Trump Gets Nightmare News as Crypto Scam Is Exposed!!

As the United States Senate comes back from its summer recess, it's going to take up a piece of federal legislation called the Clarity Act. And according to Senator Elizabeth Warren, quote, that legislation does nothing to prevent Trump from vacuuming up his next 1.4 billion in crypto profits. Why? Because the ethics language in that proposed legislation is weak sauce and dead on arrival. So it is a latest round of a spate of federal legislation that attempts to regulate cryptocurrency. And I'll bet you not any crypto that if you were to go and you were to test the basic knowledge of members of Congress as to what cryptocurrency is and why it should be regulated, a lot of them would have no idea what the hell you're talking about, which is why the latest film and the directorial debut of my friend Ben McKenzie's movie, Everyone is Lying to You for Money, is so important and why it is must see viewing for you. Ben has taken up the laboring or of educating the public about the dangers of cryptocurrency. He's gone so far as to be invited to testify in front of the Senate to be able to explain why we are rolling the dice in an incredibly dangerous way in an industry that is currently bereft of regulation, let alone a basic understanding of what it is. And if we haven't learned our lessons, then shame on us. But for people like Ben and others, the opportunity to be able to introduce you to the world of crypto in terms of understanding what the hell is going on is a win. And so I invited Ben to be able to spend time with me to talk about his film, how you'll be able to watch it, and how being a subscriber of Katie Fang News will actually help that happen. Take a listen. Joining me now is Ben McKenzie, who I will not say is the star of the OC, because I know, Ben, you've kind of done other stuff since that. Although I will say, my friend, that every time I stop and I see some type of meme reel or something from the OC, it does kind of make me laugh. But Ben McKenzie, thank you so much for joining me. I feel like I've been growing up with you. In your kind of journey with cryptocurrency, I had you on my old show on MSNBC when we talked about your New York Times bestselling book, Easy Money, cryptocurrency, casino capitalism, and the golden age of fraud that you wrote with Jacob Silverman. Fantastic book. And then I was also privy to sit at the Miami Film Festival and be able to watch your directorial debut, Everyone is Lying to You for Money. And so I'm proud of you, my friend, because this is an incredible, incredible film. It's entertaining, educational, substantive, real meat on the bone. But I want people who have foolishly not seen it to be able to see it. So let people know what this film is all about. Yeah, absolutely. So this is a 90-minute comedy about how stupid and dangerous cryptocurrency is. I made it as accessible as possible. You saw it for yourself, so you can attest to it. Audiences are loving it. We have a perfect score from the critics. But for some reason, we can't get a streamer to buy it. Wonder. Wonder why. It might be because I end the film, spoiler alert, on Trump saying, buy Bitcoin, crypto, whatever it is you're playing with. And the song that's playing over the Trump clip, there's only a little Trump at the very end. Don't worry. He won't be at the party with a lot of Trump. Sparing people the Trump. I got to spare people the Trump whenever possible. But the song playing over it is joining a cult. And it's about how nice it is to join a cult because you don't have to think for yourself. So the film is fun. Streamer won't buy it. So we're releasing it independently. So it's via a platform called Inventive. But you can just go to our website, everyoneislying.com, and click on watch. And it'll direct you to where you need to go. And anyone anywhere in the world can watch it. We have subtitles for multiple languages. And not only do you get to watch the movie, but you also can, if you want, watch a Q&A with me and Marina, Marina Baccarin, my wife, who's in the movie and very, very funny. And we took questions from the audience. We did this live event on Saturday. And it was amazing. I mean, we had people from 40 different countries show up. So it was really incredible. And for your viewers, because I love you and because you're great, 50% off for your viewers if you enter a code. We'll put it up. That's not a problem. 