The Bulwark Podcast - David Kirkpatrick: Trump's Self-Enrichment

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

Back in the day, Trump used to puff up his wealth to get on the Forbes list. Lately though, he doesn't talk about how much money he has, especially now that he and his family have pocketed an estimated $3.4 billion off his time in the White House. The bulk of those billions comes from various crypto-related ventures—and money from foreign nationals and some adjustments at the S.E.C. have helped grease the wheel. At the same time, the Trump Org is making development deals directly with dictators in the Middle East. Meanwhile, his supporters may think they're helping MAGA by buying hats and beer koozies, but their money is all going to Trump. Plus, the European leaders had their flattery game down in the Oval Office on Monday. The New Yorker's David Kirkpatrick joins Tim Miller. show notes David's piece, "The Number: How Much Is Trump Pocketing off the Presidency?” White House photo of the European's flattery game in action Go to https://zbiotics.com/THEBULWARK and use THEBULWARK at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.

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Discover the export impact today at edc.ca.ca. Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Previously was New York Times Cairo Bureau Chief during the Arab Spring. He was author of Into the Hands of the Soldiers, Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East, his new piece in The New Yorker is the number. How much is Trump pocketing off the presidency?

Spoiler, a lot. It's David Kirk Pactor. Welcome to the podcast, man. It's a pleasure to be here. Good to have you, man. Welcome to the show. I want to spend most of it on the Trump corruption graft, enrichification of his family, whatever we want to call it.

But first, you've covered some high-stakes diplomacy in your years. I'm curious what your impressions were of the multilateral, I guess we'll call it, visit to the White House yesterday of all the European leaders, giving Zelensky some backup and some support to ensure that the meeting didn't go as ugly as the one did a few months ago. I guess they achieved that goal. It was a little bit more affable, but unsure what the progress was beyond that. What did you make of what we saw yesterday? I thought one of the most striking things was the two photographs the White House put out, where President Trump sat at the Resolute Desk, surrounded by the European leaders like pupils before a teacher.

At the end of the day, looking at the statements coming out of Moscow and out of Washington as of this morning, I think ultimately not that much has changed. It seems like the Europeans showed up with a mind to flatter Trump. Those pictures suggest that was successful. and they cagely focused on the question of security guarantees, which is the way to pretty much annull what President Trump and Putin talked about in Alaska. I did enjoy from the pictures that they put out the one that you're referencing. J.D. Vance is kind of in the cut couch in the background there, so he was not able to create as

much trouble as he did last time. But I felt better about the meetings yesterday. The range of outcomes yesterday was on the good side was, you know, Trump is susceptible to flattery, as you mentioned. You know, Trump is susceptible to kind of being persuaded by the last person he listened to. And maybe the Europeans in Zelensky could succeed with that. That'd be like kind of the best outcome, not like a permanent change, but at least, you know, a buying of time. The worst case outcome would have been essentially something like what we saw back in February with Trump lecturing them. It felt like we got towards the better end of that. But again, like when you then see this morning, Trump on Fox, what you mentioned, he keeps talking about how good his relationship with

Putin is. He talks about how Ukraine shouldn't have gotten involved in this war like it was their choice. You know, he talks about how he respects Putin so much. He had to take the call with him privately. So I don't know. The interview with Fox this point did not leave me a lot of hope that there was permanent progress and sort of realigning Trump towards the Ukrainian perspective. Yeah, but I think coming out of Trump right now is that the U.S. will have some role in security guarantees, that European forces, NATO members, will be on the ground. And coming out of Russia is that's a non-starter. Right.

You know, because if NATO forces in Ukraine are attacked by Russia, the U.S. is involved. So that's, you know, kind of transitive property. That's a U.S. security guarantee. I think that substantially undoes whatever was discussed in Alaska, personally. But we'll see. Yeah, hopefully. That's true. That was my whole issue coming out of Alaska.

The crux of this is essentially Putin doesn't want the so-called root causes, which weren't the real root causes, like he doesn't want NATO on his doorstep. So instead, we're just going to do Article 5 by another name like that. I don't know. That just never really seemed workable to me. But as you said, we'll see how it shakes out. I wanted to also just pick your brain on both Trump and J.D. Vance have given speeches to this effect, right? which was this pivot from, you know, the naive democracy promotion of the past presidents in the Middle East towards more of a real politic. Some of us might call it more of a, you know, kleptocratic alliance in the

Middle East, depending on how you want to look at it. And you covered this stuff on the front lines. I'm just curious, before we get into kind of the Trump business deal side of it, like what you make of the political realignment there in the Middle East and what the impact might be and how things have changed. since you were in Egypt. You mean as far as the U.S. presence in the Middle East or as far as the... Yeah, well, I guess just like the power dynamics, right? Like, I mean, we had changed from, you know, we had this Arab Spring moment where, you know, there felt like there was some opportunity.

The U.S. is trying to kind of balance interests and values. And like that is kind of passed. That is essentially done, right? And now we've moved to this moment where a lot of the people you covered, like the autocrats have now consolidated power, you know, maybe... some of the more Muslim Brotherhood, some of the terrorist groups have lost a little bit of power. I guess, I don't know. I'm just kind of curious to pick your brain on what you think about the landscape there.

