From toasted to roasted: Trump wines sales in military cantonments invite flak

TOI Correspondent from Washington: Growing allegations that the Trump family is drunk with power took a new high this week following a Forbes report that US military stores are now selling Trump-branded wines.The controversy erupted after the magazine reported that Trump-labelled wines and ciders had appeared on shelves of duty free stores for military personnel in Washington DC and Centreville, Virginia ahead of the holiday season. Administration officials confirmed the sales but maintained it did not violate any laws. Trump surrogates insisted the products, like many other Trump branded goods, were part of a licensing arrangement, and the President’ had no role in the same.

However, watchdog groups decried the sales as a blatant monetization of federal facilities, even if no direct legal violation could be proven. "This is one of those things where there probably isn’t any legal issue, but there is an optics and an ethics issue," said Jordan Libowitz spokesperson for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), adding that if the government buys the products wholesale, it could violate the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, barring presidents from extra benefits beyond salary.

The incident though fits a broader pattern of the Trump family's alleged self-enrichment, including forays into crypto ventures that critics say has derailed US-India ties. In early 2025, World Liberty Financial (WLF)—a decentralized finance platform majority-owned by the Trump family (including Donald Trump as "Chief Crypto Advocate" and sons Eric and Donald Jr. in leadership roles, with a reported 60% stake)—signed a high-profile Letter of Intent with Pakistan's newly formed Crypto Council (PCC).

The deal, which some observers say may have emboldened the Pakistani deep state to pull off the Pahalgam terrorist attack on April 26, was led by WLF co-founder Zachary Witkoff, son of Trump's longtime ally and diplomatic troubleshooter Steve Witkoff. The partnership has fueled accusations of conflicts of interest, with critics like former US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan suggesting it may have prompted Trump’s kid-glove treatment of Pakistan and prioritizing it over India.

In a September 2025 Meidastouch podcast, Sullivan stated Trump "threw the India relationship over the side" due to Pakistan's business overtures, undermining decades of US-India alignment on technology, economics, and countering China.

There have been more dodgy developments since. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who had advised Pakistan’s Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on positioning the country as a crypto hub, won a full and unconditional pardon from Trump late last month after he had pled guilty in November 2023 to violating US anti-money laundering laws and served a four-month prison sentence.

Trump later told CBS 60 minutes he did not know who Zhao was even though he issued him a pardon.

The Trump dispensation’s lavish pursuits, including the building of a White House ball room and a "Great Gatsby"-themed Halloween gala he threw last week at Mar-a-Lago, complete with flapper dancers, feather-adorned guests, and champagne toasts, all evocative ofF. Scott Fitzgerald's tale of excess and inequality, have drawn sharp rebukes for insensitivity, coming particularly during a government shutdown.

“Nothing says ‘I feel your pain’ like champagne flutes and flapper girls while kids go hungry. Happy Halloween from Count Dracula of Empathy,” the late-night host Stephen Colbert remarked, while others invoked Marie Antoinette and Caligula.