Deal with the reality that the Kenyattas are richer than the Trumps to understand politics in Kenya, in the US, and the relations between us

Uhuru  Kenyatta “UhuRuto” Kenya presidential campaign

I am not going to invest a great deal of time mapping this out because the substance is obvious but details are deliberately obscured. If you are at all serious as a “Kenya Watcher” and are familiar with the basic public news trail on the Trump Organization, it is quite apparent that the net business wealth of the Trumps and the Jared Kushners is simply not at the US dollar value level of the Kenyatta family business empire (assuming as I do that the Trumps are not holding hundreds of millions of dollars of hidden assets overseas).

If you doubt me, work it up and show me that there is real reason to doubt the disparity.

These facts are critical to understanding the realities of the value of the presidency in Kenya and the relatively modest value of the presidency in the United States, even for a politician with perhaps an unprecedented view of the acquisitive opportunities.

If Trump were to get re-elected and get favorable dispensations from the Internal Revenue Service and his private sector creditors, and daughter Ivanka or son Eric were to be elected President in the future, and the Kenyattas fall off the pace somewhat in the next generation, then we can talk about the two families as “dollar peers”. As it stands, Donald Trump is a “first gen president” who had a father and grandfather who made a collective fortune that Donald did not succeed in breaking even with.

As an American I like to hope that a billion dollars still cannot buy everything a billion dollars could buy in Kenya, and that this will still be true even if Donald Trump actually becomes a billionaire someday through his children.