Politics - News Analysis
Donald and Melania Plan to Rake in ‘As Much Money As They Can’ During Trump’s Second Term, Says Watchdog
Just in case you didn't believe your eyes.
If you really weren’t paying attention from 2017 to 2021, there was a marked difference between the Trump presidency and any that came before it. And I don’t just mean the fact that he was stubborn and incompetent.
Donald Trump took advantage of the fact that previous administrations could be counted on to simply be ethical without a law requiring it. Other presidents released tax records going back dozens of years. They divested themselves of properties and investments that could even create the impression that they were using the power of the office to make money.
By contrast, Trump did not divest from his holdings in the Trump Organization, he just turned over the reins to his sons. He notoriously still hasn’t released his taxes, and this is his second time around. He used a Trump hotel in Washington D.C. to host paying foreign dignitaries, whose spent money at his establishment was considered basically an in-kind donation to get access to him.
Hell, when he went golfing, he even made sure to golf — at taxpayer expense — at his own resorts. He literally used public money to vacation at places that make him money when someone stays or plays there.
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Now he plans to kick all that into overdrive, and he’s already started.
Lisa Gilbert, the co-president of ethics watchdog group Public Citizen, already has a lawsuit underway against Trump for his shady antics with “DOGE,” the advisory panel that he’s calling the Department of Government Efficiency. But she says that apart from that chicanery, Trump is up to no good in the financial ethics department, either.
“This time, it feels like the gloves are off, and they have no intention of comporting themselves with the decorum and ethical standards of other administrations,” Gilbert told CNN. “They truly mean to make as much as they can on the backs of the American taxpayer.”
That money has always been Trump’s primary motivator is not in dispute. He’s sold everything you can think of before he was even in office before, and since he was president the first time, has branched out into everything you couldn’t think of before. Gold high-top tennis shoes, specialty bibles, trading cards, watches, guitars, and now even a memecoin.
That last one’s been a sticking point. He launched it just before his inauguration, presumably to skirt the kinds of questions that would have come up from such a blatant money grab if he were already in office.
On Tuesday, a reporter called him out on the cryptocurrency release, asking if he intended to keep selling things that benefit him during his presidency.
“Well, I don’t know if it benefited. I don’t know where it is,” Trump said. “I don’t know much about it other than I launched it. I heard it was very successful. I haven’t checked it, where is it today?”
Trump, of course, knows that it made him, at least on paper, more than $50 billion in just a few hours.
And the memecoin isn’t all, unfortunately. He held a great big pre-inauguration party at one of his own properties. He plans to host a Saudi-backed golf tournament at one of his resorts in the next few months. The list goes on.
Eight years ago, Trump didn’t divest, and he didn’t place his holdings into an independent trust. But he did hand over the Trump Organization, and it looks like that remains the plan this time around — with a major difference. Eric Trump has already announced that the Trump Organization will continue to pursue foreign deals that make a profit.
Any deals with foreign governments would redirect profits to the US Treasury. But it’s unlikely that governments will enter into such deals, having ethics regulations of their own. Instead, Trump will likely have exclusively private dealings with overseas interests.
Really, though, the ethics minefield is in the crypto. As president, Trump will have the power to essentially decide how those kinds of assets are regulated. It would be near impossible to find a way to regulate crypto that didn’t benefit him in the end as a holder of his own (two!) forms of it. $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins are already huge and they’re growing again.
CNN also spoke to Norm Eisen, an ethics advisor to the Obama administration, who called Trump’s coin release a “recipe for an ethics disaster” in the making.
“Trump is taking on new conflicts in real time,” Eisen said. “Any foreign government that wants to influence Donald Trump can just buy his meme coin in large quantities and let him know that they did.”
Oh, good.
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