← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
“Milking every last dime”
00:40:49
July 1, 2026; 4pm: Nicolle Wallace and guests talk about a disclosure filed last night which shows that Donald Trump raked in billions in the first year of his presidency alone. Trump and his family made about $1.4 billion dollars from family cryptocurrency businesses in addition to money made from real estate assets and new business ventures.
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- [00:00]
Nicole Sganga
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- [01:04]
Nicole Sganga
Hi there everyone. It's four o' clock in the East. While Donald Trump may not know how to keep algae out of his much ballyhooed renovation of the Reflecting Pool, or negotiate a lasting peace deal with Iran, or for that matter, lower prices for American families, one thing he does know how to do rather expertly is milk every last dime from the presidency and then some A disclosure form filed last night shows that Donald Trump raked in billions in the first year of his presidency alone. The New York Times summarizes the report this way. Quote, trump reaped a stunning windfall in his first year back in the White house, including about $1.4 billion from his family's cryptocurrency businesses, according to a new filing. All told, the president pulled in at least $2.2 billion, a figure that includes other parts of his vast holdings, such as his real estate assets. That compares to a minimum of $622 million his enterprises pulled in for all of 2024 before returning to the presidency. The president's family business, the Trump Org, has also capitalized on Trump's popularity in certain parts of the world, licensing the Trump name to properties in countries that are crucial to US Foreign policy interests, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It is not an exaggeration to say that Donald Trump has profited off the presidency in a way that is completely without precedent in the entire history of the United States of America. On that, the New York Times writes this quote generally, throughout history, American presidents have taken actions to try to separate themselves from corporate entanglements that might create conflicts, quote, public office, if anything, was a source of debt, not a source of revenue, said one historian. Trump and his family have done the opposite, creating new business ventures that are profiting from actions Trump has taken since returning to the White House, something that the Trump family has done without obfuscation or shame. In an interview with the New York Times shortly before his father took office, Eric Trump, whose own wealth has gone up tenfold, defended the Trump family profiteering when he told the New York Times this, quote, the first term we did everything imaginable to avoid any appearance of impropriety and frankly, we got crushed anyway. Eric Trump said, arguing that the presidency had cost his father, quote, an absolute fortune. He added this quote, we can't just sit out in perpetuity and I won't. Donald Trump, for one, appears to find nothing wrong with this self dealing and enriching himself and compromising ethically. He made a flyover of the new jet gifted to him by the government of Qatar, a centerpiece of the nation's celebrations for the Fourth of July. Trump said this when asked about his record profits by Journalists. Watch to critics who say you're profiting off the presidency. Mr. Well, you know why I'm profiting? Because the stock market's going up, everybody's profiting. Do you have a 401? How's your 401 done? It's about up 85%.
- [04:11]
Jason Crow
Thank you, President Trump.
- [04:13]
Nicole Sganga
So we're all profiting. I'm profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash and I give it to institutions. I don't know if they know what
- [04:21]
Jason Crow
they're doing or not, but they buy
- [04:24]
Nicole Sganga
a vast array of things. To be clear, most of his profits that make up that 2 billion with a B come from the crypto investments. But that interview took place. You can't make this stuff up. That interview took place standing in front of the Qatari jet. The Trump family's commitment to self enrichment and grift reaching new levels so extreme they rewrite the history of the American presidency is where we begin today. Senior White House reporter Vaughn Hilliard is back and we are so, so, so happy, my friend, to see you. Also joining us, the founder of the Public Integrity Project and former special counsel in the Justice Department, Brendan Ballou is here. And Media Matters for America President Angelo Carouston joins us as well. Fine. It's so nice to have you back and it's so nice to have your reporting back. I know you've been digging into the crypto piece here. Tell us what you've learned, we knew
- [05:23]
I actually had a baby, Nicole. And three months ago, right before I left, I knew that we'd be getting these financial disclosures because what we kept saying about the crypto industry is that we knew that Donald Trump had made hundreds of millions of dollars, but it was too difficult to know how many hundreds of millions of dollars. So the fact that we are at 1.4 billion is astronomical, but also not surprising. The fact is we don't know where that money has come from, how many foreign countries, how many foreign entities. The idea of the crypto industry is that there is a secret nature to it. The fact is, is that Donald Trump has also actively used the executive branch to wipe away a lot of the enforcement, the cops on the beat. In terms of the sec, he replaced Gary Gensler. Upon taking office, he was the FCC chair who was much more favorable towards scrutinizing the crypto industry and the crypto markets at the doj. He completely got rid of the crypto task force that was set inside of the Department of Justice to go and look at potential crypto financial crimes. And all of this is at a time where I think you don't need to know much about meme coins or stablecoins or the different exchanges that he has essentially invested into. But what folks should know is that among all of these coins, every time there is simply a transaction, it doesn't matter if the price goes up or down. Donald Trump and his family, they make money. They make a fee off of every single transaction. And that is why we knew that in the lead up to his inauguration in 2025, that he was on the cusp of raking in hundreds of millions of dollars. 1.4 billion in just 2025 alone suggests that the family has understood, Nicole, that this is a money making venture, whether the President wants to take any responsibility for it or not.
- [07:10]
Let me just widen the aperture for a second before we dig into just how much and how he profits over crypto. I mean, just level set on what, what is normal. And don't even do normal. Do like Trump last time and Pence
- [07:26]
last time, you mean. The fact is that we had a conversation during the 2016 transition about Donald Trump divesting from his company. That is a decade ago. The conflict of interest and ethics conversation, Nicole, that we were having. And the fact is that Donald Trump, he talked about putting his money into a blind trust. He took his name off the Trump Organization. He put Don Jr. And Eric in charge. There was at least some sort of COVID or attempt, perhaps you could, if you want, to give it to him, to separate himself from his family businesses. But that's not what we're looking at this time around. And the folks around him, I think it's important to note, Nicole, is that they knew coming into the second term that there would be essentially no restrictions. There was this guy named Justin sun who the Biden administration, the SEC actually filed a lawsuit against for fraud, for crypto fraud. And as soon as Donald Trump won in 2024, over the next two months, he gave $75 million to the crypto firm World Liberty Financial that Donald Trump and his family had set up just a couple of weeks before the 2024 election. And after giving them that $75 million, well, Donald Trump's SEC, they dropped the charges against Justin Sun. And then mere months later, over in the Middle east, who was on stage with Eric Trump, it was Justin sun himself. And so I think in 2025, we looked at the beginning of a Trump administration over four years that is not have much interest at all in adhering to any conflicts of interest or standards or norms that other presidents have followed when it comes to divesting from their companies.
- [09:03]
It is, I mean, gluttony is the only word I can think of to describe the amounts of money they're gobbling up. Brendan Bellew, just take a stab at putting this into context in terms of the brazenness. It is sort of a hallmark, and we cover the annihilation of rule of law largely in the context of Trump turning DOJ against career public servants, people like yourself, and using it to defend and protect his allies, people like the January 6th insurrectionists. But the annihilation of the rule of law in a more invisible way is to protect him from financial schemes that at best, are massive conflicts of interest. Explain what you see here.
- [09:51]
Brendan Ballou
Yeah. And we're talking about how unprecedented this is. I think it's so unprecedented that our laws don't really contemplate a level of corruption at the presidential level like this. And so we really have to develop laws around unjust enrichment, civil rico and so forth in order to be able to attack some of this stuff. I will say, you know, when we're talking about the brazenness here, one thing that I think is really important to understand is that not only is Donald Trump getting extremely rich, he is affecting policy because of those riches. So, you know, you think about. You showed the picture of the new Qatari gifted jet that he received that's now Air Force One. Well, shortly after he received that gift. He made a unilateral security guarantee that to Qatar's geography. So it's entirely possible that American soldiers might fight and die in defense of a country that has gotten an enormous benefit shortly after giving a private jet to the President. Similarly, you know, the uae, you know, to Vaughn's point about so much of this money coming from crypto gave, you know, invested $500 million in Trump's crypto business, a business that, as far as I can tell, provides no value whatsoever. But after investing half a billion dollars, Donald Trump gave approve the sale of 35,000 extremely rare, extremely expensive AI chip. So if you're wondering why technology and microchip and computers in the United States, the cost is going up in part, potentially. You can thank this investment from the UAE and what the President received. So I think it's, you know, so unprecedented to such an extent that really our infrastructure, our legal infrastructure didn't even think that this could occur.
- [11:38]
Nicole Sganga
Brendan, let me, because I think this concept of quid pro quo is something everyone that covers Trump became expert in during the first term. And let me just introduce, for the purposes of this conversation, the Wall Street Journal's reporting on the transaction you're talking about with the uae. Wall Street Journal. Under this headline, Crypto Bets and Real Estate deals inside Trump's $2 billion year, the Wall Street Journal writes this quote. Among the largest windfalls recorded in the filings is $263 million in earnings connected to the sale of equity in World Liberty Financial, the President's cryptocurrency business. It marks the first formal disclosure of a secret $500 million deal that Eric Trump signed with a group of investors led by Sheikh Taknun bin Zayed Al nahyan and a UAE Emirati. The deal, which granted the UAE investors 49% in the President's cryptocurrency business, was first reported in January by the Wall Street Journal. Shortly after it was signed, the Trump administration signed a framework deal allowing the UAE access to tightly guarded US Artificial intelligence chips. So this has come out through a sort of domino series of mandatory disclosures. But if this is the practice and pat return, what else could be for sale?
- [13:03]
Brendan Ballou
Yeah, I mean, just about everything. And let's just focus on World Liberty Financial. You know, they're making money on both sides of this thing. You know, so there's the equity investment in the business, then Trump cashed out on. There's also the mean coin that he has again, Vaughn touched on this, that once again seems to provide no value whatsoever. But because it's backed by the dollar, any investment that people make in it, the World Liberty Financial, again owned by the Trump family, will be able to get interest off of that on top of the individual transactions of the meme coin. So they're making. It's almost sort of like a Russian nesting doll of money. The challenge that you've got here is, you know, Donald Trump is presumably going to pardon himself on his last day in office. And we have a Supreme Court that is extraordinarily solicitous to this president. And so we need to be figuring out, okay, how can we get justice and how can we stop this stuff from happening while he's still in office? And so what we really need to be thinking about is who are people that are harmed by these extraordinary instances of corruption? If you are, for instance, an AI researcher who's now paying more for your chips because of the UAE's potential investment in World Liberty Financial, you need to be bringing a lawsuit to try to enjoin this so that these people are not getting the fruits of their corrupt actions. And if we can stop people from getting the benefits of corruption, they're gonna have fewer incentives to be corrupt in the first place. Not Donald Trump, but the people trying to influence him.
- [14:35]
Nicole Sganga
Yeah. And I mean, Angelo, the politics here, right, are the only recourse the American people have to vote for other people who won't view the President as a rushing nesting doll of personal enrichment, which is exactly what they do. But what is so distinct in this, in this term from the first is one, the economic pain that all Americans, obviously, including his own voters, are feeling. And two, his callous indifference calling the bipartisan housing bill, quote, a yawn.
- [15:08]
Angelo Carusone
Yeah, I mean, he's. You're right, that is a key difference. And why. And there's a reason for it, because the mechanisms of accountability, the Republican Party, the larger media apparatus, in this case Fox News and sort of the right wing echo chamber, his media apparatus, they're protection rackets. They basically said, we're not going to just turn a blind eye here. We're going to actively make sure you don't face any accountability for this. The Republicans who spent years complaining about Hunter Biden have said nothing. They don't talk about this. We know what it looks like when they're making noise for things that even whiff of corruption when it's in their political interest. But in this case, he's doing something, as you noted, so brazen, so explicit, so transactional, so corrupt that we can't even really Paint a picture. We can't even really paint a picture that you could have an evocative response to it because it's such an industrial scale. It's like thinking about the universe. It's hard to imagine because of how big it is that we can't even get the right response out of people. And the part, the mechanisms of accountability said, you know, we're going to be a protection racket. And then as you noted in this larger backdrop of this moment, he is making everybody chumps. He's making everybody chumps. He's not just doing the corruption, he's doing it in such a brazen and explicit way. And he's not even sharing the wealth. You know, a lot of people that do it, at least they share it with a couple people. You know, the only people that are participating in this are those close to him. Right. I mean, he's not sharing it, he's not spreading it around. The, even the people doing the protection rackets. Why are there all these right wing media figures, all these Republicans who is constantly shiving? Why are they not. He's not helping them in any way. He's not letting them get in on, giving them a taste. Right. So that's what I can't figure out either. It's that he's making us all chumps and they're still protecting.