100%. No, it's exciting. And we're going to get into the details of how people can watch this. Because, you know, look, the title of the film, Everyone Is Lying To You For Money, could apply to everything. So let's be clear here, though. You know, the focus is cryptocurrency. And you've been an incredibly vocal, very forward-facing critic of cryptocurrency. If you had to get into an elevator, what would your pitch be? What would your elevator speech be on why everybody is lying to us about cryptocurrency? It's a story that sounds great, but isn't true. It's also the privatization of money. It's taking money from this publicly issued good to this privatized thing. So it's literal corporate money. It's corporations issuing their own money, whether it's World Liberty Financial in the case of Donald Trump or even Bitcoin. We can go into why. But when you transfer, the money is made up. It's trust, essentially. And if you transfer that trust from the public sphere to the private sphere, a lot of bad things happen. There's a lot of fraud and manipulation of the markets. And we know this because we've tried it before. We tried it during the 19th century, during what was called the free banking era, the wildcat banking era, when banks were allowed to issue their own notes. There was a lot of fraud. So this is a long elevator pitch. Maybe the elevator was going 20 floors. But that's my pitch. Well, listen, you mentioned Trump a few minutes ago. I want to clock some numbers for people that are tuning in, especially those that are following me at Katie Fang News. They know how I feel about convicted felon Donald Trump. But when it comes to Trump and crypto, these are really important numbers, all kidding aside, right? Trump's own official 2025 financial disclosure that came out was hundreds and hundreds of pages. But there was some really important data on his crypto income. For 2025 alone, Trump's own financial disclosure revealed $1.4 billion, with a B, in 2025 alone in crypto income. More than $500 million from World Liberty Financial, the one you just talked about, the crypto venture he founded with his sons. More than $550 million from World Liberty Financial token sales, plus another $260 million from the sale of interest in World Liberty Financial businesses. And then another $635 million from the sale of his Trump meme coins, which means that it's a part of his net worth tripling in his first year back in the Oval Office. If it's Trump and it's something Trump adjacent, it's got to be corrupt. So there we go. I've now summarized your film for you. But Ben, why is this important? Because there's a lot of maneuvering that's going on in D.C. right now by Republicans, who I suspect have no freaking clue what they're doing with crypto because they don't understand it themselves. They just kind of have a directive from Trump and this administration to push crypto as hard and as fast as they can. They have a directive from Trump, but they also have a directive from the crypto lobby itself. It's a powerful lobby, by the way. Extremely powerful. In 2024, crypto and people associated with it spent $240 million in our elections. More than any other industry, 40-something percent of all corporate donations in the cycle came from crypto and people. It's just staggering. It's really staggering. Right now, it's crypto and AI, maybe, as a toss up in terms of how much money is being spent to manipulate our political system. But they've already spent, I think it's $180 million in this cycle, and we're not even to the general election yet. So there's a lot of money being thrown around, which is influencing, unfortunately, legislators from both parties, but particularly the Republicans. And then you're absolutely right. Because Trump is in on the con, he is doing whatever he can to rip up regulations that were meant to protect investors. He is cozying up with some, quite frankly, very, very shady people inside of the crypto industry. We can talk about their ties to crypto companies and also Epstein, which, of course, is your world. But there's just a lot of really awful things happening. And to come back to the point I was making earlier, this is what happens when you privatize money. When you privatize money, bad people fill the space and they do all sorts of stuff that sure looks like criminal activity, even from the White House. I mean, but Ben, look, you don't even have to be super well-versed in crypto to be able to understand. We've seen people like Sam Bankman Freed in FTX, right? We've seen that in your film. You actually interview him, which is a wild thing. So no spoilers here. Y'all got it. You got to see how artfully Ben navigates this conversation with him. But, you know, you don't have to be somebody well-versed in the law, let alone crypto, to see that it's all bullshit. So I'm not quite sure why our federal government thinks that it's a good idea to even be contemplating legislative action when it comes to this. I don't even think that they've settled on whether or not it's actual currency or not, whether or not they're going to treat it as a security or not. It's still an open question. Yes, it absolutely is. And crypto has thrived in that gray area where is it a currency? Is it an investment like a security? The industry is terrified of being regulated like an investment because investment securities have investor protections. You need to know who you're giving your money to and what the F they're doing with the money. And crypto, the industry doesn't want that. Gee, I wonder why. So there's been this whole battle on Capitol Hill over a piece of legislation called the Clarity Act. And I was down in D.C. testifying and we won. The Clarity Act didn't pass. But since then, Trump had the press conference in the White House with the crypto execs. Yeah. And the regulators that are supposed to be regulating them, like the head of the SEC and the head of the CFTC. How that seems