A Conservative Finally Says It: Trump Is Incredibly Corrupt

Summary

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Bulwark Takes — Ep. "A Conservative Finally Says It: Trump Is Incredibly Corrupt"

Host: Tim Miller
Airdate: February 8, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Tim Miller of The Bulwark dives into a new and unusually candid series by Andy McCarthy in National Review chronicling the immense scale of Donald Trump's post-presidential corruption — specifically, how his alleged crypto enterprise with UAE partners and controversial pardons vastly outpaces the corruption scandals pinned on Hunter Biden or the Clintons. Miller highlights the political and cultural significance of this critique coming from a conservative mainstay, the National Review, and unpacks the details of the exposé, calling out the rare, honest appraisal of Trump within right-wing media.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The National Review's Complicated History with Trump

• Background: Miller introduces National Review’s anti-Trump stance in 2016 ("Against Trump" cover), and its rapid retreat as the GOP base embraced Trump.
  • "[They] started to get in line … The National Review, that's not really been the case [staying 'Never Trump']." (02:12)
• Editor Rich Lowry's posturing (“tough guy Trump stuff”) and the magazine's reluctance to fully oppose Trump once he secured the party.

Andy McCarthy’s Groundbreaking Series on Trump’s Corruption

• Article Focus: McCarthy, a long-time National Review contributor, exposes Trump's elaborate crypto corruption, focusing on:

  • The formation of a Trump-affiliated crypto business, in partnership with Steve Witkoff, before Trump’s return to the White House (06:00)
  • UAE’s $2.5B investment into the business just before Trump retakes office
  • Key actors: Chinese-born billionaire and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao ("CZ"), Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, UAE’s Sheikh Tanoon

• Key Mechanisms of Corruption:

  • Trump aides leverage official diplomatic roles for personal business negotiations (07:00)
  • Foreign actors (UAE, CZ) receive pardons, policy favors, and control of lucrative US assets in exchange for investments and support
  • The legal requirement for China to divest TikTok overruled in a deal funneling ownership to Trump's UAE allies and donors (08:32)

“To Be Sure” — Right-wing Media’s Usual Rationalization, Bluntly Overridden

• Miller discusses the predictable “to be sure” paragraph in right-leaning exposés, which typically minimizes Republican wrongdoing by pivoting to Democratic scandals (09:12).
  • “In journalism, they call that a to be sure graph … like, Trump did something we don't really approve of. But to be sure, it's not any worse than whatever some liberal did …" (09:14)
• This time, McCarthy subverts the tradition:
  • "You'd have to add two digits to the sum of Biden abuses … to get near what Trump has raked in … just from the UAE." — Andy McCarthy (11:13)
• Miller praises McCarthy for his candor, finally breaking the right-wing tradition of rationalization:
  • "Kudos to you, Andy, for just putting it that bluntly for the readers. It is true. We've all been desperate for this." (11:26)

Explaining the Trump Crypto Enterprise

• Initial scammy ventures of meme coins (i.e. "shitcoins") likened to Trump's previous business scams (12:22).
  • “He knew how to take a fake product, put his name on it and get dupes to pay him for it … and that's basically what a meme coin is.” (13:06)
• The operation graduates to more serious “stablecoins” deserving of large, foreign institutional investment — crucially enabled by CZ's Binance technical team, after Trump secures his pardon.
• The exchange of favors:
  • “The corrupt guy, Chinese national that was pardoned, put money directly into Trump's crypto company. … His Hong Kong based experts helped them create a new type of cryptocurrency that would allow them to make even more money.” (14:32)
  • UAE and China reap tech and policy benefits; the Trump family gains lavish profits and expanded international influence.

