How the Presidency is Making Trump Richer

Summary

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Up First Sunday Story: "How the Presidency is Making Trump Richer"

NPR, February 8, 2026 | Host: Ayesha Rascoe | With Mary Childs, Sarah Gonzalez, David Kirkpatrick, Fred Wertheimer

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Episode Overview

In this Sunday Story episode, NPR’s Ayesha Roscoe teams up with Planet Money hosts Mary Childs and Sarah Gonzalez to investigate the unprecedented personal enrichment of Donald Trump and his family during his second presidential term. Reporter David Kirkpatrick of The New Yorker details his financial accounting of the Trump family’s presidency-linked wealth, estimating their profits at nearly $4 billion in just a year. The episode breaks down how this fortune was amassed, the innovative methods used, and how this compares historically and internationally.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Trump Family’s Shift in Business Approach

• First vs Second Term
  • In Trump’s first term, the family voluntarily stopped overseas deals for optics.
  • For the second term, “That’s gone, that’s out the window. This term, they’ve done deals all over the place overseas.” (David Kirkpatrick, 01:23)
  • Motivation: Since criticism was unavoidable no matter what, the family “might as well take the money and run.” (David Kirkpatrick, 01:45)

Methodology of Financial Accounting

• David Kirkpatrick explains he only counted profits directly tied to Trump’s presidency—deals inconceivable without him in office, excluding regular business income.
• Used a combination of public disclosures, lawsuits, and extrapolation—“I’d say I’m 100% if your target is to be conservative…this is a minimum.” (Kirkpatrick, 09:09)

The Estimated Total: $4 Billion

• Trump and his family’s presidency-related profits approach $4 billion, nearly all acquired in the past year (03:04).

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Notable Revenue Sources: How the Money Was Made

1. Merchandise and Campaign Innovation (11:04–12:20)

• Trump-branded merchandise—sneakers, Bibles, guitars—sold outside campaign structures, resulting in $27.7 million in personal profits.
• Legal defense funded via a “loophole” converting campaign funds, totaling $100 million in value.

  “Hats off, that’s a real innovation.” — David Kirkpatrick [12:17]

• Total (Merch+Legal Loophole): $127.7 million

2. Social Media & Media Lawsuits

• Truth Social (Trump’s social platform): estimated $25 million in value directly due to his presidency (13:00).
• Media deals, including lawsuits against major networks and a Melania biopic: $91 million.

  “All of which were deemed to be frivolous…fair to call those payments that he would not have received were he not the sitting president.” — David Kirkpatrick [13:37]

• Total (Truth Social+Media): $116 million

3. Luxury Jet Gift (13:57–14:23)

• Qatar gifted a royal jet to the US government, earmarked for Trump’s Presidential Library—valued at $150 million.

4. Hospitality: Real Estate & Hotels, Domestically and Abroad

• Mar-a-Lago: Only increased profits counted; hike in initiation fee after re-election ($125 million gain).

• Trump Hotel in Vietnam: Preferential government treatment, $40 million gain.

• Persian Gulf Deals: Explosive growth in deals in Oman, Saudi UAE, Qatar, newly linked to presidency ($105.8 million).

  “Would those deals have happened if he weren’t the president? No, of course they wouldn’t have.” — David Kirkpatrick [16:39]

• Combined Hospitality Gains: $271 million

5. Finance Deals (17:59–19:37)

• Jared Kushner’s Private Equity Firm: $2 billion Saudi investment despite zero relevant experience ($320 million gain).
• Don Jr. Investment Partner: Position in 1789 Capital; $19.6 million.

6. Crypto & Digital Assets (19:59–24:15)

• NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens): Trump and Melania-themed, $14.4 million.
• Token Investments (World Liberty Financial): $974.5 million.
• Stablecoin USD1: UAE government’s $2 billion buy, $243 million profit.
• Trump sons’ Bitcoin Mining (“American Bitcoin”): $115 million.
• Trump Media as Bitcoin Holding Company: Sold shares at inflated value; Trump’s stake worth $1.08–$1.3 billion.
• Trump Meme Coin (“Dollar Trump”): $385 million.

“Calling it USD1 and reminding everybody that’s associated with the president…is a good way to build faith and credibility…that makes sense to me. That’s really what they’re up to.”—David Kirkpatrick [21:36]

7. Running Total

• By the end, the estimated tally—across merch, social media, hospitality, finance, crypto—was $3.8 billion, nearing $4 billion as of production date.

