Countries have gotten results after enriching the Trumps. Could Canada do the same?
CBC
Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Corina Machado was the latest foreign leader to enter the Oval Office with a golden gift on Thursday.
U.S. President Donald Trump was happy to take her Nobel Peace Prize, and even though it's not clear she'll receive anything in return, Machado had reason to believe that presents are more persuasive than arguments when dealing with Trump. Her tribute was just one example this week of the trend to lard the White House with foreign emoluments.
The government of Pakistan signed a deal on Wednesday with crypto company SC Financial Technologies to explore using a stablecoin called USD1.
SC's CEO is Zachary Witkoff, son of Trump's Mideast and Russia envoy, New York realtor Steve Witkoff. The stablecoin was created by World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm co-founded by Witkoff, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump.
It echoes a similar tactic followed by the United Arab Emirates.
In April 2025, a U.A.E. state-owned fund used $2 billion US of World Liberty cryptocurrency to invest in Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. Within weeks, the U.S. reversed its ban on sale of advanced AI-suitable chips to the U.A.E., making it possible for U.A.E. to launch the world's largest non-U.S. AI project.
Later in the year, Canadian Binance founder Changpeng Zhao received a presidential pardon for financial crimes, following a meeting with Zach Witkoff in Abu Dhabi.
Foreign governments and corporations have found many ways to give money directly to the Trumps and a handful of New York families connected to Trump since his real estate days: the Witkoffs, the Kushners and the Lutnicks.
And crypto presents a clear, hard to trace method for enriching the Trump and Witkoff families.
"Trump is by far the most visibly corrupt president the U.S. has known," said Kim Lane Scheppele, a sociology and international affairs professor at Princeton University.
"He doesn't even try to hide that he's making himself immensely rich by monetizing his office," Scheppele told CBC News. "Estimates of his wealth have skyrocketed since he took office."
Forbes found that Trump had earned $3 billion US in the first eight months of his term by "leveraging the presidency for profit."
The crude methods foreign governments used during his first term, such as block-booking rooms at Trump hotels, have given way to far more lucrative arrangements around crypto and licensing.
"I'm sure that we don't know the extent of foreign government access and influence with this White House since much of it occurs outside the glare of the spotlight," said Scheppele.
The U.S. attack on Venezuela has shifted the ground for guerrilla groups operating across the country's borderlands with Colombia, raising fears of possible betrayal by Venezuelan regime officials, while opening the door to a wider conflict should U.S. boots ever hit the ground, local security experts say.
Protests sweeping across Iran neared the two-week mark on Saturday, with the country’s government acknowledging the ongoing demonstrations despite an intensifying crackdown and as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world.
Russia didn’t just use a hypersonic missile to target a site in western Ukraine near the border with Poland, in the European Union, but high ranking officials then went on to boast about the power of the nuclear-capable weapon, in what some saw as a clear warning to the West.
The official White House narrative of how a U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed a U.S. citizen in her vehicle in Minneapolis is bumping hard up against what can be seen in videos of the incident.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed a Minneapolis motorist on Wednesday during the Trump administration's latest immigration crackdown on a major American city — a shooting that federal officials claimed was an act of self-defence but that the city's mayor described as "reckless" and unnecessary.
When Marco Rubio took the lectern at Mar-a-Lago shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the country had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, it was the culmination of a decade of effort from the secretary of state and a clear sign that he had emerged as a leading voice within the Trump administration.
The catchphrase going into Tuesday's coalition of the willing meeting on Ukraine in Paris appears to be: expect the unexpected.
Deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro pleaded not guilty on terrorism and drug-trafficking charges during his first appearance in a New York court on Monday.
The leaders of Denmark and Greenland on Sunday urged U.S. President Donald Trump to stop threatening to take over Greenland, after he reiterated his wish to do so in an interview with The Atlantic magazine.
Venezuela's toppled leader, Nicolás Maduro, was in a New York detention centre on Sunday awaiting drug charges after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an audacious raid to capture him, saying the United States would take control of the oil-producing nation.
The United States hit Venezuela with a “large-scale strike” early Saturday and said its president, Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, had been captured and flown out of the country after months of stepped-up pressure by Washington — an extraordinary nighttime operation announced by President Donald Trump on social media hours after the attack.
The United Arab Emirates said early Saturday it had withdrawn all its troops from Yemen after escalating tensions in the war-torn country that pitted the UAE against fellow Gulf powerhouse Saudi Arabia.
Investigators on Friday set about the painful task of identifying the burned bodies of a blaze that engulfed a crowded bar and killed around 40 people at a New Year's Eve party in the upscale Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana.