Trump uses ‘personal time' to meet with mysterious crypto investors
President Donald Trump spent 'personal time' with cryptocurrency investors at a dinner on Thursday, which his spokesperson described as not being 'a White House dinner.'
During a press briefing earlier on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked by Garrett Haake from NBC News about the dinner with the president. The dinner was held with 'the top 220 $TRUMP Meme Coin Holders,' according to an online registration page.
Haake asked Leavitt if a list of attendees would be made available for the sake of transparency.
'The president is attending it in his personal time,' Leavitt replied. 'It is not a White House dinner. It's not taking place here at the White House.'
Not discussed was the price of admission. Anonymous cryptocurrency buyers in attendance paid between $55,000 to $37.7 million, NBC News reported. The top 220 winners were invited to a black-tie optional dinner at Trump's golf club in Washington, D.C.
'FOR THE TOP 25 COIN HOLDERS, YOU are invited to an Exclusive Reception before Dinner with YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT!' the registration page read.
In small text down the registration page, it stated that Trump was only to appear as a guest 'and is not soliciting any funds for [the dinner].'
The event was organized by Fight Fight Fight LLC, one of two Trump-affiliated companies that owns 80% of the $TRUMP coin project, NBC News wrote.
But the line about 'personal time' received criticism online. The Bulwark's Tim Miller said on X that 'personal time' is not something presidents have.
'There's not like a magic suit you wear when you are doing official business and one where you are just Donald from Queens,' Miller wrote in his post.
Longtime Trump critic, lawyer George Conway, shared Miller's post on X and added his own commentary.
'Actually, it's fine,' Conway wrote. 'If Trump is saying he's doing something on his 'personal time,' then obviously that means he's not acting within what the Supreme Court calls 'the outer perimeter of his official responsibility,' which, in turn, means he's not immune from criminal prosecution.'
Conway referred to last year's Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity.
'Oh (expletive) what an incredibly great point!' MeidasTouch's editor-in-chief, Ron Filipkowski, commented on Conway's post. 'Karoline Leavitt just took away his presidential immunity defense.'
In The New Republic, Malcolm Ferguson wrote that one of Trump's top crypto spenders is called 'SUN,' which is held by a Seychelles-based crypto exchange known as HTX.
'The president is having a private dinner for anonymous foreigners who bought his cryptocurrency — a scam in and of itself — and is acting as if he's just taking a personal day that will have no impact on American politics," Ferguson wrote.
A similar term was used during Trump's first term, called 'executive time,' Axios reported in 2019. This amounted 60% of his official schedule, spent watching television, reading papers and posting tweets (when X was known as Twitter). Most of 'executive time' was not spent in the Oval Office.
'Executive time' was a concept introduced to Trump by his former chief of staff, John Kelly, 'because the president hated being locked into a regular schedule,' Axios wrote. This private schedule could last as long as seven hours.
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Read the original article on MassLive.
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