← The Al Franken Podcast
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- [00:00]
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- [01:01]
David Kirkpatrick
Hey, everybody.
- [01:02]
Peter Ogburn
We got a great one today, you know, for a change. My guest is New Yorker writer David Kirkpatrick, who penned a monster article back in August about how the Trump family is profiting from the White House. And it's worse than you thought. The scale is amazing. It's in the billions just since he was sworn in in January. It's all in the piece. The online store where you could buy the God Bless the USA Bible. The Trump Organization's lucrative real estate deals in the Gulf and around the world, but most of all, cryptocurrency. David and I talked a few weeks ago, but I've been holding this one so I could give Peter his and me a Thanksgiving break. This will drop on Sunday, so I hope you all had a great one. Now we're recording this introduction on Wednesday. And Peter, I know you wanted to weigh in on Marjorie Taylor Greene's resignation from Congress. I thought she's doing it to run for the Senate against Jon Ossoff, but you say no.
- [02:09]
Peter (Guest Commentator)
I say no. I have a working theory, Al. Do you want to hear it?
- [02:15]
Peter Ogburn
I do, I do.
- [02:16]
Peter (Guest Commentator)
I think Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to be president.
- [02:22]
David Kirkpatrick
I know, I know, I know. It's.
- [02:24]
Peter (Guest Commentator)
It pains me to say it, but I think that she gave up her seat so that she could maybe get a media job, you know, like on.
- [02:34]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
On Fox or somewhere.
- [02:36]
Peter (Guest Commentator)
Yeah, I think she'd be a perfect fit on Fox or One American News Network or Newsmax or something like that.
- [02:43]
Peter Ogburn
Okay.
- [02:43]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
All right.
- [02:44]
Peter (Guest Commentator)
And keep her profile up until the MAGA eventually sort of gets tired of Donald Trump or comes to the realization that he's not actually going to run.
- [02:52]
David Kirkpatrick
For a third term.
- [02:54]
Peter (Guest Commentator)
And then I think she's gonna swoop in to try and carry the Torch of MAGA into the next generation.
- [03:01]
Peter Ogburn
She's not gonna be the nominee, but.
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Al Franken (Interviewer)
You can imagine if she were.
- [03:08]
Peter Ogburn
How nervous we would be between her clinching the nomination and the election.
- [03:14]
Peter (Guest Commentator)
We're living in scary times, Al.
- [03:17]
Peter Ogburn
Okay, let's just move on. Okay, so Trump gave Zelensky a Thanksgiving deadline to accept a horrible deal which would give Russia a territory it hasn't even conquered. By the time this airs, we'll probably know more, I think, but I hope it's good news, but I. I doubt it. There's so many reasons to hate Trump, like how much money he's made being president, or for calling for the hanging of six Democratic lawmakers who encourage U.S. service members to refuse illegal orders. But Trump said he would end the war in Ukraine in one day. Well, it's been 10 months, and his big plan is to bail on Ukraine. We should take the $300 billion of frozen Russian assets and arm Ukraine to the teeth and double. No, triple our sanctions against Russia. And in an embarrassment for Trump's Justice Department, a judge dismissed the indictments of James Comey and Letitia James because the judge found that the interim U.S. attorney, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed. Jesus. You know, I think Trump knew they were never going to be convicted, these two, but he wanted Comey and James to have to live for the rest of their lives having been indicted with a felony. Well, now he doesn't even have that. But Trump and Bondi will keep trying to. Finally, word out of the White House is that Trump would extend the ACA subsidies for two years. This, of course, is what the longest shutdown in history was all about. Maybe he could have said something, but I suppose he and Stephen Miller wanted an excuse to cut off snap to 42 million people. Well, we got a great one today. The New Yorker's David Kirkpatrick joins me to talk about all the Luke Trump and his family have made on the presidency. It's a great one. You know, for a change.
- [05:36]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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.
- [05:47]
Kerrygold Advertiser
I'll.
