As President Donald Trump saber-rattles and threatens military incursions around the world, his sons are trying to cash in on the war economy.
Donald Trump Jr.’s investments in military manufacturers, including companies that develop drones and have been given large contracts from his father’s administration, have previously been reported on. And a new report in The Wall Street Journal, focused on Eric Trump, offers an even clearer window into the family’s shameless self-enrichment.
Specifically, the Journal reported that Eric Trump is investing in an Israeli drone company that has developed weapons used against Palestinians in Israel’s deadly yearslong bombardment of Gaza.
The president’s son is investing in the Israeli drone maker Xtend as part of a $1.5 billion deal to take the company public through a merger with a small Florida construction company.
Battle-tested during Israeli operations in Gaza in recent years, Xtend markets some of its drones as “low cost per kill” munitions that align with U.S. defense directives to help wage modern warfare. The company, which opened a facility in Florida, said it has already secured a multimillion-dollar Pentagon contract and is part of a continuing Defense Department competition for new suppliers.
The Journal reported that Donald Trump Jr. is involved in the deal as well, because a drone company he invests in is investing in Xtend. So this truly is a family affair.
The Journal also noted that the Defense Department recently named Xtend as one of the companies invited to participate in the Pentagon’s push to buy up to more than $1 billion in drones.
As the administration openly flirts with the idea of opening a war with Iran, the Trump family’s self-enrichment now includes investments in military weapons, a cryptocurrency venture with foreign investors and the president’s personal push for the federal government to potentially pay him billions over his false claims of political targeting. (The White House has repeatedly defended such deals, saying that “there are no conflicts of interest.”)
For their part, the president’s sons have offered a bunch of mealy-mouthed answers when asked about the obvious conflicts of interest. A prime example of this came Wednesday, when they were both asked during a CNBC interview about a recent report from the Journal that a royal from Abu Dhabi, known as the “spy sheikh,” had purchased a massive stake in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency firm just before the president’s inauguration last year.
Notably, neither of them outright denied the existence of a conflict of interest in that or any of their business dealings. Instead, they rattled on with demonstrably false claims that their family has been politically targeted by financial institutions.
“We’ve been dealing with the conflict of interest stuff for years. … Frankly, it’s gotten old,” Donald Trump Jr. said. At another point in the interview, Eric Trump responded to accusations that people have sought to curry favor with his father with what was essentially an admission veiled in victimhood. “The great irony is they didn’t give us much of a choice,” Eric Trump said, to which his brother chimed in: “They created this monster.” As false as the claims of targeting are, Donald Trump Jr. and I agree about one thing: the monstrosity of this self-enriching behavior.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
