The Dictatorship
Spencer Pratt is looking at the MAGA in the mirror
Spencer Pratt doesn’t approve of all the Trump comparisons.
The former reality TV star gets them a lot these days. He’s a celebrity — best known for his breakout role on MTV’s “The Hills” two decades ago — who is now running for mayor of Los Angeles. He doesn’t have much experience in politics or city government, but he comes with an A-list Rolodex and a built-in fanbase that includes more than five million followers across X, Meta and TikTok. He’s bombastic, confident and has a habit of rambling his way through speeches that veer into conspiracy theory. And, by his own admission, he has harbored an absurd, borderline toxic obsession with money since he was a teen.
Pratt, 42, is a registered Republican, but rejects the notion that he is aligned with MAGA or following in Trump’s footsteps. In February, while gathering signatures at an early campaign event on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, he joined the livestream of celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton to give his elevator pitch to be mayor. When Hilton asked about claims he’s a MAGA candidate, Pratt pushed back.
“I’m not a political person — I’m somebody with basic expectations of our tax money and our quality of living,” he told Hilton.
Pratt’s primary motivation for the career pivot, he said, stemmed from the Palisades fire that ravaged his neighborhood last January, destroying his family home and killing a dozen of his neighbors. He blames Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom for the devastation, which he believes was preventable were it not for the “corruption” in city government.
Talking about the fires on Hilton’s show, Pratt began to ramble, meandering through allegations of deceit and misconduct at the hands of a mysterious “they” who he said were misappropriating fire recovery funds and purposefully “increasing homelessness” in LA to defraud taxpayers.
This election, Pratt said, is a matter of good versus “evil,” and he’s waging “spiritual warfare” on behalf of his future constituents, who, in Pratt’s telling, have fairly simple requests.
“They just want to go on TikTok, have their Wi-Fi working, and be able to not step in human poop or a fentanyl needle on the walk to get their matcha. That’s who I represent,” he said.
As a Republican in a deep-blue city, Pratt was a longshot candidate on day one of his campaign. He’s also a career entertainer with no experience running for office, let alone running a city of 3.8 million people. And he has earned support from MAGA loyalists, establishment Republicans and even Trump himself, making him a tough sell in a city and state the president casts as a leftist “trash heap.” Pratt, too, seems to prioritize sparring with his political opponents and railing against quality-of-life issues on social media over laying out detailed policy plans for voters.
But Trump’s formula for politicking, while radical, has been successful for him. And whether Pratt is intentionally following that formula or not, his celebrity and social media savvy are giving him real momentum in the race. Several polls have him in second place behind Bass; an Emerson College poll from May 13 put him at 22%, a 12-point surge from March that leaves him eight points behind the incumbent.
And this week, his growing success drew the attention of the president.
“I’d like to see him do well,” Trump told reporters. “I heard he’s a big MAGA person.”
Pratt is a bellwether of sorts for the national Trump-era GOP. His success or failure on June 2 — or, if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, in a November runoff — will test the effectiveness of running a Trump-like populist candidate in a deep-blue jurisdiction where Democratic voters are wavering on the party establishment. Democrats face a litmus test as well, with Democratic Socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman running to the left of Bass, her former mentor. Pratt seeks to position himself between them as a moderate alternative to both.
To Pratt’s supporters, he’s a “breath of fresh air” who could shake the city from the Democrats’ grip, as Roxanne Hoge, chair of the LA County GOP, put it.
“We’ve been under one-party rule,” Hoge told MS NOW. “And it has destroyed what should be paradise.”
To critics, Pratt’s mayoral campaign is more evidence of MAGA’s ineptitude. The movement’s backing of Pratt “means that they are not a serious governing party, and it means that there’s no desire to even attempt to be,” said Mike Madrid, a California-based Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project.
But to Pratt, all the MAGA talk is a distraction campaign mounted by his opponents.
“They say I’m MAGA to try to stop me,” Pratt told Hilton, “because my message exposes their corruption.”
Pratt’s team declined multiple interview requests from MS NOW, and did not respond to specific allegations mentioned in this story.
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Pratt’s early daysleading up to and during his time on “The Hills,” were marked by a relentless fixation with money — amassing it however he could, and then throwing it away as soon as it arrived.
In his book, “The Guy You Loved to Hate: Confessions from a Reality TV Villain,” published in January, Pratt details the lying and hustling that brought him celebrity and wealth, and the lavish spending that followed.
