BEST OF: David Kirkpatrick on Trump’s Shameless Profiteering

Summary

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Podcast Summary

The Al Franken Podcast:

BEST OF: David Kirkpatrick on Trump’s Shameless Profiteering

Date: May 3, 2026
Guest: David Kirkpatrick (Staff Writer, The New Yorker)
Host: Al Franken

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Episode Overview

This "Best Of" episode features journalist David Kirkpatrick discussing his investigative reporting on the extraordinary financial enrichment of the Trump family during and after Donald Trump’s presidency. Kirkpatrick provides a detailed accounting of the ways in which the Trumps have leveraged the presidency for personal profit—through everything from licensing deals and global business ventures to campaign fundraising and various crypto schemes. The conversation contextualizes these actions within the broader history of presidential self-dealing, emphasizing the unprecedented scale and brazenness of Trump’s profiteering.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Scale of Trump’s Profiteering

• Kirkpatrick’s initial reporting pegged Trump family enrichment directly tied to the presidency at $4.3 billion, growing by over a billion in just months.

  • Kirkpatrick: “Since then, the number I came up with at that time was, I think, $4.3 billion… and I think it’s gone up by more than a billion since then.” (04:22)

• Unlike previous presidents, the Trumps’ monetization of the office is unprecedented in size and method.

  • Kirkpatrick: “Nothing on the scale. Yeah, the scale is different.” (04:49)

2. Early Promises vs. Reality

• Trump publicly “promised” not to profit from the presidency, particularly via foreign deals, and had legal representatives claim his family wouldn’t exploit the office.

  • Kirkpatrick: “He would voluntarily abstain from foreign deals… the Trump family would never do anything that could even be perceived as exploiting the presidency for profit.” (05:41)

• However, Trump did profit in subtler ways during the first term—most notably through Mar-a-Lago membership surges due to presidential access (tens of millions of dollars).

  • Kirkpatrick: “A lot more people wanted to join Mar-a-Lago… that was definitely a selling point for Mar-a-Lago.” (06:59)

3. Legal Fees and Supporter Contributions

• After leaving office, $100 million in campaign contributions were funneled into covering Trump’s personal legal fees.

  • Kirkpatrick: “[They] used it to cover their personal legal fees… through a little bit of subterfuge.” (08:04)

• Merchandise and “Trump Store” sales funneled directly into his pocket, distinct from typical campaign fundraising.

  • Kirkpatrick: “This other store is just going right into his personal profit.” (09:38)
  • Kirkpatrick: “A lot of these big money making innovations didn’t really take off until after the first term.” (10:21)

4. Overseas Licensing & Middle East Deals

• Post-presidency, Trump’s sons ramped up licensing deals in the Gulf (Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, Doha), including hotels, condos, and golf courses—deals that wouldn’t exist without Trump’s political standing.

  • Kirkpatrick: “No way those would have happened without his presidency… four different megadeals with some pretty big numbers.” (12:21)

• Gulf leaders view business with Trump as political insurance; geopolitical rivalries influenced who got deals in round two.

  • Kirkpatrick: “The Qataris have really stepped up in big ways.” (13:27)
  • Host: “That’s a $400 million jet [gifted].” (14:17)

5. Corporate “Squeeze” and Litigation Windfalls

• Trump leveraged regulatory power to elicit large payouts from media companies (ABC, CBS, Meta) via dubious lawsuits—costly, but minor for media giants—with clear conflicts of interest.

  • Kirkpatrick: “He’s been able to get a lot of money out of these companies. It’s not really a fair fight. Right. When he controls the regulatory landscape...” (19:09)

• Meta (Facebook) paid $22 million after suspending Trump’s account; Melania made $28 million from an Amazon documentary.

  • Kirkpatrick: “He can be paid… He could be a consultant. The library’s mission is to burnish his legacy.” (21:08)
  • Host: “Melania gets $28 million out of that [Amazon deal].” (21:37)

6. Crypto Schemes and Digital Profiteering

• Kirkpatrick provides a primer on crypto and NFTs, explaining the simplicity behind the complexity and how Trump now profits by selling “the right to say you own a Trump cartoon”—escalating from buildings to pure digital abstractions.

  • Kirkpatrick: “What he’s just doing is selling the right to say that you’ve paid him money.” (24:10)

• The Trumps’ ventures, like World Liberty Financial and American Bitcoin, are described as “crypto banks” selling tokens or meme coins—often without much of a real product, but with massive speculative investment tied almost entirely to Trump’s name.

  • Kirkpatrick: “This is where things skyrocket . . . people started to pony up a lot of money . . . 75% of the money... goes to the Trump family.” (26:23)

• Trump’s political control over regulatory agencies like the SEC is leveraged (“the President controls the SEC”) to make U.S. crypto policy more favorable to his own interests and those of industry supporters.

  • Host: “The President controls the SEC.” (27:09)

• Example: The UAE’s $2 billion investment in dollar-denominated tokens at World Liberty Financial, and subsequent access to U.S. technology for an AI data center—raising suspicion over potential quid pro quo.

  • Host: “It’s an AI data center… There’s no proof that one was in exchange for the other. But the sequence in time raises a lot of questions..." (29:27)

• Partnership with Crypto.com, a company facing SEC scrutiny, which then received favorable regulatory outcomes after business (and donation) ties to Trump.

  • Kirkpatrick: “Trump Media, the company that owns Truth Social . . . has found one [path to profit] through crypto.” (31:36)

7. The Meme Coin and Spectacle Profiteering

• Trump’s “dollar sign Trump” meme coin, literally a digital nothing, sold for millions; its value was inflated by hosting an exclusive dinner for the top coin holders, trading access for speculative frenzy.

  • Kirkpatrick: “That is the perfection of simply selling the name… It doesn’t purport to hold any value. It’s a novelty, right?” (38:59, 39:31)

• Memorable exchange:

  • Host: “How do you make money? Just for the privilege?” (39:58)
  • Kirkpatrick: “Just for the privilege." (40:01)

• Coin holders came from the crypto industry, with the dinner itself doubling as a self-promotional event (and little actual access to Trump).

  • Kirkpatrick: “He flew in on a helicopter, helicopter took off again in about half an hour… a pretty brief visit with Trump.” (43:09)

8. Total Trump Family Profiteering Estimate

• Kirkpatrick’s running estimate: Approx. $3.4 billion in “direct” gains traceable to Trump’s use of the presidency (44:12).
  • Kirkpatrick: “This is money that has come from the presidency that they couldn’t have made without it.” (44:12)

9. Quid Pro Quo and Systemic Corruption

• While direct evidence of “money for favors” is elusive, timing, desperation, and magnitude of payments—especially from the Gulf states—raise persistent questions of transactional corruption.

  • Kirkpatrick: “The rapidity raises some questions… that is the question that looms over all of this. What payments on the private side... correlated with an official favor on the public side?” (44:32)

• Kirkpatrick distinguishes these activities from standard political “access” deals (ballroom donations, White House stays) by underscoring the novelty of direct, personal enrichment.

  • Kirkpatrick: “Where he’s really an innovator is his personal enrichment. That’s where he’s really breaking new ground.” (47:08)

10. Comparisons, Democratic Norms, and Rule of Law

• Host Franken compares the current U.S. trajectory to oligarchies like Hungary and Russia, but Kirkpatrick pushes back—arguing American transparency and rule of law remain substantive differences despite the erosion.

  • Kirkpatrick: “We still have a country with the rule of law, where President Trump might be profiting off the presidency, but he’s got to do some work to do it… Putin doesn’t have to bother to sell a meme coin or a Putin hat.” (48:12)

• Kirkpatrick asserts that although Trump’s business acumen and opportunism are longstanding, the ways in which he has integrated them with the presidency are both unique and deeply troubling.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the scale of profiteering:

  • Kirkpatrick: “Nothing on the scale. Yeah, the scale is different.” [04:49]

• On Trump’s promises:

  • Kirkpatrick: “The Trump family would never do anything that could even be perceived as exploiting the presidency for profit.” [05:41]

• On leveraging regulation for payout:

  • Kirkpatrick: “It’s not really a fair fight. Right. When he controls the regulatory landscape and they have business before his government, how are you really going to fight?” [19:09]

• On meme coins and NFT profit:

  • Kirkpatrick: “It’s just a chance to say, I own a Trump coin… It’s like a Trump baseball hat, except it doesn’t keep the sun out of your eyes.” [39:31]

• On systemic implications:

  • Host Franken: “It just feels like this is turning into a bit of an oligarchy… like Hungary or other places.”
  • Kirkpatrick: “I wouldn’t go that far… we still have a country with the rule of law… Putin doesn’t have to bother to sell a meme coin…” [48:12]

• On the ongoing tally:

  • Host Franken: “Well, these people seem desperate for money for some reason.” [49:32]

• On lessons for democracy:

  • Kirkpatrick: “Where he’s really an innovator is his personal enrichment. That’s where he’s really breaking new ground.” [47:08]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp (MM:SS) | |-----------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------| | Host sets up episode & themes | 01:04–03:45 | | The scale & origins of Trump profiteering | 03:45–07:33 | | How campaign/legal fees, store sales add up | 07:33–10:37 | | Licensing/middle east deals explained | 10:37–14:36 | | Corporate “squeeze” and media lawsuits | 18:21–21:13 | | Crypto ventures, explanations, World Liberty Financial| 22:38–27:34 | | UAE, AI center, potential quid pro quo | 27:34–29:37 | | Truth Social, Crypto.com partnership, more profits | 31:36–34:08 | | Meme coin, dinner for coin holders | 38:53–43:40 | | Running tally, finale, and democracy implications | 44:12–49:02 | | Conclusion, future updates, and reflections | 47:08–49:56 |

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Final Reflections

This episode details how the Trump family leveraged the presidency to an unprecedented degree—not just through the traditional “soft” political perks afforded to presidents, but with a relentless, innovative, and often ethically questionable pursuit of personal profit. Kirkpatrick’s reporting suggests a new model for the fusion of personal business with public office, raising enduring questions about transparency, regulatory capture, and democratic resilience. The conversation closes on a note of both warning and hope, stressing the unique challenges Trump’s mercenary approach poses but also highlighting the ongoing (if battered) strength of American democratic norms.

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Transcript

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[Podcast Host]

Hey everybody, we've got a great one for you today. You know, for a change. And that's because this, this one is a best of. I'm taking a little break from the podcast. I've been doing the show now for seven years and frankly, I deserve it. So I'd like to revisit my conversation with David Kirkpatrick from November. David is a staff writer at the New Yorker and has been tracking just how much the Trumps have been enriching themselves. It's pretty staggering. Completely unparalleled in the history of our country. The family has enriched themselves to the tune of billions this term so far in crypto alone. And of course, quite a bit more has been accumulated since we last talked to David. Now, I'm not sure why Americans are not more outraged by the staggering self dealing that the Trumps and others in the administration have engaged in. I mean, we recently learned that the Trump sons are starting a new drone business using Ukrainian technology to sell drones to our Defense Department. Just something that normal everyday Americans could set up to make a few million. And the New York Times has reported that Jared Kushner is raising $5 billion in new funding for his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, targeting Gulf Arab states like Saudi Arabia, raising some conflict of interest questions considering he's an envoy negotiating with some of the same Arab states. Well, make hay while the sun is shining. And they've got almost three more years until they're out of office. Or maybe not. They say Don Jr. Is thinking of making a run. And by then the Trumps will have figured out even new ways to keep the gravy train flowing. The New Yorker's David Kirkpatrick on how the White House has become the Trump family piggy bank. It's a great one you know, for a change, I just want you to understand that I don't understand cryptocurrency very well. So when we get to the those parts, I might ask you to. I'll try to steer it so that you can explain.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I'm happy to.

[Podcast Host]

Great. So, welcome. Thanks for coming. It was a fascinating article in the New Yorker. The number you did this in August. I mean, it hit in August, and it's telling how much money the Trump family has made off the presidency at various points. It's absolutely amazing how unflagging the Trumps are to make money off the presidency. It's beyond shameless.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I was surprised, I'll admit, by the pace of it. And as you said, this appeared in August, and since then, the number I came up with at that time was, I think, $4.3 billion, if I remember correctly.

[Podcast Host]

Right, right.

[David Kirkpatrick]

And I think it's gone up by more than a billion since then.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, it doesn't surprise me.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Good deals. Yeah. So they're, they're avid.

[Podcast Host]

It's just shameless. And no other president has ever done anything like this, right?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, in scale, I think, you know, there certainly have been family members of presidents, even Biden's, who have appeared to make money off of their connections in the White House. And there have been who owned private businesses outside the White House while they were in office. You know, lbj, lbj. Warren Harding had a newspaper in Ohio, and so I'm sure there were opportunities for people to buy ads in his Ohio newspaper in order to curry favor with prison. I mean, who knows? But nothing on the scale. Yeah, yeah, the scale is different.

[Podcast Host]

I'm not going to give the ending away and reveal how much you say that Trumps have increased their net worth by. But it's staggering. And as you say, it's gone up. Trump claimed that he wouldn't make money off the presidency in the first term. Is that right?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I would use the word promise. You know, Trump, right at the start of his first presidency, right before he was sworn in, he came out and had a press conference to talk about how he was going to manage all his business interests. And he reported that he had recently learned something that he thought was terrific, which is that he could continue to make money on the side as a private businessman while in the White House. But he went on to say that even though this was all totally legal, he referred to it as a kind of perk in his contract, like a no conflicts provision, basically, is what he said. He went on to say that even though he had recently learned that all this was totally legal. He would voluntarily abstain from foreign deals. And he had a lawyer, his personal lawyer, stand up and say that, in fact, the Trump family would never do anything that could even be pursued, perceived as exploiting the presidency for profit. And honestly, you know, as much as our friends on the left fulminated about the Trump Hotel in the first administration, you know, an FBI agent staying at Trump properties to follow. I mean, sorry, Homeland Security agents staying at Trump property, Secret Service as they followed him around, really, he did not do much, if anything, to profit off the presidency in. In the first term, he made money

[Podcast Host]

from Mar A Lago, didn't he?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, according to my account, he made money from Mar A Lago, it's true, because it became, you know, a lot more people wanted to join Mar A Lago. When it turned out that you could mingle freely with the President and his top aides in a casual setting while endearing yourself to the president, that was definitely a selling point for Mar A Lago. But, you know, we're talking about tens of millions of dollars, probably in profit, that he wouldn't have made without the presidency. Nothing like what's happened in the second

[Podcast Host]

term that wasn't so nefarious. I mean, he was just bopping around there and people could have access to him. So how was that?

[David Kirkpatrick]

You could see a couple views of that. He's got, you know, you got Camp David. You know, there's certainly secure and private places for the President to relax, but whatever he likes Mar A Lago.

[Podcast Host]

Now, you added $100 million in supporter contributions for his legal fees for E. Jean Carroll sexual assault trials and Stormy Daniels payoff trial. And the classified documents charges, did you count that toward the first term or not?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, it came in after the first term, so this is all in the second, after the end of the first term. So let's, I mean, let's be clear, right? I had to make some decisions along the way here, and I tried whenever possible, you know, because the challenge is figuring out what money that the Trump Organization made, which we're going to call honest. Right? Money that their hotels would have made anyway. People just want to play golf. They just want to spend the night. That we're going to call that fine. Right? And then there's other kinds of money which are flowing into their own profit. That does not. Also campaign contributions. We're not going to count that either. Everybody makes campaign contributions. There are restrictions on how it can be used, so leave that aside. But where are they Making money that they could not have made without the presidency. That's just because of the presidency. And under that category, it turns out that they took $100 million in campaign contributions and they used it to cover their personal legal fees. And they did it through a little bit of subterfuge. Right. A regular old campaign fund, such as you might have when you're running for Senate, would not allow you to cover your legal fees, but you can transfer some of that to a political action committee where the rules are a little less strict, and then you can cover your personal legal fees. And that's what they ended up doing. And I'm going to say that's personal profit. I added that in because that is money he would have had to spend out of his own pocket otherwise.

[Podcast Host]

Okay. And then also during the first campaign, he had an online store that sold bibles and that kind of stuff that, that you count.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, that, that again, it really kicked up after the end of the first term, but. Right. He set up an online store which to me looked like a campaign store. Right. It was a place where Trump supporters, people who like Trump and support his politics and the MAGA movement, could buy like a, you know, a Trump 2024 baseball hat or even a Trump 28 baseball hat that looks like campaign merchandise. But in this case, it was actually competing with his campaign. Right. His campaign was out there selling its own merchandise to fund its campaign activities. This other store is just going right into his personal profit. Right. That goes into his own pocket.

[Podcast Host]

You put that at 27 million. So you put for the first term, like 252.7 million. I think for.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, again, a lot of that, Some of that is coming. I didn't, I didn't draw lines in terms. So some of that Trump store, you know, he didn't get into the Bible until after the first term. The Trump Bible, the Trump guitar. A lot of these big money making innovations didn't really take off until after the first term.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, let's talk about the period between the 2020 loss and his nomination in 24. Like in terms of their family business, did the loss and January 6th hurt them?

[David Kirkpatrick]

It certainly hurt them. I mean, we all remember there was a time when people thought that his career as a politician might be over. It also happened that there were some big legal costs that accrued to him. Right. That were, you know, if we're being honest, because of his presidency. Right. The New York State Attorney General would not have gone after him had he not been president for the various forms of mortgage fraud that his company was alleged to engage in, the New York City Attorney General wouldn't have acted in it. So because of his presidency and its kind of ignominious conclusion, there were some big legal fees he had to deal with. So he started out kind of in the hole.

[Podcast Host]

Mm. Now, Donald Jr. And Eric signed a kind of a blitz of licensing deals in the Middle east, in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai and Doha. Those are like managing golf courses or managing condos or golf courses.

[David Kirkpatrick]

And hotels. Those are hotels, and in some places, condos. You got all three of those things. But the Trump business model, I think a lot of people may not really understand this. During the period when he was the apprentice host and personality, his company really shifted out of building things or even running things into just licensing the use of his name.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[David Kirkpatrick]

So he gets paid more or less, just to hang a Trump sign on a golf course, hotel, condo. And that's what he did with great success around the Middle east beginning.

[Podcast Host]

Those are licensing deals.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, licensing deals. Right. And you might say, you know, you might say, well, he was in the business before, and in some places, like, you know, India, where he had licensing deals before, I will acknowledge that his new licensing deals are just more of the same. You know, there's evidence that Indians really want to stay in a condo or hotel with Trump on the name. The projects in the Persian Gulf that we're talking about, I don't think there's any way those would have happened without his presidency. The Trump family had really been working hard to get Gulf deals with quite limited success before he went into office. And then as he's the Republican nominee for his return in 2024, and the odds start looking in his favor, bing, bang, boom, four different megadeals with some pretty big numbers for him. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

You're right that doing business with Trump is a safeguard to the Gulf potentates.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, that's right. One official in one of those countries described it that way to me. Yeah, right. Because in the first term, he had a little bit of business with the UAE and its regional rival, Qatar, found itself really on the short end of the stick. So this time around, you'll notice that the Qataris have really.

[Podcast Host]

They've stepped up in big ways.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Host]

And was the Trump administration in the first term suspicious of Qatar because of its relation with Hamas, and was that a. Put a damper on their ties?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, this gets all pretty complicated. It's true that right at the start of the first term, when Trump was throwing his weight behind a Saudi and Emirati blockade of Qatar. He was devastatingly critical of Qatar and accused it of supporting terrorism and a lot of other terrible stuff. That's all been forgotten now. Well, he doesn't seem to remember that

[Podcast Host]

There's a bit of the jet.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, he. Right. They gave him. And they gave him a jet or gave his, his foundation. It's a jet that could be for his use at the library and then it'll go to his library foundation. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Right. And that's a $400 million jet. But you estimate a gain of $150 million from that. Is that because it's just a used jet or.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, it's a used jet.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[David Kirkpatrick]

And to be honest, you know, the Qataris have been trying to unload it for a while. There's not that much market for a hyper gilded know $150 million jet.

[Podcast Host]

Well, he likes gilded and it's going to go to the Trump library after his term is over. So you kind of keep a running total after each gain. And that's a gain of $150 million you say? And that puts them at $828 million of the family benefit.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. So they're doing pretty well already. Right.

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[Podcast Host]

Then there is a Trump hotel in Hanoi, which is like a huge, huge complex.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. Massive. Absolutely massive. I think it's going to be the largest Trump branded property anywhere in the world. Several golf courses, 54 hole golf course. Yeah. Yeah. Bigger than Central Park.

[Podcast Host]

$1.5 billion property. Now, he licensed his name again. That's what he's doing.

[David Kirkpatrick]

That's right. It's a centrally planned economy. It's a communist country. So the deal takes the blessing of the local party committee and the Communist party that rules Vietnam. And the deal came together at the same time as Vietnam was negotiating with Trump over, you know, trade agreements that had really big stakes for Vietnam. And in fact, my friends at the New York Times dug up an internal letter within the Vietnamese government saying, you know, look, let's get this done quick. We care about the Trump administration.

[Podcast Host]

Mm. That's the nature of these things, I guess, huh?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. I mean, again, certain places, like India, you know, he had, he had licensing deals before, he had licensing deals after. I'm not counting those towards his personal profit. I try to be scrupulous at each turn and not to tag him with more personal profit than he was actually making off of the presidency.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, then there's what you call a corporate squeeze in your article. And this is going after like Disney and Meta. Cbs and with Disney, that's abc. George Stephanopoulos had kind of repeated what the judge said in the Jean Carroll case. The judge said that what happened was essentially rape. And Stephanopoulos repeated it. And that was a 15 million dollar suit and debated.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I'm sure if he had it to do over, he would have chosen different words. You know, he said he found guilty of rape. He should have said found guilty of what the judge acknowledged would have been described as a rap. But yeah, under American libel law, which

[Podcast Host]

is very media friendly, it has the intention, it matters. Right?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. It's got to be pretty willful. Right, so. So most media lawyers thought that that suit Against ABC had no chance. I mean, Trump has a long record of many, many unsuccessful suits against book publishers and media companies and so forth. And many of the ones that he's brought against media companies since he's on the way back into the White House also. Really, everybody thought, everybody in the legal world thought faced super long odds, and yet he's been able to get a lot of money out of these companies. It's not really a fair fight. Right. When he controls the regulatory landscape and they have business before his government, you know, how are you really going to fight? You know, what's it worth to you?

