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- [00:00]
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- [00:16]
Jarl and Pamela Mone
And the following message come from Jarl and Pamela Mone thanking the people who make public radio great every day and also those who listen.
- [00:26]
Dan
Hey, this is Dan from Nashville. I'm currently standing at the base of the world's tallest indoor waterfall, Jewel Changae Airport, at the end of a two week trip exploring Cambodia, Vietnam and Singapore.
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Mara Liasson
Ooh, exciting.
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Sarah McCammon
This podcast was recorded at 1:07pm Eastern Time on Wednesday, May 14, 2025.
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Dan
Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll probably still be somewhere over the Pacific in the middle of my 21 hour flight home. Okay, here's the show.
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Sarah McCammon
Sounds like an awesome trip. You have a great time. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon, I cover politics.
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Stephen Fowler
I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover politics.
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Mara Liasson
And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
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Sarah McCammon
Today on the show, how President Trump's business interests and policies are intersecting. Stephen, let's start with this. The president has launched his own crypto exchange and his own meme coin. So I want you to just break that down for us initially, if you would. What is a crypto exchange and what is a meme coin?
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Stephen Fowler
So we're talking about this decentralized digital currency where transactions are recorded on this open source database called blockchain. And unlike a US Dollar, crypto isn't backed by a government or any sort of financial institution. Meaning the tokens that are bought and sold are only worth what people and the market are willing to pay for them. It can be very volatile, much like Trump has the Trump Organization for real estate, business, hotels, golf clubs, things like that. Trump has a business interest in the crypto space. In addition to this Trump meme coin, there's also World Liberty Financial, which is a crypto exchange where crypto assets can be bought and sold. That was launched by Trump and his sons and largely owned by one of the Trump family entities, the Trump meme coin, mostly controlled by Trump controlled entities. And those things together account for billions and billions of Donald Trump's net worth. On paper.
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Sarah McCammon
Yeah. I mean, how does it actually work? Like how do they make money for Trump and his family and his associates?
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Stephen Fowler
Well, a lot of it comes from that on paper aspect. They hold a lot of the coins that are in circulation, so to speak. And so when the value goes up, the value of the Trump family holdings go up. But another interesting facet of how the money is made is that anytime somebody buys or sells the Trump Meme coin, a cut of that transaction goes, goes to the company and the Trump family organization. Same for the World Liberty Financial crypto exchange. So if the coin does well, if the coin doesn't do well, the transaction taking place is actually the big money making part of this.
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Mara Liasson
So they get a fee just like a credit card company would, just for the buying or selling of these coins.
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Stephen Fowler
Right. It's basically like a transaction fee, just like you said, Mara, for credit cards or any sort of other transactions. So really it's not necessarily as much about the coin doing well or things doing well, but more on the volume of people taking action.
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Sarah McCammon
And people are buying these essentially as investment products. Right. And that's their hope?
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Stephen Fowler
Well, not necessarily. I mean, this is not a typical investment like you would think of investing in a company and hoping it does well and the stock price goes up. I mean, the name itself, the Meme Coin, this is more about, you know, the commodification of the concept of Donald Trump more so than an investment strategy to get rich. In fact, some of the crypto exchange monitoring companies out there say the vast majority of people that have bought Trump Coin have actually lost money on it. And only a small handful of people have actually seen big gains.
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Mara Liasson
Well, what's so interesting about that is Trump himself when he announced this, said, quote, this is not intended to be or to be the subject of an investment opportunity, investment contract or security of any type. It's just meant to, quote, celebrate everything we stand for. So it sounds, I mean, are people buying access to Trump? What, what are they buy?
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Stephen Fowler
Well, I mean, yes and no. I mean the average small dollar investor buying a couple Trump coins here and there. It's not like you buy one Trump coin and then you get to call up the White House and be like, hey, Mr. President, this is what I think. But what we have seen is some companies signify interest in the Trump coin and in the crypto space to sort of signal to the White House, to advisors, to other people that hey, they're interested and that they do have things. There was a trucking company that filed paperwork to suggest they could buy several million dollars worth of Trump Coin and by the way, they have thoughts about U.S. mexico trade policy. Just the other day, a Chinese company that has dealings with TikTok said that they were going to potentially buy up to $300 million of Trump coin and they were going to finance it through a mystery stock sale. And that, oh, by the way, they have interest in TikTok, which is something that is currently a policy area pending before the White House.
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Sarah McCammon
And Stephen, there are reports, right, that some of the people who own these Trump meme coins might get invited to special events like a dinner with the President, right?