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Legal and Historical Perspective

Emoluments and Ethics

• The US Constitution’s emoluments clauses were meant to prevent presidential self-enrichment and foreign influence—largely ineffective in this scenario.
• Early worries over the D.C. hotel appear “quaint” compared to current scale (“people were so strung out about those overpriced martinis…and really, that’s nothing.” — Sarah Gonzalez, 10:01).

Historical Precedent (27:20–33:25)

• Fred Wertheimer (Democracy 21): “It doesn’t exist at the level of which President Trump is making money.” [28:07]
• Previous comparable US instances (Lyndon Johnson’s media holdings, Warren G. Harding’s newspaper) are “nothing” in scale or explicitness.
• Relatives of presidents have profited (e.g., Hunter Biden), but “anywhere near the amount of money that President Trump’s sons are making.” [28:58]
• Fred: “Trump has made billions…in cryptocurrency. At the same time, he is controlling the policy of the United States on cryptocurrency. And his policies are totally favorable to cryptocurrency.” [32:03]

Global Comparison

• Only foreign examples of this scale: authoritarian regimes (“A leading example of this is Mr. Putin”—Fred Wertheimer, 32:45), with estimated personal enrichment in the tens of billions.

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Conclusion & Memorable Moments

• Impact: Trump’s enrichment while president is unprecedented in US history.
• Scale and Sophistication: The blending of hospitality, digital assets, and campaign loopholes was cited as both innovative and troubling.
• David Kirkpatrick continues to monitor and update the tally; profits continue to climb even after the report’s publication.
• The systematic nature and scale set a new, alarming precedent for presidential self-enrichment.

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Key Quotes & Timestamps

• “Effectively they’ve just said, since we’re going to get criticized, we might as well take the money and run.” — David Kirkpatrick (01:45)
• “Almost $4 billion. That…is how much Trump and his family have made by this point in his second term. Almost all of it made this past year.” — Ayesha Roscoe (03:06)
• “Merch is the most surprising to me. Crypto is the biggest in its many forms. And then…the Gulf real estate is the other one…most striking.” — David Kirkpatrick (11:04)
• “Trump is the first…to make so much money explicitly off of the White House for himself and his family. Money that actually goes into his own pocket…” — David Kirkpatrick (05:57)
• “It doesn’t exist at the level of which President Trump is making money.” — Fred Wertheimer (28:07)
• “A leading example of this is Mr. Putin.” — Fred Wertheimer (32:45)
• “It just has never existed like this in our country until now.” — Fred Wertheimer (33:40)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:50–01:45: Trump family business policy shift from 1st to 2nd term
• 03:04–03:20: Kirkpatrick reveals nearly $4B figure
• 10:00–10:25: Emoluments and D.C. hotel, first-term profits "quaint"
• 11:04–12:20: Merch innovation and personal profit
• 13:00–13:57: Social media, media lawsuits, Melania deal
• 14:23–15:09: Hospitality, Mar-a-Lago, fee hikes
• 16:13–17:34: Persian Gulf deals, their extraordinary scale
• 17:59–19:37: Finance deals—Kushner and Don Jr.
• 19:59–24:15: Crypto, token investments, meme coins, Trump Media
• 27:20–33:40: Context with Fred Wertheimer: US and global history, ethics

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This summary provides full context and clarity for listeners and readers about how Donald Trump’s second term has transformed his and his family’s financial fortunes—and why this level of personal presidential profit is historically unprecedented in the United States.

Transcript

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Aisha.

I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and you're listening to THE Sunday STORY from Up first, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. After he was first elected president in 2016, Donald Trump bucked tradition and refused to release his tax returns. Although some of his tax information has come out, Trump has continued to try to shield information relating to his personal wealth. Since Trump's reelection in 2024, there's been increasing evidence that Trump and his family are personally profiting from his presidency. To learn more about how the Trumps may be cashing in, we're bringing you a story from our friends over at NPR's Planet Money, where hosts Mary Childs and Sarah Gonzalez went on a little presidential accounting adventure.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

We are one year into President Donald Trump's second, second term, and some things are really different this time around.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Going over some math to be all up to date.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

That's New Yorker reporter David Kirkpatrick.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Now, if while, as we go through this, I turn pages, is that a problem?

