As Trumps monetize presidency, profits outstrip protests
When Hillary Clinton was first lady, a furor erupted over reports that she had once made $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures. Even though it had happened a dozen years before her husband became president, it became a scandal that lasted weeks and forced the White House to initiate a review.
Thirty-one years later, after dinner at President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about first lady Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket -- 280 times the Clinton lucre and in this case from a person with a vested interest in policies set by her husband's government. Scandal? Furor? Washington moved on while barely taking notice.
The Trumps are hardly the first presidential family to profit from their time in power, but they have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House. The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking. The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and is opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone.
Just last week, Qatar handed over a luxury jet meant for Trump's use not just in his official capacity but also for his presidential library after he leaves office. Experts have valued the plane, formally donated to the Air Force, at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined.
And Trump hosted an exclusive dinner at his Virginia club for 220 investors in the $TRUMP cryptocurrency that he started days before taking office in January. Access was openly sold based on how much money they chipped in -- not to a campaign account but to a business that benefits Trump personally.
By conventional Washington standards, according to students of official graft, the still-young Trump administration is a candidate for the most brazen use of government office in American history, perhaps eclipsing even Teapot Dome, Watergate and other famous scandals.
'I've been watching and writing about corruption for 50 years, and my head is still spinning,' said Michael Johnston, a professor emeritus at Colgate University and author of multiple books on corruption in the United States.
Yet a mark of how much Trump has transformed Washington since his return to power is the normalization of moneymaking schemes that once would have generated endless political blowback, televised hearings, official investigations and damage control. The death of outrage in the Trump era, or at least the dearth of outrage, exemplifies how far the president has moved the lines of accepted behavior in Washington.
Trump, the first convicted felon elected president, has erased ethical boundaries and dismantled the instruments of accountability that constrained his predecessors. There will be no official investigations because Trump has made sure of it. He has fired government inspectors general and ethics watchdogs, installed partisan loyalists to run the Justice Department, FBI and regulatory agencies and dominated a Republican-controlled Congress unwilling to hold hearings.
As a result, while Democrats and other critics of Trump are increasingly trying to focus attention on the president's activities, they have had a hard time gaining any traction without the usual mechanisms of official review. And at a time when Trump provokes a major news story every day or even every hour -- more tariffs on allies, more retribution against enemies, more defiance of court orders -- rarely does a single action stay in the headlines long enough to shape the national conversation.
Paul Rosenzweig, who was a senior counsel to Ken Starr's investigation of President Bill Clinton and later served in the George W. Bush administration, said the lack of uproar over Trump's ethical norm-busting has made him wonder whether longstanding assumptions about public desire for honest government were wrong all along.
'Either the general public never cared about this,' he said, or 'the public did care about it but no longer does.' He concluded that the answer is that '80%, the public never cared' and '20%, we are overwhelmed and exhausted.'
'Outrage hasn't died,' Rosenzweig added. 'It was always just a figment of elite imagination.'
The White House has defended Trump's actions, brushing off questions about ethical considerations by saying that he was so rich that he did not need more money.
'The president is abiding by all conflict of interest laws that are applicable to the president,' said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. 'The American public believes it is absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency. This president was incredibly successful before giving it all up to serve our country publicly.'
But saying that he is abiding by all conflict of interest laws that are applicable to the president is meaningless since, as Trump himself has long noted, conflict of interest laws are not applicable to the president.
Moreover, he has not given it all up; in fact, he is still making money from his private business interests run by his sons, and independent estimates indicate that he has hardly sacrificed financially by entering politics. Forbes estimated Trump's net worth at $5.1 billion in March, a full $1.2 billion higher than the year before and the highest it has ever been in the magazine's rankings.
The president's sons scoff at the idea that they should limit their business activities, which directly benefit their father. Donald Trump Jr. has said that the family restrained itself during his father's first term only to be criticized anyway, so it made no sense to hold back anymore. 'They're going to hit you no matter what,' he said last week at a business forum in Qatar. 'So we're just going to play the game.'
There have been some burgeoning signs of public pushback in recent days. The gift of the Qatar plane seemed to break through to the general audience in a way that other episodes have not. A Harvard/CAPS Harris poll released last week found that 62% of Americans thought the gift 'raises ethical concerns about corruption,' and even some prominent right-wing Trump supporters like Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer voiced objections.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who campaigned with Trump last year, expressed misgivings this week during a podcast with Shawn Ryan, a right-wing influencer, who mentioned all of the Trump family business deals that seemed to coincide with the president's recent trip to the Middle East.
'That stuff kind of worries me,' Ryan said.
'Well, it seems like corruption, yeah,' Carlson agreed.
But while several dozen demonstrators protested outside Trump's golf club the other night, Democrats are split about how much to focus on Trump's profitmaking, with some preferring to concentrate on economic issues. Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., has been leading the charge the other direction, making floor speeches and leading news conference denouncing what he calls 'brazen corruption.'
