Latest news with #TrumpFamily
Bloomberg
a day ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Trump Memecoins Complicate Legislative Effort, GOP Lawmaker Says
House Financial Services Chairman French Hill said activity by President Donald Trump in cryptocurrency and memecoins has complicated work in Congress to pass legislation that's been in the works for years. 'It's absolutely fact,' Hill said, 'the Trump family engagement in the memecoin world has made this work more complicated, because it has distracted, I think our members, both Republican and Democrat, from what we need to do.' He was responding to a question at the Reagan National Economic Forum on Friday in Simi Valley, California.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Trump biographer explains why Melania denied Barron rumor
Melania Trump moved quickly to clear up a rumor that her son Barron had been rejected from Harvard after the fictional story became an ongoing joke within the White House. Trump biographer Michael Wolff has shed new light on the gossip among MAGA allies that President Trump had set his sights on destroying the prestigious university because his 19-year-old son was rejected from the school. 'That exists because I reported that was the joke within the White House,' he said about Melania's statement. Three weeks ago, Wolff took to Instagram to share the 'joke going around the White House this week.' 'What do all the universities Trump is targeting have in common?' he asked. 'Barron didn't get into them.' Melania took the rare step of issuing a public denial to the 'completely false' rumor, insisting through her communications director Nicholas Clemens that 'any assertion that he, or that anyone on his behalf, applied is completely false.' Barron is a freshman at NYU's lauded Stern Business School, and Trump has repeatedly said his son was accepted to several colleges but had his heart set on NYU. Wolff admitted that he wasn't sure if the rumor had any validity, but that hasn't stopped it from spreading like wildfire within the White House. 'I don't know if there is any truth to this, there very well might be, but within the White House, that is the joke,' he said. 'Because they're like, "What is he doing?" This is, you know, this is crazy stuff,' Wolff said about Trump's rage at the Ivy league school. '"Why would this be happening?" And then they tell the Barron joke.' Harvard has a notoriously high rejection rate with about 96% of applicants being told no. The revelation comes as Trump continues his tirade against Harvard by banning the attendance of foreign students. He also canceled the federal government's remaining contracts, which are worth about $100 million. When President Trump launched his first broadside against Harvard in April, canceling a massive round of federal funding after the university wouldn't bow to his demands, the internet was rife with speculation he was angry because his son wasn't admitted. 'Did Trump target Harvard because the university rejected Barron?,' read several posts on social media. Even a Democratic senator stoked the fires of speculation with a tweet on the matter. 'Can't help but wonder how many Trumps got rejected by Harvard,' Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island wrote on X when he reposted an article about the president's attacks. The youngest Trump child broke from family's tradition when he decided to attend Stern Business School at New York University. The president attended the University of Pennsylvania as did many of his children. Other Trump kids went to Georgetown University. In an interview with Daily Mail last fall, Donald Trump said Barron had been accepted to 'a lot' of colleges. 'He's a very smart guy, and he'll be going to Stern, the business school, which is a great school at NYU,' he said. He also said Barron had considered following in his footsteps at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, but ultimately chose NYU. 'It's a very high quality place. He liked it. He liked the school,' said Trump. Barron graduated from Oxbridge Academy in Palm Beach, Florida, last May. He lives in Trump Tower in New York while attending NYU. Melania Trump has spent much of her time as first lady in New York with her son. The two are close and she is known to be protective of him. In September, she told Fox News that Barron was always looking at studying in New York. He 'wants to be in New York and study in New York and live in his home,' she said at the time. President Trump, meanwhile, has waged war on elite universities, accusing them of antisemitism and blasting their 'woke' ideology. He claims the top schools in the country are controlled by 'Marxist maniacs and lunatics.' Trump has demanded Harvard eliminate its diversity, equity, and inclusion program; cut the power of its professors; refuse foreign students; and ban masks at campus protests. Harvard is fighting back just as hard, filing lawsuits in federal court to counter the administration.
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Eric Trump Says He'd Love to See Some Big Banks ‘Go Extinct'
Eric Trump told attendees at a cryptocurrency conference that he wants some big banks to 'go extinct,' echoing complaints from other members of the Trump family about the traditional financial system. 'Honestly, I would love to see some of the big banks go extinct, because, honestly, they deserve it,' Trump said Wednesday while speaking on a panel with his brother, Donald Trump Jr., at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas.