I think history will have to judge whether what we're seeing now is a change in policy or a more candid policy. You know, even during the period when, which probably reached a peak during the Obama administration and the Arab Spring, when the U.S. government was vigorously with its rhetoric promoting democracy and the transition to democracy, That was always in tension with its simultaneous alliance with many of the authoritarians around the region. You know, the U.S. is comfortable with the status quo. It's an American-backed order across the Middle East. And to a certain extent, that's been restored. In a way, I don't think there's been that much change under Trump.

You know, the U.S. was close to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates under Obama. and they still are. Maybe the leaders, or maybe looking over their shoulders a little bit less, I guess. I don't know. I feel like MBS and C.C. And that crowd have really have a stranglehold on power in a way that feels maybe that's wrong. I guess we saw what happened to Assad. These things can change very quickly.

But, you know, maybe that might be one difference. Yeah. The one thing I would say is we all said that in 2010, you know, when I first arrived and Cairo, nobody thought the Arab Spring was coming. But at the same time, if you're a strong man, you're paranoid. Those guys are always looking over the shoulder. If you rule with no legitimacy besides coercion and force, your life is an anxious one, and it will always be. So let's talk about maybe the thing that has changed, because I'm pretty sure that there aren't any Obama golf courses in Oman that I'm aware of or any direct financial dealings. Maybe not. I don't know who's backing the

Netflix deal, so you never know, I guess. But the direct business relationship, obviously, has changed. And the article that you wrote just basically tried to gather up all of the different Trump interminglings of the presidency and business and add them up. A lot of the stuff is happening in the Middle East. But maybe just at the biggest picture first, where is all the money that is going into Trump's coffers coming from? You know, all over the place. So I did an article. which basically asked two questions, you know, of all of the businesses or income streams flowing into the Trump family coffers, which ones are really related to the presidency? Which ones are monetizing the presidency in one way or another? And then of those, can we put a dollar on it, right?

What's the best estimate we can come up with for how much he's got in terms of money in the bank? You know, maybe it's a commitment over the next 10 or 30 years. Maybe it's payments he's already received. And I came up to $3.4 billion, which is a lot of money. But now in that, you have some real estate deals, which may involve a direct or indirect participation by a foreign government, especially in the Middle East, also in Vietnam. But you also have money he's making off his own supporters. You know, the Trump organization is not above selling campaign-like merchandise on their own account, you know, to make $50. bucks off of a hat or, you know, 40 bucks off a pair of flip-flops that buyers might actually think

is supporting the MAGA candidates in its movement, but is in fact just enriching Donald Trump. And then you get over into the crypto side where domestically they've branched out of real estate, the family, the Trump family, and they've gone into crypto on a whole variety of different fronts at a blistering pace. Ultimately, that is the biggest source of the 3.4 billion that I came up with. The majority of that comes from crypto-related enterprises. Let's like what you sort of came up with. I think you're sort of estimating, you're gathering various things, making judgment calls. But, you know, about two and a half billion, essentially, of the three-and-a-half billion, give or take, was coming from

crypto. So, like, a huge nut of it. Yeah, that's right. I don't have a figure exactly in front of you, but that sounds about right. So I want to get into the details on the crypto scenes, but just, again, at the kind of macro. I think it's hard for you to, like, wrap their heads around this. I was doing a podcast with one of these kind of anti-establishment kind of podcast, right? People that like want to be like everybody's corrupt, everything's corrupt. And you know, they have some points on various things. But it was hard for them to wrap their heads around what like the scale of the Trump corruption, right? And I was, you know, they're bringing up things from the Clinton Foundation and other things that like there were legitimate concerns

about that like the scale is just so much larger compared to what we've seen in the past. So I just talk about that at the biggest level. I'm like, what is the difference we've seen both in this administration compared to others, but also even compared to the Trump first term? So a couple things. You know, corruption is your word. It's not mine. Okay.

I went out of my way not to use the word corruption here because I don't have evidence, and I don't think anybody has evidence of a quid pro quo, right? Nobody yet has an example of Trump, you know, shaking. taking hands or signing a piece of paper to sell an official act in exchange for a personal. I mean, enriching yourself off public, off your public service is corruption even if you doesn't change what your policies are, right? No? I'm not sure.

I wouldn't. I mean, I would say it's undignified. And I would certainly say that if you know, if the president of the United States appears to be in a big, big, big hurry to make as much money for as personal accounts as possible, that's going to raise some questions, right? If you're a foreign government thinking, should I do business with the Trump organization, might that win me a personal favor, an official act out of the White House? If the Trump family is desperate to make money and broadcasting that around the world,

yeah, it says, okay, I'm probably going to get something for this. Yeah, that's definitely a concern. But let's be careful, you know, just because it seems plausible doesn't mean we should just assume that corruption is taking place. Sure. I'll give my bipartisan bona fides in a different way. I'd call what the Clintons were doing with the Clinton Global Initiative of corruption, too. I think that's a fair word to use.

