Trump s 2 2 billion payday what the new financial disclosure reveals

Right now, let's bring in Hugo Lowell, senior correspondent for Wired and author of the Inner Loop newsletter, and Dan Alexander, senior editor at Forbes and author of White House Inc., How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency into a Business. Lots of questions for you both. And I'm going to start with you, Dan, on this point, that newly released 927-page financial disclosure. It reveals Trump pulled in at least, you're sitting down, everybody, $2.2 billion this year alone. So, Dan, give us a breakdown on where all this money came from. Well, the big drivers of it are cryptocurrency. So there are two entities. The first is World Liberty Financial, which Trump launched right before the election. Nobody took much notice. Then he wins. Suddenly, lots of people pour into it. He also goes on to sell a stake in that venture. And together, those two things, the token sales and the stake, add up to nearly $800 million. Then you have his meme coin, which he launches three days before the inauguration. That's over $600 million. So right there, those two crypto ventures, you're at 1.4 of that total 2.2. And then, of course, you had a big business beforehand that provides the rest of it. Do you know if the meme coin has gained value, Dan, or not, or lost value? We know that crypto has lost value overall. The meme coin has performed terribly. Right when Trump launched it, it had a huge run-up, big frenzy. Lots of people get in, both high-frequency traders, but also people who just like Trump. And maybe they're invested in crypto heavily, or maybe they're not, but they just think it's interesting to bet on this thing. And since then, the meme coin has totally collapsed. I mean, I'm talking about from its peak down more than 90%. And that's true across a lot of Trump ventures that you see. And as that's happened, people have gotten really crushed. Collapse. All right. So let me ask you this, Hugo. How did Trump break in this much cash without serious scrutiny as to whether or not he was using his office to enrich himself? I mean, Trump says, yeah, I'm not personally involved in my trade, stock trades, that kind of thing. He says financial dealings are handled by others and advisors. But this whole disclosure, is it setting off alarm bells in Washington? I think it's setting off alarm bells in Washington just because of how large the amounts of money are. When you're getting to $2.2 billion, I mean- In a year. That's rivaling the GDP of a small nation. And I think a lot of this is clever political messaging on the president's part, which is why he's been able to evade some scrutiny, at least on a superficial level. Because if you're in the White House, you're going to go out and say, look, the president is not individually making these stock trades. It's all managed by a trust. It's been done by the Trump organization. Even though that may be true, that's really a straw man argument in a big sense. Because, for instance, in May 2026, Trump says, go buy Dell. Dell's a fantastic company, fantastic products. Dell stock price shoots up. Even if Trump is not himself day trading Dell stocks in the markets on his little brokerage account, he does have brokers. And a sophisticated broker will put some of his money in, let's say, an ETF that tracks the stock price of Dell. It's like a basket of different companies. And Trump must know, I mean, it would just be ridiculous to suggest otherwise, that him coming out and saying that a certain company is great, we should go buy Dell and try to boost the stock, would not also have reverberating benefits for his own position. I mean, there's nothing that says that he doesn't look at the stock market and analyze it. We know that he doesn't typically get into the Oval Office till what, before about 11 a.m. Got plenty of time after the opening bell and also advance of that to look at things. But let me also ask you, Hugo, about Jason Miller, of course, Trump's former advisor. We know that he is returning to the White House to help with messaging. Is that because advisors in the White House know that this whole money thing is a problem? I don't know if it's specifically because of the money problem. I think the larger point is they know they have an issue with the midterms. I think that a lot of people in the White House saying, you know, we don't care about the midterms. It's fine. Trump's going to do whatever he wants. I don't think that's necessarily correct. You know, I've spoken to a number of people inside Trump's orbit, and they are very clear that they are very concerned about the midterms, especially if they lose control of the House, because it will lead to congressional investigations, because it may lead to an impeachment, even if Democrats don't sound particularly keen on it this time around. And they are starting, the White House is starting to put advisors in very key positions to try and bolster their political messaging heading into the midterms. And I think you saw that a little bit in the Mount Rushmore speech as well. You know, he didn't talk about unifying things for the country at large, but he did talk about unifying things for the Republican Party. He talks about eliminating the filibuster, then we Republicans will not lose an election. A century. Right, exactly. A hundred years, yeah. So a lot of that's geared towards his base, but it's also geared towards his political operation being like, we are now going to cast Democrats as socialists and communists, and that will be our messaging through to the midterms months away now. And that is going to be the way we structure this. And so I think Jason Miller coming back on the team is a big part of that. So political reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, they have just released their remarkable new book, Regime Change, and it gives us quite a behind-the-scenes look at the current administration. Let's listen to what Swan said after reading through Trump's financials. I think we