The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Trump's graft in the Gulf States and Bibi's war drags on

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. On this week's Friday Focus episode Janice joins Rudyard from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where Trump made his first state visit since taking office in January. Trump's next stop was to Qatar which came with news of a gift to the President from the small oil rich country: a $400 million dollar private jet for Air Force One, which comes on the heels of Eric Trump's $5.5 billion dollar development deal with Qatar (this is the same country that has been funding Hamas to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars). Next up on Trump's tour was the United Arab Emirates, which announced it will be using up to $2 billion in Trump's meme coin to fund a crypto exchange. The graft and bribery on display is like nothing we have witnessed before. As Janice points out, this is how Kleptocracies are born. In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice turn to Israel and the release this week of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander. Janice believes Netanyahu is dragging on the war in Gaza to serve his own political interests even though 75% of Israelis want the war to end. It is becoming apparent that Donald Trump and Steve Witkoff are losing patience with Bibi and in the next few weeks we could see them force Netanyahu's hand to agree to a ceasefire.  To support the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus edition for the 16th of May 2025. I'm Roger Griffith's chair of the monk debates. I'm joined by Janice Gross Stein, my co-host coming to us where all the action's been this week. That's Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Janice, a real pleasure to pick up with you our conversation about geopolitics from a proverbial epicenter the last seven days. Donald Trump has taken over the airwaves.

Rudyard, all you see on television here, are picked. of the president and the crown prince surrounded, I have to say, by gold. And when the gold stops, there are mammoth crystal chandeliers. And you can literally see Donald Trump enjoying the bling, aside from any geopolitics here. Well, talking about bling, I've got a number of really generous donors to the monk debates this week to thank. So a big monk thank you to Jonathan K for joining as a monk curator and getting those guaranteed seats at each and every monk debate as is a benefit of our curator membership. And also some terrific supporters, Michael B, Glenn S., Mary T. and Catherine S. and Lori O.

Thank you all for coming aboard as monk supporters. And again, becoming a member of the monk debates is a charitable donation. We are a registered charity here in Canada, and we greatly appreciate your philanthropic support. Well, Janice, let's jump into the Middle East because it's been a busy week in the part of the world where you're talking to us from. Let's begin with just the optics of this, a presidential visit to the Gulf region, but not Israel. Israel has been passed over, despite the war in Gaza, seemingly. on the verge of ratcheting up to another level. And the good news this week, obviously,

that one more hostage was released by Hamas, an American Israeli citizen. You're right, Roger, that Israel has been on the silence of this visit. But when you look at the content, you'd see a widening gap between Donald Trump and the Danielle in his recorded conversation with the, Crown Prince. He talked about the Abraham Accords, and there was real hope two years ago that Saudi Arabia and Israel would normalize relations in exchange for American guarantees and access to civilian

nuclear technology. But Donald Trump added this time, they'll do that in their own time. In other words, pressure off Saudi Arabia to proceed. And throughout this trip to the Middle East, he has said over and over, I want this war in Gaza to end. There is clearly a rift now between the president and the prime minister. The president went out of his way to say on Wednesday that no, no, no, no, no, this trip was not sidelining Israel, but optics know the story here. One of the key things that's come out on this trip

is that a request that Saudi Arabia normalized relations with Israel, i.e. establish diplomatic and trade relations with the state of Israel as a precondition of an American defense and security pact has effectively been taken off the table. Talk to us just about,

how potentially, yeah, significant that is, both to the cause of peace in the region. And now the extent to which Saudi Arabia seems to once again enjoy a kind of BFF-style relationship with the United States through this president who is giving them exactly what they want without really asking very much in the way of anything in return. to talk about Saudi Arabia first and then about the growing rift. The visit was really interesting. Two key things. One was a commitment by Saudi Arabia to invest up to a trillion dollars in the U.S. economy over the next several years,

contingent on them getting a supply of advanced invidia chips. So the Saudis did get something they really want. If you just think about this, Nvidia chips, which are make the most advanced power, the latest generation of Aon models, probably more valuable than oil or gold in this world. They're the most valuable commodity for any country trying to move ahead. And that is MBS.

