Trump's Heart of Darkness
Lumumba must be turning in his grave #DRC
“Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Borborygmous is the mineral wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Gold, copper, tin, lithium and tantalum are but a few of the baubles hidden beneath the fertile soil of this chronically-mismanaged central African nation. What the DRC might have once become is wrapped up in the tragic assassination of Patrice Lumumba as well as the Resource curse and subsequent poor leadership. But those are tales for another Substack posting. Let’s veer back, albeit briefly, to the DRC’s geology, and why the Trump administration is so damned interested …
Very old is the Congo’s geology and even more complicated is its tectonic past. The country is about two-thirds the size of Western Europe, situated in the central belt of Africa. It is a land where sea caves are fed by subterranean tributaries. Geologically, ancient continental crusts pulled apart over eons, reveal volcanic lakes in the East. All of this makes for some interesting anomalies. The Katangan belt, which extends across the southern region of the country, possesses 12% of the world’s (aforementioned) copper reserves. The DRC also happens to be is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, critical in the production of electric car batteries, accounting for over 70% of global production. So it is no surprise that a sleazy real estate marketer like Trump might salivate, obnoxiously, at the prospect of having a “taste.”
Ordinarily, a narcissistic bigot like Trump would ignore the Congo altogether. It simply does not appear on his bandwidth. The DRC is up there on his so-called list of “shithole” countries, also. So there’s that as well. But there is the matter of mineral rights, something that Trump, 2.0 is obsessed about, to the extent that he is even going so far as setting up metal refining facilities on the sites of U.S. military bases (!). The plan is reducing reliance on China and increase domestic production of critical minerals. The Pentagon owns 30 million acres of land.
As of last week’s Joint Address to Congress, President Trump announced that he looking to “dramatically expand production of critical minerals and rare earths here in the USA." It is said that “Trump Whisperer” Senator Lindsay Graham — who is now advocating for a new Ukrainian leader — put the mineral bug in the President’s ear. John McCain must be turning in his grave. Still, if that is indeed the case, Lindsay Graham may have foolishly and unwittingly created a transactional mineral deal monster of a President.
Meanwhile: DRC President Tshisekedi, like most Congolese rulers before him, is a spectacularly dapper dresser — but utterly incompetent in his role as President. “Tshisekedi barely reined in corruption in the DRC, one of the poorest countries on earth, despite its immense mineral wealth,” writes Emmanuel Mutebi of The Great Lakes Eye, echoing a common sentiment in the region. Perhaps if he didn’t take so much from the country — for dapper suits, SUVs, villas, &c — the Congo might have a military worth a damn and not be wholly at the mercy of rapacious Rwanda. But the Congo’s incompetent military and raw tonnage of mineral wealth are too much a temptation to neighboring powers and so Feix must barter natural resources for military training from — of all places — the American military. Lumumba must be turning in his grave. Mutebi continues:
Ever since he assumed office, in 2019, Tshisekedi’s first term was marked with lack of a clear vision, incompetence, mismanagement of public resources, corruption, and irresponsibility. Not much will change in his second term.
During his presidential campaign in 2018, Tshisekedi listed a series of promises aimed at improving the lives of the Congolese population. Unfortunately, after five years in power there is a different story. Everything worsened.
There is no single promise that he fulfilled.
He vowed to end the security crisis, tackle corruption, boost the country’s economy, and promote human rights but did none of that.
The Congolese people were hopeful of positive changes in their socio-economic conditions under Tshisekedi’s leadership. He deceived them as he has not kept his word.
The 60-year-old politician manifested a surge of corruption cases in government offices, especially among his close circle. In September 2022, leaked videos went viral showing Vidiye Tshimanga, the special strategic advisor to Tshisekedi, offering unlimited access to the country’s mineral resources in exchange for bribes, including shares in the companies and underhand paybacks, for himself and the president.
