The Ceasefire and the Business of Trump’s Diplomacy

0:00The sight of the press corps walking out of the Pentagon is amazing. And it's a genuine act of solidarity on the part of the press, I think, here, here. And maybe even a sign that people are realizing solidarity and saying no are the only winning tactics here. Yeah, pretty important. And it was across the ideological spectrum. Very true. It went from left to Fox News and even to Newsmax. They're saying something, which is the free press matters and you're trying to keep us on free. Yeah. Well, when Pete Hegseth, Fox Weekend News anchor, has lost Fox, you know, it's really remarkable. Did you see, though, that he is now insisting that this is Hegseth, that everybody certify in the Pentagon that they have watched his speech?

0:51Yeah. I mean, that is really something. I'm going to start doing that, guys. It's not optional. I'm going to start asking people to certify that they've. Read that they've listened to this podcast. Sign right here. On nice social occasions. Have you completed your certification? When you say that you really enjoyed that column and listened to that podcast, like, I would like to test your comprehension.

1:15Welcome to The Political Scene from The New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Evan Osnos, and I'm joined, as ever, by my colleagues, Susan Glasser and Jane Mayer. Good morning, Susan. Hey, it's great to be with you. Hi, Jane. Hey, Evan. Hey, Susan.

1:35Today on the show, Trump, the Middle East, and the art of the deal. As you know by now, Israel and Hamas have agreed to the initial phase of a ceasefire deal in Gaza. Earlier this week, 20 living hostages were freed by Hamas as Israel released nearly 2 ,000 prisoners. It's been a moment of real celebration for a great many people. The reprieve from violence brings immense relief. But the details on what's next are fuzzy, to say the least. This ceasefire deal is not a peace agreement, per se. The question of what happens to Hamas and how Gaza will be governed is unclear. And there is a lot more than just diplomacy at play.

2:16There's real money changing hands in the Middle East. And often it seems that money is entwined with our foreign policy. So on today's show, we want to connect the dots a bit, try to follow the money, as we say. What's behind this deal and how does the Trump family business, what looks to a lot of people like corruption, shape America's evolving role in the Middle East? Susan, first off, I want to start by taking stock of the ceasefire deal itself. There's been a huge amount of publicity around it, of course. There was a press briefing on Monday, you'll recall when Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it one of the most important days for world peace in 50 years, to which Trump objected.

3:02And he said only 50. He prefers to see this as a step towards what he calls everlasting peace. So lay it out for us. What was achieved here? What is real and what was not achieved? Well, thanks, Evan, because I think it's really important to sort of established some ground truth here, but I'm glad that we're having this conversation because, you know, we can unpack the details, but in a big picture sense, right, I think Trump in the Middle East, it's sort of one of those decoder rings for understanding the whole Trump presidency. This is, you can do better than study this as a distillation in many ways, as you pointed out in the introduction, the intertwining of the Trump family business interests and the transactionalism of actually being in business with the people that you're also making diplomacy with.

3:52The complicated politics, not only of the Middle East, but specifically of Donald Trump and Israel and Bibi Netanyahu. That's the backdrop to this deal. And this notion of what kind of a superpower is America anymore? Are we leading? Are we just actually disentangling what's actually going on here. And there's the other element, which is Donald Trump, the puffer, if you will. I love this quote. I'm so glad you started out with Marco Rubio, 50 years. That briefing came after Steve Whitcoff, the Middle East envoy, said at a rally in Tel Aviv to celebrate the deal and Donald Trump's role in it, that he was the, quote, greatest president in American history.

4:35period, stop, foot, bar none. There are - Seems a little restrained as a description. Giant posters of Donald Trump everywhere in Israel, people at these rallies to celebrate the return of the hostages, booing their own prime minister Netanyahu, cheering Donald Trump in the Knesset. And so I think you ask what happened here. This is for Donald Trump, first and foremost, what he views as a personal triumph. And he was willing to do something that many American presidents haven't always been willing to do, which was to sort of really twist Netanyahu's arm, to exert the enormous leverage that an American president has over Israel, and particularly this Republican American president has over Netanyahu, and say now's the time.

5:21And so it's not everlasting world peace. It's not the dawn of a new Middle East, as Donald Trump says. What is it specifically? It's a phase one ceasefire deal that guaranteed that Hamas was going to return these 20 living hostages. They're still arguing over the return of some of the bodies of the dead hostages. Not all of that has happened yet. That in exchange, Israel was going to withdraw from some of its positions, was going to cease the attacks. Civilians would be able to move back to their homes in many cases. Aid would begin to flow again. But, you know, we can talk more. Is that everlasting peace or is it a ceasefire deal?