there's independence and regulation. I don't see that, but keep on going. Yeah. I mean, absurd. And what was the announcement about? The announcement was effectively, yeah, we didn't pass the legislation. And by the way, why did they not pass the legislation? Because the Democrats were insisting on an ethics provision that would keep Trump from being making another billion dollars off crypto. And Trump couldn't do that. Right. So Trump holds this press conference in the White House after this bill has been defeated and says, effectively, doesn't matter. We're going to do it anyway. And sure enough, the SEC has just issued rules that will make it easier to issue crypto assets. The Trump family has got a provisional banking license, a banking license for his World Liberty Financial. Outrageous. This is really bad. What happens is these guys get into the system. They profit massively off of it. And we are creating systemic risk. We are creating the risk of a contagion effect where when crypto crashes again, which it will, because it has repeatedly over its brief but tortured history. When it crashes again, it could contribute to the next financial crisis. And we could end up bailing these MFers out again. It is outrageous. And we've seen historically efforts to bail out these industries has not helped us. In fact, it's turned out to just fund them to continue to go screw us again as consumers. Yes. And we saw in the film, the last crypto crash was 2022. And that's when most of the events of the film take place. I interviewed Sam and then he ends up, you know, being arrested and going to jail. Yeah. And I'm called to testify to the Senate Banking Committee in December, just days after his arrest. And I'm asked by one of the senators at the end of our session, what should we think about crypto getting into our banking system? And Kevin O'Leary is testifying opposite me. And of course, he loves it. This is Kevin O'Leary, folks, that we talk about too vis-a-vis data centers. So he's also been in the crypto world. It's going to shock your audience, but he's also on the wrong side of the issue when it comes to crypto as well and profiting off of it, of course, naturally. So Kevin's like, we have to integrate crypto into our banking system. We lose the war of innovation. Okay. And I say it's playing with fire. It'll be a disaster if we do it. Three months later, three months after I testified in December and March, three banks failed in the United States, all three tied to crypto. They failed. We had to bail them out. It was a lot of venture capitalists. It was a lot of money coming out of Silicon Valley. And I think it was probably the right short-term decision to keep the contagion from spreading. But it's outrageous that not only have we not remedied the situation since then, it's gotten worse. Now crypto's further into our regulated system already. Trump's trying to do whatever he can to get it even further. What happens when it crashes again? Does it take down the whole system? We don't know. Which is a terrifying prospect. And look, there's also this other bill that we're keeping our eye on called the Parity Act. It's interesting because it's a bipartisan introduced piece of legislation that would exempt the smaller stable coin transactions that were under $200 for being reported for purposes of capital gains tax. And it would defer taxation on staking rewards for five years. Totally separate. I mean, you have these legislators that are introducing this legislation. And again, Ben, they're not understanding. What's at stake? They're just getting lobbied so damn hard that it makes sense. But then you do have, and I want to make sure we shout them out, you know, people like Senator Elizabeth Warren, right? Who's like, look, no, this is corruption on steroids. By the way, she's very clear. She's not anti-crypto. She just wants to make sure that there's guardrails in place that would allow that, you know, real ethics teeth exist. Because right now what's been proposed in various things, including the Clarity Act, doesn't really have any teeth. There's really just no way to prevent further corruption, especially by Trump and the Trump crime family. Yeah, and to be clear, that's what I'm advocating for as well. I'm not advocating for crypto to be outlawed because it wouldn't work. Crypto has existed, you know, in these gray and black markets. Somewhere in space, yeah. Yeah, on the internet, you know, and you're never going to be able to get rid of it. You shouldn't even try. All it needs to be is properly regulated as securities, as investments. And let's see what happens. Let's see if these investments, which by the way, what are you investing in, right? It's just lines of computer code stored on ledgers called blockchains. There's no real world use case for crypto other than crime. That's the use case. The use case is sending something of value instantaneously somewhere in the world, avoiding the banking system. That's why criminals love crypto. That's why the Iranians are using crypto to be paid for their ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. That's Trump is in bed with a guy whose exchange was laundering their