First Draft: Is This the Most Corrupt Administration Ever?
The New York Times published a blockbuster story on Kazakhstan, public money, and the U.S. president's sons. Meanwhile in DC, an aging Trump rambled about algae and golf.
On this day in 1950, a mostly amateur USA team achieved perhaps the greatest ever World Cup shock, a 1-0 win over England in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Note to the racist Trump administration: the American match-winner, goalscorer Joe Gaetjens, was from Haiti.
Good morning, and Happy Monday. Martin here, writing from a capital awash with either popular enthusiasm for Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair, down on the National Mall, or quite a lot of summer rain. Last time I looked out the office window it was… decidedly the latter.
Today’s edition of ‘First Draft’ is brought to you without a paywall, courtesy of our sponsor Ground News.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we consider the latest report of multi-billion-dollar Trump corruption, this time around a deal for Kazakh tungsten, and note encouraging signs of clear Democratic communication to voters of how utterly unacceptable this must be. We also consider the president’s choice of Sunday entertainment: a rather damp tour of the capital he wants to remake in his image, even as his Iran war threatened to roar back to life. Let’s dig in.
‘An Inbred Family Tree’
JD Vance may or may not be right that in Trump’s America, staggering presidential corruption makes for a “12-hour news story” at best, but it is undeniably true that the kind of alleged corruption the New York Times reported Sunday should occupy the nation much longer than that – even if it’s just the latest instance in an absolutely staggering succession of reports of Donald Trump, his family, and their allies enriching themselves at voters’ expense.
The Times headline was stark: “Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit.” The lede described how last year Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick secured a deal with the president of Kazakhstan to give “a little-known American company access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten, a metal that the United States desperately needs for the production of missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips, and other critical goods.”
“Within weeks,” the Times’s Eric Lipton and Paul Sonne wrote, a firm part-owned by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump joined with partners to take a 20% stake in “a corporate entity related to the Kazakhstan project.” Lipton and Sonne also noted how Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment company controlled by the Lutnick family and overseen by the commerce secretary’s sons, Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, worked to raise $210 million in capital for an entity related to the deal, work that would “typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees.”
In November, six days after the Trump boys bought in, the U.S.-Kazakh deal was signed. It was just the tip of the iceberg. One or both of the Trumps and Lutnicks “have financial ties to at least 14 companies that are actively working with the federal government on critical mining deals, including the Kazakhstan project,” the Times said, citing federal filings.
“All 14 of these companies have either benefited directly from offers of financial assistance from the Trump administration, or have pending permit applications before the Commerce Department, which Mr. Lutnick oversees, the Times found. The total amount of federal funding that the Trump administration has provided or is considering providing to the companies exceeds $8.9 billion, according to public statements by the companies and federal government.”
All parties concerned denied wrongdoing, of course.
As for outrage? Well, the Times quoted Rep. Maxine Dexter of Oregon, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. She said: “Congress needs to make sure that taxpayer dollars are being used in the public’s interest and not to benefit family members or those closely tied with the Trump administration.”
Well… yeah. Was that it? Was that all the most relevant Democrat could manage? When, as the Times put it, that Democrat was confronted with a prime example of “emboldened mixing of federal policymaking and personal business [that] began shortly after Mr. Trump returned to office last year, when the Trump and Lutnick sons played a role in billions of dollars of cryptocurrency deals as the fathers helped set policies that supercharged the crypto industry?” And when, “the families’ ethically tangled pursuit of profits is extending to the new arms race for critical minerals?”
It seemed so.
Fortunately, better was on offer elsewhere. California Democratic Congressman Mike Levin did a good job laying out the Times story in digested form and communicating outrage: “The fathers set the policy. The sons cashed in… This is your tax money. It is supposed to secure our supply chains and protect our troops, not pad the portfolios of the president’s children and the commerce secretary’s children.
“This is the most corrupt administration in American history. It is not close… Either we will end the corruption, or the corruption will be the end of us.”
Jon Ossoff, the Democratic senator from Georgia who is up for re-election against a predictable MAGA lickspittle, was already on the case. Addressing supporters earlier this month, Ossoff used the Kazakhstan deal in an efficient evocation of how the Trump administration is using billions of taxpayer dollars to enrich the Trump family, “while you pay more for gas, for groceries, for health care.”
Ossoff promised accountability, should Democrats regain control of Congress in November. His message was clear, and crisp, and pointed.
And yet, despite such efforts, the roar from Trump’s flood of corruption threatens to become mere background noise. However hard to parse – Was he admitting how corrupt his boss was? Did he actually think Tricky Dick Nixon wasn’t so bad? – Vance’s remarks last week about the news cycle and numbness to scandal came close to a dangerous truth. In a national conversation debased by such nihilism, Democrats must make sure voters know the sheer scale and threat of Trump’s corruption and don’t just treat it as something built in. Democrats must persuade voters it’s not the case that all politicians are just in it to get rich. At a Knicks watch party in New York the other week, a friend told me: “Red or Blue, politicians are all the same. Cut ’em, they bleed green.” I should’ve shown him Ossoff’s remarks.