6:00Jane, take us to that moment. Susan, I really correctly identified this as a an event that was so focused around Trump himself. Take us back to that moment at what was described as the peace summit with world leaders in in Egypt on Monday. Remember, Trump is speaking in front of a huge banner that said peace 2025. It was striking to anybody who remembers the mission accomplished banner in Iraq. You know, you're generally try to avoid standing in front of big announcements of conditions that might be fragile. It felt like not the kind of diplomacy we're used to. What did you make of all of the pieces that were on display in that event?

6:41Well, yeah, I mean, I think the thing that we all know about Trump by now is that he sees his job in many ways as sort of producing a TV show. He has got the set there all laid out and the backdrop all laid out. And he always likes to hire people that he says look like they came from central casting. That's the phrase he always uses. And he's imagined this scene where he's the Prince of Peace or the King of Peace in the middle of the whole thing. And everybody else, all the world leaders are paying homage around him. And they're all signing something. And we're not able to see what exactly this document is.

7:19But then some reporter, you know, zooms in on the wording of the thing. And it's this very vague, lovely, aspirational statement about how we'd like to all see peace in the Middle East. Well, yes, we would, of course. And the details, the fine print, it's not there. It's as if the picture is the end result of what he's aiming for here. Now, I don't want to – this is – what I'm saying sounds very critical and I just want to say this is an achievement to have a ceasefire. And you got to give them credit and you have to have a heart of stone not to have been moved by those scenes of the hostages being released and reunited with their families.

7:58And thank God that there's some aid coming in finally to Gaza. OK, so let's not, you know, be churlish about this completely. But the question is, as Susan's saying, what happens with stage two here? And the details are just up in the air there. And just to be clear, Susan, give us really the concise nuts and bolts here of what happened and didn't happen in the deal. Yeah. Well, to Jane's point, excellent point about this summit as a visual backdrop. And in fact, neither the prime minister of Israel nor the leader of Hamas was present at the quote unquote peace summit in Egypt, which was really then about optics.

8:37And then we have the question of what now that the hostages are released. What is the process? Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has made an unpaid brief return to this diplomacy. He's working alongside Steve Whitcoff, Trump's Middle East envoy, as well as a family business partner, to continue the negotiations in the Middle East. But the experts that I speak with suggest that the prospects for phase two longer term status negotiations, very unclear. For example, we still don't have a full understanding of what is the governance authority in Gaza, literally who is in charge of running Gaza right now.

9:15We don't know because Hamas was the governing authority before, to the extent I'm putting that in quotes, because obviously they weren't thinking about governing the place as much as being at war with Israel. Well, we don't know who's the governing authority. What is the power there? What are the positions that Israel in the end will still occupy in this territory? What will they withdraw from? Will Hamas actually fully disarm itself? Again, major questions. What's the verification process for this disarmament? And as you're looking, by the way, at the news in the coming months, the experts say to me, follow that issue.

9:53You know, the fighting over has Hamas really disarmed and will, you know, that actually become the stumbling block and the source of renewed hostilities? And will we see Donald Trump actually just he's already declared it over and won. He said this is peace for all time. So that doesn't suggest he's going to be spending a lot of time sweating the details for the phase two. But it may quickly test whether or not he's able to handle a situation in which something that he has attached to himself so personally, wrapping himself in the flag of peace, what does he do when that begins to fray? I mean, I got to say there's one other thing that struck me that I don't see people reporting about, and it's maybe because I'm not a Middle East reporter.

10:38I'm someone who focuses on things like corruption and money. But there was a tremendous amount of talk from Trump about money. It was really interesting and different. I mean, whether it was Miriam Adelson being recognized twice at the Knesset by Trump, having her stand up, and he talks about how many billions of dollars she has. She's a huge American donor to the Republican Party and a major backer of Netanyahu. Look at her sitting there so innocently. She's got$60 billion in the bank,$60 billion. And she loves, and she loves, I think she's saying no more. And she loves Israel, but she loves it.