I don't necessarily think they were, like, changing their policies based on it. It's just like, you know, it's a question about whether you think the public official should act that way or not. And I was supposed to get to that. That's right. I mean, it's interesting. The response I've gotten from the right is 100% what aboutism. And, you know, point well taken. Like, definitely members of the Biden family have been profiting off of his position as public official for a long time.

traditionally presidents have cashed in on their office after they leave it and i'm going to call that within the american system fair game yeah when i was doing my tally trump and milania i think they made 10 million a little bit more than that on book deals between their stints in the white house i did not count that because they all do that right that's we expect the president to cash in in a book deal after they leave office but the after part there makes a big difference right that Trump and his family are making this money while he has his hands on the levers of power and that's that's novel and of course as you suggested the scale is different right so hunter biden may have been making money off of the fact that his father was president i do think the

market for his artwork has dried up substantially since his father left left the white house concur well it might be on the way back up now that he's doing you know wheels off uh podcast interviews You might find a new marketplace. We'll see. Have you found podcasting to be that lucrative? Well, I'm doing okay. You know, I'm doing okay. I got to see Oasis the summer, but no, nobody's buying my art, I guess.

Yeah. But again, the scale is different. The scale is different and the degree of participation by the president himself. I mean, he, you know, the most dramatic example is he not only as president began selling this meme coin, right, a bit of crypto that doesn't represent anything. for a kind of novelty associated with Trump, he held a big dinner, a wild president for people who had bought his meme coin. And he stood behind a lectern with the White House seal on it. And he arrived and left in Marine One. I mean, that felt like a presidential appearance to promote his personal product. Just talk about like the scale compared to that other stuff

and compared to the first term. Or maybe it's even just more fair just to talk about it as the scale of what he's doing now compared to the first term. Yeah. I mean, I haven't done the math on what Hunter Biden made so right. Not a legit comparison, but it's definitely an order to magnitude. But right, first term, you know, looking back, I do feel like a lot of the allegations from the Democrats and the left during the first term were insubstantial. You know, the focus then was on the Trump Hotel in Washington and was the president using that to sell influence or to make money off of the White House. In retrospect, it turns out that the fact that it was his hotel and he was The president drove away probably as many people as it brought in.

You know, the hotel lost money during his four years, in each of his four years in the White House. And it's done better as a wall over story, you know, under Biden and now under Trump. So that, I think voters were right to ignore that. You know, and a lot of the concerns about- We did make Jimmy Carter sell his peanut farm. Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm. And God bless him. I think nobody's going to fault him for that.

That is a gesture of integrity. But, yeah, in the comparison we're talking about first term, second term for Trump, there was nothing like this in the first term. I mean, the acceleration in moneymaking happened shortly after he left the White House the first time when Jared Kushner opened his private equity shop and began soliciting money from Saudi Arabia. And it's taken off since then. You know, after hearing about how much money Donald Trump's making in crypto, I think I have no choice but to go get some drinks tonight. And I have to tell you, if I do that, there's a game-changing product I'm going to use before my night out. That's Zbiotics, pre-alcohol. Z-biotics, pre-alcohol, probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic.

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You know, I'm obsessed with this stuff, and I hadn't missed a couple of them. But on our semantic discussion, this question, what are we calling this? You cover this a little bit in the article, oligarchy or kleptocracy. You know, you talked to some experts who are saying it's not yet oligarchy or kleptocracy as bad as Putin or Najib Razik, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, who stole billions of dollars in the country, while also managing to avoid assassination nation at the hands of Zoolander. So like that level of whatever, kleptocracy, we haven't quite reached. What are we calling it, though? Because it is different. It's substantively different

from what, you know, we traditionally see in Western democracies. Yeah, I'm going to use the word self-enrichment. You know, that I think is safe or monetizing. It's apples and oranges with those other countries, right? There's a lot of countries around there where the federal budget is not disclosed where the strong man can just embezzle basically, you know, millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. And in some ways, those strong men live a more dignified life, right? They don't have to sell baseball hats to make money. They don't have to hawk meme coins. But we're not in that world. We're still in a rule of law situation where the president has to do things that are extraordinary compared to his predecessors to try to make money on the side. And it still raises

some eyebrows. But I think, yeah, I think personal enrichment is definitely a safe term. And it's terra incognita because he's a real innovator in this area. I think that's right. I think that's a good point, actually, right? Where it's like sometimes you get into the political science of it all. And it's like, well, we've got to, you know, figure out a term that like puts him in context with what we've seen and other leaders around the world. But he is, this is just different. Like, he's different. Like this, he might be a first of his kind. I hate to ever give them compliments on anything. But I think that that's fair that this is, that there is some, I don't know, maybe entrepreneurial spirit in the self-enrichment of public office from the

