# Coffee Break: A Trump Scampire Bank With No Capital and A Dem Party With No Values Beyond Crushing the Left > Source: > Published: 2026-08-31 18:00:07+00:00 Trump has somehow managed to make his stablecoin scampire even worse by bringing in the UAE, the Dem zio-centrist establishment is going all-in on war with Hasan Piker, and Texas Democrats are not even going for lay-ups in winnable races. Three awful topics jammed into one great post. My August vacation has left me behind and I need to catch up on my various beats: Trump 2.0 regime corruptions, the US 2028 Elections, and the ongoing Large Language Model AI bubble. Wednesday, I’ll be back to talk OpenAI, circular financing, Face Hugging and how doomerism feeds into AI hype. No time to waste. Let’s get to it. **The UAE Spooks Don’t Spook Trump, Will His Scams Spook Them?** On August 14 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency gave the Trump family’s crypto outfit [preliminary conditional approval](https://www.occ.gov/topics/charters-and-licensing/interpretations-and-decisions/2026/cd1385.pdf) for a federally chartered national trust bank — the first time a sitting president’s family business has been handed a national bank charter. Thirteen days later the Wall Street Journal [reported](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/27/uae-spy-sheikh-trump-family-crypto-bank.html) that the largest stake in that bank’s holding company, 49 percent of it, belongs to a vehicle controlled by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan — the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser, the man the press calls the spy sheikh, and the man who runs G42, the Emirati state AI company the administration has been clearing to buy advanced American chips. A Trump family entity holds another 38 percent. Talk about two great things that go great together. Imaginary dialogue: Donald, Jr: “Hey you got your desperate, dying, mafioso petrostate money in my slapped together scampire!” Tahnoun: “Hey you got your scampire in my asset portfolio which is otherwise full of oil and US treasury bonds I can’t sell!” Both: “Hey wait, this makes arrow go up and to the right! We win again! Our enemies may be closing in but we’re too smart for them!” Forgive me for that. Sheikh Tahnoun is buying access to American AI chips and owns half of the president’s bank, and he got in early. Four days before the inauguration, Eric Trump signed a deal selling 49 percent of World Liberty Financial to a Tahnoun-backed vehicle for [$500 million](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/01/spy-sheikh-stake-trump-crypto.html). On July 10 of this year, Commerce moved the UAE into the [highest tier of the export control system](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-07-10/us-makes-it-easier-to-export-certain-military-items-ai-chips-and-commercial-satellites-to-the-uae), so G42 can now take Nvidia Blackwell chips without individual licenses. And now they’ve got a charter. Damn, Trump 2.0 might not have a functioning navy or FDA, but the parts that greenlight his wholesale thievery move like greased lightnin’! If you insist on reading [the Comptroller of the Currency doc approving the deal](https://www.occ.gov/topics/charters-and-licensing/interpretations-and-decisions/2026/cd1385.pdf), I would recommend doing a Elon Musk sized dose of ketamine first so you can be properly disassociated. Quick summary: Commenters raised conflicts of interest, the Emoluments Clause, a CFIUS review of the foreign money, Federal Reserve supervision, and the Community Reinvestment Act. The OCC wrote every objection down and ruled each one outside its jurisdiction, on the reasoning that World Liberty Financial “is not a party to this application” and its investors “would not have an investment in, or control over, the Bank.” The Journal’s reporting says the Emirati vehicle owns the bank’s holding company directly. It’s like the Comptroller of the Currency really took [Emerson’s admonition about consistency and hobgoblins](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/353571-a-foolish-consistency-is-the-hobgoblin-of-little-minds-adored) to heart. The only hobgoblins in Trump’s DC are Don, Jr., Eric, Barron and the ghosts of girls Jeffrey Epstein introduced to Trump back in the day. The “bank” will be required to hold a minimum of $20 million in capital. It will issue, redeem, and custody USD1, the Trump stablecoin, which currently has about $4.1 billion outstanding — roughly one dollar of capital for every two hundred and five dollars of coin. Is that what the kids mean when they say somebody got ratio’d? Eighty-seven