11:18Or him meeting with various Arab leaders and embarrassingly starting to talk about how much money they have. He told a UAE official during a handshake while posing for photos, a lot of cash, unlimited cash. There was a sub-theme here that was really striking that you don't usually see in diplomatic breakthroughs, which is a lot of concentration from Trump on money. Well, which is interesting because, look, for years the cliche about Trump is that he's a transactional president. We know that. And in this case, one of the things that's happening is he's basically putting that at the center of the diplomatic discussion and essentially proposing the idea that maybe people have been doing it all wrong before.

12:10Susan, I want to play you a clip of Steve Bannon that I think in some ways explains a lot about what we're unpacking today. It's Steve Bannon on NewsNation earlier this week. Let's listen. All of that was about building commercial relationships between the United States and the Gulf Emirates, but also the potential that we could have peace. And if we had peace, we have broader commercial relations. That is what's underpinning this deal today. Right. Sousa, I, you know, words I don't think I've often said, but is Steve Bannon onto something here? Well, by the way, Steve Bannon, I think, often is kind of a keen analyst of Trump world when he's not kind of selling a point of view.

12:48He's trying to describe a reality that he has experienced more directly than we have. And the reality is that Donald Trump, you could almost say that he's taken the model of the Gulf Arab Emirates and applied that as his own governance theory of the United States and his own theory of international diplomacy. He looks at the Gulf Arab emirs and he sees, like, I want to be like them. They co-mingle their families, their business, their country's national security. And that, to Donald Trump, is how he thinks. To Jane's point, right, there's no separation between Miriam Adelson giving millions to Republicans when Donald Trump looks at her and her role as a supporter of Netanyahu over decades.

13:42in Israel versus his view of, you know, here's my sons in business in the Middle East. We'll talk about that. Here's my relationship with MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. You know, for him, it's a stew of interconnections that is very similar to the approach of a Middle East potentate. He sees himself as a potentate. You know, strong men are what he wants to be. Susan, because in the past, the president of the United States has represented the values of the United States when they go around the world talking about things like rule of law and human rights. And basically, we are the new world, not the old corrupt world.

14:27Our constitution specifically says that the president is not supposed to take emoluments from foreign kings or leaders. leaders. We have a different system, and we've been the representatives of a far more idealistic system. And in this case, you have Trump. He's already said to these potentates, we're not going to lecture you about that. They love that. That was in his earlier trip. And he's said and stood up in the Knesset and said basically about Netanyahu to the president of Israel, pardon him. You know, whether we like it or not, This has been one of the greatest wartime presidents. This has been one of the greatest wartime presidents.

15:11And cigars and champagne, who the hell cares about that?

15:20You know, a little bit of corruption. What's a little bit of champagne? What are a few cigars? He's saying corruption's fine with us. This is in one of the few countries in the Middle East with a working democracy that has rule of law and a system that is pursuing Netanyahu on criminal charges. And Trump's saying, forget that stuff. Yeah, Trump is saying, look, he is in effect seeking to be an American emir. Here we are right about to have a No Kings Day protest, but we may have in fact ushered in the United American Emirates. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to unspool the details of how Trump's personal business in the Middle East is in fact indistinguishable from some of his diplomatic decisions.

16:06The Political Scene will be back in just a moment.

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18:08Jane, a question about Qatar. It's one of America's key allies in the Middle East. It hosts our largest military base in the region. It was also a key mediator in the talks between Israel and Hamas. But if you go back not too far, just 2017, in fact, Trump said Qatar has, quote, been a funder of terrorism at a very high level, unquote. So fast forward to today. Obviously, the relationship is completely unrecognizable from what it was in that moment. Walk us through some of these financial entanglements, shall we say, between the Trump administration, the Trump family and Qatar. Well, you're absolutely right.

18:50The tone seems to have sweetened up quite a bit since 2017. And it may be in part because there's also been a kind of sweet flow of money coming from Qatar and gifts that Trump and the Trump family. I mean, most notoriously, I think everybody has watched a gape that the Qatari royal family donated to Trump a Boeing 747 that belonged to the royal family that is valued at something like$400 million, which is a gift that was not run by Congress, which is supposed to give its approval under the Constitution to any gift from a foreign leader over years. you know, any amount of money. So the emoluments clause, again, of the Constitution was just ignored.

19:40That$400 million turns out to only be the beginning of what the costs are going to be that are associated with this plane. It is estimated that it will cost a billion dollars or so to retrofit it and make it usable by the president of the United States as a new Air Force One. That's taxpayer money that's going to go into that. And most amazingly, this plane is not going to remain Air Force One for whoever the next president might be after the taxpayers have paid to retrofit it. It's going with Trump off to his library where he can use it in perpetuity for his own private uses. So when we worry about corruption, what you worry about is the public till going into private pockets.