The Scale of Corruption Compared to Previous Scandals

• Miller (drawing from McCarthy): The sums and international reach of Trump’s self-dealing “dwarf” anything attributed to the Bidens or Clintons (11:13, 15:37).
  • “A truly mind-blowing level of corruption … basically has the Trump family enriching themselves by doing favors for Chinese national criminals, the UAE, and with one degree of separation, China itself." (15:34, 15:43)

Political and Media Significance

• Miller argues this level of honesty is rare and meaningful in right-wing media:
  • "It is a notable difference from where we've been … now you have more and more people even within [Trump's] own coalition willing to dip their toe into the water and … that's important progress." (16:29)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the National Review’s past opposition to Trump:
  “In 2016, they published what we thought would be influential at the time, a magazine cover called Against Trump. ... But the National Review … realized that many of their readers … did not share their opposition to Donald Trump. They started to get in line.” — Tim Miller (01:29-02:12)

• On the right-wing’s “to be sure” rationalization:
  “In journalism, they call that a to be sure graph ... usually would go something like, Trump did something that we don't really approve of. But to be sure, it's not any worse than whatever some liberal did ...” — Tim Miller (09:14)

• On the scale of Trump corruption:
  “You'd have to add two digits to the sum of Biden abuses ... to get near what Trump has raked in ... just from the UAE.” — Andy McCarthy, as quoted by Miller (11:13)

• On moving from meme coins to stablecoins:
  “He knew how to take a fake product, put his name on it and get dupes to pay him for it ... and that's basically what a meme coin is.” — Tim Miller (13:06)

• On the broader ramifications:
  “A truly mind-blowing level of corruption … basically has the Trump family enriching themselves by doing favors for Chinese national criminals, the UAE, and with one degree of separation, China itself.” — Tim Miller (15:34-15:43)

• On the significance of right-wing media admitting the truth:
  “It is a notable difference from where we've been … now you have more and more people even within [Trump's] own coalition willing to dip their toe into the water and … that's important progress.” — Tim Miller (16:29)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:00] – National Review’s history with Trump; intro to Andy McCarthy’s article series
• [06:00] – First article details: Trump, crypto, Witkoff, UAE, and foreign influence
• [08:30] – UAE/China receive tech & legal favors; TikTok deal background
• [09:50] – The "to be sure" paragraph tradition and McCarthy's break from it
• [11:13] – Stark quantification: Trump corruption dwarfs Biden/Clinton
• [12:20] – Explaining Trump's crypto business model and transition to stablecoins
• [14:30] – How Binance/CZ enabled stablecoin grift
• [15:34] – The sweeping international implications of the corruption
• [16:29] – Why this matters in media and conservative politics

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Conclusion

Tim Miller brings a concise but in-depth analysis of why Andy McCarthy’s National Review series is a watershed moment for conservative media’s reckoning with Trump. He emphasizes the vast scale and international reach of Trump’s business and policy self-dealing while president and how, for perhaps the first time, a major right-wing outlet is laying it out with clarity and without equivocation.

Miller highlights the broader significance: growing dissent within conservative ranks, the potential for change in the movement, and how National Review’s admission—albeit belated and partial—reflects real cracks in Trump’s grip and the institutional culture of denial.

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Listen to the full Bulwark Takes feed for continuing coverage and analysis.

Transcript

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[Tim Miller]

Everybody, Tim Miller from the Bulwark here. Andy McCarthy of the National Review is working on what I think is a pretty important series laying out the scale of Trump's crypto corruption and how it dwarfs anything that the right alleged about Joe Biden. I think it's important for this reason. Look at me. Never Trumper has a long backstory, maybe some bitterness towards the people at the National Review. If you guys don't know the National Review, it is a longtime traditional conservative magazine founded by William f. Buckley. In 2016, they published what we thought would be influential at the time, a magazine cover called Against Trump. It was a series of essays from conservatives talking why they would be against Trump. If we pull up that cover here.

[Andy McCarthy]

We scroll and you might see a.

[Tim Miller]

Couple names you recognize. Mona Charin, William Crystal. So as a primary war on, the election against Hillary, war on and The National Review realized that many of their readers and the vast swath of Republican voters did not share their opposition to Donald Trump. They started to get in line. And, you know, there are a handful of those, as mentioned, who ventured off into other spaces, created new outlets, created things like this, the bulwark where we actually meant what we said about Donald Trump. The National Review, that's not really been the case. You know, they have had an editor for most of the Trump era named Rich Lowry who is a kind of a pocket protector guy that really is trying to overcompensate for his own issues about his masculinity.