Pratt grew up in the Pacific Palisades, a wealthy residential enclave of about 20,000 people sandwiched between Santa Monica and Malibu. As a teenager going to school alongside celebrities, Pratt said he stole photos of his friend with Mary-Kate Olsen and sold them to Us Weekly for $50,000. (The magazine’s then-photo editor, Peter Grossman, whom Pratt said he sold the photos to, did not respond to MS NOW’s multiple requests for comment.)
Pratt’s obsession with get-rich-quick schemes only grew after he joined the cast of “The Hills” in 2007. The MTV show, which premiered the year before, chronicled the personal dramas of a group of 20-somethings trying to build careers in fashion and entertainment in LA.
Pratt quickly assumed the role of the show’s villainover his propensity to bully other cast members, particularly women. That version of Pratt was a persona, he maintains, handcrafted by producers. The volatility of his on-camera relationship with fellow cast member — and now wife — Heidi Montag was also fake, he writes. Pratt was Montag’s bad boyfriend on the show, who fought with her family, isolated her from her friends and famously kicked her out of his car when she refused to move in with him — a scene he said producers forced them to film a dozen times, and one that he writes “still haunts me to this day.” (Several of the show’s former producers, including executive producer Adam DiVello, did not respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment.)
Fighting and breaking up proved lucrative for the couple, as did reuniting. Pratt said in 2008, he and Montag eloped to Mexico on the promise of a $400,000 paycheck from Us Weekly, all behind the backs of the show’s producers — a move they believed would make them too relevant to be fired. They staged another on-camera church wedding in LA the following year. Pratt said he considered leaving Montag at the altar if producers would offer them an extra $1 million.
The plot kept working, so they kept staging fake storylines to secure magazine deals. The whole time, Pratt writes, “the public saw chaos, betrayal, and divorce papers. But behind the scenes? Heidi and I were still thick as thieves, scheming side by side, laughing at how easy it was to keep the world guessing and the checks coming in.”
And once the money started rolling in, they blew right through it.
They amassed, in Pratt’s telling, more than $1 million worth of crystals; $500,000 worth of Hermes Birkin bags for Montag; designer suits for Pratt worth “about the same”; and $300,000 worth of guns and ammunition, purchased as they became increasingly paranoid about their safety. At one point, during the penultimate season of “The Hills,” the couple’s finances were in such dire straits that they had to move back in with his parents.
“Ever since I’d met Heidi, every dollar that came in, we’d spent right away,” Pratt writes. “That’s just how we rolled. No savings account, no backup plan, just direct deposit and vibes. Because what’s money, really? Just energy moving in and out of your life.”
Pratt’s laissez-faire approach to spending doesn’t seem to raise red flags with his local political supporters. Ariana Assenmacher, vice president of political engagement for the LA County Young Republicans, told MS NOW she sees Pratt’s admissions as proof he is “willing to admit his mistakes, and hopefully learn from them.”
She added that she has faith the city government’s “checks and balances” — including a Democrat-run city council — would help control his spending.
But some Angelenos who were on the fence about voting for Pratt told MS NOW that his financial admissions didn’t inspire confidence in his ability to manage the city’s $14 billion budget.
“Would that make me apprehensive to vote for him? Absolutely,” said Rob Jernigan, a Palisades resident and fire recovery activist, in March after hearing passages from the book read by MS NOW.
By May, though, Jernigan said he was resigned to voting for Pratt. He believed his preferred pick in a crowded field of more than a dozen candidates, tech entrepreneur Adam Miller, didn’t stand a chance.
“He’s not great,” Jernigan said of Pratt. But “compared to Karen Bass and Nithya Raman,” he added, “are you kidding me?”
***
The Palisades fire destroyed more than 6,800 structures, including both Pratt’s and his parents’ homes, and killed a dozen people in the neighborhood, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Pratt was grief-stricken in the weeks and months that followed. On social media, he posted videos of himself sifting through the rubble of his former home, where he and Montag were raising their two sons, pulling out crystals that survived the blaze.
He directed his anger at Bass and other city officials for what he described as a series of failures to prepare for and respond to the blazes. Bass was in Ghana at the time of the fires, and city officials kept a reservoir near the Palisades dry for y ears, despite the fact that it was intended to help mitigate a deadly fire — a fact that Newsom later called “deeply troubling.”
