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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We end today’s show in Gaza, where Israel’s brutal assault continues as Palestinians are commemorating the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, when some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were violently expelled from their homes by Israel’s founders. Officials in Gaza say Israeli strikes have killed over a hundred people over the past day, the majority of them children and women.

Earlier today, at the state dinner in Qatar, President Trump said he wants the U.S. to “take” Gaza and turn it into a “freedom zone.”

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, we’re working very hard on Gaza. And Gaza has been a territory of death and destruction. … United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone, have a real freedom zone.

AMY GOODMAN: “A freedom zone.” This comes amidst mounting warnings of “Starvation in Gaza,” which is the headline of our next guest’s new piece in the London Review of Books. Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, author of the book Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.

Welcome back to Democracy Now! Congratulations on the efforts of so many at Tufts, and also outside of Tufts, to have Rümeysa released, the Turkish student who was a Fulbright scholar and was taken by masked ICE agents on the streets of Somerville, Rümeysa Öztürk, now out of an ICE jail. Alex, if you can start off by laying out what you found in your new piece for the London Review of Books, “Starvation in Gaza”?

ALEX DE WAAL: So, just a couple of days ago, the United Nations Integrated Food Security Phase Classification — which is a real mouthful. It’s a system, it’s a collaboration of different humanitarian agencies. And they undertook a survey. It’s the fifth such survey since the beginning of the war, in the most recent war in Gaza, some 19 months ago. They undertook a survey of food security and malnutrition. And what they found was, yet again, that the majority of people in Gaza are facing emergency or catastrophic levels of food insecurity, and levels of malnutrition are rising fast. And this is directly related to the total blockade imposed upon the Gaza Strip at the beginning of March.

And normally in situations of famine, there are many complex factors that work in between the level of food availability and children getting hungry and beginning to die in large numbers. In the case of Gaza, it’s actually, sadly, a lot more straightforward. There’s really — the only food that is available is that that is permitted to enter by Israel, and those food stocks are running out. Rations are getting low, and the poorest and most vulnerable are beginning to starve and die.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, you write in your piece, Alex de Waal, that, quote, “Gaza is an anomaly, a laboratory in which we will discover how much nutritional stress a population can withstand before succumbing en masse.” So, if you could elaborate on that and whether that is, indeed, the conclusion that was reached in the IPC report?

ALEX DE WAAL: So, a normal, healthy adult will last somewhere between 60 and 80 days deprived of all nutrition. Now, we haven’t got to that stage, but children perish much more quickly, and there are significant numbers of children who need specialized feeding, need food that cannot be readily prepared with just the food that is available, with the lack of clean water, the lack of electricity supplies. So we are seeing the most vulnerable already succumbing.

And there are two scenarios that were laid out in this report. One is a situation in which the status quo continues, the level of blockade and the level of destruction continue unimpeded, in which case mass starvation, famine is inevitable. It is a question of weeks before that unfolds.

The second scenario is if the Israeli-U.S. plan for setting up an alternative humanitarian system comes into play. Now, the background to this is that Israel wants to debar the UNRWA and the United Nations and other international humanitarian organizations from being present on the ground in Gaza, and to put humanitarian provision in the hands of a new system, a new method, a new scheme, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. And not many details are available about this, but what is known is that the plan is to have just four distribution centers in a small part of Gaza supplying at most 60% of the population with minimum rations. And the food would be brought and distributed by members of this new foundation, including U.S. private military contractors, protected by the IDF. And it would simply be those rations and basic hygiene and medical kits. There would be no reconstruction of infrastructure, no specialized feeding for malnourished children, etc. Now, even if this were to work, the conclusion of the IPC doesn’t spell it out in quite so many words, but it’s pretty clear the conclusion is mass starvation would still unfold, just somewhat more slowly.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Alex, could you also talk about the fact of this — this concept of yours of surveillance humanitarianism? How does the aid scheme that you’ve just been talking about, that is proposed by the Israelis and backed by the Americans, fit into that. How precisely would it work? You’ve also said the plan is, quote, “an individualised version of late colonial counterinsurgency.”

ALEX DE WAAL: Back in the 1950s, the British government mounted an anti-communist counterinsurgency in Malaya, and they explicitly called it Operation Starvation. And the idea was that every individual who was in a protected village would — and was properly accredited with the authorities, would receive enough food. And every item of food was counted going into those protected villages. And outside the protected villages, where the communist guerrillas were able to roam, no food would be available. They would be forced to starve.

Now, what we’re seeing is a version of this, a much more sophisticated version, being implemented by Israel today. So, clearly their intent is that no food should get into the hands of Hamas. And they have details about every individual in Gaza. So, the plan, by inference, is that they would screen every individual, and they would put accredited individuals who have no link to Hamas on the distribution list. Those individuals would be notified by text message to come to pick up the rations that they are allocated, at a certain time, in a certain place. And their identities would be verified by face recognition and other technologies. And then they would go. They would take those rations. Those rations would presumably be just enough for a few days, perhaps a week, so that they would — there would be very little chance of them falling into the hands of anybody else. And then they would have to come back.

So, it is — the welfare, indeed the survival, of every Palestinian family in Gaza would be dependent upon, on a week-to-week basis, on this type of surveillance and accreditation system. And you can look at it as the sort of the counterpart of the surveillance and AI algorithms, the Lavender system that is being used by Israel to identify members of Hamas whom they are targeting for assassination, so they would have a counterpart for feeding the people whom they are prepared to keep alive.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Alex de Waal, The New York Times is reporting some Israeli officials are privately admitting Gaza is on the brink of starvation, and warn of the effects if the blockade is not lifted, since it takes a while, though there are thousands of trucks waiting outside to get in, to increase the humanitarian aid. And you have President Trump today in Qatar talking about Gaza being a “freedom zone” controlled by the United States? Your response?

ALEX DE WAAL: I’m not quite sure what President Trump means by a “freedom zone.” But I think it is clear across the board, with the information that we have — and I have no doubt Israel has pretty much the same information; they may just dispute some of the details — but the overall picture is completely clear that something dramatic is going to have to be done to prevent mass starvation and famine unfolding in the very near future in Gaza. The situation cannot be allowed to get to the brink and then just pull back slightly from the brink, as has been happening when the Israelis opened supply routes and food distribution a year ago, and again with the ceasefire a few months ago. The population simply cannot withstand this type of pressure for really any longer without the utmost catastrophe unfolding.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Alex, you conclude your piece by saying that Israel may, quote, “do just enough to keep most Palestinians alive.” But “[w]hether this prevents the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza as a group is another matter.” If you could say what you mean by that? What do you imagine Israel will do?

ALEX DE WAAL: So, what we see in this process of, if it unfolds, this sort of individually targeted surveillance humanitarianism is keeping individuals and families alive, but dismantling the entire structure of society. Now, clearly the dismantling of Hamas is the political and military goal of Israel. But if it goes further, towards the dismantling of society as a whole, which is one of the things that we often see during famines, it’s not just that individualized biological suffering. It is the tearing apart of social bonds, the collective humiliation, the degradation of society. That is the deep trauma, the profound experience of famine. If that is allowed to proceed, then Palestinian society, as it has existed, will be irrevocably changed, torn apart, traumatized. And if Israel knowingly does this, then it will be culpable not just of the war crime of starvation, but of the destruction of the Palestinian people of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Alex de Waal, thank you so much for being with us, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, author of the book Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. We’ll link to your piece in the London Review of Books headlined “Starvation in Gaza.”

That does it for our show. Democracy Now! currently accepting applications for director of technology. Check democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Today, Palestinians mark the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 when Israel was created. Many Palestinians say they face a second Nakba today in both Gaza and in the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians marched in Ramallah to commemorate Nakba Day.

MOHAMMED ABU QAIYDAH: [translated] Despite all of the circumstances, we are maintaining our land and rooted here. Our right of return will never be forgotten, and Palestine will always be Palestine.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This comes as Democratic Congressmember Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, has introduced a resolution to commemorate Nakba Day, with support from a growing number of co-sponsors, including Congressmembers André Carson, Summer Lee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Delia Ramirez, Lateefah Simon and Bonnie Watson Coleman. This is Congressmember Tlaib.

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: Hello. It’s Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. And this Thursday, May 15th, marks the 77th year of government of Israel’s ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people. We all know that in 1948 the government of Israel destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages, towns and cities, and ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we turn to a major new report released today by U.S. academics that analyzes Israel’s actions in Gaza under the legal framework of the crime of apartheid. Citing dozens of experts, human rights organizations and judicial decisions, it concludes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, quote, “includes mass killing, arbitrary detention, torture, and the imposition of a legal regime that provides far less due process than that provided to Israelis living in the same territory, meets the legal threshold of apartheid,” unquote.

We’re joined by one of the report’s principal authors, Sandra Babcock, director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School, where she is clinical professor and is joining us from now.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Professor Babcock. If you can talk about the significance of today, the day you’re releasing this report, and your major findings?

SANDRA BABCOCK: Thank you, Amy. It’s so nice to be back on the show.

We are releasing this report that concludes that Israel has committed and is committing the crime of apartheid, which is a crime against humanity, on Nakba Day, because Palestinians are now living through the most brutal phase of the decadeslong occupation of their territory, that the International Court of Justice has recognized is an illegal occupation. We are — our report confirms that there is now a broad international consensus that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid. We’re not the first people to say this, but we are the first group of academics to analyze over 25 reports and judicial opinions against the backdrop of what is now happening in Gaza.

And our conclusions are that Israel is not only isolating Palestinians into segregated enclaves in the West Bank, that it is subjecting them to a different legal regime than their Jewish settler neighbors, that it is not only subjecting them to arbitrary detention, torture and killings, but it is doing this against a backdrop of policies that are designed to ensure the perpetual racial subordination of the Palestinian people.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Professor Babcock, last year, in 2024, you co-authored a report which found that Israel’s actions meet the international definition of genocide. So, if you could elaborate on the links that you see between Israel’s complicity in genocide and the fact that you found that it is an apartheid state?

SANDRA BABCOCK: You know, I think there are important links between the two crimes. These are both crimes. They are both crimes that are recognized under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. And both, what they have in common is a treatment of a group that is motivated in part by racism. The International Court of Justice has found that Palestinians are a distinct national, ethnic or racial group that is the subject — that is, appropriately, the subject of the crime of genocide. And what we found is that Israeli leaders have, for decades now, and this is leaders at the top echelons — the prime minister, the former defense minister — have made comments about Palestinians that evoke age-old racist tropes, comparing Palestinians to animals, dehumanizing them in a way that is very familiar to your previous guests, who were speaking about apartheid in South Africa.

What I was really struck by in listening to the South Africans that you just had on the show is when they described the features of apartheid South Africa. If you took out the word “South Africa” and you replaced it with “Israel,” that would perfectly describe the policies and laws that Israel has in place today. We don’t often think of them as apartheid, because our thinking of apartheid is rooted in our perceptions of how white South Africans treated Black South Africans. But, in fact, what is happening in Israel today is reflective of exactly that same treatment that we saw in South Africa..

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Professor Babcock, about the significance of you, along with dozens of other senior professors, human rights lawyers, taking part in this report. You’re speaking to us from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Talk about that as protests continue across the country, students who participated in encampments are arrested or put in ICE jails. Some judges have ordered those people released.

SANDRA BABCOCK: You know, Amy, it is a very tough time to be issuing a report that is critical of Israel. It has never been easy to criticize Israel. But this is what we do. We are human rights defenders. We are human rights lawyers. We are human rights professors. And if we can’t call out genocide and apartheid when we see it, we can’t call ourselves human rights defenders. There is a double standard when it comes to Israel. When we criticize Israel, however, it is really important to recognize we are criticizing a state. We are criticizing a government. We are not criticizing its people. This is what we do. We call out human rights abuses and government repression where we see it. And those of us who have authored this report have been involved in human rights work in every single continent, and we do not make an exception when it comes to Israel.

What universities have done is, instead of protecting students, faculty and staff who are standing up and taking a very principled stance, and a risky stance, to protest Israel’s policies of genocide and apartheid, they are penalizing those students. They are subjecting them to disciplinary sanctions for peaceful protests. They are criminalizing them and jeopardizing their futures, when under international human rights law, which protects the right of people who are protesting against human rights violations anywhere in the world, to their rights to freedom of opinion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly — instead of doing that, the university is criminalizing them.

Instead of invest — and I’m talking about universities in general, mind you. I am not speaking on behalf of Cornell University. I’m speaking in my capacity as a professor who has witnessed the criminalization and disciplinary sanctions that are being imposed on students across the country. And that is wrong, and it needs to stop. Students are doing the right thing. They are standing in the line of fire. They are standing up for people whose rights are being subjected to the most horrific repression, who are being slaughtered every day, who are being starved. This is what we should all be doing. We cannot silence ourselves, and we cannot silence — we especially cannot silence ourselves when people are trying to censor what we say.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you so much, Sandra Babcock, for being with us, clinical professor at Cornell Law School, director of the International Human Rights Clinic, co-author of the newly released report, “Apartheid in Israel: An Analysis of Israel’s Laws and Policies and the Responsibilities of US Academic and Other Institutions.” She co-wrote a new op-ed in The Guardian today headlined “We are human rights lawyers. Our new report is clear: Israel perpetrates apartheid.” Among those who co-authored that report are professor Susan Akram, clinical professor and director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University School of Law; Thomas Becker, legal and policy director at the University Network for Human Rights, teaches human rights at Columbia Law School; and James Cavallaro, executive director of the University Network for Human Rights, visiting professor at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs.

When we come back, as Israel’s brutal assault continues, we look at starvation in Gaza with Alex de Waal. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Sow ’Em on the Mountain” performed by [Stephanie] Coleman and Nora Brown in our Democracy Now! studio.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says he will meet with President Trump at the White House next week, after a group of some 59 Afrikaners arrived in the United States Monday after being granted refugee status. Afrikaners are the white South Africans who ruled the country during apartheid. This comes as the Trump administration has suspended refugee resettlement for almost everyone else in the world.

Speaking Monday, Trump claimed White South Africans face racial discrimination, even though the country’s white minority still owns the vast majority of farmland decades after the end of apartheid rule. Trump said he’s allowing them to come to the United States to escape, quote, “genocide.”

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s a genocide that’s taking place that you people don’t want to write about, but it’s a terrible thing that’s taking place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they’re white or Black makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed, and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: On Monday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa refuted Trump’s claims that white people are being persecuted in his country, calling it, quote, “a completely false narrative.” On Tuesday, Ramaphosa recounted a conversation he had had with Trump about the situation in his country.

PRESIDENT CYRIL RAMAPHOSA: I had a conversation with President Trump on the phone. And I — he asked, he said, “What’s happening down there? And I said, “President, what you’ve been told by those people who are opposed to transformation back home in South Africa is not true.” And I added to him, I said, “We were well taught by Nelson Mandela and other iconic leaders, like Oliver Tambo, on how to continue to build a united nation out of the diverse groupings that we have in South Africa. We’re the only country on the continent where the colonizers came to stay, and we have never driven them out of our country. So, they are staying, and they’re making great progress. It’s a fringe grouping, that does not have a lot of support, that is anti-transformation and anti-change, that would actually prefer to see South Africa going back to apartheid type of policies.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This comes as South African-born Trump adviser and multibillionaire Elon Musk has also accused South Africa’s government of promoting what he calls “white genocide.” Musk’s grandfather moved his family to South Africa after embracing the country’s apartheid system.

AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok became a trending topic on X when people tried to use it to answer questions and check facts, and the chatbot added the topic of white genocide in South Africa to its responses, telling users it was, quote, “instructed by my creators” to accept the genocide, quote, “as real and racially motivated,” no matter what the question was.

For more, we’re joined in Cape Town, South Africa, by two guests.

Herman Wasserman is with us, professor of journalism, director of the Centre for Information Integrity in Africa at Stellenbosch University. His new piece for the website Africa Is a Country is headlined “Trump’s fake refugees.” Wasserman himself is a white South African, an Afrikaner.

And Andile Zulu is a political analyst with the Alternative Information and Development Centre. His new piece for the website Africa Is a Country is titled “Race, power, and the politics of distraction.”

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Herman Wasserman, let’s begin with you. You are a white South African, and you are an Afrikaner. If you can explain, first of all, to the world what exactly that means, and what you thought when you heard President Trump charge white genocide in South Africa?

HERMAN WASSERMAN: Well, I would say that my first response was one of incredulity, and later met with — you know, I think, with disgust even and just a rejection of this notion of a white genocide or whites being persecuted. And I think that view is shared by many others, white South Africans and certainly the majority of South Africans in the country.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Andile Zulu, if you could also respond to this, these claims of a white genocide in South Africa and Trump bringing over these 59 Afrikaners to the U.S.? And talk about this in the context of this new law that replaces the 1975 Expropriation Act in South Africa, and explain why that’s been so controversial and what it entails.

ANDILE ZULU: Well, this accusation of white genocide emanating from the White House is a conspiracy theory and a myth that has been floating around echo chambers of right-wing populists and white nationalists for many decades now, particularly within the online space. And it essentially calls the accusation that white South Africans — in particular, Afrikaan South Africans — are victims of deliberate, direct, state-sanctioned violence. And anyone who lives in this country who’s awake to the reality of this country — the inequality, the poverty, the unemployment that most Black South Africans have to endure, and including Indian and colored South Africans, as well — knows that it’s patently untrue.

And the truth, however, is irrelevant to those who are perpetuating this myth. What matters is that it’s a means through which you can mobilize anxiety, mobilize fear and mobilize frustration from a segment — I think a relatively small segment — of the population that is dissatisfied with the post-apartheid democracy and the loss of their political elevated status. It’s a way in which you can mobilize fears here in South Africa and then appeal to a base within the MAGA movement in the U.S., as well, to portray the Donald Trump presidency as essentially being a crusader to defend white civilization, both in the U.S.A. and here.

And this all began, initially, with the signing by the president, Ramaphosa, of the Expropriation Act, which in itself is not that much of a radical or progressive policy. It’s a very procedural piece of legislation, which essentially changes the criteria through which government can expropriate private property for the public good and for the public use on the basis of finding just and equitable compensation. And, in fact, most legal experts have said that the instances in which you’ll arrive at nil compensation, at no compensation, would be quite rare, actually.

So, this legislation isn’t an assault on white livelihoods. It isn’t even an attack on the dominance of private property relations in post-apartheid. But for Elon Musk and for Donald Trump, it’s doing what right-wing populism, what racial ideologies always function to do, which is to stoke fear, conflict and division in order to be able to protect the exploitative and unequal relations under South Africa’s neoliberal capitalism, and, I think, under the neoliberal order that we have more broadly.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Andile, I mean, I just want to add these — a couple of things that I wanted to say earlier, which is to clarify for audiences who aren’t as aware of South Africa’s history. It was in a 1913 law that gave over 90% of South Africa’s land to whites. Today, they are some 7% of the population, white South Africans, but they still own about half, 50%, of the country’s land. Afrikaners, who constitute the majority of the white population, are among, of course, the most successful and richest in South Africa. So, if you could explain, Andile, how has this news, Trump’s statement, the fact that these 59 people have now arrived in the U.S. — how has that been received in South Africa, this news?

ANDILE ZULU: I think it’s been a mixture of frustration and bewilderment and just real confusion as to what is the basis of the idea that white South Africans, in particular, Afrikaners, are being persecuted. And as you said, South Africa in the post-apartheid, the past 30 years of democracy that we have, comes out of a history of a white supremacist regime, which not only dispossessed people of color of their land, but also then set up a rigorous economic system of exploitation to ensure the underdevelopment of Black people, Indians and coloreds included, to be able to amass economic and political power.

Now, if you just look, for example, at the statistics that we have on the racial manifestations of inequality in this country, it’s quite clear that this myth of white genocide and of white persecution has no basis in reality. For example, the unemployment rate amongst white South Africans sits at 7.9% as compared to 36.9% for Black South Africans. The poverty rate for white South Africans sits at 1% as compared to 64% for South Africans. And, in fact, the people who are the victims of violence, by and large, due to organized crime and due to the symptoms of societal dysfunction are largely young Black men and young Black women. If you are a young Black person in the place where I live, in Cape Town, and you live in a township in a rural area, you are 16 times more likely to be a victim of homicide as compared to a white South African.

But, however, it’s just important to clarify that white South Africans, of course, because we are all living in a country that has many issues and many crises, are still, of course, victims of violent crime, of state dysfunction, of economic anxiety and of financial precarity, but they are not victims of those things because they are white. Those issues are a symptom of a larger dysfunction due to an incapacitated state, run by kleptocrats, trying to enforce neoliberalism on an increasingly dysfunctional economy.

So, it’s quite important to say that the myth of white genocide has no basis in reality. However, South Africa is facing crises, the three crises of mass unemployment, of inequality and of poverty. And those result from the choices, the bad policy choices, that the ANC has made since 1996, which is essentially an abiding commitment to neoliberal policy, the kinds of policies which are causing the crises that we see in the United States and in many parts of the world, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to professor Herman Wasserman. Here in the United States, powerful group of men around Trump, known often as the PayPal Mafia, co-founders and members of PayPal, extend to apartheid South Africa — its members, Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal with Peter Thiel, along with David Sacks and Roelof Botha. So, you have this situation where most refugees in the world are not allowed into the United States right now, where refugees are being thrown out of the United States, but you have this group on Monday of 59 white South African Afrikaners arriving in the United States after being granted refugee status. Can you talk about this small group around Trump and what they mean for Trump’s worldview right now, and what it means that these refugees are brought here? Did it get much attention in South Africa?

HERMAN WASSERMAN: Well, I’ll — 

AMY GOODMAN: I shouldn’t say “refugees,” but these white South African — white South African Afrikaners.

HERMAN WASSERMAN: Yes, I think many South African media outlets refer to these “refugees” in inverted commas, because I think that is the general understanding, that they are not really refugees, as you have pointed out. It flies in the face of the really dire and tragic circumstances that many people around the world live under and that would be much more illegible for refugee status. In fact, as Andile has pointed out, this whole refugee status is based on disinformation. It’s based on a disinformation campaign.

And so, some of it — it’s hard, of course, to pinpoint exactly what happened first, and one would argue that some of these white former South Africans around Donald Trump would have had his ear and would have maybe helped him — tapped into this sort of narrative of white persecution. They also represent to him maybe these white South Africans who have left the country and have sought their fortunes elsewhere and, you know.

But I think what is also important to recognize is that this has also been the result of a concerted effort by some Afrikaner lobby groups over many years to fan that idea that South African — white South Africans, especially Afrikaners, are being persecuted. There have been a consistent campaign by the Afrikaner rights group AfriForum, who have been pushing that narrative for many years. They have lobbied Washington. They have met Republican officials. They’ve appeared on conservative media outlets like The Tucker Carlson Show. They’ve extended their road shows to conservative think tanks and conferences in Europe, like CPAC in Hungary. And in all these places, they’ve painted a dire picture of South Africa, where white farmers are supposedly under constant attack, where they’re singled out for violence, they are on the verge of losing their land, that they are unfairly being targeted by a corrupt and totalitarian government which discriminates against them in what they would call a type of reverse apartheid.

And all of this was very deftly wrapped up in a communication strategy that then eventually found sympathetic ears among U.S. conservatives. And I think with these men around — white former South Africans around Trump, which would have amplified that to him. And now with this so-called refugee campaign, their communication campaign over these many years, their lobbying, has finally paid off.

I think in terms of the South African media, there have been a range of responses. But I think, by and large, people recognize that this has no basis in reality. As Andile said, this is based on a disinformation campaign. You know, some of the conservative elements in the society might find that now somebody has listened to their complaints and taken that seriously. But, you know, anybody who really has their basis in factual reality would know that this is a ruse, that this is a disinformation campaign, and that, actually, this little group of so-called refugees are pawns in a much larger political campaign, a campaign both domestically in the U.S., where Trump is using them as — you know, really, as pawns, as props in a campaign that purports to promote whiteness and whiteness under threat, and also geopolitically.

In his executive order, which granted this refugee status to Afrikaners, it was juxtaposed very closely with criticism of South Africa for taking Israel to the ICJ. So this can clearly also be seen as a message to South Africa to punish them for their stance on Israel and Israel’s war on Gaza and the U.S.’s involvement in support of that war.

So, I think one has to understand that this is — although this group of Afrikaners might be the tokens, might be the people propped up in front of the cameras in this media event, that they are actually pawns and props in a much larger domestic and geopolitical political campaign for Trump, and also domestically in South Africa for a group of Afrikaners who actually do not have any intention to leave. AfriForum and these groups said that they do not want to leave. In other words, this is really a power play for them domestically, as well, to force the South African government to take them, their complaints more seriously, to take their claims to privilege more seriously. So, it is not really about that group of 49 or however many refugees.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, the U.S. threw out the South African ambassador to the United States, as well, as President Trump goes after universities that talk about structural and historical racism in the United States. Herman Wasserman, I want to thank you for being with us, professor of journalism, director of the Centre for Information Integrity in Africa at Stellenbosch University. His new piece, we’ll link to, in Africa Is a Country is headlined “Trump’s fake refugees.” Professor Wasserman himself an Afrikaner, a white South African. And Andile Zulu, political analyst with the Alternative Information and Development Centre. His new piece for the website is “Race, power, and the politics of distraction.” We’ll link to that, as well. Both of them joining us from Cape Town, South Africa.

Next up, as Palestinians mark the 77th anniversary of the Nakba — the Arabic word for “catastrophe” — Israel’s brutal assault continues. We’ll speak with a Cornell University professor, lead author of a report released by U.S. academics concluding Israel’s treatment of Palestinians meets the legal threshold of apartheid. Back in 30 seconds.

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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We turn now to a journalist from El Salvador who’s left the country along with others from the digital news outlet El Faro, after the Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele threatened to arrest them all. The outlet reported, quote, “A reliable source in El Salvador told El Faro that the Bukele-controlled Attorney General’s Office is preparing at least seven arrest warrants for members of El Faro … following the publication of an interview with two former leaders of the 18th Street Revolucionarios on Bukele’s years-long relationship to gangs.”

Bukele has run the country under a so-called state of exception since 2022, supposedly in order to weaken these same gangs. And Salvadoran authorities have detained nearly 80,000 people accused of being in gangs, largely without access to due process. Human rights groups report at least 250 people have died in El Salvador prisons since Bukele’s so-called war on gangs began. This comes as Bukele is working closely with the Trump administration to jail immigrants sent from the United States at CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious so-called Terrorism Confinement Center, the mega-prison.

In a moment, we’ll be joined by El Faro’s digital editor, in exile. But first, this is a clip from one of El Faro interviews with a gang member. In it, we hear how just one month into the state of exception in El Salvador back in 2022, despite having an arrest warrant and being recognized as a clear leader of the 18th Street Revolucionarios, “Charli” Cartagena was detained and then released after a mysterious phone call. This is Cartagena.

CARLOS ”CHARLI” CARTAGENA: [translated] I’m telling you all this. That’s a substation in Antiguo Cuscatlán, so that’s not a jail. You’re really in there. And they had already taken my photo before. They were writing it up. I only heard when he told him, the manager there. “Did you already post the news?” he said. “Not yet. I’m about to post it.” “Cancel it,” he told him. “Cancel it. Not right now.” And they stood there. Why? And this and that, and he said, “Oh well, those words are coming from up top.”

CARLOS MARTÍNEZ: [translated] From up top?

CARLOS ”CHARLI” CARTAGENA: [translated] There’s nothing we can do. And suddenly, the call came in, man. I mean, the call came in, and they just stared at me and said, “Take the handcuffs off him.”

AMY GOODMAN: Under President Bukele, the fall of El Salvador’s murder rate has been accompanied by a rise in forced disappearances. This point came up in El Faro‘s interview with a former Barrio 18 gang member who goes by “Liro Man,” explaining how they carried out orders for handling murders allegedly under the direction of the chairman of Bukele’s Social Fabric Reconstruction Unit.

“LIRO”: [translated] What’s that, look, man, gosh, talking to you about these points is very delicate, man, because it’s like making myself worthy of something that maybe I do know, but I can’t tell you, because that’s how it is. Do you understand me? I’m not going to tell you, “There’s never been a homicide,” but it was said with Marroquín: “If something is done, without a body, there’s no crime.” That tells you everything. That tells you everything. Without a body, there is no crime.

AMY GOODMAN: “No body, no crime.” For more, we’re joined from an undisclosed location by Nelson Rauda Zablah, digital content editor for El Faro. Nelson, along with six other colleagues, faces potential arrest warrants for their reporting on Bukele’s dealings with Salvadoran gangs. His new opinion piece for The New York Times is headlined “The World Is Finally Seeing How Dangerous Bukele Really Is.”

Nelson, welcome to Democracy Now! Explain why you and your colleagues have left El Salvador, and the significance of this video that you released, what it says about the president of El Salvador.

NELSON RAUDA ZABLAH: Good morning, Amy. Thank you very much for having me.

Well, you’re talking about America’s prime security consultant at the moment. The president, President Bukele, is a man who says to be working for the securities of all people and has offered to solve the world’s security problems. Not long ago, he offered to lead a mission to Haiti. And he’s selling these services, because he supposedly has the solution for the world’s security problems.

What we’re doing is piercing the bubble. We’re telling a story that’s so different from that narrative, from the propaganda, because the man who says he has the solution for the gangs problem has actually made secret dealings with him all throughout his rise through political offices, way before he was a president, but even now that he is a president.

So, yeah, we’re dealing with the consequences now. A Salvadoran prison is the last place that you want to be in. So I exited the country. I left El Salvador one day before the publication. And this is something that we have done routinely in El Faro, to exit the country, not only us, all journalists in Salvador, leaving the country to wait for the retaliation or the consequences or the reaction of the government from afar, from a distance. So we left the country. And yeah, right now we don’t know when we will be able to come back. We don’t know. We have our whole lives in El Salvador. We have families, and our job is there, and houses. But we’re trying to make sure that we are safe first.

And I think that’s the significance, that we would not be facing this price if what we published was not as important as it is. It’s telling the world that the president who says he’s the — that has the panacea for security, has actually been making secret deals with gangsters, with organizations that the U.S. considers terrorists.

And when they tell it all, the videos have a great impact in Salvadoran society. They have over 1.5 million views in a country that’s inhabited by 6 million people. This has really pierced through the bubble with an analysis that says that more people saw the videos than people voted for the opposition in the last Salvadoran election.

So, that’s the story we’re telling, and we’re grateful to be able to tell it, because American people should know that their government is doing dealings with someone who has been making deals with criminals.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Nelson, it’s not just your reporting on this, but back in 2021, the U.S. Treasury Department itself sanctioned two Bukele officials, accusing them both of negotiating with notorious local gangs in an attempt to seal a secret truce and shore up political support for Bukele. Can you talk about this? And who exactly is one of those officials, Carlos Marroquín, and his connection to the gangs and Bukele?

NELSON RAUDA ZABLAH: Carlos Marroquín is Bukele’s designated man to deal with the gangs. He has done this job for Bukele before he was the president. He did it when he was running for San Salvador mayor. And he has stood throughout.

But we found now that Carlos Marroquín, in at least two different cases, personally transported gang members, you know, indicted with arrest orders, to the border with Guatemala. And we know this because Carlos Marroquín confessed it in an audio that we published, an audio that he sent to a gang member and that we published back in 2021.

So, I think Bukele’s negotiation with the deals is not something — you know, it’s not a reported story; it’s a fact. It’s a fact that’s been proven, not only by journalistic investigation, like the one that we made ourself, not only by the U.S. authorities, like the State Department and the Treasury Department, sanctioning not only Marroquín, but also Osiris Luna, who is the director of prisons, and also proven by a Salvadoran criminal investigation that is now [inaudible], because Bukele, Bukele’s party removed the attorney general who was investigating him and his party and his officials, and put in place another one, the one that’s made arrest warrants against us.

So, you’re talking about a dictatorship, and you’re talking about — CNN reported last week that Bukele’s brother, Ibrajim Bukele, said in an email that he wanted to — he wanted the return of seven MS-13 leaders, and that in exchange he would be able to offer a 50% discount in the price that El Salvador charges to have Venezuelan prisoners and other prisoners deported to CECOT by El Salvador. Why is the Bukele government so invested, so interested in having these gang leaders removed, when it’s them that they let them go? That’s the — the government has accused us, and a lot of the speakers for the government have accused us, of collaborating with the gangs, when it’s so blatantly obvious that we wouldn’t have been able to arrest Charli — to interview Charli if they wouldn’t have released him. He was in jail. He was already arrested. He’s supposed to be in jail. The only reason that we were able to interview him is that the government released him. And the fact having him on camera is a living proof that Bukele dealt with the gangs. And this goes so much against the narrative that he is, you know, this protector of Salvadoran people, because he has been making secret dealings behind their back. And we are just pulling that to light.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we only have 30 seconds, but what has been the response by the people in El Salvador to the revelations of your news site?

NELSON RAUDA ZABLAH: El Salvador is in a great state of turmoil now, one of the reasons being this publication, but there’s so many problems. I just want to say before I finish that I’m here speaking because there are many others that cannot speak — because Alejandro Henríquez, who was arrested last night in El Salvador, cannot speak right now; because Roberto Jaco, who died in a prison last night after being arrested in — last week, after being arrested by the government, can’t speak right now; because the Pastor Ángel Pérez cannot speak right now. We’re telling a story [inaudible] —

AMY GOODMAN: Nelson Rauda Zablah, we have to go, but we’re going to continue this conversation in Spanish at democracynow.org, digital editor for El Faro.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Akbar, I wanted to follow that up on Iran. The willingness of President Trump to engage in negotiations over uranium enrichment with Iran, I’m sure that Netanyahu and the current Israeli government is not happy with this.

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: They’re certainly not thrilled, Juan. Their preference would have been for a U.S. and Israeli-backed military strike by now — in fact, prior to now. Their argument is, we, as Israel, in this kind of post-October 7th moment, in our retaliatory campaign across the region, have weakened Iran, right? They’ve weakened the pro-Iran militia in Lebanon, Hezbollah. They’ve, in fact, even weakened Iran’s own air defenses. So, the argument from Netanyahu and his government is, “Let us use this moment to take a strike against Iran, knock it out for good.” The counterargument to that is, of course, unintended consequences of a major war, and also the technical nuclear expertise doesn’t go away. So, the Trump administration is saying, “Let’s try to reach a deal.” And they have stuck by that, despite facing criticism.

What’s kind of unclear still is how much expertise they’ll develop. These are very hard deals to negotiate. It’s worth remembering President Trump is in this situation because he abandoned the deal that the Obama administration had achieved — right? — through extreme negotiation and technical expertise. The Trump team hasn’t yet shown they kind of have that level of professionalism, and also they haven’t really made clear how much they’re willing to give up to Iran. Iran, given that it felt burned by the U.S., which did abandon the previous nuclear deal, which Iran was complying with — Iran has said, “We want a little more. We want more guarantees to know this will be permanent. This will bring us the sanctions relief in exchange for nuclear limitations.” And I think the Trump administration needs to kind of demonstrate that, especially in the weeks ahead. There is a looming deadline again, because there are U.N. sanctions on Iran that will go back into place starting in July. So, if there isn’t some kind of temporary deal by then, all of this diplomacy by the Trump administration will get much, much harder and less likely to deliver.

AMY GOODMAN: So, continuing on Iran, Sarah Leah Whitson, a few days ago, this whole idea being floated — this is a piece from The New York Times, “Can Trump Rename the Persian Gulf?” “His suggestion to call the body of water the ‘Arabian Gulf’ has apparently done the impossible: Unite Iranians.” But if you can talk further about what this means for U.S.-Iran relations? But then, also, let’s go back to Qatar and talk more about what exactly Qatar wants at this point. I wanted to bring in that clip — it’s like three seconds — of Trump defending taking that $400 million “flying palace.” This is what he said to a reporter.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s not a gift to me. It’s a gift to the Department of Defense.

AMY GOODMAN: “It’s not a gift to me. It’s a gift to the Department of Defense.” And, of course, when he leaves, it’s going to go to him, or to go to the Trump presidential library, which means the U.S. will pour in hundreds of millions of dollars to refurbish it, but then it goes to Trump, and these new Boeing planes, supposedly, will be the new U.S. Air Force One. But what Qatar wants from this? So, first Iran, then Qatar.

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: Well, with Iran, obviously, President Trump made clear, even when he was a candidate, that his goal was to reach a deal with Iran. And he even talked about lifting sanctions on Iran, which, interestingly, Kamala Harris criticized and condemned. So, I think Trump has made clear his willingness to engage in negotiations with Iran, to lift sanctions, to reach a nuclear deal, from the get-go. I think Israel assumed they would be able to curb that and instead get war on Iran. That’s failed. Very interesting that Iran has just proposed a joint nuclear development, Iranian enrichment, with the UAE and with Saudi Arabia, something that would have been unthinkable, but would certainly sweeten the consideration of what could be a civilian power, nuclear power for the entire region, and brings these countries closer together. And I think that’s a good thing. Anything that reduces the temperature of war in this region is a good thing.

In terms of Qatar, Qatar depends on the United States for military protection. This $400 million plane is protection money, and it’s directly protection money to Trump. But I don’t think, even though the glaring flying machine that is an advertisement for Qatar is particularly glaring, I don’t think we can take it out of the context of massive foreign influence, expanding foreign influence, the purchase of influence with money, with Gulf money. We have long had a U.S. foreign policy that has been controlled by money, including, in particular, pro-Israel money, that has seeped into American politics, Democrats and Republicans. And now the Gulf states are in on the game, in on the game more crudely and nakedly than ever before, as this plane signifies. And they’re certainly outspending AIPAC, which is something that’s making AIPAC and the pro-Israel supporters panic. But this, I think, represents the most glaring example of what has become the corruption of the U.S. political system, not just by domestic lobbying interests, but by foreign lobbying interests. So, I think, in fact, all of this is quite depressing and disheartening, because they are predicated on short-term gains, short-term financial gains, not just for President Trump, but for the entire establishment.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sarah, I wanted to ask you about Saudi Arabia. In a departure from his previous stance, Trump has suggested that Saudi Arabia will join the so-called Abraham Accords and forge relations with Israel, quote, “in its own time.” The significance of this?

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: Well, the significance of this is that Trump has successfully delinked both the development of a civilian nuclear plant, as well as this new trade deal. And I’m expecting a defense agreement, a defense cooperation agreement, that will come from any normalization with Israel. Whereas Biden had suggested that all of these things would be dependent on Saudi Arabia normalizing with Israel, that’s off the table.

But it’s important to note that it’s off the table because of Israel’s own self-sabotage. It was really only Netanyahu and Israel who were the primary reasons there is no normalization with Saudi Arabia right now. And the Trump administration has now clearly indicated that they are going to proceed on their business arrangements and military arrangements with Saudi Arabia regardless of its normalization with Israel. This is one of the greatest acts of political self-sabotage that we’ve seen in the region for a while, and it’s pretty remarkable how close Israel was to normalizing with Saudi Arabia, but torpedoed that with its own fanatical, maniacal obsession with its genocide in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump, in talking to Bob Woodward, talked about how he saved the — rhymes with glass — of Mohammed bin Salman when it came to Khashoggi. You mentioned Khashoggi at the beginning, the founder of DAWN, your organization. But for people who may not remember what happened, if you can talk about that and the significance of Trump’s very close relationship with the crown prince now, even as he said to Bob Woodward, “I saved that guy’s —.”

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: Well, that was a rare moment of clarity and honesty from President Trump, telling us, letting us know how he saved Mohammed bin Salman from global accountability, from judicial accountability, from complete ostracism, with his crime that shook the world, which was the targeted kidnapping and assassination of a U.S. resident, Jamal Khashoggi, who had been writing critical columns about Mohammed bin Salman and Saudi Arabia in The Washington Post, but also founding and launching an organization that was aimed at reshaping U.S. policy with Saudi Arabia and the region, promoting democracy and human rights in the region.

After this murder, I mean, we know that the CIA was surveilling the WhatsApp communications between Mohammed bin Salman and his primary henchman, Saud al-Qahtani, both before, during and after the murder of Khashoggi at the Istanbul Consulate, the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. And he was caught red-handed. The Biden administration revealed and released the CIA’s assessment that, in fact, Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Khashoggi. But, of course, Biden capitulated on every front, going so far as to grant Mohammed bin Salman immunity from prosecution, though he is not the head of state of Saudi Arabia, because King Salman is still the head of state. So there was a complete pivot by the Biden administration, originally promising accountability for Saudi Arabia and then transforming into the fist bump and close ties with Saudi Arabia.

So, this is something that President Trump continues to have and hold over Mohammed bin Salman’s head. They can release those messages showing Mohammed bin Salman’s complicity in the murder of Khashoggi. I’m sure there are other secrets of Mohammed bin Salman’s that the United States and the CIA has and will continue to lord over him. But right now President Trump is focused on deal making with Mohammed bin Salman.

AMY GOODMAN: Where’s Khashoggi’s body?

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: We don’t know. One would think that, at minimum — 

AMY GOODMAN: Killed in the Istanbul Embassy.

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: Killed in the Istanbul Embassy, reportedly, either burned — 

AMY GOODMAN: Of Saudi Arabia.

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: The Consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul. Reportedly, his remains may have been disposed of in an incinerator at the premises or removed out of the premises and taken to a car wash to be disposed of. We don’t really know. Saudi Arabia has never told us what they did with Jamal’s remains. One would think they would have the dignity and respect to at least allow this man to have a proper burial, but that is not something we can hope for.

And I want to remind people that Mohammed bin Salman may seem a little bit reasonable right now amidst really the complete insanity of Israel in terms of the genocide in Gaza, but Mohammed bin Salman himself is a volatile, unpredictable sociopath who continues to detain and imprison the mildest of critics in his country, who continued a seven-year senseless war in Yemen, resulting in over 300,000 deaths. And, of course, not only did he murder Jamal Khashoggi in cold blood, but targeted and attempted to kill several other critics of his regime who live abroad, including in the United Kingdom, including in Canada, opening up, really, a field day of efforts of targeted assassinations.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sarah, Sarah, I wanted to ask you: The prospect of a Saudi-U.S. security agreement with, as you mentioned, the leader that Saudi Arabia has right now, the crown prince? The significance of it? And does Saudi — why does Saudi Arabia even need it, given the close alliance it already has with the U.S.?

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: Right. So, Saudi Arabia has been demanding a bilateral security agreement, treaty-level guarantees and protection from the United States, for a while, basically to immunize themselves from the herky-jerky of a new administration that comes in threatening to reshape its ties to Saudi Arabia. And remember, President Biden said he was going to cut all military sales to Saudi Arabia in the wake of its atrocities in Yemen and the murder of Khashoggi. So they want to immunize themselves from the back-and-forth of U.S. politics by having this defense agreement.

Interestingly, the White House’s announcement of its meetings in Saudi Arabia, the $600 billion in promised investments — which let’s see whether or not they materialize and how quickly they materialize — had no mention of a security agreement, no mention of U.S. security commitments to Saudi Arabia. I’m pretty certain that these things are going to come. I don’t think Saudi Arabia is going to allow the United States to develop this civilian nuclear plant for free. China has been willing to do it, and they’ve been willing to offer the deal to China. Saudi Arabia wants something back, and it remains what the United States has to offer it, which is military and political protection.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, but, Akbar Shahid Ahmed, I want to end where we started today’s show with our headlines, and that is in Gaza, the horror that is taking place there, the intensification of Israel’s attacks right now on Gaza, the starvation, the killings, the airstrikes. And you’re writing a book on what’s happened in Gaza. Your final thoughts on where this could all lead? I mean, if President Trump — I mean, the number of negotiations he’s engaged with, coming to a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, with the Houthis, recognizing Syria — if he stopped arms sales to Israel right now, there would have to be a ceasefire, because Netanyahu could not proceed without those weapons.

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: I think, Amy, there’s some hope of that. But fundamentally, I think it’s so important to remember that President Trump has show a really clear antipathy towards Palestinians, fundamentally, right? These are not people who have something to offer him the same way that wealthy Gulf Arabs or others in the region do, or Iran, through a kind of preventing a war lens. So, I think that while there’s some hope and expectation of that, my conversations with people, talking to the White House, hoping for something meaningful on Gaza, it’s pretty low right now. I think there’s a sense that there might be a fig leaf, something that says, “Here’s a U.S. plan to stop the fighting for a while,” but that would really involve a really kind of pro-Israeli approach that humanitarian organizations are really worried about, would not necessarily help actual aid reach Gazans, and, I think, could very easily fall apart. So, right now there doesn’t seem to be that interest and that deep expertise to deliver for Gaza, even though President Trump has this desire to be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. But that may change, like everything in this administration, of course.

AMY GOODMAN: Akbar Shahid Ahmed, we want to thank you for being with us, HuffPost senior diplomatic correspondent, speaking to us from D.C. And thank you to Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of DAWN.

When we come back, we go a Salvadoran journalist who’s had to flee El Salvador along with his other colleagues from the news outlet El Faro, after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele threatened to arrest them for exposing how Bukele made secret deals with Salvadoran gangs. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Silvio Rodríguez performing in Central Park here in New York in 2017.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump has arrived in Qatar after two days in Saudi Arabia. Earlier today, President Trump met in Riyadh with Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former al-Qaeda leader who helped topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad last December. During the meeting, Trump urged al-Sharaa to normalize ties with Israel and join the Abraham Accords. Trump also asked the Syrian leader to deport Palestinians he described as, quote, “terrorists.” After the meeting, Trump said, quote, “We are currently exploring normalizing relations with Syria’s new government,” unquote. The meeting took place hours after Trump pledged to lift U.S. sanctions on Syria in a major policy shift.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: In Syria, which has seen so much misery and death, there is a new government that will, hopefully, succeed in stabilizing the country and keeping peace. … That’s why my administration has already taken the first steps toward restoring normal relations between the United States and Syria for the first time in more than a decade. … I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness.

AMY GOODMAN: Much of President Trump’s trip to the Gulf has focused on securing new deals for U.S. companies. On Tuesday, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia signed a new $142 billion arms deal, in what the White House has called “the largest defense cooperation agreement” Washington has ever achieved. Trump claimed Saudi Arabia has pledged to invest $1 trillion in the United States.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And with this trip, we’re adding over $1 trillion more in terms of investment and investment into our country and buying our products. And, you know, nobody makes military equipment like us. We have the best military equipment, the best missiles, the best rockets, the best everything, best submarines, by the way.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump is now in Qatar and then will head to the United Arab Emirates. He’s facing increasing bipartisan criticism over reports that Qatar is preparing to give him a $400 million luxury plane known as “the flying palace.”