[Andy McCarthy]

He tries to do talk about tough guy Trump stuff and traditional values.

[Tim Miller]

And he's, he doesn't really care none too much about some of the old mores around, you know, the American idea.

[Andy McCarthy]

And thinks now we should be more.

[Tim Miller]

Of a blood and soil tough guy thing. He's the guy that wrote that Trump was a big middle finger to all of the people that he was jealous of because they achieved more than he did from his elite universities. So, you know, it's tough to have to hand it to him. After 2016, folks at National Review never showed a ton of backbone when it came to fighting Trump. One of their other editors famously wrote the Trump maybe column, which I think represents really most of the National Review maybe, maybe Trump. We don't like some of this stuff. Every once in a while it gets a little too crude.

[Andy McCarthy]

We didn't like that racist video where he made the Obama's monkeys, but also the libs really overreacted to it and everybody could just chill out a little bit. I mean, the President posting a video that makes a wildly racist depiction of one of his predecessors and also talks about how American democracy is fake. That's not great. We don't love it. We'd rather they didn't do that.

[Tim Miller]

But the real issue is like the.

[Andy McCarthy]

Pearl claw chains among the liberal class.

[Tim Miller]

And that's, that's your general National Review stance. And for that reason, I think this is pretty noteworthy, this series. And I give a lot of plot.

[Andy McCarthy]

To standard McCarthy because I think he.

[Tim Miller]

Knows that the readership, a lot of them, not everybody, it's not a monolith. But broadly, you know, MAGA readers, or even non MAGA Republican readers don't really love to hear that the person they voted for three times is a scam artist and he's corrupt and he's worse than anything that they, you know, convince themselves was so terrible about the Clintons or the Bidens. Like that's, that's a tough thing to process. You know, if you're a consumer of right wing media and you've convinced yourself that the Clintons of the devil and.

[Andy McCarthy]

The Bidens run a crime family.

[Tim Miller]

It is a narrative violation. It hurts your brain to try to process some new information, which is that, no, actually, Trump is doing all the.

[Andy McCarthy]

Things you accuse the Bidens and the Clintons of, but on a scale far, far greater than you even could have imagined.

[Tim Miller]

So I want to go through some of Andy's article. It is behind a paywall, which I think is funny. I don't think the National Review is trying to maximize the number of people who could see this, but they published it, so shout out to them for publishing it. We try to put as little behind.

[Andy McCarthy]

The paywall as possible at the Bulwark.

[Tim Miller]

And we appreciate you guys that support us.

[Andy McCarthy]

You can do that right here on YouTube as a Bulwark plus member [e-mail].

[Tim Miller]

And we do have some, you know.

[Andy McCarthy]

Secret podcasts and stuff.

[Tim Miller]

But we want people to see our material. Here's the series. There are only two articles in, but I thought it was worth it to talk about it because, you know, the significance.

[Andy McCarthy]

We can kind of tell where he's going.

[Tim Miller]

First article begins the sordid story of Trump, the Trump Witkoff family business and the UAE. And McCarthy begins this way. It's a long story, but let's cut to the chase. In autumn 2024, six weeks before he's about to win back the White House, Trump and his friend Steve Wyckoff founded a crypto business. And that crypto business is an ideal deal vehicle for leveraging political power in search of financial gain. He goes a little bit into the nature of the crypto business and then he talks about how Trump gets in, how the Trump and Wyckoff children end up running this business so that it's like ostensibly separate. And so then Trump can send his Middle east envoy, Wyckoff over to talk to leaders of these countries in a formal role representing the United States of America, representing all of us, but actually cutting deals that will make money for their families. Here's the prime case that he gets into more in Article 2. But you have this Chinese born billionaire felon named Changpeng Zhao, or cz. He ran a corrupt international crypto exchange called Binance. He was seeking a pardon. He was close associates with Sheikh Tanoon, the top intelligence operative and second highest ranking royal family member in the uae. The uae, as part of this whole situation, was Also thinking about how they could become an AI powerhouse, but they're being blocked by Washington from access to our cutting edge chip technology. And they also wanted a pardon for Zhao because he lives in Dubai and.