[Podcast Host]

No, well, we've seen that with cbs. CBS had a merger they were trying to do. Right. That was over the common. I mean, that was over ridiculous one. He sued them because they said they edited her interview wrong or something.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. I mean, for these companies, the 10 or 15 million dollars they cough up is chump change. Right. It's not. It's a rounding error for one of these media giants. But it looks pretty bad. It looks like, you know, that's why presidents in the past have not filed libel suits while they're in the White House. It can't ever be fairly adjudicated.

[Podcast Host]

Right. Because they have control over mergers and regulations and government contracts. Let's see who else. Meta had suspended Facebook for use after January 6th, right?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yep.

[Podcast Host]

They paid him $22 million for that.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. I think that might be going to the presidential library also. But unlike a campaign fund, he basically has pretty easy access to presidential library funds to fund his post presidential lifestyle. So I'm going to count that as personal profit, Right?

[Podcast Host]

No, he can be paid. He can be paid by the library.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. He could be a consultant. Right. The library's mission is to burnish his legacy. He's great at that.

[Podcast Host]

Who's better than him?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Mm.

[Podcast Host]

Now, Amazon decided that they wanted to do a documentary on Melania. There weren't a lot of other buyers, but they ponied up for $40 million.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, that's right. Competition was flaccid and they went in

[Podcast Host]

hard and she gets $28 million out of that.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, that's what's been reported.

[Podcast Host]

So adding all these things up, we get to the 91 million extra dollars, and that's $959.5 million is the net worth at this point. Now he gets Truth Social, which isn't really worth that much. I mean, what is that valued at?

[David Kirkpatrick]

So I've been very scrupulous. Right. So some people will say, look, if you go by the value of Truth Social shares. His stake is worth a huge amount of money, but I didn't count that because if he were to sell those shares, the value would collapse because the company's whole value is its association with him.

[Podcast Host]

Does the thing make money? I mean, it doesn't make money.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It doesn't make money. No, it loses money. And it has not yet articulated a credible path to production profit. So I talked to accountants about how people value other money losing social media companies, and I came up with a very generous estimate of about 25 million for the value of his stake in Truth Social.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, well, that. That doesn't add a tremendous amount, but let's start getting into crypto.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Happy to.

[Podcast Host]

Now, as I said, I don't understand crypto very well, and maybe one of my listeners don't, so.

[David Kirkpatrick]

All right, well, I can explain it to you quickly. I almost think we should get rid of the term because it. It just mystifies things. It makes things sound complicated that are actually pretty simple.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[David Kirkpatrick]

When. When people talk crypto, what they just mean is a kind of digital ledger that keeps track of who owns what.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[David Kirkpatrick]

And this digital ledger, this kind of spreadsheet in the sky, can be used to keep track of all different kinds of things, be it who owns a particular online cartoon of the president or

[Podcast Host]

that's the first thing he did under

[David Kirkpatrick]

that' Fungible tokens and online NFTs. NFTs, yeah.

[Podcast Host]

And that's what, like him as a Superman or those kind of images.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, right. Or on the back, Trump on a motorcycle, slinging an electric guitar. If that's your bag and you want a small cartoon of him that you can put on your computer, you can pay for that, you can put it

[Podcast Host]

on your computer, but you don't own it.

[David Kirkpatrick]

No, you own the right to say you own it.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, you own the right to say you own it.

[David Kirkpatrick]

That's right. It's on the ledger that you, hypothetically, Al Franken, own the right to say you own a small cartoon of Trump with a guitar on the back of a motorcycle.

[Podcast Host]

But where does it exist?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, it doesn't. That's the thing. It's just a digital notion.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, I kind of understand that.

[David Kirkpatrick]

The trend line, if you look at the Trump businesses over time, he's gone from actually building buildings towards less and less, towards just licensing his name for buildings, towards finally, what he's just doing is selling the right to say that you've paid him money.

[Podcast Host]

That's quite great. Right. Now, what are token investments? What is world Liberty Financial. And what are tokens?

[David Kirkpatrick]

All right, so token, again, it's just a little chit on an online ledger someplace. Trump and some members of his family and associates set up a company called World Liberty Financial that promises to be a kind of crypto bank. But on the way in, they said, okay, we're going to sell you something which just gives you the right to vote on our future governance. Almost like a share of stock, except you can't ever sell it again, and you don't get any share of the profits. It's just a kind of notional thing, a little bit of a token. Who knows what it means?

[Podcast Host]

And why would you get that?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Why.

[Podcast Host]

Why do you. Does it have any value?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, at the time, it had. I thought the value was very questionable because it just, you know, the company didn't promise when it would hold annual meetings or when you could vote. But the token said, all it said was, you can vote on the future of what this company will become. And yet, nonetheless, even though it seemed pretty flimsy, right as he was on the way back into the White House, people started to pony up a lot of money. Oh, and by the way, the company said, I think 75% of the money that comes in from token sales goes to the Trump family.

