When President Trump decided in his first term to host the annual Group of 7 summit of world leaders at his own private golf club in Miami, the act of self-dealing was so astonishing that it incited an uproar among fellow Republicans, forcing him to scrap the idea. Now in his second term seven years later, Mr. Trump has decided to host the Group of 20 annual summit of world leaders at his private golf club in Miami in December — and this time the plan has generated practically no protest. The unprecedented blitz of self-enrichment by Mr. Trump, his family and his friends since he returned to the White House last year has become so extensive, so profligate and so brazen that he has effectively moved the goal posts of what is considered out of bounds. An act that was deemed an outrage in 2019 is barely noticed in 2026.
Mr. Trump has blurred the line between personal and public interests so much that it is hardly distinguishable anymore. He personally made at least $2.2 billion last year through business ventures and investments, many with implications for government policy. His family-backed firm introduced a cryptocurrency called stablecoin just months before he signed legislation promoting stablecoin. He accepted a luxury jet from Qatar. He arranged for his administration to grant him immunity for any back taxes and penalties that he owed, potentially more than $100 million. In recent days, Mr. Trump has ordered the government to use taxpayer dollars to air television advertisements lauding himself, commercials that resemble campaign ads even as voters are already casting ballots in this year’s midterm elections.
Mr. Trump’s private business last month filed a trademark application for Trump TV, seeking to control the name of a streaming service that the White House in theory uses for official presidential communications. Melania Trump, who already was paid millions of dollars for a flattering self-promotional film by Amazon, a federal government contractor, now has a two-part docuseries about herself to be released this fall. Donald Trump Jr. allowed a Russian business mogul close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to pay for part of his wedding after-party in the Bahamas. And President Trump next month will headline “the most exclusive dinner in the world” for the crypto firm that runs his meme coin.
The decision to bring the leaders of the G20 nations and their considerable entourages to Trump National Doral Miami from Dec. 14 to 15 in some ways offers the most clear-cut case study of how the standards have changed, not just from other presidencies but from Mr. Trump’s own first term. “Let’s be honest — in the world of all the bad things he’s done, this is pretty small,” said Paul Rosenzweig, who was a senior counsel to Ken Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton and later served in President George W. Bush’s administration. “But it is a really good, easily understood example of how he has defined deviancy down.”
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing