On MSNBC's The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone discusses right-wing figures objecting to Trump accepting a $400 million luxury plane from the Qatari royal family
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From the May 13, 2025, edition of MSNBC's The Weeknight
ALICIA MENENDEZ (CO-HOST): That's why I think it was interesting that in addition to seeing these Republican lawmakers get out there and say, like, "this is not it," you also had Ben Shapiro today weighing in on it. Can we take a listen to what he said? And then we'll talk about it on the other side.
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MICHAEL STEELE (CO-HOST): Trump family business ventures in the Middle East as of this night: Trump International Hotel and Tower, Dubai; Trump International Golf Club, Doha; Trump Tower Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Trump Hotel Oman; LIV Golf; Jared Kushner's Investment Fund, which got $2 billion going out the door the last time.
SYMONE SANDERS-TOWNSEND (CO-HOST): From the Saudis.
STEELE: From the Saudis. And Trump family crypto firm, which everybody is like, just going out, saying stuff and just watching the numbers go up. And when the little guy gets hit, they're still getting rich.
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ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): You know that list you just read though partly explains what Alicia was talking about before too, about why Ben Shapiro and some of the other right-wing media figures are sort of pushed back. It's not just that they have to carry water for this corruption and to their own audience, they have to get up every day and face them. And they're not all -- they're sycophants, but they have their own audience that they have to think about.
There's another part of it too, which is that they're not going to get their cut. That list of businesses, that's not part of an ecosystem he's spinning. Fox News didn't start their own pillow company, right? They let that guy have pillows. That's not the way the right-wing media works, right? When you are going to own all of the pie and you don't spread the wealth, your people start to push back a little bit. And that's what you're seeing here right now that that's not being spread out evenly enough across the rest of the landscape.