Breaking: The Link Between Eric Trump, the Chinese Communist Party and Middle-Eastern Intelligence
As the president's son visits China with his father, lawmakers fail to ask difficult questions about his ties
Back when I used to co-anchor a Fox News panel show called Outnumbered, we hosted Eric Trump in advance of the 2016 election. The appearance made news because the middle Trump son claimed on air that his father had “gone from practically nothing to a man who’s just —”
I cut him off mid-sentence and literally laughed in his face. (I can only imagine how much this must have ingratiated me to management.)
“Nothing?” I scoffed. “He got a million bucks [from his own father]. Come on, Eric.”
But Eric Trump was not deterred. He said that his father “epitomized what America’s all about. Opportunity and working hard and being able to achieve your dreams and what you want to succeed, right?” He likened him to Mark Zuckerberg, who decidedly did not inherit millions of dollars or Facebook from his father. In Eric Trump’s telling, Donald Trump was an entirely self-made man.
I have thought a lot about this conversation in the last several days, as Eric Trump has accompanied his father, the president of the United States, to China. Based on my exchange with him all those years ago, it stands to reason that he likely believes he landed on the manifest entirely on merit, just as his father miraculously became successful without any help from his own father.
But despite Trump family lore, Eric Trump’s presence in China should not be treated as a footnote. It should be treated as an ethical and national security scandal.
Eric Trump is accompanying his father on a state visit to Beijing while a company linked to the Trump family’s crypto interests is pursuing a deal with a Chinese chipmaker. That company, Alt5 Sigma, recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Nano Labs, a Hangzhou-based company, to explore AI-related ventures, including building American-based data centers, cloud AI platforms and AI-native payments.
Eric Trump holds an observer position on Alt5’s board and the company is chaired by Zach Witkoff, the son of Steve Witkoff and a partner in World Liberty Financial, the Trump crypto venture. Another Alt5 board member, Zachary Folkman, is also a World Liberty co-founder. World Liberty Financial is the lead investor in a $750 million portion of Alt5’s $1.5 billion share offering, while Alt5 holds roughly 7.3 billion WLFI tokens on its balance sheet at a stated value of $1.05 billion. (Alt5 is now rebranding as AI Financial Corporation.)
That is not a minor coincidence. It is a collision of public power and private interest — much of it related to China — that stands to massively enrich the family of the president of the United States.
This scandal involves foreign intelligence assets, Chinese influence, and Middle Eastern money. It should be leading nightly newscasts and the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. Instead, it has been buried under a mountain of other China-summit coverage, despite its explosive tentacles.