Technology

Let's put it this way.

Pretend I'm some semi-adversarial nation, like Saudi Arabia. I want trump to let off some sanctions, or tariffs, or in general give me preferential treatment compared to other nations. I want to give trump a big sum of money to do this, just writing him a check would be obvious corruption. So instead, I just book whole floors of his hotels during off-peak hours, and at a premium pricing. I don't even bother having anyone stay in the rooms, so trump can even book those rooms again for additional money. I just "legitimately" sent trump a bunch of money, and now he is paying it forward by stopping investigations into my goons sawing journalists into tiny pieces.

If this sounds to far-fetched for you, keep in mind that it literally happened.

https://apnews.com/article/travel-business-saudi-arabia-malaysia-15835346f75bc5f152a58842eb7c8609

This phone company trump has made really only exists as a bit of paper and some software. It has no infrastructure, no brick and mortar store fronts, nor any assets. It's mostly an agreement with a large carriers to lease time on their networks, charged per usage amount. For this scenario, let's pretend I'm Vladimir Putin trying to pay trump for leaving Ukraine high and dry. I simply put in orders for Trump's phone service, and then never even use the phones. Hell, a physical phone is probably never sent. On paper, it looks like 100,000 people signed up for the service, but they never use any of the lines, so trump collects nearly 100% of the money, with just a little bit lost to keep a small server up to handle transactions and accounts.

If none of this makes sense to you as an obvious vector for trump to receive money from foreign agents, then I'd guess that you're the kind of person who thinks that the mob ran legitimate protection services.