On Sunday, outside Congress, Adam Bonica, a Stanford professor of political science, offered another efficient distillation of the story about the Trumps, the Lutnicks, and Kazakh tungsten. Linking to the effectively simple Times graphic pictured above, illustrating how the dollars flow, Bonica made an equally simple but clear point about the source of the poison: “Usually these political corruption maps have complicated plumbing. You know it’s bad when it’s just a closed loop that looks like an inbred family tree.”
Low coverage? Don’t fear. With Ground News, you can see beyond the headlines and unlock stories that are often hidden from the mainstream. For example, take this story on Trump announcing a $1.6B dollar mining deal set to benefit his sons.
Ground News is a news app and website that scans 50,000+ articles while offering built-in bias comparisons, fact checks, and funding transparency for every source.
For this story, there is limited coverage with just 7 total sources. However, Ground News makes it easy to break down the news even when the story is new or just hasn’t received the attention it deserves. Take advantage of the unique coverage details, factuality, and ownership features to make sure you get the full picture on reporting, even when it isn’t initially clear.
With Ground News’ Vantage Plan, information becomes your superpower. Learn more at ground.news/zeteox and get 40% off the unlimited Vantage Plan.
(This portion of the post was sponsored content.)
🇮🇷 Iran War Updates
More strikes: Amid a supposed ceasefire, the U.S. and Iran traded attacks. Blaming Iranian drone strikes on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. said it shot down drones and missiles aimed at bases in Bahrain and Kuwait. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed to have destroyed eight U.S. military sites.
Trump threat: Donald Trump said, “There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”
Strait talk: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said, “Any attempt to establish new or separate arrangements from those currently being carried out by… Iran will only lead to further complications, delay the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and increase the level of tension.” Later, a U.S. official told the New York Times an agreement to halt attacks in the Strait had been reached. Iran did not immediately confirm it.
Whither Congress? Rep. Ro Khanna pointed out that U.S. strikes were in “blatant violation of the War Powers Resolution” passed by both houses of Congress. Khanna said Congress should take Trump to court to compel an end to strikes.
Talks unclear: U.S.-Iran negotiations were set to resume in Qatar on Tuesday, Axios and other outlets reported. But Iran said on Monday those reports couldn’t be confirmed. “The first round of technical talks within the framework of the designated working groups will be held when conditions are met,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said.
Lebanon latest: Israel carried on striking southern Lebanon, two days after signing a deal to end violence in the country. Iran is demanding an end to Israeli strikes in Lebanon, as a condition for ending the wider war.
‘Criminally Made Algae’
Donald Trump’s renovation mania extends to wanting Lafayette Park, by the White House, to contain 47 maple trees to mark his status as the 47th president, the Washington Post reported.
Noting that Trump spent a sodden Sunday morning touring projects including “the East Potomac Park golf course, where reporters saw him reviewing blueprints, and the roundabout where he hopes to erect a triumphal arch,” the paper said the Lafayette Park renovations would not be complete by July 4, as Trump has loudly claimed.
According to the New York Times, Lafayette Park work will cost $17 million, part of a whopping $1.2 billion bill for Trump’s DC projects. Even that is only approximate, subject to ever-spiralling costs of work such as the East Wing ballroom rebuild and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool clusterfuck. (“Noun, vulgar slang, ‘a complex and utterly disordered and mismanaged situation,’” Merriam-Webster.) Furthermore, much of Trump’s White House work is of unknown cost.
After his DC jaunt, Trump used Truth Social to post a 594-word boast about his plans, replete with batshit (“adjective, vulgar slang, ‘very irrational, excited, or angry,’” Merriam-Webster) claims. The Reflecting Pool, he said, was “now in full use” despite supposed vandalism, though it would be drained again after July 4. “The criminally made algae is gone,” the president burbled, about what he presumably thinks was… wait for it… an antifa plant.
Trump also announced that work on the East Potomac Golf Links would begin Sept. 1, under golf course architect Tom Fazio, who took the Sunday DC tour. According to Trump, the course will be rebuilt to major championship standard. Whether his mound of toxic East Wing debris will remain as a sort of novel sand trap remains to be seen.
🗞️ What You Need to Know
Book blast: Trump broke his own embargo (as reported by Zeteo) on commenting about bestselling book Regime Change, managing to misspell his abusive nickname for Maggie Haberman while claiming her work with fellow New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan was “mostly made up.”
Dictatorship watch: The Times also reported the extreme lengths the Trump White House went to in order to remove protections for federal workers it wanted to fire. Democracy Docket noted how Trump admitted pressuring California officials to ensure GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton made the general election.
Make your mind up: On Truth Social, Trump took aim at the presumptive new Washington, DC, mayor, Janeese Lewis George, whom he called both a “communist” and a “communist adherent.”
OK rules: Trump named Lance Schroyer to lead ICE. The former Oklahoma state trooper is an adviser to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, also from Oklahoma.