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Lara Trump reveals Jake Tapper's groveling apology over Biden's mental decline... then issues devastating comeback
CNN star Jake Tapper called Lara Trump to apologize for a condescending on-air dispute in 2020 where he dismissed her concerns about Joe Biden 's mental acuity. President Trump's daughter-in-law revealed the phone call on Fox Tuesday but said his apology was 'a little too late' - conveniently taking place just weeks before the publication of his tell-all book about Biden's cognitive decline in the White House. Tapper has faced fierce backlash on his reporting in the book, with critics noting he participated in the 'cover-up' he is now intently criticizing. One of the most prominent examples of this was back in October 2020, when Lara pointed to a speech of Biden's and said: 'What we see on stage is a very clear cognitive decline.' Tapper immediately interjected, savaging her with a haughty response that she had 'absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody's cognitive decline' and accusing her of instead 'mocking his stutter.' While Tapper has publicly apologized for his response and admitted a sense of 'humility' over being proven wrong, Lara has now revealed he reached out to her privately two months ago. 'Jake Tapper called me about two months ago and he said "I have this book coming out,"' she told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. Tapper told her 'I know everybody is saying I should apologize to you. I plan, when the book comes out, to go on TV and say you were right and I was wrong.' While Trump appreciated the acknowledgement and that Tapper has since stuck to his word by apologizing publicly, she noted that 'it feels a little bit too late to me.' 'Jake Tapper can't discount his role in that, no matter how much he wants to come out now,' she said. 'They have lost the American people's trust... It is the reason Donald Trump is in the White House right now. People like authenticity.' Lara went on to say that the 'over-arching thing is that the damage is done', and raised questions about whether Biden's cognitive decline ever would have been publicly addressed if he had secured another full term. Tapper first publicly apologized to Lara on the Megyn Kelly show after she replayed a damning snippet of their conversation live on air. 'Do you want to apologize to Lara Trump?' Kelly asked. 'There is a way of pressing a man like that on the actual infirmities to bring it home to him and to the audience and you didn't do it.' 'That's correct. I didn't,' Tapper confessed. 'And like I said, I feel humility about my coverage.' Lara first addressed how Tapper's new book had impacted her with a subtle dig at him on X on February. At the time, she re-shared a June 2024 post criticizing Tapper's treatment of her. 'Seems like a good time to remind everyone that in 2020 Jake Tapper, first, accused me of making fun of people with a stutter (an atrocious accusation) and then attempted to shut me down and ended our interview when I tried to warn people of Joe Biden's very obvious cognitive issues,' she wrote in the 2024 post, just one month before Biden departed from the race. He doubled down his apology on Piers Morgan Uncensored on Monday. 'Knowing what we know now, and looking back on that interview, which I feel tremendous humility about, she [Lara Trump] was right, and I was wrong. I did not see, in the moments he was having, I did not see that as cognitive decline," Tapper said. In that same interview, he said the cover-up of Biden's cognitive decline may have been 'worse than Watergate' - referring to the Richard Nixon saga long considered one of the greatest scandals in political history. 'This is an entirely separate scandal. Maybe even worse … maybe even worse,' Tapper ultimately admitted. 'It is without question – and maybe even worse than Watergate in some ways because Richard Nixon was in control of his faculties when he was not drinking.' During the 1972 scandal, the Nixon administration attempted to cover up a burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Nixon was forced to resign and 'Watergate' is now synonymous with political corruption, becoming somewhat of a benchmark through which subsequent administrations are judged. Lara said it was 'atrocious' for Tapper to accuse her of mocking Biden's stutter when she was in fact commenting on his visible cognitive decline While Tapper denies actively participating in a cover-up, he has accepted that he, along with the majority of left-leaning mainstream media - missed the signs for far too long. 'There should be a lot of soul-searching not just among me but among the legacy media to begin with - all of us - for how this was covered or not covered sufficiently,' he said. 'I wish I could do differently.' 'Conservative media absolutely has every right to say, "We were hip to this and the legacy media was not,"' he added. The turning point for him was the disastrous debate between Biden and Trump in June 2024, which he and fellow CNN star Dana Bash moderated. The duo had iPads which they used to communicate with their production team throughout the debate. Early on, Tapper sent a message to his crew backstage. He didn't know which staff were working, so he 'tried to keep it clean.' 