- [05:47]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
I'll try to steer it so that you can explain.
- [05:51]
David Kirkpatrick
I'm happy to. Great.
- [05:53]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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. 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.
- [06:27]
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.
- [06:39]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Right, right.
- [06:40]
David Kirkpatrick
And I think it's gone up by more than a billion since then.
- [06:44]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Yeah, it doesn't surprise me.
- [06:46]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, so they're avid.
- [06:48]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
It's just shameless. And no other president has ever done anything like this, right?
- [06:54]
David Kirkpatrick
Well, in scale, I think, you know, there certainly have been family members of presidents, even Bidens, who have appeared to make money off of their connections with the person in the White House. And there have been presidents 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 fair with prison. I mean, who knows? But nothing on the scale. Yeah, yeah, the scale is different.
- [07:30]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
I'm not going to give the ending away and reveal how much you say the 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?
- [07:47]
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 conflict 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 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 the first term, he made money.
- [09:02]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
From Mar A Lago, didn't he?
- [09:05]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, according to my account, he made money from Mar A Lago, it's true, because he would. 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.
- [09:29]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Term that wasn't so nefarious. I mean, he was just bopping around there and people could have access to him. So how is that?
- [09:38]
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.
- [09:46]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Now, you added $100 million in supporter contributions for his legal fees for E. Jean Carroll's sexual assault trials and Stormy Daniels payoff trial. And the classified documents charges, did you count that toward the first term or not?
- [10:09]
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. 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. They're 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.
- [11:33]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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.
- [11:43]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, 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.
- [12:19]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
You put that at 27 million. So you put for the first term, like 252.7 million, I think for.
- [12:27]
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.
- [12:43]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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?
- [12:58]
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 against 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.
- [13:35]
Peter Ogburn
Mm.
- [13:36]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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 and hotels.
- [13:53]
David Kirkpatrick
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.
- [14:14]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Right.
- [14:14]
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.
- [14:25]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Those are licensing deals.
- [14:27]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, licensing deals. Right. And you might say, well, he was in the business before and in some places like India, where he had licensing deals before, I will acknowledge that his new licensing deals are just more of the same. 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 eyes start looking in his favor, bing, bang, boom, four different mega deals with some pretty big numbers for him.
- [15:08]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Yeah. You write that doing business with Trump is a safeguard to the Gulf potentates.
- [15:14]
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, they've stepped up in big ways. Yeah, yeah.
- [15:35]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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. And, you know, their ties?
- [15:50]
David Kirkpatrick
Well, this gets all pretty complicated. You know, it's true that in the. 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, you know, he doesn't seem to.
- [16:08]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Remember that There's a bit of the jet.
- [16:11]
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.
- [16:22]
Kerrygold Advertiser
Right.
- [16:23]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
And that's a 400 million dollar jet. But you estimate a gain of 150 million dollars from that. Is that because it's just a used jet or.
- [16:32]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, it's a used jet.
- [16:33]
Peter Ogburn
Okay.
- [16:34]
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, you know, $150 million jet.
- [16:41]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Well, he likes gilded and it's going to go to the Trump library after, 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.
- [17:03]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah. So they're doing pretty well already.
- [17:05]
Peter Ogburn
Right. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with David Kirkpatrick.
- [17:11]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
From the New Yorker.
- [17:16]
Peter Ogburn
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- [19:13]
Kerrygold Advertiser
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- [19:14]
Peter Ogburn
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- [19:35]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Then there's the Trump Hotel in Hanoi, which sounds like a huge, huge complex.
- [19:42]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, massive. Absolutely massive. I think it's going to be the largest Trump Room branded property anywhere in the world. Several golf courses.
- [19:49]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
54 hole golf course.
- [19:52]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, yeah. Bigger than Central Park.
- [19:55]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
$1.5 billion property. Now, he licensed his name again. That's what he's doing.
- [20:01]
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.