We’re joined now by two guests. In Washington, D.C., Akbar Shahid Ahmed, the senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost, is with us. His latest piece is headlined “A Moment of Truth in the Middle East for Donald Trump — and Steve Witkoff.” His forthcoming book on the Biden administration and Gaza is titled Crossing the Red Line. And here in New York, Sarah Leah Whitson is with us, the executive director of DAWN, an organization working to reform U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! Sarah Leah Whitson, let’s begin with you. Your assessment of what’s happened over the last two days, both his visits with these three countries — he’s about to go to the United Arab Emirates, just landed in Qatar, in Doha — but also what this means for Israel?

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: Well, this is a very volatile moment in the Middle East, and we’ve seen some pivots that we really haven’t seen for decades in terms of independent U.S. decision-making in the Middle East. President Trump has ended sanctions on Syria, he’s reached a truce in Yemen with the Houthis, he’s declared that he’s going to have diplomatic negotiations with Iran — all without the consent or veto of Israel, which previously existed. And meanwhile, he’s dramatically expanding America’s economic ties to the Gulf states, declaring that if you can pay, then you can play — the massive announcement of trade deals with Saudi Arabia, $600 billion, the largest weapons deal, $148 billion with Saudi Arabia — and really no talk at all of a normalization with Israel as any kind of a condition, including for the development of a civilian nuclear plant. What we still don’t know is what Saudi is going to charge the United States in return, whether there’s going to be a defense pact, which is, of course, what Saudi Arabia has long been looking for.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sarah, what about all of the CEOs of major U.S. corporations that have also headed to the Middle East, as well, during these days? What do you make of that?

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: Well, I mean, the days of Saudi isolation in the wake of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, when some of these very same business leaders absented themselves from appearing in Saudi Arabia, are long over. And now I think American companies are looking to cash in on the billions of dollars of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the Emirati public investment fund, the Qatari public investment fund. This is a boondoggle for American businesses, because the Gulf states understand that in order to continue to secure U.S. protection, they must expand their investments in U.S. businesses.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the ceasefire in Yemen that Trump has implemented, as well as other actions he’s taken that seem to be marginalizing Israel and the Netanyahu administration, what do you make of that?

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: Well, I mean, the ceasefire with Yemen and the Houthis is an excellent development, and I wish that every other American president had ended failed catastrophic wars after a mere two months, which is the deadline that President Trump imposed on this foolish incursion into Yemen, which has put us back exactly where we were before the incursion started. This was never a conflict that the United States was pursuing in U.S. interests, but clearly to support Israel and to protect Israel. I think it’s a very important signal that President Trump is now making decisions that more closely align with U.S. interests than with Israel’s interests. I think it’s very notable that the Houthis launched an attack on Israel a mere day after this ceasefire was announced, making clear, underlining, really, that the ceasefire does not include sustaining or suspending attacks on Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Akbar Shahid Ahmed, you’ve written an extensive piece about the meaning of this trip. And again, at this point of this broadcast, President Trump has landed in Doha, but he just met with the Syrian president and said they’re dropping all sanctions against Syria, which also includes, presumably, against he himself, against the Syrian president. If you can talk about the significance of this moment and what you thought was most significant in the meetings in Saudi Arabia with the crown prince and the investment, a massive meeting of hundreds of CEOs? You see Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sitting right next to Elon Musk.

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Right, Amy. But with the meeting with President Sharaa, which is the first meeting between an American president and a Syrian president in more than two decades, that’s a real signal that Trump, as Sarah Leah said, is pursuing a policy that’s a little different than what the Israelis certainly would like. This is the culmination of a monthslong battle within Trump’s own administration that I’ve been reporting on, where there are still many neoconservatives, kind of pro-Israel hard-liners, the folks who have been in the Republican ecosystem for many, many years, who were not supportive of this kind of policy on Syria. So, for President Trump to be in Saudi Arabia publicly embracing the Syrian president, not just saying hello, which is what the White House told us he was going to do yesterday — he actually had a more extensive conversation and has expressed a lot of hopes for U.S.-Syria engagement — I think that’s quite striking, right? It’s certainly showing you a U.S. approach that, as some regional sources have described to me, they see as more even-handed, because they believe now, rather than under the Biden administration, certainly, but even administrations before that, there was a U.S. policy very much conceived not just in coordination with Israel, but often shaped by an assumption about how Israel would react — right? — which was kind of shaping how officials were having even internal conversations.

I will hazard, though, I think what’s really significant to remember is who’s not being talked about. There was also some chatter that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas might come to Saudi Arabia. That didn’t happen. Right? And so, even while President Trump is in Saudi, is making these conversations about peace between the U.S. and Syria, Syria and Israel, Gaza is still being pummeled, and we’re still seeing a blockade of more than 70 days there, where one in five Gazans is facing extreme starvation. There hasn’t been food. There hasn’t been fuel. There hasn’t been medicine. And all of that is backed by the U.S. So, President Trump is putting forward this image that, “Yes, I’m not necessarily aligning with Israel at all times”; at the same time, he’s making significant concessions and approvals to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to continue the war, continue pummeling Palestinians.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Akbar, what do you make — there’s been a lot of press attention to this donation of the royal family of Qatar of a $400 million luxury 747 plane to President Trump, but to the United States. What’s your take on this?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: I think, Juan, it’s going to be a really serious wrinkle in President Trump’s attempt at diplomacy. A lot of what he’s trying to do, whether it’s weapons sales, whether it’s a potential defense treaty with Saudi Arabia, does have to go through Congress. I think this is going to become a significant issue. Democrats are going to latch onto this, claiming corruption, and some Republicans are already uncomfortable with it.

I think the concern about this is not just about an ethical appearance of taking a gift from the Qataris, which has its own concerns. It’s also about policy making and real strategic danger. When I’ve been talking to regional officials, Western officials, U.S. officials, they’re saying, “Look, Trump’s deal-making approach is part of why he kind of plays so well with these Arab states, that are very transactional, don’t want to hear moralistic rhetoric about human rights or even long-term strategy.” They want to just pay to play, as Sarah Leah put it. But does that lead to just short-term wins, right? Or does that lead to the personal and private mixing in ways where President Trump can walk away saying, “I feel great. I got this plane, and maybe I’ve got some deals. What’s the long-term strategic danger there, you know?” And a lot of my reporting on Trump and his envoy to region, Steve Witkoff, has focused on how they’re pursuing really unconventional, really personalistic dealings with these leaders. In one instance, the leader of the United Arab Emirates, Steve Witkoff, who’s Trump’s envoy, had a 10-hour meeting with him, where he didn’t tell any other U.S. officials what was discussed. So, that kind of policy-making process, I think, is the risk behind this extreme, personalized and potentially corrupt relationship.

AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed, I wanted you to talk — Akbar, I wanted you to talk more about who Steve Witkoff is. I mean, this trip started before President Trump got on the plane to Saudi Arabia, right?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it started with Edan Alexander —

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — the Israeli American hostage, who Israel didn’t negotiate to get him out. The U.S. negotiated directly, presumably with Witkoff, with Hamas to get him out. And he didn’t meet with Netanyahu, and he’s coming to the United States. The significance of this complete sidelining, icing out of Israel that began before Saudi Arabia?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Absolutely, Amy. Witkoff has been the man shaping the region, not just since January, when Trump took office, but, to a large extent, in November and December, in those waning months of the Biden administration. Witkoff was the person who really negotiated that Gaza ceasefire, that did last from January to March. Since then is when you’ve seen the beginning of the sidelining you talk about. Based on my sources, I’ve understood that Witkoff has actually personally told people he felt played by Netanyahu, because it was Israel that broke the ceasefire, went back into Gaza and really undercut what Witkoff and, by extension, President Trump were trying to do.

So, this kind of sense of “we don’t have to coordinate with the Israelis” is very much linked to Witkoff’s view that he is a personally empowered envoy of Trump, he’s a personal friend of Trump’s, and, importantly, he’s personally wealthy, and he’s not political, right? So, compared to, say, U.S. officials in previous administrations, or even in this one, he’s not someone who’s looking at “how do I advance international security establishment for years to come? How does challenging Israel potentially put me at risk?” And so, that’s something where, talking to a lot of regional officials, U.S. officials, they feel he is able to be a little more even-handed and a little less driven by a fixation on Israel. But I think that also puts him in the crosshairs of a lot of the pro-Israel kind of advocacy ecosystem that does exist, right? And we’ve seen that come out. Already, there’s been a lot of attacks on Witkoff personally, his business ties with Qatar, his potentially, you know, unconventional tactics.

But Witkoff very much has the trust of the president personally, and I discovered this kind of reporting on him. Taking criticisms to the White House, they are ardently supporting him. And importantly, not just kind of lower-level officials, really high-ranking people, like Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, and Vice President JD Vance, are pushing Witkoff as an avatar almost of what they describe as a different kind of Trump foreign policy, saying, “We are promoting a foreign policy that will bring peace to the region.”

Really important to remember that foreign policy, of course, involves, as I said, continued pummeling of Gaza and huge weapons deals to regimes that have pursued huge wars. But it is one that isn’t necessarily being driven by intense U.S. military entanglement, particularly with Israel. And I think that pattern will continue. You’ll see that mostly play out in the next few weeks. I think there’s a looming deadline and fight over Iran diplomacy, which Steve Witkoff, the president’s envoy, is also leading — again, very controversial for Israel, very controversial for national security hawks. I think that’ll be a really intense kind of battle over what Witkoff is willing to do with Iran.

