David Kirkpatrick

speaker

148 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 14 Jan

David Kirkpatrick’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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Planet Money · How much money President Trump and his family have made · 14 Jan 2026 podcast

The Trumps had not done much business in the Persian Gulf.

Suddenly, as he's on his way to being the Republican nominee and on his way back into the White House, they get a string of enormous deals with the same Saudi company across Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.

Would those deals have happened if he weren't the president?

No, of course they wouldn't have.

If you're going to open a big resort in the Persian Gulf and you could go to the Four Seasons, you could go to Marriott, you could go to the Ritz, you could go to a lot of these giant companies that can lower costs because of their size.

Why would you go to the Trump Organization, which has so little track record in the Gulf?

The Trump Organization is a very small management firm.

Usually, if you're going to hire somebody to run your hotel and license a name for your hotel, if it's Marriott or one of the behemoths, they'll hold out for a 30-year contract.

But if it's, you know, David Kirkpatrick Hotel Management, you're lucky if you can get a 10-year contract.

But reportedly, according to the New York Times, the deal he got in Oman for a giant hotel, condo, golf course operation there was a 30-year contract.

deal.

So that's another clue that this is an extraordinary kind of a thing.

Certainly not abroad.

In these Persian Gulf Hotel deals, I come up with an estimated gain of $105.8 million.

So Jared Kushner.

He opens a private equity firm.

But he reaches out to Saudi Arabia, the rulers of Saudi Arabia, who he'd been very good to in office, and he asks them for a $2 billion investment.

Now, I was able to obtain, years ago, the minutes of the meeting of their advisory board evaluating that investment.

And it was unanimously negative.

Everybody said, this guy has no experience in private equity.

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