Trumps, something we haven't seen. The properties. So again, in some of the comparisons, you imagine how how this story would look if it was a Democrat. The Vietnam story stands out to me, because this was one that I hadn't focused that much on. In September 2024, the General Secretary of Vietnam's ruling Communist Party, visited New York and dispatched a central committee member to wrap up a Trump resort deal. It turned out to be the biggest Trump resort deal he's ever done. So the Vietnam Communist Party was like closing the deal on this with our president. That's noteworthy, I think. Yeah, it is noteworthy. And the New York Times, excellent reporting the New York Times unearthed a letter showing that the Vietnamese government is treating this project

with special care because he's the president. They're expediting it. They're pushing aside some local rules and customary regulations to make it happen as fast as possible. Abundance communism. They're cutting out the red tape in Vietnam. You know, you say that it's the biggest, I think in terms of square footage, for sure. We're talking about three times the size of Central Park, 54 holes of golf. Wow. The project that he's doing with a Saudi company in Oman might ultimately be a bigger thing in coming up with a guess, an estimate, a credible estimate, a minimum for how much money he's

going to make of that Vietnam thing was very difficult for me. And that's the place actually where I think my estimate is the most likely too low. So to your point, you're kind of back to this question on quick, quote, quote, yes or no. Like part of the reason why it's hard to determine this is just like the nature of Trump and he's just so just haphazard in the way that he does a lot of the stuff. But, like, you look at Vietnam, for example, and the tariff negotiations, right? Like, on the one hand, you can look at that and say, well, this obviously wasn't a quid pro quo. Like, Trump, they tried to butter up Trump and he got money and he, you know, took a bag and didn't give him anything because they still have a 20% tariff on them, which is bad for an export company.

That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is like, well, it's a lower tariff than some of the other Southeast Asia countries that do these kind of exporting to the United States. So maybe it would have been worse for them if they hadn't done the deal. You know, maybe they'd be looking at the India tariff or the China tariff level. Did you kind of navigate that at all when you're doing this article or just sort of wanted to put the facts out there and just see and that everybody can make a choice for themselves? I'm definitely in the put the facts out there and let people make a choice for themselves camp. I did try to figure out how that went down, right? Is this an example where Vietnam got something or didn't?

And ultimately, I came to the conclusion that we don't know yet. Right. Because if you look at what happened, Trump announced this deal with Vietnam, which looked some good, some bad, kind of half-empty, half full, 20%, not 50%, or whatever. And then Vietnam said, oh, no, no, no, no, there's no deal yet. We're still negotiating. No customary trade deal. You know, lots of pages, plenty of lawyers on both sides.

Nothing like that has happened yet. So we don't actually know what the tariffs on Vietnam are going to end up like. So outside of Vietnam, just on those other kind of deals in the Middle East, and so the stuff that's just wild, like as far as the scale of the money. So you have it estimated here as about $105 million, essentially, for these kind of bucket in these other essentially real estate deals, right? You have Muscat in the Middle East. You have the one that you mentioned, Oman, Dubai.

I mean, again, this is a huge change from the first term. Yeah, totally. So in the first term, the Trump family said that voluntarily the Trump organization was not going to do any deals abroad at all to avoid the appearance of a possible payoff. Trump himself said he didn't like the way that looked. Now the family has said that's out the window, right? Basically, Don Jr. has said, look, even though we exercised that restraint, people kept criticizing. us for profiteering anyway. So we're not going to hold back. We're not going to lock ourselves in a pivotal padded room, as he said it. But you know what? The truth is they've gone even a step

further. Not only are they doing deals abroad, they're doing deals with foreign governments, right? They're doing deals connected to the government itself, not even a private entity. Now, you know, having covered the Persian Gulf a bit, my own view is that there aren't really meaningful differences between a big private tycoon in the Persian Gulf and the ruler of that country because they're so dependent on the rulers. But in some places, like in some of their crypto enterprises, World Liberty Financial, a Trump family crypto operation did a big deal with a company owned by the rulers of the United Arab Emirates without, you know, no pretense of independence. And that's another thing that is different that we can just say, as where, again, I'm just trying to make these things as simple

for when people are talking to the folks. Because your point about the what aboutism, this has not been a safe space for Hunter Biden's graft on my show. There have been a lot of past politicians that have made money off access. But again, this is something that is just like meaningfully different than hasn't happened before. Like, it's not as if we have had other presidents

that had real estate deals that they were doing with dictators in the Middle East. The thing that's so remarkable about the arc of Trump's career is that as he moves from builder to television personality to political entrepreneur, he's selling goods which are less and less substantial, right? So he starts out building buildings and selling buildings, renting space, and then he moves on to just licensing his name, right? Once he's apprentice, television famous, then he can just sell licensing deals,

you know, use his name to sell steaks or pizza or mattresses or shirts or, or put his name on a hotel that someone else owns and runs. I'm just waiting for my first licensing deal. That sounds nice. Yeah, you're right. It's almost free money, as one of his sons put it in testimony. And now he's selling even less. I mean, there's a variety of deals there where the Trumps are just getting paid,

it seems like, you know, for being the Trump's. The crypto is the most direct example of this. And I guess now it's the crypto is now interwoven with Trump truth social and the Trump media stuff too in a way. As I was going through all of this, I guess I think the best way to do it to talk about with folks is you break it up into kind of five separate elements when it comes to when it comes to the crypto. And it had a couple of them that I wasn't really like that weren't really even on my