'It is unlikely he is going to be held accountable through traditional means,' Murphy said in an interview. 'There are going to be no special counsels; there's going to be no DOJ action. And so it's really just about public mobilization and politics. If Republicans keep paying a price for the corruption by losing special elections throughout the next year, maybe that causes them to rethink their complicity.'
Trump had long promised to 'drain the swamp' in Washington after years of corruption by other politicians. When he first ran for president in 2016, he excoriated the Clintons for taking money from Saudi Arabia and other Middle East monarchies with an obvious interest in currying favor in case Hillary Clinton won the presidency. But that money went to the Clinton Foundation for philanthropic purposes. The money Trump's family is now bringing in from the Middle East is going into their personal accounts through a variety of ventures that The New York Times has documented.
Johnston said the Trumps represent 'an absolute outlier case, not just in monetary terms' but also 'in terms of their brazen disregard' for past standards. 'While we might disagree as to the merits of policy, the president and figures in the executive branch are expected to serve the public good, not themselves,' he said.
Trump made a nod at those standards in his first term by saying he would restrict his family business from doing deals overseas. But since then, he has been convicted of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records and held liable in civil court for fraud while the Supreme Court has conferred immunity on him for official acts. In his second term, Trump has dispensed with self-imposed ethical limits.
'He's not trying to give the appearance that he's doing the right thing anymore,' said Fred Wertheimer, founder of Democracy 21 and a longtime advocate for government ethics. 'There's nothing in the history of America that approaches the use of the presidency for massive personal gain. Nothing.'
Congressional Republicans spent years investigating Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, for trading on his family name to make millions of dollars, even labeling the clan the 'Biden Crime Family.' But while Hunter Biden's cash flow was a tiny fraction of that of Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, Republicans have shown no appetite for looking into the current presidential family's finances.
'The American public has had to inure itself to the corruption of Donald Trump and his presidency because the president and his Republican Party have given the American public no choice in the matter,' said J. Michael Luttig, a conservative former appeals court judge who has become a critic of Trump.
Trump evinces no concern that people funneling money into his family coffers have interests in government policies. Some of the crypto investors who attended his dinner Thursday night acknowledged that they were using the opportunity to press him on regulation of the industry. According to a video obtained by the Times, he reciprocated by promising guests that he would not be as hard on them as the Biden administration was.
One guest at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, that night was Justin Sun, a Chinese billionaire who became one of the largest holders of the $TRUMP memecoin after buying more than $40 million, earning him a spot in an even more exclusive private VIP reception with the president before the dinner. The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023 accused Sun of fraud, but after Trump took over the agency put its lawsuit on hold even as it dropped other crypto investigations.
As for Bezos and Qatar, each has reason to get on Trump's good side. In his first term, Trump, peeved at coverage in The Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos, repeatedly pushed aides to punish Bezos' main company, Amazon, by drastically increasing its U.S. Postal Service shipping rates and denying it a multibillion-dollar Pentagon contract. Trump also had denounced Qatar as a 'funder of terrorism' and isolated it diplomatically. He has not targeted either Bezos or Qatar in his second term.
The president has not hesitated either to install allies with conflict issues in positions of power. He tapped a close associate of Elon Musk as the administrator of NASA, which provides Musk's SpaceX with billions of dollars in contracts. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously worked as a lobbyist for Qatar, signed off on the legality of Qatar's airplane gift.
Zach Witkoff, a founder of the Trump family crypto firm World Liberty Financial, and son of Steve Witkoff, the president's special envoy, announced a $2 billion deal in the United Arab Emirates, just a couple of weeks before his father and Trump traveled there for a presidential visit.
Wertheimer said the accumulation of so many conflicts puts Trump on the all-time list of presidential graft. 'He's got the first 10 places on that,' he said. 'He's in the hall of fame of ripping off the presidency for personal gain.' But he said the public would eventually grow upset. 'I think that's going to catch up with him. It's going to take some time, but it's going to catch up with him.'