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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org.

We go from Gaza to someone who was just in Gaza when we last spoke to him. Abubaker Abed is a 22-year-old journalist from Deir al-Balah. He used to be a football, or soccer, commentator, but now, as he says, he’s an accidental war correspondent. In recent weeks, he’s been evacuated to Dublin, Ireland, to continue his education and get medical treatment for malnutrition. He received a scholarship to study as he heals. His new piece for Drop Site News is headlined “The Unbearable Pain of Leaving Gaza.”

Abubaker, welcome back to Democracy Now! We last spoke to in Gaza. Now you’re in Dublin. Talk about that journey that you took, and your thoughts as you listen to another report from Gaza City, a report that you might have given several months ago.

ABUBAKER ABED: Yeah, thank you so much, Amy, for having me.

Of course, it’s a very — it’s been a very agonizing decision, a very heartbreaking one. And let me just say first that everyone in Gaza should have this chance to get the treatment. Everyone in Gaza should have the right to continue their education. I’m not better than anyone inside Gaza at the moment. But, yes, for a 22-year-old to take such a decision at such a time, in a very, very young age, is absolutely traumatizing.

I was forced to it, because at that time I was very malnourished, and if I stayed, because of the blockade — and we heard the report on the ongoing starvation — a blockade of every corner of the Gaza Strip is just lethal. So, if I stayed, I would die. All Gaza right now is starving. So I was left with no choice.

And this wasn’t the only reason, to be honest, because at the same time, I was threatened multiple times. Yesterday, Israeli warplanes bombed the burns ward inside the hospital, killing journalist Hassan Islayeh. He’s literally the most famous, renowned journalist inside Gaza. Everyone really learned from him. I learned from him. And he brought journalism to Gaza. He’s been covering Gaza since 2009, three years after the blockade or the siege that Israel opposed on the territory. So, when you look at the number of journalists killed in Gaza, more than 215, and I was — I’m very fortunate to have survived. But again, I don’t — everyone deserves this chance. Everyone should have the right to education, to health, to everything.

But I can’t really — I can’t really tell you that I’m safe here. I’m probably a physical survivor, but not an emotional survivor. The images that I took with me from Gaza are still haunting me all the night. And I can tell you, like, over the past three weeks, since arriving here, many nights I didn’t sleep at all, because every place, every beautiful place I visited here in Dublin or around Ireland, it was — I had that secondary instant idea that this place would be bombed anyways, and I would see it lying in ruins, even the home where I reside in right now. So, the trauma is relentless.

And my whole family is still in Gaza, my friends, my colleagues. And all of them, I’m just thinking about them every single second all day. And this shouldn’t be — again, this shouldn’t be the life of a 22-year-old. And I didn’t want to make this decision. I wanted to stay. But when a son hears from his mom that — telling him that he is going to harm his own family and harm her, your home country is no longer your home. You have to flee. You have to leave, because your mom thinks you are a danger. Your family thinks you’re a danger. And everyone felt that I was going to be the next target. And myself, I knew that I was going to be the next target. So, when you’re put under such circumstances, this is just an unfair world and filled with corruption that no one can really describe. So, this is just a very traumatizing and agonizing decision, and I don’t know what to say anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about what it is like to watch the news outside about what’s happening inside, and what is happening directly to your family inside now, though you have made it out, Abubaker?

ABUBAKER ABED: It’s unfair. It’s traumatizing. And I constantly live in fear, just thinking about my family. I try to have some joy here, but it’s painful joy. I don’t have a taste of any food. I don’t have taste to the pure water that I drink right now. I remember the times when I was in Gaza, I was drinking contaminated water coming from the sewage, and it was really causing me a lot of pain. But right now, even when you think about it, that someone has been taken from hell to heaven, it’s really hard to process.

And, you know, I’m not there anymore. So, if I — I don’t know, but if anyone — like, for example, I should have been today with the other journalists, one there of our colleagues, our brave colleague Hassan Islayeh, who was deliberately assassinated by Israel. And the killing spree continues to grow every single day towards journalists. So, I should have been there, but I’m watching right now in silence, surrounded by fear, by fury, by wrath.

I really want to do something, and I’m trying to do something from here to try and tell the governments, tell the people, that we need to do something, because this is not — Amy, this is not some sort of aberration. This is deliberate genocide, starvation by design, an act to try and wipe out the entire Gazan population, from the young to the elderly, because we’ve seen the systematic erasure of entire families in Gaza, more than has been — as it has been reported, more than 1,200 families have been wiped out.

And one week before leaving Gaza, my aunt’s family was killed — was bombed, sorry. And my cousin, who was 45 years old, her husband was killed, she was killed, and all of her six children. So, all of the family was wiped out now. Their memories, their home, everything about them has now been — is now erased because of Israel.

So, Israel continues bombing Palestinians. I can’t really — I’m praying every single day that a ceasefire will be achieved, an agreement will be hashed out. But I’m trying to do something from here, but I can’t tell you anything. But I feel very guilty for the water that I drink, for the fresh food that I have, for the good medications. Even I’m taking right now gastro-resistant pills and paracetamols and just other multivitamins that are — these are just simple medications that it should have had in Gaza, but right now I’m taking these simple medications that I was forced to get out just to continue my education and take these medications, very simple medications.

So, what is the objective that Israel is trying to achieve by blocking the entry of aid, food and medications into Gaza? This is just the peak of terrorism that Israel is doing and the hell that Israel has inflicted upon Palestinians, particularly the children, given the fact that half the population is children. This hell is just unprecedented. And the conditions, as I’m talking to my family, and I’m hearing the bombings from abroad — I was hearing them in Gaza — I feel very frightened, very terrified, and I can’t — I can’t really have a good moment of safety here. I’m not safe. I’m just a physical survivor.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, I’m speaking to you as President Trump is in his first major international trip. It’s to Saudi Arabia. It’s to the United Arab Emirates. It’s to Qatar — Qatar, which has been a country that is negotiating, supposedly, a deal between Hamas and Israel — of course, with U.S. involvement. What message do you have to these countries?

ABUBAKER ABED: That it is enough. It’s enough. We’re not a party to this war. And this is something I told you while I was in Gaza. We’re not a party to this war. We’re not — we didn’t do anything to be suffering that way, that all the Palestinians right now trapped in the territory are still suffering every single day. They cannot — they don’t have access to water. They don’t have access to food. My family is suffering relentlessly. They don’t have anything. And that this, what is happening, is something that has to stop, because we are humans like anyone across the globe, and we have the right to live. We have the right to have a normal life, because the simplest things here in this country, in Ireland, are not available for people in Gaza. I’m seeing the leftovers people leave in the wastebaskets. Those things are precious for Palestinians, for my family, for everyone in Gaza. But you can see the different worlds that we are living in.

A whole community, a whole population is being genocided live now, while an entire world of 9 billion people is just to stand by passively, not being able to send one bottle of water or can of food to children who are starving, who are being brutalized, traumatized and ostracized, as if their lives have no value at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Abubaker Abed —

ABUBAKER ABED: And Israel’s war crimes go just unpunished —

AMY GOODMAN: — I want to thank you so much for being with us. We have to leave it there. We’ll continue our conversation at democracynow.org.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

“Trump Heads to the Middle East With a Single Goal: Deals, Deals, Deals.” That’s the headline of a New York Times piece our next guest contributed to as he follows the dealings of the Trump administration. Eric Lipton is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter with The New York Times, where his latest pieces are headlined ”Auction to Dine With Trump Creates Foreign Influence Opportunity” and ”Trump Sons’ Deals on Three Continents Directly Benefit the President.”

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Eric Lipton. Well, why don’t you start there? We’re looking at this first major international trip President Trump is taking, first stop Riyadh. We’re looking at the line of American CEOs and others who are shaking the hands of Mohammed bin Salman and President Trump, very prominently, of course, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, the Trump ally. If you can talk about who is behind the trip — you can talk about the advising of Jared Kushner, his son-in-law — and what all of them, and who we aren’t seeing right now, Eric and Donald Trump, have to gain?

ERIC LIPTON: The Middle East is the nexus of the Trump Organization’s global business operations at the moment. It’s really their single most important profit center by far. And it relates to the fact that there is such enormous wealth there. It’s the oil and gas revenues over many decades have been stuffed into the sovereign wealth funds. And the sovereign wealth funds are now looking to expand their engagement globally to become more prominent economic players in the world. And so, that’s the reason that there are so many venture capitalists and, you know, artificial intelligence or technology companies that are heading to the Middle East. And it’s the same reason that the Trumps and Jared Kushner are so tied to the Middle East, because they have hundreds of billions of dollars to give out. And that’s the reason that so many American corporations are in the Middle East with President Trump right now.

So, for the Trump family, they have $2 billion worth of capital that in the last several weeks the government of Abu Dhabi announced that it was going to put into World Liberty Financial, their cryptocurrency company, and that will pass through World Liberty on its way to finance the largest crypto exchange in the world. But while that money resides with World Liberty, the Trump family and its partners will be making interest off of that $2 billion, so we’re talking tens of millions of dollars a year.