[Podcast Host]

Is it fair to say that at this point in time, people were thinking that crypto was a way to make money and they're all different ways to go. And if Trump was involved in a cryptocurrency business, that was attractive, isn't that sort of behind all of this? Now that this is what the brothers figured out, and this is what the family has figured out, and this is where, when you start totaling up their net worth, this is where things just skyrocket.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, this is where things skyrocket. Right. So if you're following, if you're paying attention, crypto, right, which we just said is these sort of marks on this digital ledger that you can't really touch. What it's really good for, the true proven uses are speculation and money laundering or fraud, and that's what it's known for. So a lot of people like yourself are thinking, I don't really understand this. I don't really trust it. But if you come along and you say, guess what? I've got a crypto company which is endorsed by the sitting President of the United States, well, that's a great competitive advantage. It seems much more credible. And by the way, there are a lot of regulatory issues. Is crypto going to be regulated like a stock by the securities Exchange Commission or like a commodity. By the commodity.

[Podcast Host]

The President controls the sec.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Exactly. And the President has a lot to

[Podcast Host]

say about this and they've touted that at conferences. They say the SEC is making these rules, making it easy to buy crypto and we're in your corner.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. Basically they've said this is an administration that is crypto investors, so you can expect crypto friendly decisions from this administration.

[Podcast Host]

Trump announced that he would provide the UAE with advanced technology for a joint 10 mile square artificial intelligence data center. Did that have anything to do with their investment in crypto?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, it follows very shortly, in time. We don't really know. Right. Maybe they would have done that anyway. The UAE's got a lot of cheap energy. You need energy to run data centers. Makes sense. However, there is some sensitive technology involved and some people in the national security arena worry that technology shared with the UAE could get shared with China. So it's not a simple case. And that particular deal, which is great for the UAE, happened right after the UAE did a very profitable deal for the same company, World Liberty Financial. Basically, there's another kind of thing that these crypto companies do which is selling a form of crypto, you know, a mark on that ledger that is equivalent to a dollar. It's like putting money into a savings account. Right. You put money in a savings account and you kind of know the savings bank is going to buy bonds with that and make some money off your savings while they're holding it for you. That's what happens when you buy one of these dollar denominated crypto tokens. So the UAE came and bought, I think, 2 billion of them. Right. So that's 2 billion that this Trump company, World Liberty Financial, gets to put into bonds and start profiting from. And right after that deal, and by the way, the UAE is virtually the only customer of World Liberty Financial buying these tokens. Right after that deal comes this other arrangement where the US Government is going to allow this huge, the transmission of this technology for this huge data center in the uae.

[Podcast Host]

It's an AI.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It's an AI data center. Right. So there's no proof that one was in exchange for the other. But the sequence in time raises a lot of questions about a possible quid pro quo.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, so now I'm keeping this total. This was worth, according to you, $243 million.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, that's the profit I calculate they're going to make. The Trump family share the profit they're going to make on that 2 billion.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, boy. And so that brings their running total up to $1.7 billion.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I know. It's really ticking up fast now.

[Podcast Host]

Boy, oh, boy. I'm going to skip American bitcoin story since the brothers only make $13 million on that.

[David Kirkpatrick]

We got an update there. We got an update. American Bitcoin, which is a company launched by the Trump brothers, in which they contributed virtually only their name has now appears to have netted them, I think, a billion dollars. My estimate, I was trying to be conservative at every turn. That company has now gone public, and their share is worth certainly hundreds of millions of dollars. So my estimate there was very, very conservative.

[Podcast Host]

And did you say they did not pay money to get into it, or am I wrong?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Did I miss that? That is correct. Their contribution appears to have just been the value of attaching their name. I know. It's nice work if you can get it.

[Podcast Host]

Well, I think that again, people say, like, you know, this is a risky business, but if the Trump name is on, delineates it from everybody else.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, that's right. That's the competitive advantage versus because there are other companies. American bitcoin, we don't need to get into what it does, but it doesn't do anything unique. However, it's the only one in its sector that says the Trumps are with us.

[Podcast Host]

They formed a partnership with Crypto.com, a Singapore company, fighting an SEC enforcement action. And Crypto.com donated a million dollars to Trump's inaugural. And the SEC investigation went away.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, now they canceled a lot of SEC investigations. You know, I think if you were a crypto person who had been in trouble with the Biden sec, chances are your investigation was going to go away whether you gave money to the Trumps or not. It turns out many people are not taking any chances and have given, you know, a lot of people in the crypto business have given big money to the trumps. This company, crypto.com got into business with the parent company of Truth Social. Right. Trump Media, the company that owns Truth Social, which, as we said, did not have a path to profit, has found one through crypto. It's doing two things. It's decided to get in the business of allowing regular old retirees and citizens to invest in crypto through exchange traded funds.

[Podcast Host]

Exchange traded fund, yes. Like, you go to Schwab.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, you go to Schwab or whatever, and you want to buy a stock, you might think, I could buy some nice, safe S&P 500, or I could just buy a bundle of crazy crypto if you want to do the latter, Trump Media wants to help you, and that's their arrangement with crypto.com to help them do that. The other thing they've done is they've taken, you know, they had a lot of cash because they're able to sell their stock at an inflated price because people, you know, it's. Even though it's not worth much, doesn't have a prospect of money, make money. People want to own some of Trump's name on it. They've taken that stock, that kind of funny money stock, and they've bought bitcoin, which, like it or not, it has a real value. Like it's a liquid market. You can sell it. So they now have, you know, more than $2 billion of Bitcoin on the books of Trump Media. So now it's really a kind of bitcoin stockpile with a small social media platform on the side.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, so American Bitcoin is one of their companies.

[David Kirkpatrick]

American Bitcoin is one of their companies. Trump Media and Marketing is one of their companies. I know it gets confusing. American Bitcoin is a associated with the Trump brothers, and they've made some money that way. Trump Media and Technology, which owns Truth Social, has also become a crypto company, and that's the one that's doing business with crypto.com, and that's the one that's become a kind of bitcoin stockpile through this sort of financial alchemy of turning their stock of questionable value, their sort of meme stock of Trump Media, into real, actual sellable assets. This huge pile of bitcoin.

