This Is How Saudi Arabia Bought Donald Trump

And what they want in return.

By Paul Blest, More Perfect Union

Just days after he won the U.S. presidential election last year, President Donald Trump appeared at an Ultimate Fighting Championship event flanked by top allies Elon Musk and Dana White, the UFC CEO.

Someone much more obscure to an American audience was there too: the head of the $930 billion Saudi sovereign wealth fund, Yasir Al Rumayyan. It wasn’t exactly a shocker — Trump’s financial ties to the Saudi government have included holding LIV Golf events at Trump Doral and developing Trump Towers in Jeddah and Dubai, not to mention a $300 billion arms deal he signed during his first term.

One of the key players in all of this was Jared Kushner, the husband of Ivanka Trump and a top advisor in the first Trump White House.

“It seemed as if from the get-go that Jared Kushner was charged with cultivating the relationship with the Saudis,” said Virginia Canter, former chief ethics counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a watchdog group.

Just months after Kushner left the White House in 2021, he started a new investment group, Affinity Partners, which quickly got a $2 billion commitment from the Saudi investment fund. After a panel charged with screening investments raised concerns that Kushner’s firm was “inexperienced” and had “unsatisfactory due diligence,” they were personally overruled by a board led by de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman — who reportedly once said that he was so close to Trump’s son-in-law that Kushner “in my pocket.”

For the Saudi royal family, it’s likely a gamble worth taking. The first Trump administration saw full-throated U.S. support for the regime’s war with Yemen, with the president even vetoing a bipartisan War Powers Resolution to end that support. Trump also famously abandoned the Obama administration-negotiated nuclear deal with Iran, a Saudi adversary. And with Kushner’s backing, Trump allies including former national security advisor Michael Flynn were involved in a multi-billion dollar plan to build dozens of nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia via transferring sensitive nuclear technology.

Now, as Trump takes office and his second and final term begins to take shape, we took a deep dive into the Saudi royal family’s vast business interests with Trumpworld — including Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, among other companies — and found that the potential is ripe for even more corruption and graft. Watch our video below.