- [16:56]
Nicole Sganga
Yeah. I mean, and I guess what that sets up is a story that isn't really traditionally an American story, but around the world, autocrats who become weak with their populations, the crystallizing event is often bracing corruption. So we'll broaden the conversation to examples around the globe, which is what we have to turn to in a news cycle like this one. No one's going anywhere. We'll show you what that might sound like. Also ahead for us, Trump's unrivaled exploitation of the White House to enrich himself and his family flies in the face of everything that the American people say they care about. And voters are weighing in on this. We'll tell you what that sounds like later in the broadcast. Former director of the CIA John Brennan, a frequent political target for Donald Trump and the administration's weaponization campaign, is fighting back. Today, he has announced that he is suing Donald Trump and the Department of Justice. He will be here later in the broadcast, except exclusively in his only television interview about that lawsuit. At the top of the next hour, we'll have all those stories and much more when Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
- [18:06]
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- [19:28]
Nicole Sganga
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- [20:00]
Jason Crow
Listen to this.
- [20:01]
Nicole Sganga
The son of the other Middle east envoy is raising billions from the Emirates
- [20:07]
Jason Crow
for the President's crypto business. While the President grants the Emirates the rights to our most sensitive technology, your
- [20:14]
Nicole Sganga
tax dollars are backing a Trump family
- [20:18]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Announcer
tungsten mine in Kazakhstan.
- [20:21]
Nicole Sganga
They are literally the elites. They pretend to hate the same folks who tried so hard to cover up the Epstein files.
- [20:32]
Jason Crow
And listen, here's the bottom line.
- [20:35]
Nicole Sganga
If you're involved in any of this, next year you'll be raising your right
- [20:41]
Jason Crow
hand and swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
- [20:45]
Nicole Sganga
truth shall help you.
- [20:46]
Jason Crow
God in front of the United States Con.
- [20:55]
Nicole Sganga
So, Angela, I want to come back to you on this point of treating everyone like chumps. Part of the DNA of the old Republican Party, I'll admit I'm not in touch with any of its molecules or atoms anymore. But this pridefulness was sort of the legacy of the tough strain of. And I think it comes up in the manosphere conversations we have. Trump is making them all look like lame weaklings by stealing from them. And Ossoff actually looks like the populist out there saving everyone from being scammed and robbed. The politics are. They're policy, right? Like you have to follow some of the schemes, but they're also the vibes of being treated like an idiot and then the vibes of being protected. This seems like the gravest, lethal sort of political line of attack against MAGA and Trumpism completely.
- [21:47]
Angelo Carusone
And I'm so glad you brought that up because, you know, if you listen to some of the callers, they're talking about this more than the hosts are. So listen to Megyn Kelly show people calling in and complaining about the Trump sons. And you know that the Biden people were making money, but the Trump kids are, you know, not getting any scrutiny for the money they're making. There have been murmurs about this. Those are regrets. Those regrets have been mounting. And what you just noted with Senator Ossoff and to the larger point of the story, regrets mean nothing unless they turn into defections. And they only turn into meaningly defections if you can give them another story and another other narrative to latch onto. And that's exactly what he's doing. And that's what that narrative represents. And so you have to give them an alternative. Otherwise people just simmer in regrets and it doesn't turn into anything actionable.
- [22:30]
Nicole Sganga
Let me show you all of the on camera confessions. Vaughn, this is Eric Trump. Not saying I didn't make myself and my family rich for no reason other than being the descendant of an American president, but I went to crypto basically because I had to. I don't know. You'll explain this answer to me.