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright 2025
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump's approval rating drops to second-term low as support from independents craters
WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump's approval rating has dropped to 37%, according to a new Gallup poll, the lowest mark of his second term as independent voters have increasingly soured on his presidency. The poll, taken July 7 through July 21, was conducted on the heels of Trump's July 4 signing of his "Big, Beautiful Bill" into law and as he's faced an intense backlash over his administration's refusal to release files in the government's case of disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It marks a 10-point drop from the 47% approval rating Americans gave Trump's job performance at the beginning of his term in January. The poll, a phone survey of 1,002 Americans, has a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points. More: Trump tussles with Powell during Federal Reserve visit but backs off firing threat Only 29% of independent voters said they approved of Trump's job performance, a 17-point decline from the 46% the president enjoyed among independents at the start of his second term. The 29% approval rating among independent voters is the lowest Gallup has tracked with the group in either of his two terms. Trump has maintained strong support from Republican voters ‒ dropping just one point from 90% in January to 89% ‒ while backing from Democratic voters has slid from 6% to 2%. Trump's approval rating slides on issues including economy An average of recent polls from Real Clear Politics found Trump with a higher approval rating of 52%, compared to 46% of Americans who approve of his job performance. Although Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" legislation marked a major legislative victory for the president, a CNN poll conducted by SSRS this month found 61% of Americans opposed the megabill, which includes cuts to Medicaid and food stamps and an extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts estimated to add $3.3 trillion to the debt over 10 years. Trump has also lost support on his handling of most issues. Only 37% of Americans approved of his handling of the economy in July, down from 42% in Gallup's February poll. Trump's favorability rating on immigration decreased from 46% to 38%, his handling of foreign trade from 42% to 36%, his handling of foreign affairs from 44% to 41%, and his handling of the Middle East from 40% to 36%. More: Trump says he hasn't considered pardoning Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell Trump's lowest approval marks are for his handling of the war in Ukraine, 33%, and the federal budget, 29%. More: Trump signs order pushing cities and states to remove homeless people from streets Trump's average approval rating in Gallup polls between April 20 and July 19, was 40% ‒ significantly below the 59% average for all post-World War II presidents elected from 1952 to 2020 at the same point in their first terms. Yet it was a notch above the 39% first-term second-quarter average Trump had in 2017. The latest Gallup poll is a potential warning sign for Trump and Republicans more than one year away from the 2026 midterms, when Democrats hope to win back control of the House of Representatives and Senate. Yet Trump has proven in the past that he has the strength political to overcome poor polling. Trump's lowest approval rating, 34%, came at the end of his first term in January 2021 after he refused to concede the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: President Trump's approval rating reaches low point of second term
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump administration releasing $6 billion in education funding it withheld
The roughly $6 billion in education programming that was frozen by the Trump administration earlier this month is being released, according to a Department of Education spokesperson on Friday. This includes all title program funding for English language acquisition, teacher development and adult education, among other programs, the spokesperson confirmed. MORE: GOP senators urge Trump administration to reverse $6 billion education funding freeze On Thursday, in an interview with ABC News, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon suggested the roughly $6 billion in education programming that was paused and under review by the Office of Management and Budget could be released by the end of the year. "We want to make sure that we have the right focus on what we're trying to do with our students," McMahon said. The congressionally authorized education funding was under review to determine if programs "grossly misused" government funds to promote a "radical leftwing agenda." MORE: GOP senators urge Trump administration to reverse $6 billion education funding freeze Last week, several Republican senators sent a letter to OMB Director Russ Vought urging the Trump administration to reverse its decision to withhold the more than $6 billion in federal funds for education programs already appropriated by Congress. Additionally, a coalition of school districts and advocacy groups sued the Trump's administration over the funding freeze. Friday's announcement comes a week after OMB unfroze more than $1 billion in after-school and summer learning funds that had been under review. A senior administration official said the states would have to adhere to new guardrails moving forward. Many programs told ABC News they received the after-school and summer learning funding earlier this week. It's unclear how soon states will receive the additional education funding that was released today, but the school year starts in the coming days for many districts nationwide. This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump tariffs weigh on Brazil chemical exporters, spark order cancellations
By Ana Mano SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Chemical products companies in Brazil, which exported $2.4 billion to the U.S. last year, face a slew of contract cancellations as President Donald Trump has threatened a new 50% tariff on the South American nation's exports from August 1. Since Trump's announcement, export orders have been canceled for certain resins and compounds used to make fertilizers, which Brazil supplies to the U.S. agriculture sector, Andre Cordeiro, head of Brazilian chemical lobby Abiquim, said on Friday. "Fundamentally, these decisions are being made because the bet is that he will actually apply the tariff," Cordeiro said. One company in Brazil had all its contracts for exports to the U.S. canceled, Cordeiro said, adding that other businesses have seen some of their contracts canceled. There are also cases where sellers had secured export financing for the order, which was later revoked. He declined to name the affected exporters. Losses associated with the tariffs go beyond direct exports, as almost every industry uses chemicals in manufacturing processes, from oil to steel, from machinery to production of agricultural commodities, he said. "No one produces coffee, even grains, without some kind of chemical product in the process." Cordeiro added that chemical companies are losing export business and also local sales to clients that export goods into the U.S. market. Brazilian plywood exporters, for example, use chemicals for bonding and themselves have faced U.S. order cancellations, he said. Orange juice makers, which sent 42% of their exports to the U.S. last year, also use chemical preservatives. Brazilian companies like Braskem have operations in the U.S. and could be affected. Dow Chemical, which has 10 plants in Brazil and sizeable exports of silicon metal for processing in the U.S., is also at risk. Braskem and Dow did not immediately comment. Exxon Mobil, which declined to comment, operates in Brazil and serves clients in various industries. Tariffs are unjustified because Brazil's chemical sector runs a $7.9 billion trade deficit with the U.S., Abiquim said. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