[Podcast Host]

Now, there was some news made on 60 Minutes. Changpeng Zhao. Can you. You write about him in your.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

In your piece. Yeah.

[David Kirkpatrick]

People call him cz, Right.

[Podcast Host]

He spent some time in prison, right? A few months.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, I think he was in prison for a short time. He got in trouble, and his company, Binance got in trouble for money laundering, you know, for facilitating a variety of international crimes by allowing people to use their crypto platform to. To shuffle money around without oversight. He really wanted to be pardoned, and he wanted his company. He wants his company to be out from under some special government oversight that it agreed to as part of those convictions. We mentioned a minute ago that deal with the UAE, where the UAE bought a lot of this, you know, digital equivalent of dollars, like putting money into a savings account. Well, what they did with that is they wrote a check, so to speak, to cz, Right. So CZ actually controls when that check is cashed. So the Trumps can keep earning their interest on $2 billion. This Trump linked company can keep earning profits on that $2 billion until CZ decides to cash that check. So is he gonna cash that check while the Trumps are in the White House? No, no, he's definitely not. So he's actually in a position of power. And with him in that position of power over the Trump finances, it looks like Trump has decided to pardon him.

[Podcast Host]

Hmm.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. I mean, again, Trump might have pardoned him anyway. He's been very pardon friendly with various crypto entrepreneurs who've been in trouble with the law. But the secrets of events raises a lot of questions.

[Podcast Host]

Well, he's been pardon friendly with a lot of crooks in his time. I mean, from his first administration, he gave a lot of pardons.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, that's, you know, that's legal. Presidents get to give pardons.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, but usually we could debate that. No, no, you get to get pardons, but usually you kind of have to justify it and you get in trouble if like, like Clinton did with Mark Rich.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Mark Rich, Yeah. There was a bit of a scandal over that. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

And that is nothing compared to this kind of stuff, I don't think, do you.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I mean, if there was, if the Trump supporter on the phone with us here now, he would probably talk about Biden's sweeping pardons of his family. But yeah, the scale of Trump's pardons and the specter of a quid pro quo is, is novel. Nobody's ever done it quite like he's done it.

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[Podcast Host]

Okay, how do you pronounce dollar sign Trump? What is that? That is a.

[David Kirkpatrick]

That's the Trump meme coin. To me, that is the perfection of simply selling the name. So when you buy a meme coin, a meme coin is like a. It's like a gimmick, a souvenir, a bit of a. Just a little bit of nothing, right? It doesn't purport, if you read the fine print, it doesn't purport to hold any value. It's not a stake in a company. It's not even a little digital cartoon. It's a nothing. It's a zip, right? It's just a chance to say, I own a Trump coin.

[Podcast Host]

So how's it worth anything?

[David Kirkpatrick]

It's not worth anything. It doesn't claim to be worth it. It's a novelty, right? It's like a Trump baseball hat, except it doesn't keep the sun out of your eyes.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, he had this thing where he had a dinner for the big holders of him. How do the holders. How do you monetize that?

[David Kirkpatrick]

That's it. So he managed to add. So first he sells these Trump coin and he makes some money. You know, I don't know how much it was. $100 million, something like that. And maybe less if they have no value.

[Podcast Host]

How do you make money? Just for the privilege.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Just for the privilege. And then the value starts to sag a little bit. And he has this idea that he's gonna throw a dinner, an exclusive dinner for the. I think it was 100 biggest owners

[Podcast Host]

of 220, I think.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Thank you for correction.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, no, well, it was in your piece.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. It's been a while. 220 top holders of Trump Meme coin as recorded on that giant digital ledger. And that, of course, sets off a bit of a bidding frenzy because people want to go to the dinner. So he's managed to create a value there through access to himself that didn't previously have. Now, I know what you're thinking. This is all very unseemly. Yes.

[Podcast Host]

However.

[David Kirkpatrick]

However, you know, you read my mind. You have to take into account that the people who are paying for the Trump meme coin or investing in Trump crypto or, you know, or buying Trump merchandise, the Trump store. If you think they're making a mistake, they're only hurting themselves. Right. I mean, people. Liberals have always said Trump's MAGA supporters are mostly suckers. They're the ones who are primarily the victims here.

[Podcast Host]

Sure. And the beneficiaries are the Trumps, and

[David Kirkpatrick]

the beneficiaries are the Trumps. Yeah. But as I was writing the piece, I got to a point where I was like, well, you know, if people want to buy Trump meme coins or Trump cartoons, you know, go with God. But it does. By the end, when you see the vast amounts, when you see the eagerness of the Trump family to keep monetizing their name and the fact that they're able to sell less and less for more and more, if you will, it does sharpen those questions about when is one of these private payments to the Trump Organization going to win you official favor out of the Trump White House? Right. If he's that eager for money, that he and his family are just determined to make it hand over fist. You do wonder a little bit more what the buyer is getting. Right? Not the mom or pop who foolishly buys some Trump or maybe they like it in some Trump meme coin, but

[Podcast Host]

someone who buys a significant amount.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, someone who buys a significant amount. Or the UAE, as we talked about before.

[Podcast Host]

Well, UAE, like $2 billion wor.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Or they get a AI center.

[David Kirkpatrick]

The Saudi Arabians have been investing with him. And, you know, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is on his way to the United States next month for some meetings with Trump, so we'll see how that goes.

[Podcast Host]

Well, those Gulf states have really climbed on board. Now, you went to the dinner, I understand there was a dinner for the 220 people who held the most. What do you call it? Strump. You don't call it strump, do you?