He has a 2030 vision. And in the time that I spent in Saudi Arabia this week, it is really stunning to see the drive in the energy that Saudi officials are putting behind this. The role that women are playing, which is not the image that we have, this is a country, frankly, hell-bent on transforming its economy. So those chips really matter. But let's take apart this story for a minute. The annual GDP of Saudi Arabia is a trillion dollars. It seems like a big, yeah, ask, frankly. And secondly, Saudi Arabia will come right up very quickly

against export controls on advanced chips. Both present, we both at the Crown Prince and President and overlook those little details when they made the big, fleshy announcement. That's sweet. But looked again at the body language. Look at that picture. These are BFFs. And the crown prince of Saudi Arabia is the driver of politics in the region.

There's no question. Yeah. And we'll have to see. You know, there's always one of the symptoms. Maybe it's a disease. related to trade-related trips is that there's all these announcements, and then what actually is signed, what actually comes to fruition? Maybe the Saudis will hold back unless they get those chips.

And more importantly, a defense pact that allows the transfer of nuclear technology, nuclear reactor technology from the United States to Saudi that many people say could be a pathway for Saudi Arabia to engage in its own nuclear weapon program. Again, this technology, once you have it, it's hard to put it back in the box when you've got it on your domestic soil. I want to talk a little bit about the other aspects of this visit to not just Saudi Arabia, but Qatar, and a series of stories that have, I think, really kind of shocked observers here at not simply the blurring of a line between the president's interests and, you know, national interest, but in a sense, their complete erasure. We have a $400 million private jet that the Qatari government is offering to the United States as a new Air Force one that would then be signed over to the president's foundation for, I presume, his personal use after he leaves the presidency.

Indeed, we'll see if he leaves in 2028. That's a promising sign render, isn't it? Yeah, maybe. Maybe that's the icing on an otherwise pretty ugly moment. Next, we have Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump, clearly an international businessman of great reputation. He signed a $5.5 billion golf development deal in Qatar. And we also have an announcement by UAE that they will be using up to $2 billion of the Trump meme coin. This is the cryptocurrency that Donald Trump and his family created in the days leading up to his presidency to,

fund a crypto exchange and acquisition on behalf of the UAE. I don't know, Janice, I put this all together and look, we can we can tis tis and tut tut, but I just think we have to say what this is. It's gross. It is a president who is conspicuously and obviously enriching himself at the expense of an American policy on defense and security and foreign affairs that would represent the interests of Americans, as opposed to the interests of the Trump family? It's more than gross, right? This is how kleptocracies behave.

You know, when you think about that plane, it's a really, such an interesting story in so many ways. Air Force One has not been replaced in 25 years now. What's that, all right? And what's wrong, again? this is the the Ezra Klein argument. We don't get anything done anymore.

And he shows up in Qatar. And this, I saw Air Force One at the rear at airport because it was parked just at the end when my flight came in. And it's an older plane. And then this dazzling plane from Qatar, which is a personal gift to him. It's not a gift to the United States. It's a gift to him, which is you said he keeps for his personal use.

And in the Emirates, this is a, you know, this is a business. I don't think much of the business, but that's irrelevant, but it's a business that the Emirates are investing in. So you are seeing, frankly, what we might call bribery in simple English. an exchange of large, large, large amounts of money where it is no longer possible to separate out the interests of Donald Trump's family from the interests of the United States. There are always issues of corruption at the margin, but we've never, ever seen anything like this, frankly. Yeah, and the audacity of the president to refer to the former president's family as a crime syndicate. when we have, you know, this kind of rank graft going on.

And again, Jen, it's not not alighting any of this. I think what's so kind of shocking about it is just how out in the open it all is, how it suggests that this president believes that his Republican-controlled Congress has no ability, no interest, no willingness to kind of rein in what is what's clearly a fire sale of American interests for personal gain. I note that Qatar that is providing both the $5.5 billion golf course development to his son Eric and the half a billion dollar jet to the president personally is the same entity that's provided hundreds of millions, possibly a billion dollars or more, in funding to Hamas over the last decade, that has been funding many of the protests on American

campuses that were anti-Semitic in nature, and that ironically and maybe tragically has now led to the subsequent arrest of some of these students unfairly and unjustly by the Trump administration on the basis of protests that the Qataris had a key role in, and yet the president is allowed to take, he and his family, billions of dollars from the Qataris, but students who write an op-ed in a student paper are detained and their basic rights taken from them. I don't know, Janice. I think you're right. I think we are not contemplating not simply oligarchy, but, you know, the obvious in-your-face outlines of an American-style authoritarianism.

