In October, 2025, the value of Unusual Machines’ stock spiked as the U.S. government granted a $12.8 million contract with Unusual Machines to supply for Strategic Logic’s drones. Founded in 2019, Unusual Machines produces a diversity of products such as electronics, propulsion systems, and drone technology. Unusual Machines’ stock sold for $3.78 per share on April 7, 2025, but by the first week of October, 2025, the price topped $16.0 a share. The special elixir of added value was Donald Trump Jr.’s appoint to the company’s board of directors. This was not the only time the magic worked. Dominari Holdings’ shares jumped 30% when Don Jr. joined the board. Dominari heavily invests in Artificial Intelligence, one of the president’s favorite investments (Li, 2025).
Canoodling between elected officials and corporations is not new. In the 1940s, Texas Congressman Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) helped Brown & Root secure a government contact to build a dam on the Colorado River. It was the beginning of long and lucrative relationship. Brown & Root’s loot funded LBJ’s rise to the presidency and LBJ’s influence as Senator and President were vital to Brown & Root’s acquisition of government contracts (Dallek, 2004). Journalist Ronnie Dugger wrote:
It was, indeed, a partnership, the campaign contributions, the congressional look-out, the contracts, the appropriations, the telegrams, the investment advice, the gifts and the hunts and the free airplane rides —it was an alliance of mutual reinforcement between a politician and a corporation. If Lyndon was Brown & Root’s kept politician, Brown & Root was Lyndon’s kept corporation. (Dugger, 1982, p. 286)
Private finance has always shaped foreign and domestic policy. In 1965, LBJ told journalist Drew Pearson that the war in Vietnam had to be escalated because Brown & Root (as well as Bell Helicopter, General Dynamics, Bechtel), was poised to cash in on military contracts (Mellen, 2016). Though a New Dealer Democrat on the outside, LBJ not a liberal’s liberal. Brown and Root was conservative to the core and reviled labor unions. It is no surprise that LBJ’s regard for union rights unions was cool at best (Dugger, 1982). When the IRS investigated Brown & Root’s covert funding of LBJ, the inquest ended after LBJ convinced the Roosevelt administration in 1942 that it was unproductive (Werner Papers, 1942). Real power can make criminal conduct disappear.
The axis of private interest and democratic governance presents three concerns. First, there is the conflict of interest when lawmakers make deals with foreign countries wherein the lawmakers’ stock profits are directly impacted. In May of 2025, the U.S. concluded a deal with Saudi Arabia whereby Saudis promised to invest $600 billion in the U.S. in exchange for U.S. assistance with developing Saudi airports, infrastructure, and modernization of Saudi military. The deal specified that Saudi purchases had to include certain companies such as Boeing, Google, and Uber (Cameron, 2025). Trump owns Google stock (Alphabet, Inc.) and $6 million in corporate bonds from Boeing (Cleveland-Stout, 2025). With little resistance from Congress and the courts, the president has created his own personal cash cow out of domestic and foreign policy. The deal was made in part to keep Saudis away from China, but there is no guarantee that Saudis will never find it useful to do business with China and no guarantee that Saudis will always use U.S. military resources to advance U.S. interests. However, as long as Trump holds stock in companies that foreign countries are forced to do business with Trump profits.
The second reason to fret over the axis is that it tends to shift authority away from elected representatives working for the people to unelected millionaires and billionaires at home and abroad. The shift leaves the people trapped in policies they did not support with votes or petitions. They may find themselves destroying nations and killing people just because that nation did not yield to the demands of international plutocrats. This way of governance also leaves the people vulnerable to tax burdens engineered by the super-rich who secure tax breaks for themselves. A third source of anxiety at present is the reality that many of the president’s investments have been in mass media, including his own company, Trump Media & Technology Group Corporation (Duggan, 2025). Trump has repeatedly imposed his narrative of what is the truth, what right for the country, and who deserves to live and die. Increasing control of the airwaves means increasing the capacity to manipulate opinion and behavior. (See the PowerPoint “Understanding Propaganda and Reading Critically” in Educational Materials [Create internal link]
The First Amendment to the Constitution is vital to creating and sustaining an honest narrative. The traditions of facilitating scholarly, independent inquiries and open debate has long been recognized as one of the virtues of the American university, and the tradition of independent journalism has helped to keep people informed about matters that affect their lives. These traditions have improved our civic lives and humanity, and all of them have been assailed by Trump’s administration.