Primary win: In Louisiana, Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow, who beat incumbent Bill Cassidy in the first round, secured the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate with a run-off victory over state treasurer John Fleming.
Dire warning: A group representing central banks said debt-fueled spending on AI data centers risks a financial crunch similar to the 2008-09 global crisis.
Birthday bigotry: Elon Musk spent his 55th birthday on Sunday boosting a fascistic, anti-migrant film from German director Uwe Boll, which glorifies vigilante violence against migrants and which was denied classification in Germany.
🧠 Pop Quiz!
The early 19th-century Decatur House, on Lafayette Square by the White House, contains a rare surviving urban example of what sort of building?
Keep your eyes out for the answer below!
🌏 Anywhere But America
🇵🇸 Don’t forget Gaza: Israeli strikes killed at least four Palestinians, including a 13-year-old girl, Gaza officials said Sunday. Heavy tank shelling was reported with drones overhead. Israel has killed at least 1,045 Palestinians in Gaza since the so-called “ceasefire” last October, and more than 73,000 since October 2023.
🇻🇪 Quake toll: Venezuela’s government reported 1,450 dead from twin earthquakes last Wednesday. Thirty-three rescues were reported. Amid criticism of official efforts, the UN said more than 2,200 international rescuers had arrived.
🇺🇦 🇷🇺 Kyiv strikes: Ukraine hit two Russian oil refineries, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted his country was going through a “difficult period” amid the war it started in February 2022.
🇵🇰 🇦🇫 Pakistan-Afghanistan escalation: Tensions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border flared Sunday, with Taliban officials claiming Pakistani strikes and ground operations killed more than 35 civilians. Pakistan said it launched a ground operation late Sunday against militant hideouts, killing more than two dozen fighters, AP reported. Afghanistan warned it would retaliate.
😳 WTF?!
Fox is really shilling for Donald Trump’s “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall, despite overwhelming evidence it’s a flop for the ages. On Sunday, a day of biblical downpours in DC, it might not have been the best choice of words to claim “a great wash” of people were taking in the displays.
🧠 Trivia answer: Slave quarters.
📺 Sunday Show Roundup
Presented with “centrist” Democrat Josh Gottheimer’s claim that “If you’re a socialist, you’re not a Democrat,” and publication of a centrist manifesto to that effect, Zohran Mamdani laughed, telling ABC’s ‘This Week’ hawking manifestos “sounds pretty socialist to me.” The New York mayor added: “I’m not interested in writing a manifesto, or frankly, in reading one. I’m interested in delivering, and that’s exactly what we’ve been showing.”
On CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis lamented Donald Trump’s fixation on supposed voter fraud, asking: “Why are we doing more things to undermine our confidence in elections, rather than getting the strong message out that will win for Republicans this year?” Tillis is not running, having chosen to retire, only then to speak against his party’s Trumpist insanity.
Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana GOP senator, who also speaks out, but only because he lost his primary to a Trump-backed opponent, said Trump sees Congress as “merely an appendage,” adding: “And frankly, sometimes Congress acts like it’s an appendage.” Cassidy did not tell CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ what sort of appendage he meant.
🗓️ Mark Your Calendars
Monday, June 29: All eyes will be on the Supreme Court as it releases opinions before the end of its term on July 1. The Trump administration’s challenge to birthright citizenship is among cases not yet decided by the far-right-dominated court. So are questions about how much Trump can control the Fed and government agencies.
Tuesday, June 30: Colorado holds primary elections. Among Democrats, all eyes will be on the first district, where Rep. Diana DeGette faces Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist endorsed by Bernie Sanders, and the Senate race, where incumbent John Hickenlooper is looking to stave off Julie Gonzales, a progressive state senator.
Wednesday, July 1: Trump will visit the Theodore Roosevelt presidential library in Medora, North Dakota, set to open to the public on Saturday, July 4. Plans for opening night include a display about Roosevelt’s life mounted by 1,776 drones.
Friday, July 3: Trump is due to speak at a fireworks display at Mount Rushmore, in South Dakota.
ICYMI From Zeteo
Still want to get Zeteo content, but not this newsletter? You can unsubscribe directly from ‘First Draft’ by going to ‘manage subscription’ in Substack, scrolling down, and toggling the button for ‘First Draft’ off.
Two quick notes:
1) The Democrats are anything but corruption-free, which is a major reason why they’ve been no foil to Trump etal’s. That includes both personal and playing a part in or quietly supporting Trump‘s, all too often working for the same donors. So your friend was right, and when any Democrat talks a different game you have to ask whether they are just talking.
2) (this one gets repeated) The war in Ukraine was not started by the Russians in February 2022 - it began in 2014 after the CIA-led coup. The Russians entered into an ongoing Civil War on behalf of one side in that Civil War. Why are you repeating propaganda?
Yes the 'moderate' Democrats financed by the same system as Trump are corrupt. The Progressives are not! They actually refuse big money from corrupt sources and this is going to be big in the midterms. Unfortunately they have to fight the corrupt Democrats as well as Republicans but this time they will win because the American people have had enough. Support progress, vote progressive.