Why the Hell Is Trump Taking His Son Eric on an Official State Visit?
Don’t hold your breath for an impeachment hearing. Eric Trump and his wife, Lara, are scheduled to accompany Donald Trump on a state trip to China next month, Kimberly Benza, a spokesperson for the Trump organization, told Reuters Tuesday. Two sources told Reuters that Eric and other members of the Trump family planned to work on business relations between the U.S. and China, but Benza insisted that Eric was attending the trip in a “personal capacity.”“He does not have business ventures in China nor plans on doing business in China. He will not be participating in private meetings, but will instead stand alongside the President to mark this historic occasion,” Benza said. Donald Trump has previously alleged that Hunter Biden made a fortune from business dealings in Ukraine and China thanks to his father’s connections. Now it appears that the president is setting his own children up to do just that. This is the kind of thing that should raise alarm bells in Washington but probably won’t. Eric serves as executive vice president of development for the Trump Organization, which does not currently have any upcoming real estate projects in China. But during Trump’s last term, China and its state-owned entities paid a whopping $5.5 million at properties owned by the president’s family—far more than any other country.Eric and his brother Don Jr. co-founded World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance platform that has attracted the financial interest of foreign investors who then benefited from Trump’s policy changes. Eric and Don Jr. recently merged their publicly traded golf course holding company with Powerus, a Florida-based drone company, with the goal of filling the gaps left by the Trump administration’s ban on Chinese drones, another blatant move to profit off their father’s policy changes. In October, Donald Trump and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto were caught on a hot mic discussing plans to set up a meeting between “good boy” Eric, the foreign leader, and another potential business associate. In February, speaking from his father’s gilded ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, Eric didn’t bother to push back on claims that the brothers had financially benefited from their father’s office.