money, the Iranians' money. This guy named Shang-Peng Zhao. Oh, the guy who got pardoned? That guy? And then Trump pardoned him. And then this guy also invested through an investment firm in the UAE $2 billion in Trump's stablecoin business. So this stinks to high heaven. But to your point, I am not saying it should be outlawed. And I am the one trying to protect investors. Elizabeth Warren is the one trying to protect investors. What the industry is doing is preying on its own customers, indoctrinating them into this cult-like situation where they believe that if you criticize crypto, somehow I'm the bad guy and trying to simultaneously not have regular investor protections for their own customers. If they gave a ---- about their customers, they would try to protect them, but they don't. Well, because that actually would be an occupational hazard for them, would it not? I mean, it's the whole premise of their commerce, right? I mean, it's the whole theory of how they make it work is a presumption that people either are not paying attention or they don't really understand, which is why I bet you a million bucks if you tried to test basic crypto literacy for 99% of Congress, they would have no effing clue what the hell you're talking about. They wouldn't, and not to be ageist, but there is an age issue there with a certain generation not really understanding things that are native to the internet, not understanding just how much information, misinformation is out there. So there's that issue. But there's also the issue, of course, again, as we've seen so often in our sort of, I don't wanna say broken political system, but certainly deeply flawed, is Citizens United has just opened up the floodgates and the unlimited spending means that the representatives don't really have an incentive to understand it. It's almost better for them, probably psychologically as well. They don't understand all they understand is the dollars, the real money that's coming in. Yeah, that's coming in to help them. Yeah. So it's a very bad situation. But I will say this, when you say 99% of people on Capitol Hill, like the senators don't understand, I think that's probably true, or certainly it's in the 90s. And there are good senators like Chris Van Hollen, like Elizabeth Warren. Oh, yeah, yeah, yes, yes. Who are fantastic. Yeah, smart. But, and Bernie Sanders. But it's also true that the majority of the public doesn't know much about crypto. Which is why your film is amazing. I mean, I'm not bullshitting people because you and I are friends. I mean, your film, you said accessible and that's such a fantastic adjective because Ben, it literally explains it and then it develops your theory on it and improves it empirically through the course of the film. I mean, that is why I think it's important for people to see it. It knocks down the barriers to entry to an understanding of what it is because a lot of people are so intimidated by it that they pretend like they understand it so that they're not judged because everybody talks about it. But in reality, again, people don't understand what it is. When I ask, when I tell people what I'm doing and I ask them what they think about cryptocurrency, the people that aren't in crypto, which is the majority of the overwhelming majority of the country, 84% of the country has never, ever messed around with this crypto stuff. 84% and yet we've all heard the word. And so when I ask people what they think of it, they almost always say some version of, I don't know, it seems complicated. Maybe I'm not that smart, but it seems pretty scammy. Look at that self-deprecation like straight out of the gate, right? Well, it's because the end of what I want people to understand is it's not you. You are smart enough to understand it. Does it seem like a scam? Trust your instincts. You're right. Let me explain to you why you're right, how you're right. But the industry relies on convincing. It's the metaphor I use in the book is the emperor's new clothes. It is this, it's, you know, it's an incredible story because it's so true, right, about human behavior. What an incredibly astute observation that the tailors trick people, adults into believing that these imaginary clothes that they weave are real out of appealing to their ego, out of saying only the smartest people can understand this. If you can't understand this, you're just not smart enough. And so most people go, okay, I guess I'm not smart enough. Leave me alone, weirdos. But for a certain percentage of the public, they get pulled into that. You get sucked into that. And then they believe. And the net result is you have a small portion of the public, very small, like less than 5%, that really, really, really believe in this stuff. I think they're in a cult. I really do. Like there's a lot of cult dynamics that happen. And I say that with love. I say that with sympathy. But like, I do think that's kind of what we're looking at. It's like a microcosm of MAGA, but like tucked into this very small niche of like dudes, young guys in particular. And those people, I look, I show them in the film. I have a lot of sympathy for them. I talk to a lot of victims who have been scammed. Yeah. All