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Stephen Fowler
Well, the company putting out the coin says that the biggest holders, account holders of the Trump coin, could have the chance to go to a dinner in Washington where the President is an invited guest and the extra tippy top VIP level holders might get to have a tour of the White House. And so it's raised some alarm bells across the ideological spectrum of people who say that there are some unknowns about who these people are, having that level of access, being close to the President. And if the President is personally benefiting from this, it's important to note that on Meet the Press last week, Trump was asked about this and asked if he was profiting from the presidency through crypto. And this is what he had to.
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Mara Liasson
Say, not profiting from anything. All I'm doing is, you know, I started this long before the election. I want crypto.
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Sarah McCammon
I think crypto is important because if.
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Mara Liasson
We don't do it, China is going to.
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Sarah McCammon
So, Stephen, there are these questions about what people are getting for this product. Aside from perhaps the satisfaction of having a Trump meme coin if they're Trump supporters. There are these questions about access to the President. What do we know about who is actually buying these coins?
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Stephen Fowler
The cryptocurrency itself is documented through the blockchain and transactions can be tracked. But it's not like, you know, Sarah McCammon is buying $500 of Bitcoin. There are people that have usernames that aren't always easy to discern. You know, some of the top holders of Trump coin includes usernames like Sun, Case, Meow Hype. We do know the identities of some of these people. For example, sun is Justin Sun. He's a Hong Kong based crypto entrepreneur. He has several cases before the securities and Exchange Commission that have been dropped since he's donated money to Trump's crypto holdings in the past few months. Others are various companies and individuals that live outside of the US which raise concerns about foreign business dealings and people circumventing campaign finance laws to get to the President and lobby him and do things in such a way that aren't necessarily traced the same way it would be if it was a normal sort of campaign lobbying interaction.
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Mara Liasson
And, you know, the other ironic thing about this is that the crypto industry was really looking forward to being legitimized through regulation. They wanted Congress to recognize them as a legitimate industry, not just an industry that laundered money or was a front for. For criminals, which is what the crypto reputation was. And now that Trump has participated in this, now the crypto industry is disappointed because that regulation bill is stalled.
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Stephen Fowler
I mean, the crypto industry is a regulatory wild, wild in a lot of ways. It's not that established. There's not frameworks, there's not rules, there's not widespread adoption. So in recent years, lobbying has taken place across the political spectrum in both major political parties to lobby, to get on board, to kind of institute crypto and blockchain technology as a reputable industry. And as part of this, there's been efforts to outline regulations in the Senate. There's a bill called the Genius act, for example, that had bipartisan support and was moving towards passage. And then after the news of Trump's dinner came out, and after the news of some of the large amounts of money that have been generated by these transactions that go to benefit the Trump Organization, Democrats in particular said, hold up. Maybe we need to have something in here to bar the executive office and people in high positions of power from directly profiting off of this. That didn't happen. And so the Genius act actually failed a vote last week. It's not a complete goner, but it certainly is a big roadblock for what until now was largely bipartisan agreement that something needed to be done.
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Sarah McCammon
I mean, there's, I think, a bigger question here, which is just overall oversight, overall scrutiny. Is the president allowed to do this, to take this kind of money in this way?
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Mara Liasson
Well, there's certainly no conflict of interest rules that affect the president. And we know that he has moved to get rid of a lot of the inspectors general, the watchdogs that are embedded in the federal government, to look for conflicts of interest or improper acts. But there is an emoluments clause of the Constitution which says that the president cannot take gifts from foreign countries. And then there's the $400 million jumbo jet that President Trump is considering accepting from Qatar. And that plane is worth a hundred times more than every other presidential gift from a foreign nation combined in the last 25 years. You know, even though Republicans are very loath to criticize Donald Trump for things that they would be jumping up and down if a Democratic president did, there are several Republicans who have raised concerns about this crypto business of the president's.
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Sarah McCammon
Okay, it's time for a quick break. We'll have more in just a moment.
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Mara Liasson
On the indicator from Planet Money podcast, we're here to help you make sense of the economic news from Trump's tariffs.
- [11:37]
Stephen Fowler
It's called in game theory a trigger strategy, or sometimes called grim trigger, which sort of has a cowboy esque ring.
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Mara Liasson
To it to what exactly a sovereign wealth fund is. For insight every weekday, listen to NPR's the Indicator from Planet Money.
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Dan
When Malcolm Gladwell presented NPR's Throughline podcast with a Peabody Award, he praised it for its historical and moral clarity. On Throughline, we take you back in time to the origins of what's in the news, like presidential power, aging and evangelicalism. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from npr.
- [12:18]
Jarl and Pamela Mone
Support for NPR and the following message come from Jarl and Pamela Mone, thanking the people who make public radio great every day and also those who listen.
