SCRUTINIZE UAE

“So Sheikh Taknoun is this really interesting figure. He oversees a more than $1,300,000,000,000 empire that's backed by both his personal fortune and state money, and he owns companies that span from, you know, fish farms to AI to surveillance, and he is sometimes referred to as the Spy Shake.”

“In less than two years, World Liberty Financial has earned the Trump family at least $1,200,000,000 in cash, and a lot of that has come through foreign owned businesses. As we examined in yesterday's episode, one of the companies they worked with was the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. The other involves The United Arab Emirates.”

“The president is exempt from conflict of interest rules in a way that other members of his administration are not. And we talked about this so much during Trump's first term, the idea that there were really not a lot of rules in place for presidents and conflicts of interest and, you know, ethical obligations, because there has always been an assumption that a president would be governed by the norms of this role and the desire to not have there be, you know, bad optics and that sort of thing.”

“He's there in large part to push for a chip deal with The US. He meets with Trump in the Oval Office. He makes this $1,400,000,000,000 investment pledge. He says The UAE will invest in The U. S. Over a decade, which, you know, Trump loves those kinds of announcements, loves to later tout those, and he told people at the time that he was really excited about that.”

“The deal is signed 01/16/2025, four days before the inauguration. It's signed by Eric Trump. Signing on the UAE side were two executives working for Tah Noon. Half of the purchase price was paid upfront, immediately steering a $187,000,000 to Trump family entities. It was not disclosed. They never announced this partnership.”

“World Liberty presented this MGX investment using USD 1 as an enormous vote of confidence in World Liberty and in its stablecoin. And so the fact that Zach Whitcough took the stage and was saying, we thank MGX for their trust in us. At the time that he knew that both MGX and World Liberty were, you know, partly owned by the same person was just pretty shocking to me.”

“Taknun arrives in Washington with his delegation, and Trump hosts this big White House dinner for Taknun and his delegation. And he invites the vice president and several cabinet members, including the secretary of state and the secretary of the treasury. We see Taqnun in photos that the White House releases sitting across from Trump.”

“What you've heard from, really, over the course of the past year from a number of lobbyists who have foreign governments as clients and foreign diplomats is that there is this view abroad that Trump is a transactional president and that, you know, I think some of these countries even appreciate that stance because they feel like they know how to play that game. But the feeling is very much that if you want something from the Trump administration, you have to be prepared to give something in return.”