But Pratt has focused the majority of his attention and ire on a disproven theory surrounding the disbursement of $100 million in recovery funds raised through a pair of concerts in LA last year, organized by the Annenberg Foundation, a private family organization. In July, Pratt platformed allegations by a local blogger, who claimed the funds were being misspent by FireAid, the entity charged with disbursing them, by going to nonprofits rather than individual victims. Within days, Trump posted about it on Truth Social, alleging FireAid “LOOKS LIKE ANOTHER DEMOCRAT INSPIRED SCAM,” and Rep. Kevin Kiley, I-Calif., called for a federal investigation on the House floor. Within weeks, Pratt was in DC, having meetings at the Justice Department.
Pratt’s claims were soon undermined. Separate investigations by the Los Angeles Times and a law firm commissioned by FireAid found that while some of the money did go to nonprofits, none of the funds were misappropriated. Instead, some grants provided direct assistance to victims through cash vouchers and gift card for groceries, while others supported more long-term recovery.
But conspiracy theories have a way of outlasting the facts. Pratt has continued repeating the unsubstantiated claim that the FireAid relief effort was a “scam,” including in his book and during an interview with Joe Rogan last month, which has more than one million views. The fantastical theory left Pratt feeling, he told Rogan, like public funding “doesn’t go to solving anything or fixing it. It goes to scams.”
This isn’t the first time Pratt has dipped his toe in the conspiratorial waters, as he admits in his book.
“I come from a long line of so-called conspiracy theorists who turned out to be dead-on accurate because it’s only a conspiracy theory until it becomes breaking news,” Pratt writes. “Then, suddenly, everyone’s acting like they saw it coming all along…”
In 2009, he and Montag appeared on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ now-moribund podcast to discuss their “recent awakening” after watching Jones’ new film, “The Obama Deception,” which claimed without evidence that former President Barack Obama had been installed as a puppet president by shadowy actors to facilitate a totalitarian regime.
“I really do feel like we took the blue pill or whatever in Matrix,” Pratt told Jones at the time. “And I feel like you really did pull that little mechanical thing out of the back of my brain.”
Pratt kept taking the Matrix pills. Among the beliefs he shared with Jones were that 9/11 was “100%” an inside job; that global warming isn’t real (“We’ve all seen footage of the polar bears swimming to new pieces of ice,” Pratt said); and that fluoridated water is a government poison (“Do you know how hard it is for me to go to the market and even find a drinking water bottle that says ‘fluoride free’?” Pratt asked).
Eight years later, the couple again joined Jones and revealed that they had gone deeper down the conspiratorial rabbit hole. They said that their belief in the “New World Order” — a sprawling Cold War-era theory alleging that global elites are behind pandemics, terrorist attacks and other crises — had tanked their Hollywood careers.
***
Pratt may be coy about his party affiliation and ties to the Trump-era GOP, but Republicans are nevertheless claiming him as one of their own.
Fox News host and former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany called him a “phenomenal model” for the party’s midterm candidates on air earlier this month.
“Wake up, congressional Republicans. Become Spencer Pratt,” McEnany said the day after Pratt’s first mayoral debate.
Assenmacher, from the LA County Young Republicans, sees Pratt as “the future.”
“We want imperfect people to step up and lead us in the right direction,” she told MS NOW.
Pratt is a flawed candidate. In addition to his track record of poor money management and belief in conspiracy theories, Pratt has been caught stretching the truth during his campaign. Pratt said he lived in an Airstream trailer on his burned-out lot in the Palisades, while reports said he was actually staying at the Hotel Bel-Air, where rooms go for at least $1,500 a night. (Pratt later told TMZ“I don’t live anywhere” — despite a viral campaign video in which he claimed to live in the trailer — and said his security team would not let him sleep in his Airstream due to death threats.)
MS NOW’s review of Pratt’s campaign finance records turned up other discrepancies. Despite Pratt’s recent claims to CBS News and in a fundraising email that he campaigns “from my heart” and without consultants or backing from billionaires, since launching his campaign in January, Pratt has spent at least $48,000 on consultants, including TAG Strategies, whose clients have included Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and the Arizona Republican Party. (Between January and mid-April, Bass spent at least $167,000 on consultants, while Raman spent at least $27,800, their most recent filings show.)
Pratt also secured donations from billionaires, including sports executive Jeanie BussNew York hedge fund manager Dan Loeb and the Winklevoss twinsknown for their ties to Facebook. Pratt out-raised both Bass and Raman between January and mid-April, taking in more than $538,000 — just over $7,000 more than Raman raised in the same period, and about $40,000 more than Bass.
