Trump’s Foreign Business Partners Are Showcasing Their Access to the President and His Rich Pals
Then President-elect Donald Trump listens as his Dubai business partner Hussain Sajwani, speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, on Jan. 7.AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Donald Trump’s inauguration was a bacchanal of wealth and power attended by the first, second, third, fifth, and seventh richest men on the planet. And the celebration displayed Trump’s uncomfortable mingling of his business and political empires, for among the VIPs rubbing shoulders with Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sergey Brin were a cadre of Trump’s foreign business partners who have paid Trump millions to use his name and, once again, the reputation of the American presidency to make money at their properties around the globe.
His business partners and their families—some of whom attended his first inauguration—eagerly showcased their access on social media, and their role in Trump’s inaugural festivities highlighted the thicket of conflicts of interest we can expect from Trump’s second Oval Office stint.
Last week, Hary Tanoesoedibjo, an Indonesian magnate and politician who has built two luxury golf courses with Trump in that country (and bought a mansion from Trump in Los Angeles), flew to Florida with his family and mingled with the Trump family at one of their Florida resorts.
The Tanoesoedibjos got souvenirs signed and chatted with the president. They also got to meet New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who is facing charges he took bribes and solicited illegal donations from foreign business interests, but who Trump has suggested he might pardon.
During the first Trump administration, Tanoesoedibjo touted his level of access to the U.S. president.
“If other people have difficulty getting to him, I can do it easily,” he bragged.
On Saturday night, the Tanoesoedibjo family— Hary, his wife Liliana and two of their adult children—attended a posh pre-inaugural celebration at Trump’s Virginia golf course, where they mingled with other global elites and wealthy Trump supporters. In addition to being singled out by Trump for a handshake, Tanoesoedibjo posed for souvenir photos with Mukesh Ambani—the wealthiest man in Asia, estimated to be worth $119 billion, who lives in a 27-story mansion in Mumbai—and Masayoshi Son, a Japanese tycoon who runs Softbank.
The Tanoesoedibjo family documented their trip in Instagram posts, showing they spent time at the former Trump hotel in downtown Washington (now a Hilton-run Waldorf-Astoria) and turned up at the Starlight Ball, an official inaugural celebration designated for big-spending Trump donors. According to reports, donors had to contribute a minimum of $250,000 in order to receive two tickets. But based on a photo posted by Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s youngest child, Warren, showing off their entry passes, the family’s access was thanks to Eric Trump.
The photo also suggests that if not for the last-minute decision to move the inauguration indoors, the Tanoesoedibjos would have had even more access. Warren’s stack of access passes included entry to the west front of the Capitol for an outdoor ceremony and prime inaugural parade viewing spots. In 2017, Liliana Tanoesoedibjo posted a video to Instagram showing the couple riding down the Inaugural parade route, passing crowds lined up waiting for Trump to follow.
Hussain Sajwani, a billionaire from Dubai who has built several projects with Trump, also enjoyed VIP access over inaugural weekend. Sajwani, who Trump recently touted for his promise to invest $20 billion in US data centers, turned up at the Saturday mixer for elites at the Trump golf course in Virginia, where he posed for a picture with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
In 2017, just days before his inauguration, Trump said that he had turned down a $2 billion dollar offer from Sajwani to expand their partnership before taking office. This year, during his Sunday night pre-inaugural rally, Trump called out Sajwani’s company, DAMAC, by name, as an example of how he was already attracting new business to the United States.
Sajwani rounded out the weekend at the Starlight Ball, where he and his son, Abbas, posed with Google founder Sergey Brin.
Zaid El Chaar, the CEO of a Saudi real estate development company that has signed a deal with Trump to build Trump-branded properties in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, also attended the inaugural festivities—snagging a luxury box for the pre-inaugural rally—and enjoying the Starlight Ball, where he posted a photo of with Larry Glick, the executive vice-president of development at the Trump Organization. He captioned the photo, in an unintentional nod to the tangled worlds of Trump’s business and political interests: “The power behind the power.”