percent of that capital supply [sits on Binance](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2026/02/09/trump-stablecoin-usd1-binance-holds-87-percent/), whose founder Trump pardoned in October. There is no deposit insurance, no Community Reinvestment Act obligation, and no Federal Reserve supervision of the holding company, because the bank has promised never to become a “bank” in the legal sense that would trigger any of it. It’s almost like they’re already packed for a quick getaway, for reasons I can’t imagine. Mark Goodwin and Whitney Webb [saw something like this coming two years ago:](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/politics/trump-embraces-the-bitcoin-dollar-stablecoins-to-entrench-us-financial-hegemony) Trump – [per his recent speech]– seems poised to employ bitcoin as a sink for out-of-control U.S. government debt and to unleash the expansion of digital dollar stablecoins, which are already[quietly dollarizing]numerous countries in the Global South as the consequences of Covid-era fiscal policies continue to decimate the purchasing power of the 99% globally.Trump promised, among other things, to “create a framework to enable the safe, responsible expansion of stablecoins […] allowing us to extend the dominance of the U.S. dollar to new frontiers all around the world.” He then asserted that, as a result of his future administration’s embrace of dollar stablecoins, “America will be richer, the world will be better, and there will be billions and billions of people brought into the crypto economy and storing their savings in bitcoin.” Bitcoin mining was also a later focus of the speech, with Trump claiming that “America will become the world’s undisputed bitcoin mining powerhouse.” This would further entrench something else touched on by Trump, that “the United States government is among the largest holders of bitcoin.” Tether and Circle between them had already bought over $150 billion of US government debt. Tether has frozen roughly $435 million in tokens at the request of the DOJ, FBI and Secret Service, because programmable money is money somebody else can switch off. The best line in their piece is Trump’s own, from Nashville in 2024: he promised a framework to allow “the safe, responsible expansion of stablecoins… allowing us to extend the dominance of the U.S. dollar to new frontiers.” Ten senators have introduced a bill to unwind the whole thing retroactive to January 20, 2025. It will not pass anymore than that Balrog could get past an angry Gandolf in the Mines of Moria. Don, Jr., Eric, Barron and the Sheik are like an evil version of the hobbits and their friends running out of the mines with The Precious hidden in their hands, hoping they can get to Mount Doom just in time, before the whole deal goes Gollum. Alright, that was funny, but not ha, ha funny, just so stupid it’s scary funny. Now let’s get to the opposition party that is working so hard…not to oppose the Trump regime, but to crush the American left. **Hasan Piker Is The Dem Establishment’s #1 Issue In 2028** The thing to understand about professional Democrats in 21st Century America is that losing a presidential election isn’t that big a deal as long as they personally retain their seat, or access to a lucrative lobbying or think tank gig. The only thing that can ruin a Dem congresscritter’s prospects is doing something truly stupid and awful like opposing the pro-zionist corporate agenda in a meaningful way. Nine days after Abdul El-Sayed and two other left insurgents won their Michigan primaries, Third Way announced a [$15 million campaign](https://www.commondreams.org/news/third-way-anti-dsa-campaign) against the Democratic Socialists of America, including a $140,000-a-year “Director of Anti-Extremism” whose job is building a database of DSA statements. Its president, Jonathan Cowan, put it in plain English: “We are preparing for the next war that is coming.” Not against Republicans. Against Democratic nominees. David Sirota tweeted it like it is this morning: I’ve been saying this for a while. Third Way announcing it’s going to spend millions to wage a “war” on the populist left just confirms it. Corporate Dems are willing to sabotage candidates like [@AbdulElSayed]& lose Congress if thats the cost of the faction maintaining its power.