Republican voters may be willing to overlook Pratt’s imperfections on the hope of gaining a substantial foothold in city government. But whether a majority of Angelenos can accept Pratt’s shortcomings is another question — especially as the city gears up to host the World Cup this July and the Olympics in 2028, all while confronting housing and homelessness crises and a crumbling entertainment industry.
Some of the city’s electorate may be starting to sour on Bass — a UCLA poll released last month shows that 40% of the electorate is undecided in the race — but some Republican strategists are skeptical those voters’ frustrations will be enough to make them pick Pratt over Raman. In the city’s last mayoral election, Bass beat her closest challenger, billionaire Rick Caruso, a Republican turned centrist Democrat, by nearly 10 points. Pratt, meanwhile, is contending with comparisons to Trump at a time when the president’s approval rating sits at a historic low.
“This is a much more difficult partisan environment than four years ago,” Madrid, the California strategist, said.
Angelenos, Madrid added, “want a change agent who’s not part of the typical Democratic Party — it doesn’t mean [they’re] going to go vote for a Republican.”
Raman and Bass seem to be hoping the same. Both highlighted Trump’s comments supporting Pratt this week, in apparent efforts to boost their own campaigns.
But just as Trump dismisses his own critics with claims that he alone can make America great again, Pratt promises he’s the only candidate who can restore LA to its “golden age.”If he doesn’t win, Pratt told CNN this week“LA is cooked, cooked — like, done. Burnt cooked.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
WASHINGTON (AP) — For decades, disabled people have fought for their rights to go to school and live alongside peers without disabilities — rights that some fear could be losing ground under the Trump administration.
Last month, the Department of Education announced it would shift oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose comments on the limits of disabilities such as autism have drawn sharp rebukes from advocates and lawmakers.
Meanwhile, after a White House push to police homelessnessthe Department of Justice released guidance that lowered the barrier to institutionalizing any person with a disability.
Taken together, the actions signal a worrying return to a reality where people with disabilities are pushed to the margins of society, advocates said.
“It’s a direct, frontal assault on the rights of people with disabilities to live their lives the way that people who are nondisabled live their lives,” said Selene Almazan, legal director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. “I can’t imagine that as a country, that would be something that we would agree we should go back to.”
Whitman Althaus, 12, who has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, poses for a portrait at his home Wednesday, July 1, 2026, in Luckey, Ohio. (AP Photo/Nic Antaya)
Whitman Althaus, 12, who has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, poses for a portrait at his home Wednesday, July 1, 2026, in Luckey, Ohio. (AP Photo/Nic Antaya)
The move away from confining people with disabilities
Since the 1960s, legislation and court decisions have expanded supports and protections for people with disabilities to go to school with nondisabled peers and to live and work in their communities. Before that, people with mental illnesses or developmental and intellectual disabilities were largely confined to institutions.
Advocates have pushed back on what is known as the “medical model,” where an individual’s disability is viewed as a defect to be cured. Instead, under a “social model” of disability, differences can be accommodated and supported, as people with and without disabilities learn and work alongside each other.
Families and advocates have warned that moving special education to a health department marks a return to the medical model. They also have been angered by Kennedy’s attempts to link vaccines to autismgoing against decades of research that show no such link, and his framing of autism as a debilitating disease.
Kennedy’s comments last year, where he said children with autism would never write a poempay taxes or hold a job, raised questions about how he would oversee an agency meant to help students develop those skills. Kennedy later said he was referring to people with ” severe autism ″ or those who are nonverbal.
“Many of the things he said autistic people will never do, (special education) is in charge of making sure students with disabilities have the opportunity to do,” said Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “Will he execute that faithfully, or does he consider disabled students a lost cause until we find some medical cure?”
The Supreme Court weighs in on disabilities
In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that segregating disabled people who are otherwise able to live in their community with proper supports was a form of discrimination. The Olmstead v. L.C. decision led to requirements that government agencies provide disability services in the most integrated setting possible — in mainstream schools, homes and workplaces.
But in a memo issued in June, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel upended that guidance. It argued that neither the Americans with Disabilities Act nor Section 504, two major disability rights laws, requires states to provide services in the most mainstream setting. While the memo does not change the law, it signals how federal agencies may interpret and enforce civil rights issues related to the topic. It could embolden states or school districts to decline to support people with disabilities in mainstream environments.
The White House has already acted on a similar philosophy. Last year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on homelessness that endorsed civil commitment, where a court orders individuals into involuntary hospitalization or treatment programs. Trump directed HHS to reduce barriers to institutionalizing people with mental illnesses.