radar. And yet the Trump kind of meme coin that everybody is, you know, very aware of that he launched, I guess right before he went into the. the presidency. We already mentioned there, the World Liberty Financial. These things all have very great names. The World Liberty Financial. And then you had those NFTs that they were doing for a while where it was like the Trump, which is like the digital baseball cards. Then you had another thing that I didn't even realize he was doing, which was the American Bitcoin. I'm still not even 100% sure what that is, but that's included in here. Yeah, and that's his sons. Trump is all over the

website for World Liberty Financial and the meme coin and the NFT are actually clearly the president. American Bitcoin is his sons, is Don and Eric, with less involvement by their father, of course, you know, everyone knows they have the same last name. So you've got the meme coin, the NFT, the World Liberty Financial, what his sons are doing with Bitcoin. And then the Trump media now is like managing cryptocurrency ETFs essentially, which are like, that is the biggest nut on here. You have that as estimated gain of 1.3 billion. Yeah, that's worth that's worth talking about. I mean, honestly, so when I reported this, you know, in March or April, they were, by my estimates, a billion dollars poorer. I mean, that's how fast it's coming in. And a lot of that

is this one transaction at Trump media and technology. Now, maybe some people will disagree with my reasoning, but let me lay it out here. Sure. So Trump media and technology, which owns truth Social is effectively a meme stock, right? Nobody pretends that Truth Social has a path to ever being profitable. And yet, the Trump Media and Technology Company stock trades at a very hard justify inflated price. It goes up and down basically based on how people feel, how Trump supporters feel about President Trump. So that means one of the things that he can't really sell his shares, right? If he starts to unload, then that's going to go through the floor. because all they're selling is association with Trump.

So some people have said, well, look, he's got this many shares in Trump media and technology. I'm going to count that as X billion dollars. I did not do that. I'm going to consider that illiquid assets that he can't ever really touch. But around June, Trump Media and Technology Group did something different, which is they effectively sold their meme stock at its inflated prices. And they use the proceeds to stockpile cash and to buy Bitcoin. Now, say what you will about Bitcoin. You might say, well, that's, you know, that goes up and down.

You can't really count on the price. But it's liquid, right? They bought $2.4 billion of Bitcoin. And they did it without significantly moving the market up or down. So they could sell that $2.4 billion of Bitcoin. And they've stockpiled maybe nearly $8 billion. 800 millionaires of cash. With whose money did they buy all of that Bitcoin?

So they did a private placement of stock to 50 different investors. And with the money they got from selling those shares of stock, they went and they bought Bitcoin. Now, those investors can turn around and sell that. So I'm a big investor. I'm going to say, okay, all right, Trump Media and Technology Group here, you can have some my money. In exchange, give me some of those shares.

I see that they trade at this crazy price that just reflects Trump's popularity. But since I'm not Trump, I can sell those. So I can turn around tomorrow and monetize this stake that I've just gotten. And that's fine by me. So you've got some money. I've got some money. Who are the 50 people? Do we know who they are?

You know, I am not sure that those 50 investors have been listed. But the company said 50 investors in their disclosure. Well, I couldn't they have just bought the Bitcoin themselves? I just, again, trying to understand how this is not. corruption, right? Like, if you, if you're a rich person who wants a stake in a cryptocurrency, you could just go buy Bitcoin or Ethereum or anything. Why would you use a, why would you use a Trump Media middleman to do this? But those people were buying shares in Trump Media and Technology Group. So Trump Media and Technology Group is now saying to the world,

but Trump Media and Technology Group is worth nothing. Well, Truth Social is worth nothing, but Trump Media Technology Group is now worth something because they've got... Because they bought Bitcoin, no. Not because it invented something or because it has it says its own product because it bought other products. They could have just bought those products themselves. Why go through the Trump middleman? Media company middleman. Now you're getting into a broader phenomenon. This is happening across the stock market right now. There's a trend for publicly traded companies to stockpile crypto. But why do it through Trump? That's my point. It's a broader phenomenon. I could do it. My brother's been crypto guy. He is in a ETF where it's like Ethereum 3x.

or whatever. And like my friends, so there are a million places you could buy, you could buy crypto ETFs. Why would you buy it through Devin Nunes and Trump's media company? I would say you are a bear about Trump media and technology and that is a perfectly fine argument. What I'm saying is the 50 large investors or institutions that did this transaction where they gave cash in exchange for new shares. They may not even be thinking this is a good way to own Bitcoin. They might just be thinking, I can flip these, right? I can flip these shares and then I come out ahead. So from the Trump media technology perspective, what they've done is this kind of financial alchemy where they've turned their meme stock, which did not have a real value, into an actual liquid asset, cash and

Bitcoin. I'm sorry. I still don't understand why this has more value than Hunter's Art. This is Hunter's Art. It's just a fancy version of Hunter's Art. It's a digital coin. These guys aren't doing anything. They have no product, and it's just Hunter's art, but in crypto. That's a conversation that you can have with the people who are buying shares in Trump media and technology. But we can't, I can't because we don't know who they are. Are they foreign? Are they Americans? It's a good question. We don't know. That's a good question. That's insane. This is insane, right, David? I mean, were you not looking at this going like, what in the fuck, like, who, what in the fuck is happening? Where is this money coming from? I did scratch my head because it's, they've changed something,

And, you know, serious investors all write off Trump media and technology. The buyers are mostly retail investors who just like Trump. And to turn that insubstantial bubbleish meme stock into an actual asset, something that they could feasibly sell, is a neat trick. And that's what they've done. So I went and said, okay, after selling all these new shares, Trump's stake in the company is diluted to about 42%. So he indirectly owns 42% of a stockpile of Bitcoin and cash that is about $3.1 billion.