[pic.twitter.com/VBK150pGzn]— David Sirota (@davidsirota) [August 31, 2026] Just look at the micro-crisis they’ve made by twisting some comments El-Sayed supporter Hasan Piker made on one of his many and endless live streams into a media tornado. Twelve Democratic officeholders and the chair of the DNC condemned Piker inside of five days, after he said on an August 20 stream that if American Jews keep insisting they are singularly invested in Israel, “eventually someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.” I read it as a commonsense warning to American Jews. The open anti-semitism I’m seeing and hearing lately is making the hair on the back of my neck stand up on the regular and justified opposition to the genocide in Gaza is what’s opening the door for that crap to come oozing back into polite conversation among “civilized professionals.” Your take may vary. Piker’s responded to the all-out assault on him (which included El-Sayed and New York Mayor Mamdani condemning his remarks) by saying it is “pure resentment against the left and a singular political pundit.” I’m not sure if he’s glazing himself with the “singular political pundit” line or if he meant “a single…” I mean, if I had his audience, I’d probably think I was pretty singular too, but that’s neither here nor there. Branko Marcetic isn’t as obsessed with Hasan Piker as Piker and the Dem establishment seem to be, but he still supplies the larger context for the fight in a Jacobin piece titled [Centrist Dems Are at War With Their Own Voters on Israel](https://jacobin.com/2026/08/moskowitz-democratic-establishment-israel-iran): Putting Jared Moskowitz in charge of Middle East policy isn’t just a slap in the face to Democratic voters — it’s an empowerment of a leading Democratic supporter of Trump’s disastrous Iran war and free speech crackdown. …The views of the Democratic electorate on Israel are not ambiguous. A recent [poll]carried out by YouGov, for example, found that majorities of upward of 60 percent of Democratic voters across several key states overwhelmingly want their 2028 presidential candidate to cut off weapons for Israel and even sanction Israel over its illegal behavior.Moskowitz’s appointment is, to put it lightly, a slap in the face of this supermajority of his party’s own voters. Moskowitz is a [darling]of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for his implacable[support]for Israel’s genocide,[opposing]a ceasefire for months while Israeli forces carried out some of the worst killing and[vehemently]opposing any[conditions]whatsoever on US aid to Israel — even though, under US law, it’s already illegal to send aid to states violating human rights.In fact, it’s fair to say that, if it were up to Moskowitz, he would probably outlaw the views of most of his own party’s voters. He [authored]a resolution absurdly declaring “From the river to sea” an antisemitic call for violence, and[voted]to censure his own Democratic colleague, Rashida Tlaib, because she suggested Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza — a hospital that Israel has proceeded to[repeatedly][bomb]in the years since, besides bombing[every other]hospital in the territory.But beyond Israel and Palestine, House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’s decision to elevate Moskowitz also hands the party’s Middle East policy to a supporter of what has proven to be Trump’s most disastrous foreign policy decision, both on the politics and its actual outcomes for US interests: the Iran war. But don’t worry, the decision maker behind Moskowitz’ rise, Hakeem “AIPAC Shakur” Jeffries is getting out and hearing directly from ~~the American people~~ ~~the Democratic voter base~~ Jared Kushner, [per the NYT](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/us/politics/jeffries-kushner-private-meeting.html): Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, met privately in recent weeks with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and top outside adviser, and discussed potential areas of common ground, according to five people with knowledge of the meeting. The rare engagement was held in a private space in New York City, offered up by a mutual friend of the two men, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting and a third who was briefed on it. They and others were granted anonymity to discuss a meeting about which they were not authorized to speak publicly. Through aides, neither man would comment on the session, which was described by one person with knowledge of it as a broad conversation on a range of topics. Still, its timing underscored that those around Mr. Trump were well aware of the likelihood of a Democratic-led House, and trying to foster as much of a working relationship as possible before any change. Mr. Jeffries is in line to be the speaker, were Democrats to win the majority. It appears AI is not the only thing hallucinating these days as Times