have that tape. I mean, this financial disclosure does not account for a lot of the money that's going into the Trump family through different mechanisms, through the children and other business ventures, deals overseas. I don't think we've begun to scratch the surface of understanding all the different ways that money is flowing into the Trump family throughout this presidency. All the different ways, Dan. Can you share other Trump revenue streams that are flying under the radar? Well, so one of the things that he's referencing here is that if you are the child of a president and you're an adult, then you do not have to disclose how much money you're earning because you don't necessarily have a White House position. Now, Ivanka Trump had to when she was in the White House. But for example, you know, Hunter Biden did not, and other presidents' kids have not. And so one of the things that's happening right now is that both Don Jr. and Eric Trump were very involved with World Liberty Financial, that thing that threw off nearly $800 million to Donald Trump. They also got huge sums of money. They have taken that money and redeployed it into other investments. And in addition, Don Jr. also joined a venture capital firm, which has raised tons of money and is able to deploy into other investments. Now, none of the things that are exclusive to the kids appear on the financial disclosure. So it's true that there's stuff that we're missing. I will note, however, that Donald Trump, unlike most real estate developers his age, has not given over significant portions of his family fortune to his heirs. And the result is that most of the money coming into the Trump family we do see, but there are things that are missing. So Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee, Hugo, they accused Trump of not only politicizing America's 250th anniversary, but using it to commit fraud. The report was shared first with MSNOW, and it says when the president sidelined the bipartisan commission that was created by Congress for a new organization that is tied to Trump and his allies, that created opportunities for corruption. So a Freedom 250 spokesperson, we should add, told MSNOW that these accusations in the report are categorically false. But what opportunities are they referencing? Well, it is certainly true that there were two entities at issue here. There's the America 250, which was the bipartisan, congressionally approved entity, which was partnering with the Smithsonian. And they wanted to do things that brought in artists and musicians on both sides of the political spectrum to perform in Washington, D.C. And you can you saw that in the buildup to July 4th. And then you saw the Freedom 250 kind of start to emerge out of the groundwork, you know, late last year, which is the president's blessed organization. And Freedom 250 has basically taken over all of all of the event management production stuff right on the White House lawn. Yeah. If you watch if you watch the UFC, you would see, you know, earlier one of the one of the fighters getting beaten to a pulp and blood dripping literally onto the Freedom 250 logo. It wasn't America 250. Yeah. But it is certainly the case that they have requisitioned a large part of the money that was supposed to go towards celebrations, not only in Washington, D.C., but across the nation. And that is because, you know, the president and the White House has steered a lot of those contracts to Freedom 250. And the one thing I will say, and this is not necessarily corrupt, but just the way that Trump works, one of the event company putting on the July 4th celebration on the National Mall is being run by Trump's advance guy and his company. He didn't join the White House. He effectively stayed outside the White House and it's his company that is running the celebration. And so you do see contracts getting steered to people in Trump's little bit. Yeah. So Trump took his first flight on the new Air Force One. It was gifted to him, of course, by the Qatari royal family. So, Dan, what are lawmakers concerns about this? Well, the initial concern is that, you know, Donald Trump said that this was a gift and it actually turned out that it cost the United States a lot of money, you know, 400 million dollars to refurbish the plane. The Qataris have been trying to get rid of it since 2020. It had been on the market, weren't able to, and then they sort of dumped it on the US. These things are expensive to run, expensive to operate. And then, of course, there are also just the natural national security concerns of whether it was scrubbed closely enough and whether it's OK for the president to be able to fly to fly on it. But the obvious and most immediate thing that you can't refute is the financial concern. Dan, back it up just a moment. I was not aware that this was a plane that the Qataris were trying to get rid of. And you say it was on the market since 2020. I just whispered to Hugo, did you know that? No. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so the Qataris, you know, they have there are lots of countries that buy these massive planes and that recently have made shifts and decided they want smaller fleets, more mobile fleets, that sort of thing. And the Qataris have been trying to get rid of some of their planes. And they first listed this plane in 2020. Nobody bought it. And then, lo and behold, Donald Trump comes into office and suddenly there's this, from the Qatari perspective, very elegant solution, which is we can give this plane away. We no longer have to pay for the maintenance of it and that sort of thing. And oh, by the way, it's also going to be a nice thing that the president will probably appreciate. So it's good diplomacy for them, too. I mean, I don't know how the Qatari financial system works, but I mean, in other countries, that would be a tax write off as well. Anyway, we will leave it there. Dan and Hugo, guys, thank you so much. And thank you so much for joining me, especially on this holiday. Appreciate you both. Thank you.