And so we have the surreal prospect of a former colonial breadbasket travelling overseas to Trump’s pre-inaugural events a few months ago, hat in hand. It is no surprise that the Trump administration might want to hold “exploratory talks” on mineral rights with Tshisekedi, as the FT reported on Friday. But why would a Congolese President reach out to a former friend of its old colonial masters, one whose actual involvement in the deposition of its first democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba (who lasted 10 weeks), is well known? What is the meaning of this thusness?
Raw desperation. Or — more precisely — the “paradox of plenty.” Also known as the Resource Curse, which was mentioned earlier. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, despite its vast mineral wealth, has always been something of a basket case, poorly managed, largely because it is and always has been such a target-rich environment to acquisitive “adventurers,” like the Belgian Congo in the 19th Century. And a brutish beast like Leopold II, one of the most hideous authoritarian rulers of all time (body count north of 5 million), was an innovator in the savage methods designed to increase output in the extraction of resources, like the chopping off of hands or the outright killing of millions during the course of his dictatorship.
So, why isn’t such a resource-rich country enjoying its natural “gifts”? Such is the paradox of plenty! Subsequent black African rulers like lowlife Laurent Kabila and his hapless son, Joseph, ran the country like small-time warlords, selling out the Congo’s mineral rights for a luxurious lifestyle, at a distance from Moscow (else the CIA or European intelligence agencies might get involved). Megan Crimmins of PBS explains:
Resource-rich countries tend to be prone to authoritarian rule, in part because their governments rely on taxing resource-extractive industries rather than their citizens. Untaxed citizens naturally are less aware of how government money is being spent. Authoritarian governments will bypass health, education, and social services to pour funds into government salaries, inefficient fuel subsidies, large monuments, and graft. Labor and capital that would normally be diversified across the country is funneled into the country’s resource extraction industry. This impedes full economic development and impacts women’s role in the workplace as well. Authoritarian regimes typically suppress a woman’s right to gainful employment. And, because reliance on only one resource creates a volatile market, the country can be trapped in boom-and-bust cycles.
So here we have the almighty spectacle of a buffoon like President Felix Tshisekedi, fully cognizant of the terrifying possibilities of inviting a man like Donald J. Trump in the front door to exploit its natural resources ….
But, it gets worse. Lebanon-born businessman Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of Tiffany Trump, is slated to become America’s envoy to the Great Lakes region in East Africa, according to SEMAfor’s Yinka Adegoke. This is an astonishing scoop for two reasons: One, Boulos, the Lebanese-born businessman who helped Trump consolidate the Arab vote in 2024, is an extraordinarily sleazy man. He is not, as he has described himself, a billionaire, but in fact a small-time truck salesman in Nigeria. And now he’s a chief envoy of a superpower. Only in America!
Two: Boulos should not be allowed anywhere near the ultimate temptation of Congolese mineral rights! This is a man who has no ethical problems with inflating his net worth in the heat of an American election. Further, his signature political achievement thus far has been to convince the traumatized Arab-American community that Trump would be better for the Palestinian cause than Biden (How is that working out?). And since the election, Boulos has, in his role as Trump’s current Arab and Mideast affairs adviser — a job, we might add, he is profoundly unqualified to hold — been meeting with some of the most hardline Israeli settler leaders. Nothing screams shady transactional Africa deal more than appointing your daughter’s father-in-law as envoy to a gold, diamond and coltan-rich region.
Finally, everything Trump learned about diplomacy, he learned from his oily New York billionaire pal, Ron Lauder, co-heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics company and, we cannot fail to note, naught much else. As someone that has never accomplished anything other than what was given to him by his mother, Lauder is the poster child of nepo-babyshambles. Perhaps that is what drew Trump to him? The elective affinity of wasted inheritances? It was Lauder, who has known Trump since college, who planted the notion of annexing Greenland into his ear. Lauder served as U.S. Ambassador to Austria in 1986, when Reagan was most appreciative of big money donors (also, Nancy always had a thing for fashion and cosmetics heirs).
