Daily Kos85%
Trump’s nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia comes with a personal payday 95%
By Lisa Needham97%
7/23/2026, 8:30:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Framing Effect, and Burden of Proof, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 80.2% saturation with 489 hits. Analysis detected 2,277 faulty-reasoning hits from 610 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 90.9% and a BS Rank of 95% (1,222 of 21,198 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 94.20% of the article peer group.
Were you surprised to learn that we somehow now have a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, because President Donald Trump said so?
Well, perhaps you’ll be less surprised to learn that, while Trump, the president, was cutting the nuclear deal, Trump, the private citizen, had his private business making deals in Saudi Arabia—lining up a Trump-branded hotel, golf, and residential project in a development helmed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
That helps explain why, out of the blue, there was suddenly a 30-year, multibillion-dollar deal where U.S. companies would be helping to develop nuclear infrastructure for the Saudis—as Trump’s disastrous war in Iran rages on.
And apparently it’s a done deal, as in it was literally already signed without congressional approval.
But honestly, do we really believe that Trump, who is currently blowing off Congress regarding the War Powers Act, really cares if it signs off on his deal?
It’s neat that he can just hand out nukes now, especially to a country run by a guy who oversaw the bonesaw murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
On its face, the deal with the Saudis is a bit confusing—given the whole mid-war thing.
But it got even more confusing when Trump, the day after touting the super great deal, added a pretty big condition: normalizing relations with Israel.
Yeah, that seems like a pretty major thing that maybe should have been discussed before everyone signed?
But back to Trump getting paid, which is all that this is really about.
Turns out that Trump’s private dealmaking was a long process, dating back a couple of years.
Just after Trump was elected in 2024, a Saudi firm announced oh so coincidentally there would be two Trump-branded developments in Riyadh.
Then, six months later, Trump did a big international diplomatic swing through the Middle East in May 2025, where he combined diplomacy with dealmaking again—taking meetings with Saudi businessmen, including the firm that had already done deals with the Trump Organization.
By November 2025, the private deal was in full swing, with a representative for the Trump Organization creating two new companies that gave Trump an 80% stake in an agreement for a hotel in Diriyah, with his sons presumably getting the remaining 20%.
And then after that, voila!
The crown prince flew to the United States for an official visit, and they started talking about giving Saudi Arabia a nuclear deal.
The quid pro quo for Trump came in January, when the Trump Organization made the deal official.
It’s truly unbelievable how openly corrupt and scuzzy this whole thing is.
The president used his official role to do a deal with the Saudi crown prince in his official role so the Saudis get a nuclear program, while the president as a private citizen did a deal with the Saudi crown prince to get a big hotel.
Forbes also found that Trump already had a few companies with Saudi projects, and the organization keeps incorporating more, but they do not appear on Trump’s financial disclosures, because of course not.
Who knows what happens now, given that Trump monkey-wrenched things with the surprise Israel condition.
If the Saudis do agree, they get an incredibly sweet deal.
They can enrich uranium—including spent atomic fuel—and they can bar inspectors from certain sites, which means that Saudi Arabia could easily turn a civilian nuclear power program into a secret nuclear weapons factory.
But hey, at least some U.S. businesses will get paid to build the nuclear facilities.
And at least Trump and his family will get even richer—and isn’t that all that really matters?
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