The looting of America.

Bitcoin, internet, EVs, private dinners for sale - the list of Trump and Co's extraordinary conflicts of interest in his second term goes on, and on and on

- By Ed Pilkington

The South Lawn of the White House had never seen anything like it. The president of the United States was posing for the world's media against a backdrop of five different models of Tesla, peddling the electric vehicles with the alacrity of a salesman on commission.

"I love the product, it's beautiful," Donald Trump said as he sank into the driver's seat of a scarlet Model Y. With the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, beside him, he went on to enlighten the American people that some Tesla models retail for as little as $299 a month, "which is pretty low".

That same day, within hours of the White House's makeover into a Tesla showroom, the New York Times revealed that Musk had decided to invest $100m in political groups working for Trump. The massive injection of capital would enhance the nearly $300m Musk had already spent getting Trump elected.

A week after the commercial on the South Lawn, on 19 March, Trump's commerce secretary, the billionaire investment banker Howard Lutnick, went on Fox News and exhorted viewers to "buy Tesla". "Who wouldn't invest in Elon Musk's stock?" he gushed. "He is probably the best person to bet on I've ever met."

At the time Lutnick made those remarks, he had yet to divest himself from Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm he had led for 35 years. He was talking up stock in which he still had a vested interest - Cantor held $300m in Tesla shares, a stake that has since soared to $555m. And the commerce secretary was also bigging up his friend Musk, whose SpaceX and Starlink businesses are regulated by the commerce department that Lutnick now controlled.