- [20:33]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Mm. That's the nature of these things, I guess, huh?
- [20:37]
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.
- [20:55]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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 suit and debated.
- [21:25]
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.
- [21:38]
Peter Ogburn
Is very media friendly, has the intention.
- [21:42]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
It matters, right?
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David Kirkpatrick
Yeah. It's got to be pretty willful. Right?
- [21:46]
Peter Ogburn
So.
- [21:46]
David Kirkpatrick
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?
- [22:24]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
No, well, we've seen that with cbs. CBS had a merger they were trying to do.
- [22:31]
Peter Ogburn
Right.
- [22:32]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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.
- [22:42]
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.
- [23:03]
Peter Ogburn
Right.
- [23:03]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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?
- [23:19]
David Kirkpatrick
Yep.
- [23:20]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
They paid him $22 million for that.
- [23:22]
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?
- [23:37]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
No, he can be paid. He can be paid by the library.
- [23:42]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah. He could be a consultant. Right. The library's mission is to burnish his legacy. He's great at that.
- [23:47]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Who's better than him?
- [23:49]
Peter Ogburn
Mm.
- [23:50]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Now, Amazon decided that they wanted to do a documentary on Melania.
- [23:58]
Peter Ogburn
There weren't a lot of other buyers.
- [24:00]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
But they ponied up for $40 million.
- [24:04]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, that's right. Competition was flaccid and they went in hard.
- [24:08]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
And she gets $28 million out of that.
- [24:12]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, that's what's been reported.
- [24:14]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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?
- [24:35]
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.
- [24:53]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Does the thing make money? I mean, it doesn't make money.
- [24:55]
David Kirkpatrick
It doesn't make money. No, it loses money. And it has not yet articulated a credible path to product 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 True Social.
- [25:12]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Okay, well, that, that doesn't add a tremendous amount, but let's start getting into crypto.
- [25:19]
David Kirkpatrick
Happy to.
- [25:20]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Now, as I said, I don't understand crypto very well, and maybe a lot of my listeners don't, so.
- [25:27]
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, it just mystifies things and makes things sound complicated that are actually pretty simple.
- [25:36]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Okay.
- [25:37]
David Kirkpatrick
When, when people talk crypto, what they just mean is a kind of digital ledger that keeps track of who owns what.
- [25:44]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Right.
- [25:44]
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.
- [25:56]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
That'S the first thing he did under.
- [25:58]
David Kirkpatrick
That' fungible tokens and online NFTs. NFTs, yeah.
- [26:04]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
And that's what, like him as a Superman or those kind of images.
- [26:09]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, right. Or on the backhand, 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.
- [26:18]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
You can put it on your computer, but you don't own it.
- [26:21]
David Kirkpatrick
No, you own the right to say you own it.
- [26:24]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Oh, you own the right to say you own it.
- [26:25]
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.
- [26:35]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
But where does it exist?
- [26:37]
David Kirkpatrick
Well, it doesn't. That's the thing. It's just a digital notion.
- [26:41]
Peter Ogburn
Okay, I kind of understand that.
- [26:44]
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.
- [27:01]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
That's quite great. Right. Now, what are token investments? What is World Liberty Financial, and what are tokens?
- [27:09]
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?
- [27:47]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
And why would you get that? Why, why do you. Does it have any value?
- [27:51]
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.
- [28:21]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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 they've. This is where, when you start totaling up their net worth, this is where things just skyrocket.
- [28:57]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, this is where things skyrocket. Right. So if you, 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?
- [29:43]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
The President controls the sec.
- [29:45]
David Kirkpatrick
Exactly. And the President has a lot to say about that.
- [29:48]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
And they've touted that at conferences. They say, the SEC is making these rules and making these, making it easy to buy crypto, and we're in your corner.
- [29:59]
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.
- [30:08]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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?
- [30:27]
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.
- [31:59]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
It's an AI.
- [32:01]
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.