scribes Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni appear to have suddenly dropped a few thousand micrograms of pure LSD-25 to cap off the facts reported above: Democrats and the president have been savaging each other on the campaign trail with increasing fury as the midterm elections approach The only fury I see coming from Dems (other than a very few on the left who are effectively isolated from the larger party comms apparatus) is when they echo MSM attacks on progressives like Zohran Mamdani, El-Sayed, Graham Platner. **The Brits Have Seen This Play Out Before** Paul Holden, who wrote the book on Keir Starmer’s operation and was the source for the Sunday Times’ reporting on Labour Together’s undeclared money dropped a post on X explaining it: There are so many parallels between what is happening with the Dems and Piker in the US and what happened with Labour under Corbyn. Like so much of the Dem establishment, the Labour right and the Labour Together Project were far more animated by their total hated and intolerance… [https://t.co/fWUR7rCXMa]— Paul Holden (@pauleholden) [August 31, 2026] Key quotes: Like so much of the Dem establishment, the Labour right and the Labour Together Project were far more animated by their total hated and intolerance of the left. It was visceral. They – literally, and with premeditation – worked to undermine the Labour Party under Corbyn so that the Labour Party would lose to the Tories. Their internal strategy documents listed a “Labour government” as a threat to their political project. So they set about working with the press to undermine Corbyn’s Labour. Morgan McSweeney, Steve Reed and fellow-traveller Imran Ahmed (now at CCDH) worked covertly and in collaboration with the media and Jewish communal organisations to foment the “antisemitism crisis”, often based on tendentious evidence. They did so precisely because the 2017 election showed the public wanted social democracy, an end to wars in the Middle East: not more reheated Blairism at home and neo-conservatism abroad. This is exactly what is now being revealed with Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed and other primaries – when voters in the US (especially Dem voters) are given the chance, they vote for progressive and anti-imperialist politics. … It was because I was exposing this project, including how it was funded with an illegal slush-fund, that I was targeted by Labour Together, who paid over £30k for a mad and defamatory smear “report” on me and my family, and them reporting me to the security services. This is what’s plainly happening with Piker. Let’s be clear: the current media circus is plainly and incontrovertibly based on systematically misrepresenting Piker and his views. It’s not even subtle. It is a wholesale and wide-spread collapse in basic journalistic standards. It’s being driven by right-wing media but with the active collusion of the Democratic Party establishment. They are pretending that a bare-knuckle fight against their own irrelevance (and to defend their own corruption) is actually a noble endeavour to protect the Jewish community. But what happened when the Labour Together Project eventually won power? Almost immediately it was revealed the ideological and political cupboard was bare. Starmer was removed in two years. They just reverted to status quo politics and taking policy from lobbyists and their popularity collapsed into public hate almost immediately. We’ve had two years of a Labour super-majority and they’ve been tinkering at the edges and collapsing into sordid crisis. This is exactly what will happen if the Dem establishment wins this contest with the DSA and progressives. They might win power in the future – and then reveal that they’ve got no new answers to old problems, and they’ll be hate once more, and some new version of Trumpism will fill the vacuum. Meanwhile, in Texas. US Senate nominee James Talarico has spent [$29 million on advertising](https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/29/james-talarico-ken-paxton-negative-television-ad-senate/), almost all of it positive, and only went negative on Ken Paxton this weekend. Democrats have outspent Republicans $31.5 million to $4.7 million since June, and Paxton is [still waiting for his own party’s money](https://www.nbcpalmsprings.com/ca-us-and-world/2026/08/30/texas-senate-race-talarico-ads-surge-as-paxton-awaits-gop-support/) — MAGA Inc. has not shown up, and John Cornyn, asked whether he would campaign for the man who beat him, said “No.” So both establishments are sitting on their hands, but the RINO GOP is only passive-aggressive against their MAGA