And we're going to create a federal crypto reserve? We're going to create a federal Bitcoin reserve. He's got 42% of that stockpile. That seems interesting. Yeah. I mean, I'm not for a federal Bitcoin reserve. I don't know. I've been pushing for a federal Mardi Gras bead reserve because I think that I've got a lot of

those. And I think that that would be good. And I feel like we might want to keep them in case we get into emergency. What if there's a hurricane and we don't have beads for Mardi Gras? You know, it's interesting. I think you should publicize that strategy some more and see if you can get others to stick. I'm working on it. I'm interested.

In fairness to Trump, the Bitcoin Reserve that they're talking about right now, the crypto reserve, they're just talking about holding crypto assets that they have seized through various legal actions. Right now, there's no plan to take U.S. tax dollars and go out on the open market. market and buy crypto, you know, maybe that'll happen someday, but I think that would be quite controversial. I want to talk about one of the other crypto deals, the stable coin, because that one seems like the normal one. Unlike this, this is real, right?

It's stable. It's right there in the name. It's back to the U.S. dollar. So they start a stable coin. This was World Liberty Financial. That's right. Yeah, they start a stable coin, put that out into the marketplace. A lot of stable coins out there, again, for people who are not familiar with this or this is going

out in their head, over their head. There are a bunch of options. You could invest in several different stable coins on Coinbase or other platforms. Trump has one. He makes a stable coin deal that you referenced earlier with the UAE. And then I guess the group that puts the money into that stable coin is called Binance. They've got 90%. That was in your article, 90% of the World Liberty Stablecoin investment came from Binance. Yeah. Can I back up for a minute? I think we need to explain to people what a stable coin is. Yeah, please. Because it's not really an investment. The stable coin is like a surrogate currency. Basically, you get some, and it's supposed to stand for a dollar. You don't get interest on it. You don't make money on it. It doesn't appreciate.

It's not like Bitcoin. It's just a dollar. So why would you want it instead of a dollar? Well, you can move it around digitally, and maybe that's attractive to you. It's an easier way to pass things around. Of course, maybe you're criminal. Maybe you're interested in money laundering. maybe you're committing some crimes, it also can be very appealing in that way. So a non-crime reason to have a stable coin instead of a dollar would be what? Some people think it's pretty neat that you can transfer it very quickly from one digital wallet to another. They think it's a good way to make transactions. That would be the argument.

The seller of the stable coin, in this case, World Liberty Financial, which is substantially owned by the Trump family, says, okay, I'm going to give you a stable coin for a dollar. While it's out there circulating, well, you're passing it around like a kind of, digital currency. I'm going to take that money and I'm going to invest it in short-term treasuries. I'm going to earn, you know, 4% a year on that money. So I've sold you a stable coin for a dollar. I've got that dollar and each year I'm making, you know, four cents on that dollar. In this transaction, World Liberty Financial, new entry to the market, right, there's selling, there's lots of other stable coins out there. They've got one. A company controlled by the rulers of the UAE says, we're going to be the first customer. We're going to buy $2 billion

dollars of your stable coin, World Liberty Financial. And we're going to use it to buy a stake in a crypto exchange called Binance. So they take the $2 billion in Stablecoin. They give the $2 billion to World Liberty Financial, and they move the stable coin over to Binance. Now, Binance is a company with a checkered history that's been in trouble with the U.S. law, now under monitoring by the SEC. And the owner of finance was born in what country? I believe he's Canadian. China, actually. He was born in China. He's a Canadian. He's a He was born in China. Let's not, you know.

He's a Chinese Canadian citizen. I'm just saying... I'm not going to go too far in demonizing people of other... I'm just saying where he's from. I'm just saying where he's from. A lot of money. There's a bunch of money that just went from over to a company run by a Chinese national. He's a Canadian.

Okay. He's both. So, but, you know, just because somebody is from another country, you know, if he's a Canadian, he's a Canadian. Sure. So, but right, Binance has its own interests with the U.S. government because it's all, under, it's been, you know, it's been penalized. It's under this regulatory umbrella. The founder you're talking about is a felon, a convicted felon who did some time. He's now asking for a

pardon. So, Binance, which received all this stable coin, you know, that the UAE bought from the Trump family company, they now control how long that stable one goes unredeemed. How long World Liberty Financial can continue to earn that 4% a year on that $2 billion. So they have some leverage over World Liberty Financial here? Are they going to redeem that while Trump is still president? No, I would bet they are not. I would not do that. Is the SEC looking into this at all to your knowledge? Under the current administration? No, you know, I'm sure that a cynic like you will say, look, the Trumps are making money from crypto, and that's why the SEC has stopped its, you know, its enforcement actions. There's some evidence that Trump just would have stopped

all the SEC enforcement actions against crypto anyway, just because of campaign donations. even if they weren't paying in billions? Sure, maybe. I don't know. SEC stopped enforcement actions and other things. It is notable, though, just to like put that one more time. So this group creates a stable coin. There's a lot of stale coins in the market. They create one in a free marketplace. They'd be competing against all the stable coins. The UAE decides to spend $2 billion on it and then transfers it over to a company that is under investigation and they're holding that money. So they paid essentially under monitoring, already convicted of crimes and under monitoring. already convicted of crimes and under-monitoring.