[David Kirkpatrick]

I try not to call it, you

[Podcast Host]

try not to call it because there's no way to round it. It's a dollar sign. Trump.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. The Trump meme coin. So they, Yes, I did go. I did go to the dinner. I stood outside the dinner. I was not one of the 220.

[Podcast Host]

It was at the, what, his golf club in Virginia or something?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, at his golf club in Virginia. And I went thinking, you know, these fat cats are going to slink in and make their. Their secret deals. Not at all. You know, the people who attended were mostly people in the crypto business trying to promote themselves by their association with Trump. So they were eager to advertise that they were going. And they didn't get much access to Trump. I mean, he flew in on a helicopter. Helicopter took off again in about half an hour. It was a pretty brief visit with Trump.

[Podcast Host]

And there are protesters there.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, there were some protesters outside.

[Podcast Host]

And how did the coin holders treat the protesters? They were laughing at them.

[David Kirkpatrick]

They were so friendly and bemused. I would say. Okay. It was almost like the protest just added to the fun.

[Podcast Host]

Uh huh. I see. Wow. So you ended up with $3.4 billion that the Trumps family. Family has made since the presidency.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, off of the presidency over this decade. This is money that has come from the presidency that they couldn't have made without it.

[Podcast Host]

To what extent do you think that. How much of this involves selling favors?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, that's the thing. I can't prove any single dollar was a trade for a favor.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[David Kirkpatrick]

But I will say that the speed of it, the rapidity raises some questions. Right. If the Emiratis make a payment that benefits a Trump company, and then the government does something that benefits the Emiratis, you think, huh, Maybe. But if the Trump family is just determined to rake in as much money as possible as fast as possible, almost with a kind of desperation, then you're more likely to think, yeah, it might be that Trump was willing to do an official favor for a private payment. I don't have any proof, but that is the question that looms over all of this. What? You know, what payments on the private side to one of these Trump companies correlated with an official favor on the public side?

[Podcast Host]

For example, the $300 million ballroom. Okay, now that seems like an area where people that's away from crypto, but that seems like an area where people are putting themselves in position to ask favors.

[David Kirkpatrick]

You know, it's a good question. I kind of see both sides of that. It would not have added money to my account. Right. Because that, that money is going to go into the building of a ballroom.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[David Kirkpatrick]

And the ballroom is going to stay in the White House after Trump leaves. On the other hand, he definitely has a kind of investment in it and I think his ego is gratified by it. So you have reason to believe that giving money to the ballroom could well win you goodwill or even a favor from the Trump administration? Yes, I agree that it's controversial. It's a different kind of controversial than what I'm talking about.

[Podcast Host]

Right. But this feels like he rewards people who invest in the, obviously the business, but invest in his projects. Like, like the 300 million dollar ballroom.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, but now. But again, in his defense, you know, politicians, including presidents, have often done various favors for campaign contributors, including, you know, the Clintons would invite people over to the White House to stay in a, you know, White House bedroom. People offer, I mean, the offering access to senior officials or even presidents in exchange for campaign contributions. That's routine. That's the way everybody plays the game. So the ballroom stuff might be in that category. That's not personal profit. He's selling access and possibly his goodwill. But he's not the first to do that in that way. Where he's really an innovator is his personal enrichment. That's where he's really breaking new ground.

[Podcast Host]

And what, since you wrote the article and that was about two months ago, have you kept prized of any new investments or any new schemes or.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I think I'll be returning to this to do a more specific update. I did notice that when that company, American Bitcoin, went public, my estimate, my conservative estimate of what the Trump family could profit off, it was very, very conservative. And they probably made hundreds of millions of dollars. They definitely made hundreds of millions of dollars at the current price of those shares. And there was another sale of tokens in World Liberty Financial that brought in a rather large amount of money as well. So it's ticking up.

[Podcast Host]

Unbelievable. It just feels like this is turning into a bit of an oligarchy. I mean, and again, that's more the favors for things, but it just feels like it's getting like Hungary or other places.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I mean, I, I wouldn't go that far. You know, when people talk about all our oligarchy, often they're talking about governments like Russia where there's no accountability, all the books are closed. You know, you can't see anything. Vladimir Putin doesn't have to bother to sell a meme coin or a Putin hat 28 on it. We still have a country with the rule of law, where President Trump might be profiting off the presidency, but he's got to do some work to do it. He's got to have this crazy dinner. He's got to set up these companies.

[Podcast Host]

But if he has the SEC making regulations that make it easy for people to invest in his crypto schemes or his crypto operations companies, that feels a little hinky to me.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I would say feels a little hinky is probably correct. Nobody's going to dispute feels a little hinky, but it doesn't amount to a quid pro approvable quid pro quo because again, Trump appears to have been ideologically, philosophically pro crypto before he came into the White House. So all those favors for people in the crypto industry, he might have done them anyway if it hadn't enriched himself.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, it happens.

[David Kirkpatrick]

He also enriched himself.

[Podcast Host]

Well, thank you, David. We'll see the next article. How much he's. But these people seem desperate for money for some reason.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, well, you know, when they're asked about this, their answer is basically, you know, we're business people. What do you expect? We're going to stay in business even though, you know, Trump is in the White House. Yep.

[Podcast Host]

Thank you. And we'll keep an eye on this mounting, mounting number.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It's been a pleasure. Thanks a lot.

[Podcast Host]

Well, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kotke, the great Leo Kotke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.

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Navigating post military challenges can be tough. Regardless of when you served. You are not alone. Connect with fellow Oregon veterans and find activities, navigate resources and join a community to help support your journey or challenges after military service. From mental health support to veteran community groups and activities, discover what's possible for you at BeyondTheMilitaryUniform.com that's BeyondTheMilitaryUniform.com what's up baby?

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