In its memo, the Justice Department acknowledged its interpretation of the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision is “out of step” with the common understanding. If a state starts to provide services in institutional settings, legal challenges likely would follow, the department said.
The Republican administration’s steps fit a worldview in which the government has no obligation to support people with disabilities, said Claudia Center, legal director at Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.
“It’s dark, and it’s awful,” Center said. “And I think it’s contrary to the majority view in our country. … It’s out of touch with where our society is.”
The application that Whitman Althaus, 12, who has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, uses to communicate is seen on a phone Wednesday, July 1, 2026, in Luckey, Ohio. (AP Photo/Nic Antaya)
The application that Whitman Althaus, 12, who has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, uses to communicate is seen on a phone Wednesday, July 1, 2026, in Luckey, Ohio. (AP Photo/Nic Antaya)
Families say their kids thrive in mainstream classes
The moves have created a deep sense of uncertainty for students with disabilities.
Lindsey Althaus says home and community-based services in northwest Ohio have been instrumental to her family. Her 12-year-old son, Whitman, has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, in which the brain struggles to tell muscles how to move to form words or perform other motor skills. For some of his school career, with proper support services, Whitman was able to spend much of his school day in a classroom that included kids without disabilities.
Through a Medicaid waiver program, Althaus pays her mother to care for Whitman in her absence. That allows him to spend time out in the community with his grandmother while Althaus and her husband are working or away with their daughter.
Under the Justice Department’s new interpretation of Olmsted, states would have fewer obligations to fund and support those programs. Kennedy, in testimony to lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year, criticized similar programs as subject to fraud.
“We want to be able to have him in the community,” said Althaus, who works as a disability rights advocate. “It’s just starting to feel like Whitman’s not going to be welcome anymore. We’re going back to this: You’re either perfect, or you’re not in the light.”
For many students with disabilities, schools are where they receive the majority of support services and where they are integrated among their peers. Before Magda Nakassis’s 8-year-old son, who is autistic and nonverbal, started public school in Maryland, his preschool experience had largely been defined by being kicked out of things, she said.
In school, Nakassis said, she found teachers and staff members who understood her son’s needs and told her to stop apologizing for them. A program at his school called Fantastic Friends teaches mainstream fifth graders about autism and they spend recesses with children in the autism program. Every year, Nakassis said, there is a waitlist to be a Fantastic Friend.
Nakassis said that it has been difficult to see the ways autism in particular has become politicized. Every child is entitled to a public education in this country, Nakassis said, and special education is a response to the fact that some children have differences that require additional support.
Regardless of his diagnosis, his right to an education is not a medical issue, she said, but rather a question of equity and access in a society that often pushes disabled people to the margins.
“There are lots of kids like him out there, and I sometimes wonder, ‘what did we use to do?’” Nakassis said. “I can’t believe it was better.”
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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump took in nearly $1.2 billion from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released Tuesday shows, locking in profits while his investors were socked with losses.
Mere startups when he took the oath of office, the new ventures have now eclipsed in revenue much of his vast property portfolio that took him decades to accumulate. Fueling their rise were billionaire investors and Trump’s own move to quash a federal crackdown on the industry.
Trump got more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products, including “governance tokens,” according to the required annual disclosure report with the Office of Government Ethics. It also showed another crypto business, CIC Digital LLC, took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his face.
Both the tokens and the coins have plunged in value since the sales.
Trump also took in millions last year from selling Trump-branded Bibles, sneakers and other small items in another unprecedented move for the presidency. The sale of Trump-branded watches alone brought in $4.7 million.
The 927-page disclosure form paints a stark, if incomplete picture of the massive growth of the president’s wealth since taking office last January through a web of business interests — many of which have benefited from the policy moves of Trump’s own government. Trump has insisted that his sons direct his finances but the arrangement rejects the conflict of interest protections that his recent predecessors in office had instituted.
Forbes estimates Trump’s net worth at $6 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2024.
The Trump business is growing abroad
The rise of crypto relative to Trump’s property is especially noteworthy because he first rode to office boasting of his property wins. It’s also remarkable because that mainstay business also boomed last year. Trump took in tens of millions in fees from a flurry of new hotel, resort and condo deals overseas that amounts to the biggest property expansion ever in the century since the family business was founded.
Many of those countries were negotiating with the U.S. over tariffs, military aid and other important matters while the family business was striking the deals.