base where the Dems are openly hostile. But let’s look at a massive Dem win opportunity that is getting slept on by the Democrats, especially from the Democrat nominally running for the office. **Eight Thousand Local Businesses and the Beer Money Wants Them Gone** The Democratic statewide ticket underneath Talarico is more of a rumor than a roster of candidates running real campaigns: the nominee for lieutenant governor, Vikki Goodwin, has raised $368,000 against Dan Patrick’s $37.7 million war chest. That is a factor of two hundred and thirty-four. And this is against the idiot who destroyed the semi-legal marijuana market, a multi-billion-dollar industry that mostly consists of small businesspeople, many of them in Republican rural Texas. We’re talking about towns like Coleman, Texas, where virtually the only locally owned businesses are vape shops, tatoo parlors, gun dealers and donut shops (which have never been rolled into a mega-franchise since Krispi Kreme and Duncan Donuts ignore the rural market). This Dan Patrick: Dan Patrick has ordered schools to get rid of books that are “dirty, filthy and vulgar.” He just outlawed THC products and now he wants to outlaw books. Who elected this old lesbian to be the moral arbiter of the State of Texas? [pic.twitter.com/HqOY2Ydpct]— Turnbull (@cturnbull1968) [August 19, 2026] And just in case you worried the old ghoul was banning THC sales out of moral values, don’t. Texas Ethics Commission filings show Patrick took [$250,000 from John Nau](https://hometownhero.com/insights/follow-the-money-texas-hemp/) — the chief executive of Silver Eagle Distributors, the largest Anheuser-Busch distributor in Houston — in April 2024, plus $25,000 from the Beer Alliance of Texas PAC. In June of this year his committee took another $275,000 from Silver Eagle itself. Nau cut Abbott a $500,000 check the same day. That is over half a million dollars of beer money to the man running the campaign against THC, and none to the man running against alcohol, because there isn’t one. Taking out Dan Patrick should be a layup. The guy is personally repulsive. His president and party’s poll numbers are in free fall — with independents and GOP base voters, even in rural Texas. [UT/Texas Politics Project](https://texaspolitics.utexas.edu/blog/june-2025-university-of-texas-texas-politics-project-poll-economic-concerns-drag-trump-s-job-approval-underwater-in-texas-while-most-texans-oppose-ban-on-thc-products-dividing-gop-leadership) (1,200 registered voters, 6–16 June 2025, ±2.83): Texans oppose the ban 53–31. Republicans split 46 support / 39 oppose; independents oppose 58–17; Democrats 68–22. Separately, 54 percent back expanding medical marijuana, including 59 percent of Republicans, and voters disapprove 47–22 of how state leaders are handling cannabis law. An [industry-sponsored poll](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-poll-shows-strong-majority-of-texans-including-republicans-support-keeping-consumable-thc-legal-with-regulations-302406008.html) has it 70–16 for regulate-rather-than-ban. Cutting the other way, the [UH Hobby School](https://www.uh.edu/hobby/tx2025/legalization.pdf) found 55 percent support banning *unregulated* THC consumables and 61 percent of Republicans favoring a ban — while 62 percent of Texans, and 53 percent of Republicans, back recreational legalization outright. [Texas Scorecard](https://texasscorecard.com/state/poll-majority-of-republican-primary-voters-support-thc-ban/) has a majority of Republican *primary* voters supporting the ban. The results turn on whether the question contains the word “unregulated” and on registered voters versus primary voters — [GreenState explains why the Texas polls disagree](https://www.greenstate.com/news/texas-thc-poll/). There’s been one poll showing [Goodwin leading Patrick](https://www.fox4news.com/election/texas-dan-patrick-vikki-goodwin-lieutenant-governor-poll-july-2026), but it’s an outlier. The [Texas Southern University poll](https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/where-texas-governor-ag-other-155341796.html) (1,200 likely voters, same 27–30 July window, ±2.83) had Patrick up 46–39, with Abbott leading Hinojosa 49–43. The gap is name recognition: 83 percent of likely voters knew enough about Patrick to have an opinion of him; only 27 percent said the same of Goodwin. [Jack Fink’s summary](https://x.com/cbs11jack/status/2084612022876917955); [running tracker of the race](https://texpolls.com/races/lt-governor-2026). So the Texas Democrats aren’t even trying, but they might win despite themselves. 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