- [32:11]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Okay, so now I'm keeping this total. This was worth, according to you, $243 million.
- [32:20]
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.
- [32:27]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Oh, boy. And so that brings their running total up to $1.7 billion.
- [32:32]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, I know. It's really ticking up fast now.
- [32:35]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Boy, oh, boy.
- [32:38]
Peter Ogburn
And we're going to take a quick break.
- [32:39]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
We'll be right back with David. Well, it's, it's fall and I've been.
- [32:48]
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- [35:04]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
I'm going to skip American Bitcoin story since the brothers only make $13 million on that.
- [35:11]
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.
- [35:37]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
And did you say they did not pay money to get into it or am I wrong? Did I miss?
- [35:42]
David Kirkpatrick
That is correct. Their contribution appears to the value of attaching their name. I know it's nice work if you can get it.
- [35:51]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Well, I think that again, people say like this is a risky business, but if the Trump name is on.
- [36:02]
Peter Ogburn
Delineates.
- [36:02]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
It from everybody Else.
- [36:04]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, that's right. That's their 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.
- [36:18]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
They formed a partnership with Crypto.com, a.
- [36:21]
Peter Ogburn
Singapore company, fighting an SEC enforcement action.
- [36:26]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
And Crypto.com donated a million dollars to Trump's inaugural. And the SEC investigation went away.
- [36:34]
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.
- [37:25]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Like Exchange Traded fund is just. Yes. Like, you go to Schwab.
- [37:29]
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 and P500 or I could just buy a bundle of crazy crypto. The. 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, you know, like 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, it's really a kind of bitcoin stockpile with a small social media platform on the side.
- [38:27]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Okay. So American Bitcoin is one of their companies.
- [38:31]
David Kirkpatrick
American Bitcoin is one of their companies and Trump Media and Marketing is one of their companies. I know it gets confusing. American Bitcoin is a company 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. They're sort of meme stock of Trump Media into real, actual sellable assets. This huge pile of bitcoin.
- [39:07]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Now, there was some news made on 60 Minutes. Changpeng Zhao. Can you, you write about him in your, in your piece and.
- [39:18]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, people call him cz, right?
- [39:21]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
He spent some time in prison, right? A few months.
- [39:24]
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 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 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 going to 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.
- [40:44]
Peter Ogburn
Hmm.
- [40:48]
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 sequence of events raises a lot of questions.
- [40:59]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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.
- [41:08]
David Kirkpatrick
Well, that's, you know, that's legal. Presidents get to give pardons. Yeah, but usually debate that.
- [41:14]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
No, no, that 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.
- [41:26]
David Kirkpatrick
Mark Rich, Yeah. There was a bit of a scandal over that. Yeah.
- [41:29]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
And that is nothing compared to all this kind of stuff, I don't think, do you?
- [41:35]
David Kirkpatrick
I mean, if there was, if the Trump supporter on the phone with us here now, he would probably talk about Biden sweeping pardons of his family. But yeah, the scale of Trump's pardons and the specter of a quid pro quo is novel. Nobody's ever done it quite like he's done it.
- [41:51]
Peter Ogburn
Well, we're gonna take another quick break.
- [41:53]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
We'll be right back with David Kirkpatrick.
- [41:59]
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- [43:57]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
That we sent you.
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- [45:30]
Peter Ogburn
And we are back with David Kirkpatrick.
- [45:32]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Okay, how do you pronounce dollar sign Trump? What is that? That is a.
- [45:38]
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.
- [46:09]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
So how's it worth anything?
- [46:11]
David Kirkpatrick
It's not worth anything. It's. No, doesn't claim to be worth it. It's a novelty, right? You know, it's like a Trump baseball hat, except it doesn't keep the sun out of your eyes.
- [46:20]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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?
- [46:28]
David Kirkpatrick
That's it. So he managed to add. So first he sells these Trump coin and he makes. 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.
- [46:38]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
How do you make money? Just for the privilege.
