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.
***
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.
The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination, a spokesperson said late Wednesday, as two retiring Republicans on the panel dug in over President Donald Trump’s personal “anti-weaponization” deal with the government he runs.
Sen. Chuck Grassley’s decision to delay the committee vote that had been set for Thursday marks a setback for one of Trump’s highest-profile Cabinet nominees, at the hands of Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a pair of Republicans set to leave the chamber next year.
“Chairman Grassley works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure. Senators Cornyn and Tillis want written assurances from the Department of Justice regarding the Trump-IRS settlement,” the committee spokesperson said.
Blanche’s nomination to permanently head the Department of Justice needs the support of either Cornyn or Tillis to make it out of the committee to a vote by the full Senate, assuming all Democrats remain opposed.
“Why don’t you call over the Department of Justice and tell them they have one hour and 50 minutes to get me what I asked for,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday afternoon amid the hardening standoff over his demand that Blanche and the DOJ put in writing a commitment never to pursue the president’s prized “anti-weaponization” fund, and to clarify the terms of Trump’s personal deal with the Internal Revenue Service.
Tillis told MS NOW that the conversations were complicated by the need for the Justice Department to get “several parties” to agree on the language of the statement Cornyn and Tillis are seeking.
“What I’ve advised the chair, and I would assume Senator Cornyn said something similar, is that we’re not prepared to vote yes yet,” he added.
“The Department has been in regular communication with Committee members for weeks, and we look forward to continuing to work productively with Senators to address any concerns,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in response to the decision to postpone the committee vote.
Cornyn was set to meet with Blanche on Wednesday morning, but the meeting was called off after Blanche failed to meet the senator’s demand for written proposals to modify the controversial settlement agreement he brokered between Trump and the IRS. The Republican senator is set to leave Congress when his term ends in January after a bruising May primary loss to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump’s chosen candidate.
“Maybe John Cornyn’s upset with me because I didn’t endorse him,” Trump told reporters Wednesday afternoon in the Oval Office. “I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t heard that there’s a problem. I heard (Blanche) is going through quite nicely.”
Cornyn made clear to Blanche during his confirmation hearing that he will not get his support until he agrees to reopen and modify the settlement. Due to the committee’s narrow Republican majority, one GOP “no” vote is enough to sink Blanche’s nomination.
The senator has asked Blanche to provide proof that the proposed nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund established as part of the deal between Trump and the IRS is formally dead, and he has also demanded Blanche narrow the tax audit immunity provisions the settlement afforded to Trump and his family.
Blanche has publicly stated that his department has dropped the fund, but he and the DOJ have dodged requests from Cornyn and a federal judge to put that in writing.
After announcing his meeting with Blanche would not take place Wednesday morning, Cornyn told reporters that changes from Blanche “in a modified release form” would be acceptable, but that “for some reason … they simply refuse to do it,” referring to the DOJ.
Shortly after the meeting was called off, a Justice Department official told MS NOW that the department “provided a written proposal to Senator Cornyn’s staff yesterday following ongoing discussion with both the Committee and the Senator’s office.”
Cornyn said that proposal was “not responsive” to his demands because it did not address the tax audit immunity provisions in the settlement, one of his key demands.
In May, Blanche signed an addendum as part of the deal that granted Trump, his family and his businesses immunity from pending IRS tax audits. That agreement, which has been decried by former IRS officials and legal experts as unlawful self-dealing, is being contested in federal court.
Cornyn noted that Blanche testified under oath that he could meet the request during his confirmation hearing.
“Maybe they think I’m just going to give up or you know, go along, but they’re mistaken,” Cornyn said when asked why he thinks the DOJ could be slow-walking his request.
Kevin Frey contributed to this report.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived this week for his tour of Washington, he may have had a mission in mind.
Netanyahu needed to overcome his newly diminished stature and waning influence over his once close friend President Donald Trump as both leaders grapple with the unpopularity of a war they started together and is escaping their control.
His meeting at the White House with Trump on Tuesday, which was closed to the press, was the first face-to-face encounter between the two allies since the U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack against Iran on Feb. 28.
Trump gave him a muted welcome and afterwards simply described the meeting as “very good.” “Obviously, many important subjects were discussed,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
Rather than an intimate one-on-one setting, the Oval Office was full of top U.S. officials — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
But Netanyahu continued the full court press on the Trump administration.
Over the course of two days, in addition to seeing Trump and attending Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral at the Capitol, Netanyahu also met separately with Vance, Hegseth, and Rubio, White House and Israeli officials confirmed to MS NOW.
The Israeli prime minister’s slate of meetings with key U.S. national security officials comes at a pivotal moment in the Iran conflict as tensions escalate in the region and Americans increasingly sour on the war. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows 60% of American voters opposing U.S. military action against Iran and 74% against sending U.S. ground troops into Iran.
Not only does Trump face pressure as Republicans face an uphill battle to retain congressional control in this fall’s midterms, Netanyahu’s fate as prime minister is at stake in Israel’s upcoming September elections – and he can’t afford to lose Trump’s favor.
The talks largely focused on what to do next as Iran continues to menace shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and retaliate against American bases in the region and launch attacks on Gulf allies.
According to a senior Israeli official who was granted anonymity to describe the closed-door meeting, President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu did not come to a final decision after discussing three paths forward: get a “good deal” focused on Iran’s nuclear program and enriched material, have no deal and instead continue the blockade and economic pressure, or take escalated military action.
But Netanyahu did not tell Trump what he should do – nor did he express a preference.
The senior Israeli official noted Netanyahu has not ruled out diplomacy – as long as it is coupled with “very strong pressures,” calling the push to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program “a contest of will and a contest of force.”
