Somewhere in the long tradition of Trump family grifting, there’s a line between “nakedly corrupt” and “genuinely mortifying.” Eric Trump’s latest investment in an Israeli drone company that advertises a “low cost per kill” lands smack dab in the middle.
According to recent reporting by the Wall Street Journal, the young Trump is taking part in a $1.5 billion deal to take the drone company Xtend public.
Potential Xtend investors will be happy to know the company already comes with a multi-million contract with the Pentagon, and is part of the Defense Department’s “Drone Dominance Program,” an effort reform the weapons procurement process and rapidly produce swarms of low cost drones, Al Jazeera has reported.
Xtend isn’t some fly-by-night weapons company, either. Per reporting by The New Arab, Xtend’s drones have played a role in Israel’s war in Gaza, where they reportedly killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in 2024.
The company’s hand in the destruction of Palestine hasn’t gone unnoticed by activists in the US, where Xtend’s planted at least one facility with help from the Florida Israeli Business Accelerator, a taxpayer funded initiative operating in the state.
In sum, Xtend’s services are now being pitched to the same Pentagon Donald Trump controls, under direction from his son, aided by a US footprint funded by Florida taxpayers. In case the web wasn’t tangled enough, the WSJ notes that, Donald Trump Jr — another presidential scion — has separately thrown his name behind the military drone firm Unusual Machines, itself a strategic investor in the Xtend deal.
That marks a total of eleven companies joined by Don Jr and Eric Trump since their father’s election victory in 2024 — a clear sign that the Trump family has learned how to make the most of the presidency this time around.
More on drones: There’s Something So Embarrassing About Homeland Security’s New Drone Video That We’re Gonna Have to Sit Down for a Minute