- [46:41]
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.
- [46:52]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Of 220, I think.
- [46:54]
David Kirkpatrick
Oh, thank you for correction.
- [46:56]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Yeah, no, well, it was in your piece.
- [46:58]
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. However.
- [47:27]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
You read my mind.
- [47:28]
David Kirkpatrick
You have to take into account that the people who are paying for the Trump meme coin or investing in Trump crypto or buying Trump merchandise at 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.
- [47:54]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Sure. And the beneficiaries are the Trumps, and.
- [47:59]
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 it's. Maybe they like it in some Trump.
- [48:54]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Meme coin, but someone who buys a significant amount.
- [48:58]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, someone who buys a significant amount. Or the UAE, as we talked about before.
- [49:02]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Well, UAE like $2 billion worth.
- [49:04]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah.
- [49:04]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Or the u. S. They get a AI center.
- [49:07]
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.
- [49:18]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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?
- [49:31]
David Kirkpatrick
I try not to call it.
- [49:33]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Yeah, try not to call it because there's no way around it. It's a dollar sign.
- [49:36]
Peter Ogburn
Trump. Yeah.
- [49:37]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, exactly. The Trump meme coin. So they. Yes, I did go to the dinner. I stood outside, outside the dinner. I was not one of the 220.
- [49:46]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
It was at the, what, his golf club in Virginia or something?
- [49:48]
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.
- [50:15]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
And there are protesters there.
- [50:17]
David Kirkpatrick
Yeah, there were some protesters outside.
- [50:19]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
And how did the coin holders treat the protesters? They were laughing at them.
- [50:27]
David Kirkpatrick
They were so friendly and bemused. I would say.
- [50:31]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Okay.
- [50:31]
David Kirkpatrick
It was almost like the protest just added to the fun.
- [50:35]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
I see. So you ended up with $3.4 billion that the Trumps Family. Family. Has made since the presidency.
- [50:51]
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.
- [50:58]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
To what extent do you think that. How much of this involves selling favors?
- [51:04]
David Kirkpatrick
Well, that's the thing. I can't prove any single dollar was a trade for a favor.
- [51:11]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Okay.
- [51:11]
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 payments on the private side to one of these Trump companies correlated with an official favor on the public side?
- [51:57]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
For example, the $300 million ballroom. Okay, now that seems like a. 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.
- [52:15]
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 money is gonna go into the building of a ballroom and the ballroom is gonna 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.
- [52:49]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Right. But this feels like he rewards people who invest in, obviously the business, but invest in his projects like the 300 million dollar ballroom.
- [53:07]
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.
- [53:48]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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.
- [54:03]
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.
- [54:35]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Unbelievable. It just feels like this is turning into a bit of an oligarchy. I mean, and, and again, that's more the favors for things, but it just feels like it's getting like Hungary or other places.
- [54:52]
David Kirkpatrick
I mean, I, I wouldn't go that far. You know, when people talk about oligarchy, 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.
- [55:26]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
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.
- [55:42]
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 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.
- [56:06]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Yeah, it happens.
- [56:08]
David Kirkpatrick
It's also enriched himself.
- [56:11]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Well, thank you, David. We'll see the next article. How much he's. But these people seem desperate for money for some reason.
- [56:23]
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.
- [56:35]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
Yeah. Thank you. And we'll keep an eye on this mounting, mounting number.
- [56:42]
David Kirkpatrick
It's been a pleasure. Thanks a lot.
- [56:44]
Peter Ogburn
Well, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kottke.
- [56:49]
Al Franken (Interviewer)
The great Leo Kottke.
- [56:51]
Peter Ogburn
I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.
- [57:11]
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David Kirkpatrick
What do you think makes the perfect snack?
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Could you be more specific?
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I'm seeing a pattern here.
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- [58:28]
SpinQuest Disclaimer
What more could you want? Stop by AMPM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's Cravenians am, pm too much good stuff.