[Andy McCarthy]

It creates some geopolitical complications.

[Tim Miller]

So four days before Trump is inaugurated, the UAE begins pouring in at least two and a half billion into the Trump crypto enterprise. And what did they get? Well, exactly what they want. CZ got his pardon, UAE got their chips. And on top of that, they were, this is, in McCarthy's words, feted at the White House, inflated into a nation of real consequence in Middle east geopolitics, included in the Trump Stargate project to build a global artificial intelligence and supercomputing capacity. And the this doesn't get mentioned as much, given an ownership slice of TikTok, when the president just unilaterally broke the.

[Andy McCarthy]

Law and overturned the law that had been passed by Congress and signed by a president and affirmed by the Supreme Court that China had to divest altogether. Instead of just having TikTok go belly.

[Tim Miller]

Up as the law required, Trump delayed.

[Andy McCarthy]

That and cut a deal where his buddies in the uae, as well as Larry Ellison and Marc Andreessen and other big supporters of his, got in on the action.

[Tim Miller]

So that's basically the intro. And Andy says over the course of the next few installments in this series, he's going to go into some of the details. We have the second one. I'll get to that in a second. But here's where he does something that.

[Andy McCarthy]

I think is really important.

[Tim Miller]

This is the portion of any negative article in a conservative outlet where the author always gets to, but the Democrats are worse, right? So like, here's this thing, we have to write about it. Trump's forced our hands. It's just so out in the open. But on the other hand, you should.

[Andy McCarthy]

Know this parade of things that Hunter.

[Tim Miller]

Biden did or whatever in journalism, they call that a to be sure graph. And so that to be sure in right wing outlets usually used to usually would go something like Trump did something that we don't really approve of. But to be sure, it's not any worse than whatever some liberal did on the San Francisco school board or Elon.

[Andy McCarthy]

Omar or, you know, Hunter Biden's laptop.

[Tim Miller]

Like, that's just how these articles go. So in this article, Andy McCarthy gets to his to be sure graph. I started to like get that feeling inside where I was like, oh, this is why I can't read the National Review, because there's always this to be sure the Democrats are awful graph and well, I gotta tell you, this is.

[Andy McCarthy]

Where I got a little smile on my face.

[Tim Miller]

The to be short, graph reads like this. Before we get into the gory details, it's worth observing that at National Review we extensively covered the Biden family business of corruptly profiteering off his political power and influence. So did congressional Republicans, et cetera, et cetera. I'm getting the heebie jeebies. I'm not really enjoying this. We fast forward a few sentences and then McCarthy says this. The sum generated, I'm going to add, allegedly over several years of Biden self dealing is over 27 million. That flashed in neon throughout the House Republican reports. The 291 pages. Republicans were especially incensed because Biden practiced their harlotry. You just got to bear with me here on foreigners in particular agents of China family avarice, other national interest drove the United States government policy. The House impeachment report thundered. And now we get to the knife into the gut of his readers. From Andy McCarthy. You know what the difference is between the Biden family business and the Trump family business? You'd have to add two digits to the sum of Biden abuses of power, foreign entanglements and corruption alleged in this report to get near what Trump has raked in to just from the uae.

[Andy McCarthy]

Then he goes on to insult James Comer for not doing any congressional oversight of Trump like he did of Biden because of his fake investigation into Bill Clinton. I just got to tell you, kudos.

[Tim Miller]

Kudos to you, Andy, for just putting it that bluntly for the readers. It is true. We've all been desperate for this. I mean, like, you know, you just. Something that bugs me is as right wing hypocrisy just becomes table stakes and nobody talks about it anymore because it's just like they're all hypocrites. They've demonstrated themselves to be hypocrites.

[Andy McCarthy]

So like, why talk about it?

[Tim Miller]

I feel like mainstream media feels this way. The handful of good conservatives or conservatives that see Trump's flaws at least feel.

[Andy McCarthy]

This way, even like we sometimes will skip over it just because it's like.