- [22:50]
Angelo Carusone
My entire life was in the modern financial system. And it, as Zach just said, it works really well for, you know, maybe the top 1% or the top.01%.
- [22:58]
Nicole Sganga
But it doesn't work for the rest of the world.
- [23:00]
Angelo Carusone
And it's a system. Until politics, until my family got into politics, I didn't realize how fragile it was. And the second you start saying something that goes against the system, they'll cancel you, they'll ostracize you. They'll come after you. And it's really amazing. That's actually what caused me to find
- [23:14]
Jason Crow
cryptocurrency,
- [23:17]
Nicole Sganga
basically arguing that he was so, I don't know, corrupt or shady, or maybe it was when his father was indicted, what, three dozen times that he's describing himself as being ostracized, pushed out of the, quote, modern financial system that, quote, works really well for maybe the top 1%. I don't know what the son of American president is, if not, as he says, the top 0.1%. But he's basically confessing that he was pushed into crypto. It's insane, right?
- [23:47]
And that in order to prevent, you know, lawsuits by people like Letitia James who are going to try to bankrupt. Right. In their view of this, the Trump Organization and the family, that they've got to put their money into crypto, essentially, in order to protect it and protect their own investments. And I think that that is also part of why I think it's really important that we continue to also look at the fact is just how unregulated it is and how unscrutinized crypto is. And they know that. And that is why, right. Unlike the SEC being able to look at stock exchanges, that doesn't exist here in this realm. That other man that you saw there sitting on stage with Eric Trump, that was Zach Witkoff, the son of Steve Witkoff himself. And we have seen this here repeatedly, the understanding that these very investments that were announced the firm World Liberty Financial, I remember on the campaign trail, I was driving through North Carolina at the time when Trump first posted about this crypto firm, World Liberty Financial. Did I fully understand it at the time? No. Just the magnitude of it, no. But clearly the Trumps and the Witcoffs were let in on what this financial opportunity would be. Days later, they won the presidency. And despite Steve Witkoff being involved in negotiations in the Middle east, literally during the transition, they have both sets of their sons that were out there essentially creating a pipeline of financial transactions at the same time that the Treasury Department has effectively weakened their unit that looks at crypto, crypto crimes as well. One that we should be Also clear, almost 100% of ransomware attacks, they happen through Bitcoin. And I just think that this spawns not only the profiting, but. But also spawns the questions of the security of the American economy and potential other financial crimes not committed by those just here in Washington, D.C. but also on Americans themselves.
- [25:42]
Brendan Ballou
Nicole.
- [25:44]
Nicole Sganga
Yeah.
- [25:44]
I mean, and on this national security theme, I know this becomes like an Afterthought with Donald Trump. But not for nothing. I mean, who made sure that the Qatari jet was secure? You know, it becomes the command center from which the President of the United States and his closest advisors lead the country. I mean, on September 11th, George W. Bush was aboard Air Force One until he could get to a military base. Who's in charge, Brendan Ballou, of making sure that his Qatari jet is secure, that the communications are secure, that the perception of an American president on this extraordinary lavish Qatari jet doesn't become a target in and of itself.
- [26:35]
Brendan Ballou
Responsibility was the Department of Justice's Department of Defense's, and they farmed that out to a third party company. I think one of the more outrageous parts of the Qatari jet catastrophe was that according to the New York Times, the Department of defense repurposed nearly $900 million to refurbish the jet that was meant to be used for nuclear modernization. So, like the technology to make sure that our nuclear weapons don't accidentally explode or launch, that money is now going to refurbish the jet and make sure that it doesn't have, you know, surveillance systems in it. But to go to that broader point about, you know, how this infrastructure is being used for criminal behavior and how the Trump administration is sort of facilitating or helping to build that infrastructure at every level again, once again, as Vaughan was talking about, you know, one more example, Changpeng Zhao, known as cz, you know, was the CEO and founder of Binance. Binance was convicted by the Department of Justice for facilitating or allowing the facilitation of money to known designated terrorist organizations. Well, decides to provide the technical infrastructure for Donald Trump's meme coin. He receives a pardon. Now he gets to run Binance again. And Binance is in the free and clear again. So, you know, this corruption doesn't just enrich a wealthy, tiny elite few. It creates real practical problems for people. I don't think we want the president helping people that are in turn helping designated terrorist organizations, but that's literally what's going on right now.