Okay, thank you. So they paid 90% of $2 billion, $1.8 billion or something. And on that, Trump's making 4%. So the 90% figure is, if you look at the amount of World Liberty Financial Stablecoin in circulation, according to Bloomberg, 90% of it is that $2 billion. So right now, their only customers, at least, you know, as of the most recent reporting, basically their only customers was the UAE buying stable coin in order to give it to Binance exchange for a stake.

Yeah, I'm sure, I mean, I'm sure that if Kamala Harris, you know, had gotten 200,000 more votes than the UAE and this finance would really, would see the World Liberty stable coin as the one, as the one that they would want to put the billions in. Honestly, I think that that's probably likely. I can see the world liberty business proposition, right? So stable coins are, you know, they've gotten in trouble over the years. They're often used for money laundering or, you know, illicit activities. Some of the people who sold stable coins have taken the money they got and instead of putting in treasuries, they've invested in crypto-ponty schemes. They've done all kinds of things. So now comes a stable coin that basically says we're endorsed by the president of United States. We're really credible. You can trust us. Well, no, I understand that proposition. What would the proposition be if he was just a retired former president, though, living in his beach? Yeah, that's why I'm going to count all that money as presidential profits. I don't think that would happen if he weren't in the White House.

I want to ask you about one other guy also happens to be born in China. I should just mention Justin's son. How much money do you think he's put in to the Trump crypto operation? You might have it. I'm not sure I've got it in front of me right now. I mean, he's bought shares. More than 50, do you think? More than 50 million?

Yeah, I think that's probably right because he and some of it is still ongoing. He bought 75 million in World Liberty tokens and signed on as a formal advisor. That's nice. That's right. But they don't get all of that money. I think they get 75% of that, about 75% of that $75 million in payments for World Liberty Financial tokens. Now, those tokens are different than the stable coin.

Those tokens are just a kind of digital certificate that allows you to participate in, you know, the governance of World Liberty Financial. Those are not yet tradable, but soon, be. Interesting. And he was also investigated by the SEC, and that investigation seems to have gone away. They put that on hold to negotiate a resolution. He's also the number one holder of Trump's meme coin. He's a big booster. That's in addition to the 75 million? Yeah, that's in addition to the 75 minute. Okay. I miss that. A lot of coincidences out there, I would say. Things are turning up for Justin's son. So he got to watch. You went to the, they had the dinner.

Trump's golf course? That's right. He got a reward. A person that was under investigation by the U.S. government before Trump came in, then put in tens upon tens of millions into his crypto, gets to go to a dinner and be honored at the dinner, and the investigation is dropped. That's a decent summary of what's happening with Chinese national Justin Sun. I would add to that that, you know, after Trump just flew in for the dinner, right? So he flies in on Marine One, he talks for about half an hour, and he hits the road. after he left over dessert, Justin's son took the podium and gave a few remarks of his own as the

biggest holder of the Trump meme coin. And among the things he said was, you know, I just love the Trump administration for everything it's done for crypto. Look at this. You know, he kind of implied this part, but it's well known that under Biden, Justin's son was afraid to come to the U.S. for fear of arrest. And he said in his toast, look, if I can come to the U.S., everybody's going to come. Well, unless you're Venezuelan, I guess probably, unless you're a poor Venezuelan. If you're a wealthy crypto scammer, though, life is good. Well, it's an interesting situation we find ourselves in, David Kirkpatrick. Any other big picture thoughts on what you saw looking at all of Trumps, anything I didn't ask you about that piqued your interest?

No, I mean, we hit it. I mean, the two takeaways are one, you know, this is not particularly dignified. And to a certain extent, I think that people on both sides of the aisle would agree this demeans the office of the presidency. More people are worried about the question of corruption, about the question of quid pro quo. And there, you know, nobody's got evidence yet of a specific quid pro quo. But we can say that the velocity of this moneymaking and the evident thirst. And the Justin's son evidence is pretty close. You know, he's here.

He's here. He's queer. He's Chinese. He's celebrating. he's getting free watches and he wouldn't be he wouldn't have been here otherwise i'm not going to talk about his i don't know i think it's pretty safe to say that if justin's son was instead of somebody investing 70 million into his crypto if he was somebody who was under investigation for i don't know narco trafficking and um and he wanted to come into the country probably wouldn't have been

honored as much maybe on the contrary i would say the trump administration was on its way to roll back all the investigations into everybody in crypto before justin's son invest in a dollar. So yeah, the timing looks pretty fishy. He puts up a bunch of money and then things go right for him with the SEC. But on the other hand, he can make a strong case that Trump would have done that anyway. Yeah, I guess I'm just saying hypothetically, have Justin's son been like under different type of investigation? He probably wouldn't have had such a deal. So I guess your point is maybe had he given nothing, he still, they Trump might have let him off the hook for nothing as possible, I guess is true. Yeah, right, because there's a policy change

around crypto. And we won't, I won't bore your, your, uh, your listeners with the details. No, I'm obsessed with this. I'm obsessed. And I hope that you learn more because I'm, I got to tell you, I've been following this stuff pretty closely. And the scale of what is of the investment into the Trump media ETF is like, is really astounding.

