Incoming President Donald Trump opened a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on January 7 by announcing a business deal. More data centers, he said, were coming to the U.S. courtesy of a businessman from Dubai.
“We’re honored to introduce one of the most respected business leaders in the Middle East, indeed the world. He is a founder and chairman of Damac Properties, Hussain Sajwani. Very respected gentleman,” Trump said. “I’m thrilled to announce today that Damac will be investing at least $20 billion over a very short period of time into the United States and they may go double, or even somewhat more than double, that amount of money. It’s a great thing and I believe he will say that he’s doing it because of the fact that he was very inspired by the election.”
“The investment will support massive new data centers across the midwest, the Sunbelt area, and also to keep America on the cutting edge of technology and artificial intelligence, he’s very big into the data centers, and that’s going to be a very hot item in the coming years, as you know, with AI in particular…the first phase of the project will be in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana. Those places.”
Trump and Sajwani have been friends since around 2007 and became business partners a few years later. Sajwani donated $1 to $5 million to support Trump’s first campaign and was the mastermind of the Trump International Golf Club in Dubai, which opened in 2017. When the club opened, Donald Jr. was on hand to pose for the cameras and talk up his father. There were, of course, questions about Trump and Sajwani’s close business relationship during Trump’s first term, but they were lost in a sea of other investigations.
Now, just two weeks before he becomes President again, Trump announced he’d gotten his buddy a sweet data center deal in the U.S. After talking about where the data centers would go, Trump prompted the Dubai billionaire to address the crowd.
Sajwani wrapped up his remarks quickly. Trump got back in front of the cameras and spoke for another hour. As he always does, he said a lot of wild things.
Trump railed against wind power and claimed the wind turbines are killing whales. “You see what’s happening up in the Massachusetts area with the whales where they had two whales wash ashore in, I think, a 17-year period. And they had 14 this season. The windmills are driving the whales crazy. Obviously,” he said.
He also said he would change the name of the Gulf of Mexico. “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America…the Gulf of America, what a beautiful name.”
He went on and on about a dozen different topics, weaving in and out of various strange talking points. At the end of the press conference, and after generating bizarre headlines, it’s easy to forget he kicked the whole thing off by bringing up a Middle Eastern billionaire who helped him build a golf course in Dubai and promised him, in front of our eyes, that he would help the man get whatever he needed to build data centers in the U.S. as part of a sweetheart deal.
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