- [28:20]
Nicole Sganga
Fawn, in the first term, when you covered these kinds of stories with Trump, and we should say this is unlike anything that we learned about in the first term. You often would come across some people who could acknowledge that it was not a good look for MAGA and for their core. Sometimes that was Steve Bannon or close to him. Does anyone around Donald Trump care about any of the corruption?
- [28:47]
I'm trying to think, Nicole, in real time here, and I would my response to that would be that the people that are in this White House. No, not that I'm aware of. Because the people that are in the White House now are the same people that were traveling the country with him in 2023 and 2024. And there was, right. Lawyers were being paid by super PACs. Right. There were financial schemes that were underway at that point in time. Millions of dollars were going into contractors for firms that were putting on Trump rallies. Right. I think that this is just became kind of par for the course for the way in which a more insulated Trump world. That is why we saw such a movement towards Mar a Lago and Bedminster and the events that were there and the members who were at these facilities. You know, in terms of the American public, right back during the first term, they had somebody in Mike Pence who would joke on the stump about that he got his suits from Joseph A. Bank, right. And his wife, Karen Pence, I remember going through their financial disclosure. She actually lost money from our arts and crafts business, bless her. And that is not what we're looking at this go around here. And what we're seeing is business opportunities that not just Donald Trump and the Witkoffs are profiting off of, but we see others that are able to also access these opportunities and access these sorts of investments. And there has been no indication over the last 18 months of any repercussions for anybody that has sought either through conflicts of interest or otherwise corruption or an access to an increased money profiting off the executive branch of the United States.
- [30:19]
Juan Hilliard, as we talked about at the top, you are just back. You welcomed a beautiful baby. Hard hitting question for you. Are you sleeping?
- [30:28]
I am. I'd like to think our little man Hudson is doing great. And we're even sometimes getting up to nine hours. Nicole. And he's only three months, so feeling pretty good.
- [30:36]
Oh my God, stop.
- [30:37]
He's helping me out.
- [30:38]
I'm jealous. Now you're gloating. Now you're gloating. Now you're gloating. Congratulations to you and your beautiful family. We're so happy you're back on show the the beat. Brendan and Angela, stick around a little bit longer. After a break, Trump's financial windfall from inside the White House shows that he has only ever cared about himself. Add to that his Washington D.C. renovation obsession keeps mushrooming. How Americans feel about all of it. Next.
- [31:08]
Livy Dunn
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Angelo Carusone
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- [32:26]
Nicole Sganga
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- [34:11]
Jason Crow
Thanks, Nicole.
- [34:14]
Nicole Sganga
What do you make of this sort of I don't even know how to how many. I mean, $2 billion is a number that most people can't fathom. It's a line item in government spending, not an amount of money that an American public servant should make while on the job. What do you make of this new report and how much money Trump and his sons are earning off the presidency?
- [34:37]
Jason Crow
Well, first of all, Americans know what's going on. Right? The vast, vast majority of Americans understand that President Trump is not focusing on their needs. He's not following through on his campaign promises. He's not prioritizing them. And that the rank corruption of this administration has made it the most corrupt administration in American history. You know, which is saying something because we've had Teapot Dome, we've had all sorts of like crazy scandals in this administration is topping all of them. So they understand that. They feel it. You know, we don't have to look at the polling and we don't have to, you know, have talking heads tell us that Americans are suffering. They understand it themselves.
- [35:18]
Brendan Ballou
Right.
- [35:19]
Jason Crow
I spend most of my time back in Colorado talking to constituents and they're losing their health care. They're not buying prescription drugs that they need for their children because they can't afford it anymore. Farms are going under, businesses are going under, and it is getting worse by the week.
- [35:36]
Nicole Sganga
I mean, Congressman, what does it say? It's almost ominous and eerie in its own right, that he doesn't care. Right. He's not doing anything popular and he doesn't seem to care. What does that say to you?
