Eric Trump opens door to political dynasty

Eric Trump has said that “the political path” for a family dynasty “would be an easy one”, opening the door for another Trump to seek office after his father leaves the White House.

“The real question is: ‘Do you want to drag other members of your family into it?’” the US president’s son said in Trump Tower this week.

“Would I want my kids to live the same experience over the last decade that I’ve lived? You know, if the answer was yes, I think the political path would be an easy one, meaning, I think I could do it,” he added. “And by the way, I think other members of our family could do it too.”

His comments came in a wide-ranging Financial Times interview, in which the co-executive vice-president of the Trump Organization discussed his real estate dealings around the world, hit back at criticism that the family is seeking to profit from the presidency and echoed many of his father’s claims about political persecution.

He also depicted the family’s burgeoning focus on crypto as a “perfect hedge” for its real estate portfolio.

The 41-year-old, who grew up on the Trump Tower’s top floor, has been considered less political than his older siblings, instead focusing on the family business he has been entrusted with since Donald Trump’s first term began in 2017.

His older brother Donald Jr is a frequent fundraiser and Maga podcaster, and his sister Ivanka took a role in the first Trump White House, while his wife Lara was co-chair of the Republican National Committee last year.

But Eric Trump described himself as “wholly unimpressed by half the politicians I see . . . I could do it very effectively”.

US vice-president JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are seen as favourites for the 2028 Republican nomination, but, as to whether a family member would run then or in subsequent elections, Eric Trump said: “Who knows?”

Asked whether 2024 will be the last election with a Trump on the ballot, he said: “I don’t know . . . Time will tell. But there’s more people than just me.”

He added: “The question is, do you want to do it? And do you want to subject the people that you love to the brutality of this system? And I’m not sure if I can answer that question yet.”

While critics say the second Trump term has been marked by the president’s personal involvement in money-raising endeavours, the family has often depicted itself as persecuted by a hostile establishment.

“If there’s one family that hasn’t profited off politics, it’s the Trump family,” Eric Trump said.

“In fact, I would sit there and say that we [would have] had many more zeros behind our name had my father not run in the first place. The opportunity cost, the legal cost, the toll it’s taken on our family has been astronomical.”

He said that the Trump family had spent close to $500mn “just defending ourselves from Russia shams, fake hoaxes, dirty dossiers about the unthinkable”.

In 2024, a New York judge ordered Donald Trump and the Trump Organization to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties after censuring them for “blatantly false financial data”.

Donald Jr and Eric Trump were ordered to pay more than $4mn each and individually barred from doing business in New York state for two years.

The case is being appealed.

The family waded into the social media industry after the then ex-president was barred from Facebook and Twitter following the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol, which led him to create his Truth Social network to get his message across.

The president’s stake in its parent company Trump Media & Technology Group is now worth about $2bn on paper, while the family’s crypto holdings may rival its real estate portfolio.

According to Eric Trump, the family embraced crypto after being shunned by traditional finance. He now describes it as a “very profitable venture”.

TMTG has raised $2.5bn to buy Bitcoin. Trump’s World Liberty Financial has also said that an Emirati state-owned investment firm had used its stablecoin to invest $2bn in Binance.

The president has also sought to tap into enthusiasm for crypto by issuing his $TRUMP memecoins, days before his return to office in January, and rewarded top holders of the token with a dinner at his golf course in Virginia last month.

Eric Trump has himself launched a crypto mining company called American Bitcoin. He called Bitcoin the “gold asset in the modern era”, saying the cryptocurrency is “better than gold” — “tradeable 24/7”, “transportable”, “digital”, “immediate” and in limited supply.

By contrast, he told a crypto conference in Las Vegas last month that he “would love to see some of the big banks go extinct”.

His father who dismissed crypto in 2019 as “highly volatile”, “based on thin air” and a facilitator of illegal activity, is now is leading a charge in Washington to boost the industry.

At the same time, Eric Trump, who says the Trump Organization is worth between $8bn and $12bn, is striking real estate deals across the world, despite a pledge the group made ahead of his father’s first term to avoid new foreign ventures.

“We got absolutely no credit for doing it, and we’ve done everything right,” he added, referring to the pledge.

“I’m really busy and my father’s trying to stop World War Three,” he said. “My father has nothing to do with companies; he’s not running any of our entities. I run great hotels around the world. It’s what I’ve done my entire life; I started on our construction jobs when I was 11 years old. It’s all I’ve ever known.”

Eric Trump said that he was working on “several” hotels in India. A group connected to Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, recently paid a $10mn “development fee” to the Trump Organization. “Pick the five biggest cities [in India], and we’re going to be there,” he said.

But, noting the role of geopolitics in potential deals, he said if there were “true political stability” he would enter the Israeli market and has had “a hundred” opportunities to enter China.

“Our brand is hugely popular in China,” he said. “In the middle of tariffs and trade wars, it’s just not the right time, right?”

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