- [12:29]
Sarah McCammon
And we're back. Mara. Lots of people, especially businesses, try to curry favor with politicians. That's not new. Lobbying is a huge industry, has been for a long time. But there are some rules. What constraints are there on Trump's actions as president when it comes to his business dealings? And how different is what's happening now from what he did during his first term?
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Mara Liasson
Well, first of all, it's different because back then he said his family would not do any business with foreign governments, and that's no longer the case. His sons are all over the world making deals about condos and golf courses, et cetera. In terms of the rules that would prevent this, there is the emoluments clause. It says that American presidents are not supposed to take gifts from foreign nations. And we don't know if the crypto purchases from foreign nationals would be considered a violation of the emoluments clause. Somebody probably will file suit and we'll find out. But in general, the president has treated ethics as a norm that is worthy to be completely ignored.
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Stephen Fowler
And it's also worth noting that this is, like you mentioned, Sarah, a sort of lobbying. You know, in some ways, this is cutting out the middleman. Instead of a business entity or an individual paying a lobbying firm, that lobbying firm then goes to the White House or then goes to a key senator or Congress member and says, here's my viewpoint. And then the conversations happen. In many ways, it's cutting out the middleman and going straight to the source. But also going straight to the source in that way is a lot of the ethical concerns that people have.
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Sarah McCammon
You know, Stephen, we were talking earlier about the fact that a lot of people in the crypto industry wanted legitimacy, have wanted regulation, so they can move forward as an industry. So how is all of this going over, I guess, with industry leaders, but also just kind of rank and file crypto enthusiasts?
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Stephen Fowler
Well, one thing that's important to note is part of Trump's interest in crypto comes from the target demographic. A Pew survey from last October estimates nearly one in five U.S. adults invest in crypto, with similar shares of Democratic and Republican leaning voters doing so. And they are predominantly younger and male, smack dab in Trump's prime demographic that he did significant outreach to during the election. Now, some of the analysis of the holdings of Trump coin finds that most of the people that hold the coins haven't really done well and haven't gained any money and in fact, have lost money. And so that's part of this. But by and large, the kind of bypassing of this regulatory framework, the, you know, the hundreds of millions of dollars in fees that have been generated directly to the Trump Organization, the efforts from companies to skip the middleman and go straight to, you know, waving a giant digital flag to the president to say, here's our money, here's what we want to do with it, has certainly been a step back for the industry. I mean, that genius act being stalled in the Senate is not something that they wanted to see, although there's more negotiations and things happening behind the scenes. But it doesn't really do a lot to help the image of cryptocurrency if its biggest use case is the President of the United States touting something that primarily makes him and his family money over anybody else.
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Sarah McCammon
So, to both of you, where do you see things going from here? Is there any chance, you know, Mara, you mentioned some concern from Democrats in Congress and Republicans. Is there any chance Congress steps in or some other regulatory body? I mean, can anyone say no to Trump on this?
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Mara Liasson
I find that very hard to imagine. I mean, he has gotten rid of every possible watchdog in the federal government. He has Pam Bondi, the attorney general, she's already blessed the Qatari airplane deal. Even though you have heard some criticisms from some areas of the MAGA universe, people like Laura Loomer and Ben Shapiro have criticized some of the things that President Trump has done, particularly the interest.
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Sarah McCammon
In accepting the Qatari plane.
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Mara Liasson
Right. And particularly the airplane. But I don't think it's gonna get beyond that. I just don't. This is a party that is controlled lock, stock and barrel by Donald Trump.
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Stephen Fowler
And at the same time, Donald Trump's entire life and career has been around selling Donald Trump Trump steaks, Trump water bottles, Trump University, Trump hotels. Like this is just the latest extension of how Trump has comported his entire life, of his entire business Persona and now his political Persona. And so any effort to regulate that and any effort to go against that is probably not going to be successful. That said, you know, there is the potential for rules for the and not for me, where there will be a framework put in place and there will be sort of regulations that may come from this, from Congress or from some other agencies that would apply in the future in a world where Donald Trump is not the president. But in this second term. So far, as Mars mentioned, the main theme of things has been sort of dismantling the federal government, dismantling oversight and other things like that. So it's not necessarily likely that crypto is going to be the one thing that magically gets oversight in this term for now.
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Sarah McCammon
Okay, well, we're gonna leave it right there. I'm Sarah McCammon, I cover politics.
- [17:54]
Stephen Fowler
I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover politics.
- [17:56]
Mara Liasson
And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
- [18:00]
Sarah McCammon
And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.
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Sarah McCammon
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Sarah McCammon
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Sarah McCammon
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Mara Liasson
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Jarl and Pamela Mone
NPR and whyyy support for npr and the following message come from Yarl and Pamela Mone thanking the people who make public radio great every day, and also those who listen.