And it's real, it's a lot of money. I can say as much money as Trump was worth when he first got into the presidency. Just that. I'm going to correct you again, because there's, there's two things. things going on here at Trump Media and Technology. One is what they're calling their Bitcoin Treasury strategy, right? That's where they swap their meme stock for cash in Bitcoin. The other thing is a separate ETF business. So one of the regulatory changes that the Trump administration has brought about is that crypto companies have an easier time selling

stocks, which will trade, they'll trade on the New York Stock Exchange, and they will track a basket of crypto. So whereas before, it was actually quite difficult for just ordinary investors to to get into crypto, which is logistically a pain in the neck to try to buy and sell crypto. Yeah. This makes it much, much easier for even you to buy some crypto, you know, just by going to your regular online brokerage. So the Trump Media and Technology Group is going to get into that, selling these ETFs, which are, you know, these baskets.

I want to make sure, if I'm wrong with this, that's fine. But, like, there are other non-Trump crypto ETFs. Like, you can just get on Robin. You can just get on Robin Hood. Tons. Yeah. It's not like it was an innovation. It's a new trend.

It's not like it was an innovation that was unique to them. No, they're jumping on the bad way. They're jumping on the bad way. But it's a staggering amount of money, though, in that kind of bucket of goods underneath the Trump media, I guess, is all right. But they haven't actually sold their first ETF yet. Their Bitcoin Treasury strategy is a little bit different. They expect to make more money selling ETFs, which will track Bitcoin Ethereum.

Got it. So the one point three, right, so it's important to give this right. So the money that your estimated gain of 1.3. billion is based then on just the stockpile of Bitcoin. Right, exactly. That's the meme stock to Bitcoin and cash. And that was the money that came from the 50 investors or the 50 investors or this prospective ETF that's coming, which one?

No, that's the money from the 50 investors. They're still finalizing the deal to sell the ETFs, which they're doing with a company called Crypto.com, which I think also is Singapore-based. So the 50 investors, just to be 100% clear. I think this is very important to understand what this business deal was with these 50 anonymous investors that we don't know who they are. And they definitely aren't Chinese. We don't, we don't see any evidence of that. These 50 investors, they got the Trump stock. They got Trump, media and technology group stock. She stuck. Yeah, which was then traded into Bitcoin. Right. So the company bought Bitcoin. I would guess that I wouldn't get too hung up on those 50 investors. I'd say chances are they've already unloaded that. they flipped it you think yeah i bet they took their trump media technology group stock and they flipped it to unsuspecting trump fans out there in the retail investor market be a good deal if that was true for them but they the trump folks would know who they were though they didn't just put it

anonymously under the yeah that's probably right um you would think and we don't know for sure i guess but you would think that they would know who they were yeah the wall street firm that acted as their intermediary certainly would yeah and i think it's canter Fitzgerald What a deal. I'll introduce a show. Who worked there? Was that the Commerce Secretary? Yeah, that's right.

The Commerce Secretary's firm and his son, is it the thing? Okay, well, all right, nothing to see here. I'm sure you won't have any more reporting on this to come, David and Patrick. Thank you so much. It's an important story. And it's like really hard to follow. And despite the fact that I misinterpreted a couple of things, you make it quite easy to follow. So I encourage people to check it out in The New Yorker.

I hope you'll come back sometime soon. appreciate you very much. Thanks a lot. All right. Thanks to David Kirkpatrick for dealing with my sarcastic bullshit and educating us on all this money that's coming into the Trump, the various Trump organizations. Appreciate him very much for coming on the show. And tomorrow, you got one of my old buddies coming on.

You're going to like it. So we'll see you all then. Peace. He didn't do it for the man. Didn't do it for the world. Didn't do it for the high power. It's supernova. He didn't do it for the war.

Didn't do it for the peace didn't do it for the Didn't do it for me Didn't do it for the love Didn't do it for the priest down on his knees I didn't do it for the sex Didn't do it for the law Didn't do it for the money I did it for the money

You all did it for the money You all did it for the money He didn't do it for the girl, didn't do it for the boy, didn't do it for the mother, father, sister, daughter, didn't do it for the speed, didn't do it for the peace, didn't do it for the neon Jesus, didn't do it for you, didn't do it because I could, didn't do it for all the pain and suffering, bye, please dance, strongly I'm made to a dance, I didn't do it for a thing man other than the money. You know we get it for the money Come on we are getting it for the money Come on we are getting for the money The Bolloy! We did it for the money. We did it for the money.

We all did it for the money. The Bullock podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. Thank you.