrikaners are welcomed with open arms, offered press conferences, and praise. It’s immigration as identity project. It’s apartheid nostalgia dressed in humanitarian drag.

Let’s pretend Trump’s trip is about economic strength. Let’s ignore that Trump Media lost $31.7 million last quarter, with less revenue than your local Panera. Let’s look past the fact that U.S. labor productivity just posted its first decline since 2022, and that corporations are spending $233 billion on stock buybacks instead of wages or innovation. Let’s even turn a blind eye to the Australian farmers and swimwear exporters now bleeding cash thanks to Trump’s tariffs, one retailer losing nearly $1 million a year just to stay afloat as duties spike costs and crater demand.

It’s all fine. Everything is normal. Jeanine Pirro is now the federal prosecutor for D.C. Todd Blanche, who lost all 34 of Trump’s felony counts in New York, is running the Library of Congress. And if you squint out the window of that luxury Qatari jet, you can almost see American democracy disappearing over the horizon, still waving goodbye.

If the fuselage rattles mid-flight, maybe Musk and Altman will finally settle their score in the aisle. Think of it as the ultimate cage match: Singularitarian vs. Supremacist. Winner gets first rights to colonize Mars. Loser has to moderate X.

We’ll be here, buckled in, bracing for impact.