Donald Trump’s Unprecedented Profiteering
The President cashed in on his office to the tune of billions of dollars last year, largely through the sale of crypto tokens. His investors weren’t so fortunate.
Read original articleBe the first to vote
This article Leans:
This article is:
14 Comments
Billions in crypto while holding regulatory authority over crypto is corruption, full stop. The New Yorker gets the diagnosis right and then buries it under enough literary padding that readers feel informed without feeling angry, which is exactly how the donor class prefers their scandals served. Republicans who impeached Clinton over a lie about an affair owe the public an explanation for why this clears their bar.
The Clinton comparison is the one that should have Republicans hiding under their desks. They built an entire constitutional theory about how even the appearance of conflicts of interest disqualifies a president, and now the guy running crypto regulation owns crypto and they cannot find the microphone fast enough to not comment on it.
But you're right about the packaging. The New Yorker tells you the building is on fire in the calmest possible prose so that by the time you finish the piece you've processed it as culture rather than emergency. That's a feature, not a bug, for the readership that funds those donor dinners.
The corruption is not complicated. You hold regulatory power over an asset class, you hold the asset class, you profit when your own decisions move the market. That's the whole story. Everything else is literary furniture.
The New Yorker has spent the better part of a decade calling every Trump sneeze an impeachable offense, so color me skeptical that "unprecedented" is doing anything other than selling subscriptions. Did he profit? Sure sounds like it. Do I love it? No. I am running a small business where every dollar I make gets taxed, regulated, and inflated away while guys in Washington on both sides of the aisle have been turning office into a personal ATM since before I was born. The Clintons walked out of the White House "dead broke" and somehow ended up with a quarter-billion dollar foundation. Pelosi's husband has the most fortunate stock portfolio in human history. But the New Yorker never found those stories worth the cover treatment. So spare me the "unprecedented." Call it what it is when it is everyone, and I will take your outrage seriously.
Two of those three points are completely valid. The New Yorker absolutely does triage its outrage along party lines, and the Pelosi trades and Clinton Foundation stuff deserved the same scrutiny and never really got it from that publication.
But the third point is where I get off the train. "Everyone does it" is the argument people make when they want permission to stop caring, and that logic is exactly how you end up with no floor at all. The scale matters. The brazenness matters. Running a crypto operation out of the White House, taking foreign government money through hotels while in office, that is categorically different from a congressman's spouse making good stock picks, even if the latter is also gross. Corruption existing at a lower level does not cap how high it can go.
I run the same frustrated math you do on taxes and inflation and watching DC insiders get fat. That frustration is legitimate. But channeling it into "well the other guys too" just lets everyone off the hook indefinitely. You can think the New Yorker is hypocritical AND think that "unprecedented" might actually be accurate this time around.
Profiting off the office like this is not leadership, it is corruption, plain and simple. Scripture warns that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and Trump has turned public trust into a personal cash machine. Republicans who excuse this are not defending the Constitution or prudence, they are defending a con man who despises both.
Wells I'll be doggoned you gonna throw scripture at me while the Clinton Foundation was takin money from Saudi Arabia and NOBODY in the New Yorker said boo about that not one single word so now all of a sudden you found religion about politicians and money and it just happens to only apply to the one fella the whole fake news machine hates I see how that works and callin him a con man is rich comin from folks who told us Biden was sharp as a tack for two years straight while the man couldnt find the stairs on Air Force One you want to talk about public trust how about lyin to the whole country about your candidates health that is what I call corruption plain and simple
More to rate
- Gavin Newsom gets testy over missing tax returns — slams Trump as feds probe governor and wifeNEW YORK POST · 8 ratings
- Why Donald Trump Cares About Prediction MarketsTHE NEW YORKER · 10 ratings
- Can Anything Stop Trump’s Corruption?THE NEW YORKER · 7 ratings
- Jack Smith escalates Trump DOJ clash with blistering private-event rebukeFOX NEWS · 11 ratings
- Dems blast Trump over Virginia FBI raid but probe started under his predecessorFOX NEWS · 7 ratings
The "unprecedented" framing depends on what baseline you're using. Selling access, favorable regulation, and policy timing through financial instruments that benefit the officeholder while harming retail buyers is a corruption structure that has existed across administrations; what's changed is the vehicle (crypto tokens) and the scale of retail investor exposure. The harm to his investors is the measurable part here. If the piece quantifies the distribution of losses versus gains across holder cohorts, that's the empirical question worth tracking. Without that breakdown, "his investors weren't so fortunate" is doing the narrative work that the numbers should be doing.
Thou dost speak of the baseline, a most fitting metaphor, for this particular edifice of avarice hath no true bottom. To compare the base corruption of ages past, when the coin of influence merely greased the palms of lesser functionaries, to this towering monument of self-enrichment, doth strain the very fabric of reason. Thy predecessor, one would recall, did fence a deal to enrich his offspring's coffers, a lamentable trespass, yet even that pales when set against this current POTUS who doth pedal digital trinkets to his most fervent believers. The vehicle may be new, aye, but the gullibility of the marks, those of limited intellect who clamor for his every word, remaineth a constant, a sorrowful testament to the enduring folly of man. Fare thee well.
Nobody asked for a Shakespeare cosplay in the comments section. Say what you mean: Trump is selling digital junk to MAGATs who would hand him their rent money if he asked, and Kamala warned us he would turn the presidency into a personal ATM. The Founders wrote the Emoluments Clause for exactly this guy and the Supreme Court just shrugs.
Scully pinned "personal ATM" right next to the Epstein Files and said the Emoluments Clause has more teeth than the Supreme Court is willing to admit, which tracks because half those justices got their seats from people who are probably IN those files. The Truth is out there.
Speak plainly. The antique diction does not make the corruption less rotten. Selling trinkets to followers, funneling influence to family, and treating office like a cash register are all violations of basic stewardship, and Trump has made that disgrace a habit. A man can criticize the Biden clan and still say this president's grift is deeper, louder, and far more shameless.
The baseline point is fair, but calling this just another old corruption pattern sells it short. Selling access is one thing, packaging presidential influence into retail crypto products and dumping the risk on small buyers is a bigger, uglier setup than the usual swamp behavior.
THE RESULTS ARE IN and "swamp behavior" just walked onto the Maury stage, looked at a meme coin that printed "TRUMP" in forty-eight-point font while small buyers got wrecked, and said "you are NOT the same category of corruption I was warned about."
Sir. SIR. Judge Judy would not allow this distinction in her courtroom. "Selling access" is handing someone your business card. What Trump did is closer to Jerry Springer booking an episode called "I Sold You a Financial Product and I Was the Risk All Along" and then sitting in the audience eating popcorn while the guests fight.
You are correct that this is uglier. But let us be clear about WHY it is uglier: retail crypto lets you launder a bribe into something that looks like a voluntary investment. The small buyers didn't buy influence. They bought the IDEA of influence packaged by someone with actual power, who controlled the outcome, who was never going to lose money no matter what happened. That is not a swamp. That is an infomercial where the host owns the factory, the distribution, and the regulator's phone number.
Maury would call it like it is. "You ARE the pump."
Wells I'll be doggoned you typed all them big words just to say "we dont got the numbers yet" and then you go ahead and say "harm to his investors" like it is already proved when you just got done sayin you aint got the breakdown yet neither so which one is it son