[Tim Miller]

How many times can you tell the same story about the fact that these guys are hypocrites and they pretended to.

[Andy McCarthy]

Care about something when a Democrat was a president and now they overlook it when Trump does something a thousand times worse than that in the same category. And so shout out to Andy McCarthy for just calling it exactly like it.

[Tim Miller]

Is on that in Article 2, he goes more into the corrupt pardon particular, particularly with cz. And I think the key part of the CZ article here is that Andy puts his finger on something which is like Trump's original crypto business idea was shitcoins. It was something that he knew a lot about from Trump Stakes and Trump University and Trump Wines and everything else. Like all of the other scams that he ran over years, he knew how to take a fake product, put his name on it and get dupes to.

[Andy McCarthy]

Pay him for it.

[Tim Miller]

And that's like basically what a meme coin is, right? Like you're getting dumb people to pay you for like the Trump Muscle man coin. And then, you know, you do a.

[Andy McCarthy]

Rug pull and you take money for.

[Tim Miller]

You and your buddies. There's probably a corrupt insider game there and you move on to the Melania coin next, right? Like he knew how to do shitcoins, but like, and by the way, he's.

[Andy McCarthy]

Made ungodly sums of money on shitcoins.

[Tim Miller]

So it's not nothing, but it's not the level of money that you can.

[Andy McCarthy]

Make for from stablecoins.

[Tim Miller]

Like stablecoins is ostensibly more of a serious business, right? The UAE is not. Maybe there'll be some paper bag work into the shitcoin and there'll be a little bit of money, but uae, nobody can put in. You can't go put in billions of dollars into the Melania coin, right? You've got to at least pretend to.

[Andy McCarthy]

Offer them something legit if major bona fide foreign interests are going to pay off.

[Tim Miller]

And so they had to move from those meme coins into these stable coins which are, you know, pegged to currency and are meant to, you know, be, have, be more legitimate because they're not as volatile in their pricing. You know, people can use them to trade after hours on weekends with criminals. You know, like all the reasons you'd want to have stablecoin, but they didn't really have the expertise for this. And so the pardon of CZ was critical. Not just because CZ gave them money, but because he helped them move into the more profitable stablecoin business. Here's how the Wall Street Journal puts it. CZ's Binance platform deployed a team of over a dozen engineers to build the technology behind the USD1 stablecoin currency. The team that helped them included Binance's Hong Kong based stablecoin chief to build the blockchain technology. So the corrupt guy, Chinese national that was pardoned, put money directly into Trump's crypto company. Okay. And then he had his Hong Kong based experts help them create a new type of cryptocurrency that would allow them to make even more money. And CZ's friends at the UAE put resources into that stable coin and in exchange for that they got access to these chips, which is now going back to China. I mean this is a truly mind.

[Andy McCarthy]

Blowing level of corruption that we are.

[Tim Miller]

Seeing, which basically has the Trump family.

[Andy McCarthy]

Enriching themselves by doing favors for Chinese national criminals, the uae, and with one degree of separation, China itself.

[Tim Miller]

So as Andy McCarthy ends a segment two of his series, as you'll see in the next post, that isn't even half of it, or more accurately, even.

[Andy McCarthy]

Half of the half.

[Tim Miller]

So there you go. It's behind a paywall at National Review.

[Andy McCarthy]

So I wanted to bring it out for you all.

[Tim Miller]

And it's something we're going to keep monitoring because as we saw with the Against Trump article at National Review, you don't want to overstate this, be like this is the end of Trump. Trump's already succeeded without having the intellectual class of the old school Reagan, Thatcher conservatives along for the ride. But it is a notable difference from.

[Andy McCarthy]

Where we've been for a while and where we were certainly last year in.

[Tim Miller]

2025 where everybody was scared of Trump. Now you have more and more people.

[Andy McCarthy]

Even within his own coalition, willing to dip their toe into the water and and I think that's important progress and.

[Tim Miller]

I think that we should highlight it when it's happening. So appreciate you guys, subscribe to the feed and we'll be talking to you again soon.

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