- [35:52]
Jason Crow
Well, what it says to me is he's going to try to cheat when this election comes up on November 3rd. Right. The man is focused on nothing else than trying to get number one, pat his pockets, build monuments to himself and try to pass the SAVE act, which is a voter suppression bill. He knows he can't win unless he suppresses the vote and prevents people from voting. He actually understands that, which is why his number one priority, which is why he has stopped the housing bill. There was a bipartisan housing bill that would have brought more housing onto the market, brought housing prices down, addressed this nefarious dynamic of large private equity firms coming and buying up housing stock, something that had been heavily negotiated for the last year and a half in the Financial Services Committee. And he had a signing ceremony in the Capitol last week ready to go in the day of. He canceled it because it wasn't, it wasn't, it didn't bring forward the SAVE Act. It is crazy, it's insane. And obviously he knows this.
- [37:01]
Nicole Sganga
What is the plan, both to stop the SAVE act and then hold Trump accountable on the other side of the midterms?
- [37:10]
Jason Crow
Well, to create as much public pressure as possible. Clearly a handful of our Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate are feeling the pressure and are holding the line. Right. So we need as much public pressure as possible in every place in America. This is, no, this is a voter suppression bill. We understand this is a voter suppression bill. And if you are complicit in getting this across the finish line and doing what Donald Trump wants you to do, we will punish you in the polls at the same time as we have a robust effort that we're working on that involves getting litigation ready, mobilization, activation, communication between now and November 3rd so that we're combating disinformation and misinformation. We're getting people to sign up for election judge positions, poll watching positions, so we can ensure a free and fair election for Americans.
- [38:02]
Nicole Sganga
Congressman, you have to go usually to places outside of America to even find parallels to the public rising up in the face of this brazen self enrichment in the face of economic hardship. You know, it's a hallmark of populations rising up against tyrants and monarchies. It's not super consistent with our own history, but when the tide turns, it is usually dramatic. What do you do as Democrats to sort of expand the party and bring along everyone and anyone that's repulsed by this sort of rank, brazen public corruption of the presidency.
- [38:46]
Jason Crow
Well, the first thing we have to do is go everywhere, right? We can leave no stone unturned. One of the problems with the Democratic Party in the past, and I say this as a proud Democrat, but somebody that knows we have fallen short, we have not done what we needed to do to build coalitions to win elections, to actually deliver for working class Americans in the past. So all that needs to change. We need to look from the ground floor up on how we're going to re engage with folks, go everywhere, make the case to everybody. You know, we have micro targeted our way out of vast swaths of America. We have stopped showing up and making the case to Tons of Americans, tens of millions of Americans. So how could we possibly expect those folks to understand what we stand for and what we're trying to do if we stopped talking to them? So we have to go everywhere. We have to field great candidates, right? And we have to field candidates that are locally focused. I'm the battleground chair now for the House Democrats, and I've been working in Colorado and around the country to recruit that next generation of leaders to stand up. Because Americans want generational change. They want street fighters, right? Even more than ideological differences. You know, moderate, progressive, whatever. They want someone who's tough and is going to take the fight back to this administration because people are sick and tired of getting beat the hell up and seeing their families and their neighbors being victimized, of seeing the corruption go unchecked. They want street fighters who are going to go after it proactively, not just sit around and sit in foxholes and allow them to throw grenades at us. That moment is over. Right? So we're going to get street fighters in all sorts of districts, right? We're going to get progressives and progressive districts. We're going to get moderates and moderate districts. We're going to build a coalition. We're going to retake power. We're going to build something new and we're going to deliver from folks.
- [40:30]
Nicole Sganga
Congressman, when you come back, let's sit down with some of those places that you want to reach into and look at some of those races together. It's always great to talk to you. Congressman Jason Crow, thank you.
- [40:42]
Jason Crow
Thank you.
- [40:44]
Nicole Sganga
We'll bring Brandon and Angela back into this very conversation on the other side of a very short break. Don't go anywhere. That the president, his financial disclosures came
- [40:57]
out and it showed that he made
- [40:58]
1.2 billion on cryptocurrency, on his personal cryptocurrency. Do you think that that's appropriate for the president to be doing while he's in office? I actually don't.