You know, there's a common theme in what you're saying, both ends of this story, the arrest of Palestinians. And what was the woman who was a Palestinian woman arrested for? For writing an op-at, right? Which, let's just call it what it is. This is an arrest because she expressed her opinion in a country where the right to freedom of speech is guaranteed. And it took weeks for a federal court judge to remove her from jail. At the same time as Donald Trump, and why is this, let me ask the question this way,

why is this level of kleptocratic behavior allowed to continue? How does Donald Trump do this so boldly so openly? He doesn't bother to cover anything up. Well, he has a compliant Republican majority. But more than that, he's intimidated the Department of Justice, Roger. Well, he owns the Department of Justice. Pam Bondi, his attorney general, wrote a memo, preposterous memo, justifying the acquisition of this jet and the transfer of it to his future presidential foundation,

where we know who's going to be using the jet if it's an asset of his personal presidential foundation. Exactly. And so his attorney general makes it legal. He's appointed his personal attorneys to senior positions in the Department of Justice and Doche intervened and fired anybody that he thought had any part in prior investigations. Now, if you were working in the Department of Justice, would you put your hand up now and launch an investigation? I don't think so.

No. So we were seeing, in a fact, to call it out for what a... is a collapse in the rule of law. Yeah. And let's, I mean, wouldn't you think, Janice, that after he's spent a week kind of traipsing around the, the authoritarian regimes of the Gulf states, he's going to come back to America saying, why, you know, why am I not similarly adorned with these types of powers? Why am I, you know, not in a sense a monarch, a king who, like MBS, enjoys unfettered, you know, power and authority through my, you know, through my government and de facto through much of my society. I worry, Janice, that, you know, this is a man as much

guided by impulses and desires than anything else. And I would think a weak kind of immersed in tocracy might not be the best psychological environment for this president, you know, as he returns to the United States, you know, to govern a once great republic. I, you may be right, but I don't think he needed the trip to the Gulf to reinforce those authoritarian impulse. And here's the irony in the Gulf. Most, you know, most visibly in the Emirates where I was before, this is a society where there is a growing sense of a freedom of.

to speak out. The changes are really remarkable, even in the last five years. Saudi Arabia, when I landed at the airport, women, women, working at the airport in the visibly, openly in the immigration departments. So, yes, the rule is the authoritarian in the Gulf, but those societies are in their different ways, and they're very dissimilar, moving forward, in some very very very, important ways. Hard to say that.

In the United States, this president is moving backwards. Look, I will laud the ability of women to exercise very simple rights, like driving a car and being out of the public without being chaperoned by your male spouse or relatives. But I would remind viewers that these countries, Saudi Arabia, most notably, regularly executes and kills, gays, lesbians, and other people who they consider abnormal and abhorrent. This is a king in MBS who, I think, all evidence points to, murdered a Washington Post columnist in Istanbul under his direction with his security services providing that killing of a journal.

I mean, so I don't want to get into debate about this. because I know some of our audience gets a little bit touchy when we debate, but I do think we can acknowledge the progress, but we have to hold these countries to account for their human rights abuses and the extent to which they still massively suppress free and open public debate and political participation in the best traditions of our societies. Look, I agree with you about that, Relyer, but I do want to say things are really black and white, They're great.

It wasn't, it isn't only that women can drive and go outside without being chaperone. That's really, even to me, the changes here have been so fast. I was spending a lot of time with the AI community over the last week. That was one of the reasons I went. And presentations were led by women. This is a highly technical scientific area. There were men in the room. It was just thinking about today.

There was a senior man in the room. He turned the meeting over to a woman who led the conversation. That's not tokenism anymore. That's something much deeper. And it's simply encouraging to see. Right. Let's just hope all the many people that wrote tweets that the king didn't like and are now indefinitely incarcerated in jails in that country are allowed out

and can exercise their freedom. There is a hard point. You know, I'm not too keen about visiting countries like Cuba either. So I guess that's, you know, a choice for all of us as to, you know, where we go, what we do. And, you know, countries like Canada, who we decide to let into the community of nations to be treated as equals. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast to get full-length editions of each and every episode of this program. Simply go to our website. Triple-W the monk debates.com. Click on the Friday Focus tab in our navigation on the top right of the site.

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