20:29You're talking even just in this one deal about potentially a billion dollars of taxpayer money going into a private plane that's going to transport Trump and his family around after he's left the Oval Office, assuming that he does. I'm curious, actually, Jane and Evan, what you guys think. From my perspective, it was Netanyahu's very bad tactical error of staging an attack inside Qatar on what he called a Hamas terrorist figure that didn't succeed but really blew back on him. And here's Donald Trump with this financial relationship with the Qataris. That's the moment at which I believe this deal took shape.

21:10Absolutely. And they were upset. It violated their sovereign space. They pushed, very interestingly, they pushed, of course, Trump to push back on Netanyahu. But it wasn't just the Qataris that were doing so. In the background, according to The Wall Street Journal, was Jared Kushner, who's also very involved in a business way and financially with Qatar. It's put money into his private equity firm, Affinity Partners. And he was there apparently demanding that Trump get Netanyahu on the phone and get Netanyahu to apologize. Yeah, the apology was reportedly co-written by Jared Kushner. And you have this complete intermingling, as you've been saying, between the private finances of the Trump family and international diplomacy at the most sort of, you know, explosive level.

22:10I think what's happening here, that was I think Susan's right to identify the key juncture in this process was when Netanyahu initiated this attack inside Qatar, it created an opportunity for Trump to put pressure on Netanyahu in a way that he previously hadn't. He has a lot of social capital in Israel. Trump does. And he was able to squeeze the prime minister at that moment. And then there was one more little step, which is that when Hamas seemed open, perhaps to some kind of deal, Trump did a very Trump thing, which is that he declared total victory and he pretended as if it was a done deal.

22:49And that actually had the effect of sort of pushing these players closer than they might not otherwise have been. And part of the reason why all that was happening was because you had these other deals, which we haven't even mentioned, which is things like the fact that Qatar is going to build an Air Force facility in Idaho. So they have some skin in the game. And then, of course, you also have never leave out the family business, the Trump family real estate business nominally led by Eric Trump, who has signed a deal to develop a big golf course and luxury villa. So you have all of these pieces in this kind of Gordian knot.

23:25I mean, but actually, I have to say, to play devil's advocate here, you might argue, as Bannon is arguing, that all of these commercial ties are helpful in giving leverage to the United States. So I think what we have not— Well, no, I'm sorry. It's giving leverage to Donald Trump, not to the United States. He's enriching himself. Exactly. And I think what the press and all of us have a responsibility to do is explain why that might be a problem to have him becoming independently rich through this kind of international crony capitalism that is the old world Bakshi style of the Middle East. And they're strings.

24:07They're hooks that everybody's got in each other's pockets at this point. Whether the Trump family is, there's no doubt it's getting rich. The question is, is it working for the American public or is it working for the Trump family? And Susan, we've only talked about Qatar. We really haven't said as much about the UAE. Earlier this summer, there were a couple of giant multi-billion dollar deals. The New York Times has done a deep dive on the question of how these were sequenced. For people just to remind us of the basics here, Steve Witkoff's son, Zach, announced that one of Sheikh Tachnun's investment firms would put$2 billion into World Liberty Financial.

24:47This is the crypto startup founded by the Witkoffs and Trump. And then a couple of weeks later, the White House agreed to let the UAE buy hundreds of thousands of the world's most advanced chips, which, of course, are very valuable in the AI race. So we're seeing foreign investment here as certainly a piece of the puzzle. When does a business deal with the Trump family cross unmistakably into political corruption? Is there a way to separate these things? Is that a plausible defense? And is it fair? It's just quite simply unprecedented. And the idea that we have conflict of interest laws in this country, which would, you know, say a mid-level government bureaucrat can't take lunch from Sheikh Taq Noon.

25:35OK, let's be real about that. And yet somehow you think it's legal that they can give two billion dollars to the family of the president of the United States time to coincide with the official very first foreign trip of Donald Trump's second term in the presidency of the United States. It's like, come on, right? Like, this is like, it's not only doesn't pass any kind of a smell test for what would be legal for any other person except for this particular president, but it is a scale of corruption and the hollowing out of any notion. You know, right? Like, how can we ever talk to anyone else in the world about the rule of law and financial transparency?