On his second Inauguration Day, Trump signed an executive order ending hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid used to preserve freedom of the press around the world. Then, his administration clawed back $1.07 billion from public broadcasting that Congress had already designated. It launched investigations into NPR, PBS, NBC, CBS, and ABC claiming that they threatened the nation because they lie to the public and promote Anti-American ideas about equity. Trump has sued ABC, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Paramount, BBC, and The Des Moines Register for defamation, liable, and fraud (Fu, 2025). He has threatened to strip universities of federal funding if they will not silence instructors who teach about racism, the consequences of American hegemony, and how wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of elites who have a low regard for the people (Mueller, 2025).
The idea that privatization of everything from education to health care, to national defense, to prisons, to the media has been touted as a way to end waste in public spending, improve efficiency, and increase the quality of everything. Many private enterprises have served society very well without pillaging the common good and without securing a public vote on everything they do. However, privatization always brings the risk of marginalizing dissent, silencing whistle-blowers, becoming a form of modern piracy, and enabling run-away greed. So far — though not without a few fisticuffs — privatization has co-existed with democracy. There is no guarantee that democracy can withstand the scale of avarice and demagoguery that characterizes capitalism in the 21st century. Democracy itself is an experiment, and so is capitalism.
References
Cameron, Hugh. Trump’s $600 Billion Saudi Investment Deal: What We Know So Far. Newsweek, May 14, 2025. Trump’s $600 Billion Saudi Investment Deal: What We Know So Far – Newsweek.
Cleveland-Stout, Nick. Trump buys millions in Boeing bonds while awarding it contracts. He also bought upwards of $5 million in Intel bonds after announcing the US government was buying a 10% stake in the company. Responsible Statecraft, November 20, 2025. Trump buys millions in Boeing bonds while awarding it contracts | Responsible Statecraft.
Dalek, Robert. Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President. New York: Oxford university Press, 2004.
Duggan, Wayne. Donald Trump Stocks: 8 Stocks Owned by the President, US News & World Report, December 8, 2025. Donald Trump Stocks: 8 Stocks Owned by the President | Investing | U.S. News.
Dugger, Ronnie. The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Norton, 1982.
Fu, Angela. The numbers that defined the Trump administration’s attacks against the press in 2025. Poynter, December 22, 2025. The numbers that defined the Trump administration’s attacks against the press in 2025 – Poynter.
Hargreaves/Lansdown. Unusual Machine, Inc (UMAC). Unusual Machines Inc Share Price (UMAC) USD0.01 | UMAC. Accessed December 23, 2025.
Ivanova, Polina, et al. What Hunter Biden Did on the Board of Ukrainian Energy Company Burisma. Reuters, October 18, 2019. What Hunter Biden did on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma | Reuters.
Li, Yun. Dominari Holdings shares surge 30% after Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump join advisory board. CNBC, February 11, 2025. Dominari Holdings shares surge after Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump join advisory board.
Mellen, Joan. Faustian Bargains: Lyndon John and Mac Wallce in the Robber Baron Culture of Texas. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016.
Mueller, Malte. Trump’s aggressive actions against free speech speak a lot louder than his words defending it. The Conversation, April 24, 2025. Trump’s aggressive actions against free speech speak a lot louder than his words defending it
Nations, Scott. A History of the United States in Five Crashes. NY: William Murrow. 2017.
Sobel, Robert. The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market. Beard Books, 2000.
Werner, Elmer C. Elmer C. Werner Papers, 1937-1945, File MC253. University Archives, Princeton University. “How High Can an Income Tax Fix Go?” The LBJ tax scandal that you’ve probably never heard of. – University Archives