- [41:07]
Angelo Carusone
No. I don't think that's appropriate. I think, you know, if you're in
- [41:11]
Nicole Sganga
the office, take your salary, your investments
- [41:15]
Jason Crow
are in the hands of third parties
- [41:17]
Nicole Sganga
that you don't have any influence over. I think you should just concentrate on being the president. I think he has enough money already. I think he has enough money already. I do, too. But those folks are people who voted for Donald Trump 18 months ago. And that interview was done by our White House reporter, Laura Baron Lopez. We're back with the panel. I mean, Angela, this is, this is the thread to pull Right. I mean, these are people who thought that despite everything that had been revealed about Donald Trump, despite running as, quote, your retribution, they voted for him 18 months ago and they think that, quote, he has enough money and quote, it is not appropriate that he made $1.2 billion from his cryptocurrency ventures.
- [42:03]
Yeah.
- [42:03]
Angelo Carusone
And that's before they even had any of the information about how he made a bunch of that money with the crypto, which is not just the foreign investments. But let's not forget that a big part of how he made that money is by promoting the meme coins and then cashing out at its all time high after. And then the currency, you know, the quinta, but that his own people were buying dropped 80%. I mean, it's an extraction. That's how he made his money. Aside from the foreign investments, he extracted it from his supporters. And it's really the sort of full circle moment because he used to tell this story on the campaign show and his supporters would cheer. He would read that snake poem about how the snake asked somebody for help and she takes him in and then at the end he bites her and says, how could you do this to me? And he was, well, you knew I was a snake.
- [42:45]
Nicole Sganga
And.
- [42:46]
Angelo Carusone
And that's it. You know, I mean, his people used to think they were in on it and now they themselves have been fleeced. They got bit by the snake. I mean, the same day that the grift be got notarized in a 927 page document, he gets on a $400 million plane that was gifted to him. I mean, if you were an author and you gave this story to your publisher, they would hand it this draft and say, oh, no, no, this is too fantastic. You need to change it a little. They know that people are going to roll their eyes. I mean, and so that's it. Today's the moment. And that's what I hear when I hear those clips in that report, is the moment that they're starting to realize that the snake they took in bit him.
- [43:22]
Nicole Sganga
Brendan, quick last word.
- [43:25]
Brendan Ballou
I think, you know, it's important for people to understand just how bad things are, but I think it's also important for people to understand that things aren't hopeless. You know, in a world where obviously the Department of Justice is not going to take action. Here we still have civil lawsuits by private plaintiffs and we have state and local prosecutions. So even if Donald Trump pardons himself, there are options after the election, after he leaves office, and there are things that we can do right now.
- [43:50]
Nicole Sganga
Brendan and Angela, thank you for being here today. And as if on cue, when we come back, we'll tell you about one of those instances. Lawyers for E. Jean Carroll say enough is enough. It's time for Donald Trump to pay up in that lawsuit. We'll bring you the latest next. Well, we now know that the $5 million that is owed to E. Gene Carol is chump change to Donald Trump. And yet, and yet he hasn't paid. So Carol has asked a judge to order him to pay up the damages awarded to her by a jury that found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her in a civil case three years ago, just days after the Supreme Court declined Donald Trump's request to review the case. E. Jean Carroll's legal team says that Trump's lawyers called them asking for another delay to make payments after the Supreme Court said it would not hear the case. Here's what Carol's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, had to say in response. Quote, after four years of litigation across every level of the federal court system, it is time for this case to end. Given the extraordinary lengths he's taken to avoid such payments and that each of those efforts has been denied in full, that cooperation ends today. It is time for him to pay Carol, end quote. Today, a judge agreed that Trump must respond to her request in six days. What do the kids say? TikTok. We'll keep an eye on that after a break. John Brennan joins me right here exclusively on his brand new lawsuit against Donald Trump and Todd Blanche. The next hour of deadline. White House starts after a quick break. Don't go anywhere. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo, the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier from CRM, accounting, inventory, E Commerce and more. And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you try Odoo for free@odoo.com that's o d o o dot com.