President Donald Trump’s “demented” grifts are not only the result of him wanting to make money—they’re because he feels he deserves to, the president’s biographer says.
Michael Wolff told the Daily Beast’s Inside Trump’s Head podcast that Trump, 80, is more than just cynical in his financial motivations. Wolff pointed to the Trump administration’s deal allowing an American company to mine tungsten in Kazakhstan, with up to $1.6 billion in federal financing going toward the project.
As The New York Times reported, Donald Trump Jr., 48, and Eric Trump, 42, partly own the firm Dominari Securities, which partnered with other investors for a 20 percent stake in a corporation linked to the mining project. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s two sons, Kyle, 30, and Brandon, 28, were also doing business toward the same ends via their work as the heads of investment company Cantor Fitzgerald, according to the Times.
“It’s an extraordinary story,” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles. “The grift is the grift and the grift is there, but this is... just completely out in the open.”
The president said in January that he decided not to restrict his sons from making certain foreign business deals, as he had in his first term: “I found out that nobody cared, and I’m allowed to.”
Coles commented: “And he may not be wrong.”
The Times also reported that either the Trump or Lutnick family—or both—have financial links to at least 14 companies working with the government on “critical mining deals.” The total value of funding, whether already provided by the government or under consideration, exceeds $8.9 billion.
“The really interesting thing is what Donald Trump thinks about this,“ Wolff said. ”We tend to... see him as he’s completely cynical: ‘Just give me the money.’ I don’t think that’s exactly the case. I think it is that he—profoundly in his mind, in his head—believes he deserves this."
“‘It’s a fair exchange. I’m Donald Trump, I’m the president of the United States. I should get something out of this,’” Wolff said, explaining that the felon’s several indictments while out of office factor into that decision.
“It’s not just grift for him. It’s truly revenge—a revenge that he deserves, that he is due.”
“This is an important thing and a step beyond... certainly any kind of grift that I’m familiar with, even historical grift,“ Wolff went on. ”It’s a much more elaborate psychology here in which he deserves it... This is all Donald Trump always against the establishment and the system, and ‘They’ve done me wrong, so I should be paid.’”
Wolff concluded: “It’s not cynical as much as it is demented... He literally sees this world in which he deserves to get this money, he deserves to be rewarded.”
When reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung gave a recycled statement: “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
In a statement in response to the Times’ reporting on the mining deal in Kazakhstan, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in part, “The only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”
Find and subscribe to Inside Trump’s Head with Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes of incomparable insight into the psyche of the world’s most talked-about man drop every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday evening on YouTube and Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday mornings on other podcast platforms.