guys. They're very emotional. Yes, it is. But I didn't make the movie for them because it's really hard to break through to those guys. I made the movie for the... If you're out there and you haven't bought it, I made the movie for you. Exactly. And if you are like another, say 10%, that has kind of like messed around with it, right? Like you saw some celebrity selling and you put a little money and you... And that's fine. Like that's no judgment. Wait, let me be clear. Several of whom that have been sued because they've been messing around with it and they've been advertising and using, you know, they're backing this stuff and then they got in trouble for it. I mean, let's be very clear about that too. Yeah. I mean, Kim Kardashian had to pay an over $1 million fine. A bunch of the celebrities who shilled for FTX, Sam's failed crypto exchange, Sam Beckman Freed's failed crypto exchange, they're being sued civilly right now. Yeah. Yeah, there are consequences. And thank God there are consequences, but the system shouldn't have to devolve into civil litigation. It should... There should be investor protections from jump, right? That's the way this should work. We just live in the era of Trump where, you know, it's... Well, it's because he's gaming. He's gaming the system because he's making so much money off of it. I mean, sure, right? If you're the one who gets to build the rules and the way that the game is being played. Yes. Trump called Bitcoin a scam as recently as 2021. So, you know, just a few years ago, he was saying it's a scam and now he's figured out how to make money on it. So he loves it. Trump also used to be a Democrat. Not a lot of deeply held beliefs. No, I don't think there's anything other than the bullshit with him. So, Ben, again, other than being the brooding bad boy outsider, which you kind of are now doing in crypto, by the way. I'm going to say, you've kind of taken that and translated it over. Tell people where they should go to learn about the streaming event. It began August 22nd. What's cool is when you actually buy the access and the link is live, you can watch it over the span of, what, two weeks, right? Yeah, until September 6th. Go to everyoneislying.com. Click on watch and it'll set you. You'll get set up. Yeah, it's a fun movie. And again, anyone anywhere in the world and we have subtitles for other languages and all sorts of stuff. It's been an incredible. We've had people from 40 different countries join us on Saturday. It was really amazing. So I think there's a way forward here, you know, not just for my movie, but for a lot of other movies that are unfortunately suffering. You know, we haven't had time to talk about it. Maybe I'll come back on to talk about it at some point. But like the suppression of free speech that's occurring in this country, sort of by these major corporations just being afraid of him. It's sort of a self-censorship where you just don't buy independent movies because what's the, you know, what the downside's too big, right? Trump can come after you. But the net result is this really chilling effect on our democracy, on the functioning of our democracy. If people don't have access to legitimate information to the truth, then it's much easier to indoctrinate them. So I do feel like in my own small, fairly stupid way, I've contributed to a truth getting out there in the form of everyone's lying to your money. But go check it out. Not small, not stupid. And I will say that is why I testified in front of a Senate hearing myself about this mega merger between Paramount, Skydance, and Warner Brothers Discovery because it's already happening. The silencing and the chilling effect, it's already happening and it'll continue on steroids if we don't, you know, films like yours, frankly, to show how valuable they are with the information that it provides. So, Ben, what we're going to do is we're going to obviously include the hyperlink to the website. 50% off for my viewers, my subscribers, to be able to watch this amazing film. My best to Mirena, who is a long-suffering wife but incredibly talented actress in and of her own right. Folks, when you tune in, you watch the movie, you'll see exactly what I am talking about. But my best to you, Ben, and to the family. It's good to see you. And I'm so excited and thrilled. And again, very proud of your hard work in this. It's a mission, but you're really shouldering it and I appreciate it. Well, I appreciate you for everything you're doing with Epstein. We didn't even have time to talk about Epstein Crypto. Oh, it's OK. But what you're doing is truly a public service of incredible import. And I am just very impressed. And it makes me wish I had gone to law school because if I'd gone to law school, I could be helping somehow. You certainly are. Ben McKenzie, thanks for being here. I appreciate you. Katie Fang here. We launched the Katie Fang News Channel in partnership with the Midas Touch Network so we could bring you the latest in legal and political news. Straight, no chaser. So if you're a fellow truth teller, hit that subscribe button and share the word about this channel so we can build a high information America together.