'I wrote 'holy smokes,'' he told Kelly. 'I wanted to write 'holy f**k.'' Around the same time, Bash slid him a piece of paper, with her own message on it. It read: 'He just lost the election.' In addition to questions about Biden's cognitive ability, his recent diagnosis with late-stage prostate cancer has fueled conspiracy theories about whether he was aware of - and hid - his sickness while president. Biden's team have maintained he was not tested for prostate cance r while he was president, and that the diagnosis is recent. That reassurance has not stopped MAGA loyalists from demanding his long-term physician Kevin O'Connor be subpoenaed to answer questions about Biden's health. O'Connor repeatedly assured the American public during Biden's term that he was healthy and could have served another four years. Simultaneously, several of Biden's closest aides are facing pressure to reveal how much control they had over his autopen after Trump raised questions about who was really in charge during the Biden administration. According to the book, which is based on hundreds of interviews, 'access' to Biden diminished significantly during his White House term, as his staff allegedly walled him off, even from cabinet members. One cabinet secretary told the authors that he didn't brief the president directly in 2024 but only spoke to the president's aides. Even still, insiders maintained they were not aware of how dire the situation had become until it was too late, despite Biden's repeated gaffes and tumbles on the public stage. One of the most shocking incidents took place in September 2022 incident Biden called out for Republican Congresswoman Jackie Walorski at a White House event. 'Jackie, are you here? Where's Jackie,' he said scanning the audience. 'She was going to be here.' Walorski had been killed in a car crash in August and Biden and the First Lady had issued a statement extended condolences to her family at the time. Another standout moment for Tapper was when Biden did not recognize actor George Clooney at a 2024 fundraising event, along with the revelation that White House aides were considering placing the president in a wheelchair if he were reelected.
Al Jazeera
4 days ago
- Business
- Al Jazeera
Trump Media to raise $2.5bn to invest in Bitcoin
The Trump Media and Technology Group will raise about $2.5bn to invest in Bitcoin, United States President Donald Trump's social media firm says, as it looks to diversify its revenue streams with a push into the financial sector. The company is raising the funds by selling $1.5bn in stock at its last closing price and $1bn in convertible notes priced at a 35 percent premium, it said in a statement on Tuesday. The money will be used to build a 'Bitcoin treasury', the company said. The Bitcoin will be held on Trump Media's balance sheet alongside existing cash and short-term investments totalling $759m at the end of the first quarter. Crypto platforms Anchorage Digital and are to provide custody for the Bitcoin holdings. 'We view Bitcoin as an apex instrument of financial freedom,' Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes said, hailing the move as a 'big step forward' in the company's plan to acquire 'crown jewel assets consistent with America First principles'. Shares of the company behind Truth Social, a streaming and social media platform, were down 6 percent in early trading. Trump Media has been exploring potential mergers and acquisitions as it aims to diversify into financial services. Last month, it reached a binding agreement to launch retail investment products, including cryptocurrency and exchange-traded funds aligned with Trump's policies. The Trump family, long rooted in skyscrapers and golf clubs, has opened multiple beachheads in cryptocurrencies, quickly gaining hundreds of millions of dollars. Its other crypto forays include Trump nonfungible tokens (NFTs), a meme coin, a stake in a newly formed Bitcoin producer called American Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency exchange World Liberty Financial. But the crypto push has attracted scrutiny from lawmakers, including Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who last month asked the US securities regulator about its plans to supervise exchange-traded funds (ETFs) due to be launched by Trump Media. Trump, who referred to cryptocurrencies in his first term as 'not money', citing their volatility and a value 'based on thin air', has shifted his views on the technology. During an event at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida during his presidential campaign in May 2024, Trump received assurances that crypto industry backers would spend lavishly to get him re-elected. Last week, Trump rewarded 220 of the top investors in one of his other cryptocurrency projects, the $Trump meme coin, with a swanky dinner with him at his luxury golf club in northern Virginia, spurring accusations that the president was mixing his duties in the White House with personal profit.