“There are ways of squeezing them and squeezing them and squeezing them and negotiating at the same time,” the official said.
Netanyahu did not present President Trump with new intelligence regarding the underground Iranian nuclear facility Pickaxe Mountain, per the senior Israeli official, noting the U.S. and Israel already are constantly sharing intelligence – and know where Iran’s highly enriched material is. “We don’t think it’s moved, and I think we have a pretty good grasp on that,” the official said.
During their meeting on Tuesday, Trump and Netanyahu discussed ways Israel and the U.S. can work together to stop Iran’s nuclear program and get the Strait of Hormuz open to maritime trade, the senior Israeli official said.
The two leaders also discussed a third goal: to continue to undermine the Iranian regime and “possibly create future conditions for a change in that area.” U.S. officials have backed away from pursuing paths that would overthrow the current leadership, but Netanyahu still believes that could happen.
“The chasm that has been created between the people and the regime is not about to be closed,” the senior Israeli official said of Netanyahu’s thinking.
Netanyahu advised Trump in February that Israeli intelligence indicated launching strikes against Iran would lead to the toppling of the Islamic Republic’s regime – and five months later, the slain ayatollah’s son retains power with a close circle of hardliners, calling into question the accuracy of Israel’s intelligence apparatus.
But the senior Israeli official said at the time, Netanyahu did not promise the Iranian people would take fate into their own hands following a coordinated attack. Rather, he chose his words carefully and said that an attack could create conditions to “advance the probability or the possibility that that would happen.”
The conditions needed for the Iranian regime to fall, “did not materialize,” the official told MS NOW, adding, “not for lack of insight, but for either operational failure or decisions that were made.”
Despite Netanyahu insisting Israel and the U.S. are on the same page, differences still remain: the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey and the Saudi nuclear arrangement did not come up during Wednesday’s White House meeting, according to a second Israeli official granted anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.
Meanwhile, the conflict continues to spread, with an Iranian drone attacking a U.S. gas storage tanker off the coast of Egypt on Wednesday.
Trump indicated he would not let Iran’s latest action slide, telling reporters on Wednesday that the U.S. would retaliate against Iran even as he leaves room for diplomatic talks to resume.
“It’s our turn, and we’ll see if we get there with an agreement at some point,” Trump said. “But we’re going to hit them very hard.”
As for what it would take for Israel to join the U.S. strikes, the senior Israeli official said that if Israel is attacked by Iran, “We will respond very, very forcefully and very quickly. And I think Iran would make a great mistake.”
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.
International rage over FIFA’s close ties to President Donald Trump has reached a fever pitch after soccer’s governing body announced a plan to sell a significant stake to an investor group led by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law.
The president and his family have all but turned the White House into their personal piggy bank. And FIFA — which has its own sordid history of corruption — seems to have made itself a party to Trump’s self-enrichment under Gianni Infantino’s leadership, such as by paying for space inside Trump Tower in New York. (The organization has defended the office rental as a World Cup outpost.)
Soccer is seen by many as a unifying game. But Trump’s incorporation of FIFA into his political dynasty is threatening that idea.
FIFA has announced plans to sell a large minority stake in a new company that will run its main events, including the World Cup and Club World Cup, as part of a plan to triple the amount of development money it dishes out to its 211 member associations.
Under the proposals — which are subject to approval by a majority of those national associations and FIFA’s 37-member council — a new entity called FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE) will take over all commercial operations, while FIFA remains the game’s global governing body and retains a majority stake in FFE.
A press release from FIFA confirmed the plans and said Thrive Eternal, which was launched by Joshua Kushner, is expected to lead the investment group that would control FIFA Forward Enterprise. FIFA did not clarify why Thrive Eternal was selected, and Kushner was already dabbling in sports.
But Trump basically has already given son-in-law Jared Kushner carte blanche to dictate U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East while simultaneously hatching business plans in the region. (Jared Kushner has denied any conflicts of interest.)
Joshua Kushner reportedly has been a major donor to Democrats. But, predictably, the idea of another Kushner becoming financially entwined with the World Cup — the world’s most popular sporting event — and basically being dropped into a position of global significance isn’t going over well. Several other soccer governing bodies have expressed concerns, including Europe’s UEFA.
“This crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross,” UEFA said in a statement about The Athletic’s report, adding: “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade — especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially. None of us are the owners of football. It is not FIFA’s to sell.”
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee also rebuked the plan, writing on X: “Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough — now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a multibillion-dollar deal with Jared Kushner’s brother to sell ownership stakes in the World Cup to private investors.”
FIFA, Donald Trump’s favorite corrupt racketeering enterprise in world sports, is now going directly into business with the Trump family!
Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough—now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a… https://t.co/knSZibuMea
— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudiciary) July 28, 2026
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., has already launched an investigation into the FIFA leader’s relationship with the Trump administration, while dozens of European lawmakers — citing concerns about “potential breaches of political neutrality” — have called for the FIFA Ethics Committee to investigate Infantino. This new proposal seems unlikely to assuage those concerns.
But what it does seem likely to do is fuel global anger toward the U.S. — the kind that has been growing since Trump retook office.
And when you consider that, it’s truly remarkable how the same MAGA movement whose members whined for years about politics mixing with sports is now in lockstep with a president who seems dead-set on casting his shadow over every sports event he can.
This post on X basically sums up the foul stench around FIFA’s latest proposal.
Sepp Blatter was Infantino’s predecessor as FIFA president and oversaw the organization amid some of its many scandals. When heof all people, is warning about how Trump and Infantino’s relationship is “deeply damaging” soccer, it’s a sign of how far FIFA has descended into the gutter.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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