Imagine a President Trump Who Owes Saudi Arabia $540 Million

Donald Trump is attempting to appeal and delay having to pay that whopping fine that New York Judge Arthur Engoron laid on him earlier this month in the Trump Organization fraud suit brought by state Attorney General Letitia James. As we’ve all heard, to do so, he has to secure a bond.

NBC News did some cipherin’ Wednesday and reported that he’ll need a bond of about $540 million. It is widely assumed he doesn’t have the liquid cash. He has some buildings, notably 40 Wall Street, but many experts are saying that the government doesn’t like to take real estate as collateral. “Whoever is going to bond [Trump] is committing that they’re going to make good on that judgment,” New York business attorney David Slarskey told NBC. “Who’s going to do that?”

Indeed. That is the question. And the possible answer is chilling, if we imagine Trump back in the White House next year.

In sum: He could borrow this money from just about anybody. Or not even borrow it. Someone might just give it to him. Incredibly, as Neal Katyal said on MSNBC Wednesday night, there is apparently no law that prohibits someone in Trump’s position from securing the collateral from anyone. It’s another one of those laws that I suppose no one ever even thought to write because the system has never encountered a Donald Trump before. But now it has.

“There are potential sanctions prohibitions and campaign finance prohibitions. And of course potential tax issues,” MSNBC analyst Andrew Weissmann told me via email Thursday. “But apart from those, a third party can give a gift or loan to post the federal or state bonds.”

Ponder with me the possible dangers here. Let’s imagine a roster of actors who might have the resources and motive to stake Trump to half a billion dollars, either as a loan or a gift. There’s Russia, first of all. Russia—and Vladimir Putin personally, because he’s apparently stolen so much over the years that he might be the world’s richest man—may be out of the question because of the sanctions. But of course, that’s just the law, which Trump spits at.

Imagine a President Trump in hock to Russia or Putin to the tune of a half-billion dollars. Sure, Trump is inclined to give Putin half of Eastern Europe anyway. But money like that would turn a mere ideological sentiment into ironclad fealty, since money means a lot more to Trump than ideas. Well, Poland, you didn’t exist from 1795 to 1918; you can get used to it again.

Or let’s say it came from Saudi Arabia. Remember, it was during this very trial that Trump bragged that the Saudis, or at least some individual Saudi, would willingly pay inflated prices for Trump properties. This was a justification he used for inflating the prices in the first place. Engoron wrote in his ruling: “He also seems to imply that the numbers cannot be inflated because he could find a ‘buyer from Saudi Arabia’ to pay any price he suggests.”

So imagine now that a “buyer” or buyers from the kingdom secretly put up Trump’s collateral. And then Trump won the election. The United States would do whatever Mohammed bin Salman wanted it to do. On the surface, Saudi Arabia is committed to its Vision 2030 plan that proclaims a desire to normalize relations with Iran (this has started) and move away from the current reliance on oil revenues and toward a knowledge economy. That’s all very nice. But conflict will arise in that region, as it always does, and when it does, Trump will serve the master who bailed him out of legal hot water.

Or suppose the Netanyahu government put up the dough. People are plenty critical of Joe Biden now, and rightly so, over the money we’re giving to Israel and the absence of conditions imposed on that money so that Israel can commit atrocities on a massive scale. But if you think it can’t get worse, think again. Trust hard-right Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who said earlier this month: “Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel, which goes to Hamas. If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”

Of course, Trump’s benefactor need not be a foreign nation. What if, as Weissman posited to Lawrence O’Donnell Thursday night, it was Elon Musk who ponied up the dough? Or Peter Thiel? Or a consortium of Texas oilmen? Or the Mafia? Obviously, Trump would willingly accept the money from any and all of those sources. How nice would that be, to have a president who hardly made a move without anticipating their reaction?

Lara Trump argues that rank-and-file Republicans will be perfectly happy for their donations to the Republican National Committee to go to paying Trump’s legal bills, and the Trump-era Republican Party is such a warped, freakish imitation of a normal political party, so smothered in cult-worship, that she’s probably right. But even so, rank-and-file Republicans can’t begin to cover more than a fraction of this.

The other hypothetical to consider here is of course that it’s entirely possible that Trump won’t pay at all. After all, as we know all too well, if there’s a law or rule to flout, Trump is there to flout it and dare the system to catch up with him. So this all might be moot, which speaks only to how brazenly lawless the man is.

But if he decides to post the bond, and if all this reporting is correct that he doesn’t have the money himself, he’s going to have to get it from someone. And whoever that someone is will claim a mighty stake on what remains of the mind of the man who might be the president of the United States.

This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky. Sign up here.