A property in the United Arab Emirates generated $10.4 million for the Trump business last year. One in Saudi Arabia being built by a real estate developer close to the ruling family sent the president’s company $9 million. And one in Bucharest, Romania, and another in Qatar sent him $5 million each.
One of his prominent domestic properties, Mar-a-Lago in Florida, notched big growth last year, too.
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Trump took in $77 million from the property, a 50% jump from the year earlier when he was just another citizen, as heads of state and business people flocked to it in his new term.
The disclosure report doesn’t give profit figures, just revenue, so it’s impossible to know how much he is earning.
Trump is now the billion-dollar crypto man
Trump said Wednesday that most of his gains last year came from the stock market and he’s just riding along with everyone else.
“We’re all profiting,” he said. “I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash.”
But crypto was clearly the big revenue generator last year in part due his own moves since taking office — pushing policies friendly to the industry and reversing a Biden administration regulatory crackdown.
The regulators are still worried. Before Trump’s World Liberty began selling “governance tokens,” they issued warnings about this new kind of crypto asset, saying that unlike stocks, the tokens offer no ownership stake in the issuing company, just voting power on certain corporate policies, and are difficult to value.
Buyers pounced anyway, including a Chinese billionaire who spent $75 million on the tokens and $200 million on the souvenir coins. In February last year, a federal lawsuit charging him with duping investors was paused before being settled for a $10 million fine.
The billionaire, Justin Sun, has repeatedly denied his spending on Trump businesses had anything to do with his federal case, while World Liberty has dismissed the notion of a conflict of interest.
Meanwhile, investors have seen the value of their Trump-tied holdings drop significantly.
The price of World Liberty tokens has fallen 80% since they started trading in September. And the Trump souvenir coins that spiked to more than $74 in the days after launching in January 2025 now sell for $1.68.
The White House says Trump only acts in the public interest
The White House has repeatedly said Trump put his business in a trust managed by his sons and is not involved in its decisions and that there are no ethics issues to discuss.
“Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”
The Trump umbrella company, the Trump Organization, has said its deals overseas were with private companies, not with governments.
Still, it is difficult to know what is truly private in countries ruled by authoritarians, royal families and one-party governments.
For a new Trump resort in Vietnam, the report shows Trump took in $5 million last year after the ruling Communist Party sent its deputy prime minister to sign off on the deal and, according to The New York Times, pushed farmers off the land to make way for the construction.
Whether the deals played any role in changing U.S. policies in ways these countries sought is nearly impossible to know, but the countries did get what they wanted.
Vietnam got tariff relief. Qatar got access to advanced U.S. technology previously off limits, and Saudi Arabia got U.S. fighter jets it had coveted for years.
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AP White House reporter Josh Boak contributed from Washington.
It turns out readers still want to learn more about President Donald Trump after all.
“Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” the l atest book on the Trump presidencywritten by political journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, has sold more than 300,000 copies in its opening week, according to publisher Simon & Schuster.
They’re the kind of sales that numerous works about Trump reached during his first term, but had been rare during his second term. Publishers had speculated that the public had tired of Trump books, believing there was little left to know.
The total figures include preorders, print book sales, ebooks, and e-audiobooks and orders that have yet to be fulfilled because of demand, the publishing house said. Simon & Schuster said the book is into its third hard copy printing, with 200,000 copies on order, after it sold out quickly in bookstores and on Amazon. It’s the best first-week clip of any hardcover nonfiction book in 2026.
The book covers the first 14 months of Trump’s second presidency and takes readers inside the West Wing, White House residence and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, aboard Air Force One and on foreign trips with the president.
Trump, who has a long history with Haberman from her days covering him as a New York City business and society figure, has trashed the book as “mostly made up.” Haberman and Swan are now New York Times reporters.
Their manuscript depicts meticulous details of Trump’s military decisions, how he’s wielded the power of the Justice Department against his political opponents, his conversations with other power players, and the time and attention he’s devoted to remaking the aesthetics and structure of the White House.
The book spells out a thesis that Trump himself believes: Had he not lost the 2020 election, he would not be as powerful in his second term as he is now — emboldening him to trample norms, dismantle established institutions and push the limits of presidential power.
Haberman and Swan have been featured regularly across news talk shows promoting the book and sharing details of their reporting, including a sit-down with Trump in which he boasted about being compared to some of history’s great villains.
Sean Manning, vice president and publisher at Simon & Schuster, said the book “has entered the national conversation” and will hold up as “a work of historic importance.”
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