After leaving his diplomatic post, Lauder used his influence in Europe (how else?) to cash-in on the fall of the Soviet Empire. What a country! For what else is a good nepo-baby to do at the end of the Cold War? He sank tens of millions of his inheritance into a telecommunications venture that failed (he has so much in common with Trump). Even by the standards of the day, cashing in on an Ambassadorship which was earned by campaign donations and privilege was a bit much. But the lessons of transactional, nepo-baby diplomacy remained with Trump, so much so that at present his daughter’s father-in-law is going to help him negotiate a “taste” of the Congo’s mineral rights.
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon …
“The M23 rebellion first emerged in 2012, but was defeated in 2013 — largely through international pressure on Rwanda. In theory, M23 is fighting to protect the Rwandophone community in eastern Congo, most especially its Tutsi community. But its agenda is more ambitious and closely linked with Kigali’s interests in the region. The more recent creation of the Alliance du Fleuve Congo (AFC) — also fits within this strategy; it’s the political wing of M23, which has a broader political agenda of regime change in Kinshasa. M23 reemerged in November 2021 for a number of reasons, including the failure of the the Congolese government to abide by promises it made to the militia’s veterans, such as their integration into the national army. But the main reason was due to Rwanda’s fears that its interests in the region were under threat. Kigali has a number of interests in eastern DRC. It considers the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebel group, which consists of the remnants of the mainly Hutu perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, an existential security threat, notwithstanding their diminishing numbers. It also has economic interests: gold is Rwanda’s most important export, and it’s a well-known secret that most of that gold is mined in eastern DRC. Moreover, with neighboring countries Uganda and Burundi expanding military operations against their own DRC-based insurgencies into territory that it considers within its own zone of influence, Rwanda felt it necessary to reactivate its armed proxy, the M23, to protect its interests there.” (Kristoff Titeca and jacques Mukena/Responsible Statecraft)
“Racist pseudoscience and flirtation with fascism were always in the water around Trump. But the influential online eugenicists and neo-Nazis of 2025 are not your grandad’s German Nazis, nor are they David Duke or even Richard Spencer (tiki torches, khakis, and gaiters are so 2017). The Trump 2.0 white pride influencers often have academic cred. Their erudite snark appeals to the self-regard of Silicon Valley oligarchs and their fanboys who think being in a computer lab when the sum of all human knowledge initiated the digital era makes them superior DNA-bearing geniuses. Last week’s featured Freakshow freak Geoff Martin and many of his fellow online racist anons, like Texas race pseudoscientist Jordan Lasker (who Elon Musk has engaged with dozens of times), prefer to lurk behind pseudonyms. But some out-and-proud white nationalist/race scientists don’t mind putting their real names to tweets about sterilizing ‘low IQ trash’ – the white supremacist online pseudo-scientists’ current favorite insult.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)
“Vice President JD Vance told House Republicans hours ahead of an expected vote on a seven-month funding patch on Tuesday that Republicans will take the blame for a government shutdown if they don't pass the legislation, according to three people who were in the room for the comments. Vance emphasized that Republicans had little room for dissent given the tight margin in the House. Government funding is set to expire at midnight Friday, and a handful of GOP members have yet to commit to the stopgap put forward by Speaker Mike Johnson and endorsed by President Donald Trump. ‘We already lost one vote, we can’t lose another,’ Vance said, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to describe a private meeting. That one vote belongs to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has said he is firmly against the plan. Vance told House Republicans they need to vote for the GOP funding bill to clear the runway for the massive domestic policy bill Republicans are now in the process of assembling, the people added. By failing to pass the stopgap, Vance added, Republicans will lose momentum on securing the border and lose credibility with voters. He also assured Republican members that Trump would continue cutting federal funding with his Department of Government Efficiency initiative and pursue impoundment — that is, holding back money appropriated by Congress.” (Meredith Lee Hill/Politico)