Similarly, not very far away, in Qatar, as, you know, your prior guest was referencing, the government there is the landowner on a property where the Trump family is going to be doing golf and villas. And many of these projects in the Middle East are coordinated with a company called DarGlobal, which is a subsidiary of Dar Al Arkan, which is a Saudi-based real estate company that’s closely aligned with the government of Saudi Arabia. And DarGlobal has six different real estate projects with the Trump family, which basically are branding projects, where the Trump name, as Robert Weissman indicated, is put on these projects. The Trumps get millions of dollars in branding fees, and then they often get licensing and managing fees, as well. So, they have projects in Saudi Arabia, in Oman, in the United Emirates with DarGlobal. And that’s where the biggest growth chunk of the Trump real estate operations are, through DarGlobal and these branding projects.

And so, you know, when I looked at the list of who’s attending the Saudi meetings today, I actually — I did not see, and I looked closely — I didn’t see anyone from DarGlobal listed, although they may be there, and I didn’t see their other business partners listed as being present. But just being in that space is good for — the president being there is good for Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner has more than $2 billion in funds from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, which went into his private equity firm. And then, similarly, the Public Investment Fund is the single biggest investor in LIV Golf, which has played four tournaments in a row at the Trump family’s Doral golf course in Florida.

And so, the money from the Middle East is just in so many different ways — in crypto, in golf and hotels and Jared Kushner — flowing into Trump family operations. And so, it’s not surprising that this is, you know, a big trip that the president has taken to visit UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, three business partners of the Trump family.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk more about Eric and Donald Trump. In the first administration, we saw them all the time. They were front and center. But right now we’re not seeing them. You write an article, maybe that’s because they’re making deals on three continents that directly benefit the president. But also, the financial relationship between President Trump and his two older sons?

ERIC LIPTON: I mean, you know, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were in the White House in the first term, but Don Jr. and Eric Trump were never a part of the administration. They were part of the political operation, and they have always been a part of the political operation. So, in terms of their visibility and presence in the second term, I don’t see that much difference for Don Jr. and Eric. I mean, they are very active, and they are — you know, Eric Trump was just in Dubai giving a speech at a crypto event, and then he similarly was with DarGlobal having a grand celebration of the start of the Dubai Trump International Hotel project that’s on sale there now for, you know, more than — you know, I think it’s $12 million for some of the top condos there. So, they are — and, you know, Don Jr. is going to be in Vegas for a bitcoin conference, and he’s going to be in Qatar next week, as well, for another conference. And so, they are out there.

And Don Jr. is opening up a new club in Washington. He’s a part owner of something called “The Executive Branch,” which is, you know, obviously named after the White House, that’s paying — you know, going to cost you $500,000 a person to get a membership. And David Sacks, the president’s crypto adviser, is one of the founding members. And Jeff Miller, a lobbyist, who has dozens of clients that he’s gotten since Trump started — he’s a big fundraiser for Trump — is also one of the founding members. And Don Jr., the son of the president, is one of the owners. So, Don will be, you know, present at that venue in Georgetown once it opens.

So, I’ve seen a lot of Don and Eric, similar to what I saw in the first term. The difference is that they are much bolder in their deal making right now than they were in Trump’s first term, where they were a little more shy about pursuing profits as aggressively as they now are. There’s very little restraint at the moment. They’re just pursuing as many profitable deals as they can find.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk more about cryptocurrency? And I think there’s a problem in the United States, that a lot of people don’t even understand what it is. But earlier this month, the founder of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture said Thursday that a fund backed by Abu Dhabi will make a $2 billion investment in the crypto exchange — you pronounce it Binance? Talk more about that and how exactly President Trump is financially benefiting from this.

ERIC LIPTON: Yeah, so, there are at least three different ventures, and you could argue that there are four, that the Trump family has recently embraced relative to crypto. There’s the memecoin, which is the one that the president is having the auction that ended yesterday in order to — the more of his memecoin that you buy, you can get invited to a dinner and even a tour of the White House. And that is personally enriching him and his sons. And there are 220 people that next Thursday will be invited to the Trump National Golf Course in Virginia for a dinner with Trump, and 25 of them will have a, quote, ”VIP reception” with him. And then, that similar 25 will also be invited for a White House tour. And that’s because they spent, you know, in some cases, millions of dollars to buy the Trump family’s cryptocurrency memecoin, directly enriching the president and his family in exchange for getting access to the president.

So, again, you know, in history, if you make campaign contributions, you get access to powerful people. We’ve not had a tradition in the United States when if you personally enrich a person, you know, the president or a U.S. senator, that if you give money to the U.S. senator, that you then can have a meeting with the U.S. senator or with the president of the United States. That is not the tradition in the United States, but that has now become what Trump is doing. So, that’s one company. That’s the memecoin. It’s dollar sign T-R-U-M-P, all caps [$TRUMP].

And the second company is World Liberty Financial. And that one is — they’re trying to be, effectively, a JPMorgan Chase of the crypto world. They’re going to have, you know, lending and borrowing, you know, borrowing money and depositing your crypto in their accounts. They also have something called a stablecoin, where you can deposit your crypto, and it will be — maintain a dollar-to-dollar value for each stablecoin. And that’s the place where Abu Dhabi, which is a part of the UAE, has put $2 billion. So, overnight, that World Liberty went from becoming just started, in October, to now having one of the largest stablecoin deposit in the world. It’s one of the — and stablecoins are one of the most profitable chunks of the crypto world, because what happens is that $2 billion that the government of Abu Dhabi has put into World Liberty, much of that will be put into short-term treasuries to try to back up the dollar-to-dollar stablecoin, and the yield from those treasuries will go — the interest, the return on that investment, goes to World Liberty, not to the owner of the stablecoins, and so that’s why it’s so profitable. Tether, which is the world’s largest stablecoin producer, makes billions of dollars in taking that yield from people who deposited stablecoins. So, that’s a second venture.

The third one is that just yesterday Eric Trump announced that they’re going to have a publicly traded bitcoin mining company, which they are executives on. And the fourth, with Trump Media and Truth Social, they’re also talking about having some crypto nexus, although that one’s a little less clear.

So, the family is rushing into crypto because they see it as a potential profit center, and it is quickly emerging as one of the single biggest, if not the single biggest, sources of revenues and profits for the Trump family. And this is happening at the same time as the president appoints the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has been rolling back all kinds of regulatory enforcement actions of crypto, including partners of the Trump family have been given regulatory relief. And even one — the president himself pardoned Arthur Hayes, who is effectively a business partner of World Liberty Financial, so the president effectively pardoned a business partner. Again, it’s like it’s never happened before. And so — and then, the Justice Department is rolling back its own crypto enforcement program.

And so, at the same time as Trump is the chief regulator, he is also the regulated, and he is curbing the regulations in a way that directly benefits his own business operations. These are conflicts on a scale that we’ve never seen before in American history, and they’re playing out so quickly and at such a complex level that most of the American public just simply cannot follow it all. And to throw in a 747 being donated by the government of Qatar, I mean, it’s just headline after headline. They’re happening just day after day.

AMY GOODMAN: So, finally, Eric Lipton, you’re an investigative reporter. You focus on powerful people and the influence they have over American society and the world. You’ve been a reporter for more than three decades. Your work has received three Pulitzer Prizes. What has surprised you most in reporting on the Trump administration and this whole pay-to-play approach of the presidency so far?

ERIC LIPTON: It’s just how unrestrained it is. You know, during the first term, they were reluctant to be so brazen. They tried to appear to be more respectful to conflicts of interest and norms and standards. And I think that — and I’ve talked to Eric Trump about this, because Eric Trump and I have had a very respectful relationship for over a decade now. We talk. You know, we’ve had lunch. And he was angry over how they were treated in the first term. And he felt — and they were subpoenaed. They were — you know, they were sued. And he felt — his feeling was, “We tried to be good.” Now, you know, obviously, most of your viewers would think that they weren’t good, but they did at least make an attempt to — for example, they did not do new international real estate deals during the first term. And his feeling is, you know, “We tried, and we were still completely assaulted with lawsuits and subpoenas.”

And so, coming into the second term, they said, “You know what? We’re just going to — you know, we’re going to act ethically.” They feel like they’re acting ethically; you can argue over that. “But we’re going to do what we want to do. We’re not going to be restrained by appearances.” And they’re not restrained. And that’s the thing that’s most striking and startling, is just how completely unrestrained this is. And the conflicts of interest, it’s no longer an appearance of a conflict of interest. These are real, you know, provable conflicts of interest.

And many people want to use the word “corruption.” I’m less — I’m more reluctant to use that term. I mean, there are ethical violations everywhere that we’re seeing. There are conflicts of interest. There is an appearance of corruption. To me, corruption means when you are giving someone in exchange for a benefit. And that’s — the quid pro quo part of that appears to be the case, but proving that is something that, generally, I want to let a court, you know, or a prosecutor document the quid pro quo. We have all the ingredients of the quid pro quo, but, you know, whether or not there was intent to give a government benefit in exchange for financial assistance is something that, you know, is subjective. But all the ingredients are now there, in a way that is so brazen, striking and unprecedented in American history. It’s really sort of shocking. And that’s the thing that’s most surprising to me.

AMY GOODMAN: Eric Lipton, I want to thank you for being with us, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, investigative reporter at The New York Times. We’ll link to your latest pieces at democracynow.org.

When we come back, we go to Gaza, where Save the Children is warning every child is now at risk of famine, at risk of starvation, due to Israel’s 10-week-long blockade. We’ll speak with one of the leaders of Oxfam in Gaza City. And then we’ll go to Abubaker Abed, 22-year-old Palestinian accidental war correspondent. We spoke to him when he was suffering from malnutrition in Gaza. He’s now in Ireland. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Women Gather” by Sweet Honey in the Rock, performing in our Democracy Now! firehouse studio over 20 years ago.