[Ayesha Roscoe]

No, no. I think we actually like that sound.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Oh, is that right? Okay. All right. Okay, fine.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

David has been doing the near impossible task of following every new business and business deal and financial transaction that Trump and his family have made this past year. And in the first term, and he's.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Noticed this shift, you know, in the first term, they said voluntarily, we're not going to do any hotel or other business deals overseas because that would be bad optically. That's gone, that's out the window. This term. They've done deals all over the place overseas. In the first term, we actually said we're not going to do any, any foreign deals.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

That's Donald Trump Jr. Talking.

[David Kirkpatrick]

And the reality is it didn't stop the media from constantly saying, you're profiteering anyway. It was like we stopped entirely. So this time around, we said, hey, we're going to play by the rules, but we're not going to go so far as to stymie our business forever, lock ourselves in a proverbial padded room, because it almost doesn't matter. They're going to hit you no matter what. So, so effectively they've just said, since we're going to get criticized, we might as well take the money and run. And that's when they've started making money kind of hit hand over fist.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

And it's not just foreign hotel deals or other investments from abroad. It's crypto merch, President Trump's social media platform that he makes official White House announcements on.

[David Kirkpatrick]

In fact, it's hard to find a case where they've turned down an opportunity to make money off the presidency.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Okay.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Before Trump's first term, David says Trump was in a tight spot financially. He was losing income from licensing and endorsements. And at the beginning of his second term, he was in an even tighter spot. David says at the time he owed hundreds of hundreds of millions in fraud and defamation lawsuits.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

But after just six months into his second term, Trump's financial situation started looking real good. Like real good, just zoop. Shot up in six months. Let's just get the number out there. What is like the total amount?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I'd say approaching 4 billion.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Almost $4 billion. That is the number, according to David. That is how much Trump and his family have made by this point in his second term. Almost $4 billion and almost all of it made this past year.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

And disclaimer, this isn't just money that Trump himself has made, but his sons too. And then there's some in there that his wife Melania and son in law have also made. There's no real way to detangle Trump from his family, because even though Trump has transferred management of the Trump Organization to his sons, Trump still profits from the business deals that they make. And Trump can withdraw profits or assets whenever he wants.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Now, David says he went out of his way to not include money that the family would have made if Trump were not president. So he didn't count many deals, some big ones that he says would likely have happened anyway. And he didn't count profit made from like regular pre existing businesses.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Somebody just likes to stay in a fancy hotel with lots of gilding. Okay, fine, that's legit. He owned those properties before. We'll call that fair. That's not making money off of the presidency. The only deals that I focused on are the ones where it was just inconceivable that Trump or his family would have made this money, would have done this deal, sold this crypto, or agreed to manage this property for some lucrative contract if he weren't the president.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

One of the reasons presidents get a salary is supposed to be so that they don't worry about personal gain. The founding fathers also wanted to prevent presidents from being susceptible to corruption.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

But I mean, a lot of presidents, Republican and Democrat, have made money after they're president once they leave office. Like Bill Clinton's very well paying speaking engagements, George W. Bush's book, Barack Obama's Netflix deal.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

And also while they're in office, presidents will essentially sell access to the president. And even Sell positions like when they're running for reelection, raising campaign money. There's examples of like you donate and then you become the ambassador to something.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, there's tons. Ambassadors, the classic example. Ambassadorships are routinely, I would say, in every presidency given to big donors. Secretary of Commerce is one position where that often happens. So he's not the first to sell access. He's not the first really to sell position. And I don't want to defend it, but it's routine and it's familiar. It's what they all do. President Clinton famously let donors stay in the Lincoln Bedroom. Right? That's a notorious example. That's not what we're talking about here.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Right. Those are campaign donations. They are not personal profit. They don't go to the president.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Trump is the first President Trump to make so much money explicitly off of the White House for himself and his family. Money that actually goes into his own pocket that he can use at his pleasure after he leaves office. So that's really what I tried to focus on.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

So what are you counting?

[David Kirkpatrick]

So I'm counting cash in hand. I'm counting money that has been paid to the Trump family that they've put into the bank.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Sarah Gonzalez.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

And I'm Mary Childs. Today on the show, we get out the counting machine and tally up the minimum amount of money Trump and his family have made or profited, as David.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Puts it, off of the presidency that almost $4 billion. We go line by line and stop at the most interesting ways that Trump and his family have made all that.

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[Ayesha Roscoe]

We'Re back with a Sunday story. Today we take a ride with our colleagues over at Planet Money who've been looking into the profits flowing into the Trump family since the start of the President's second term. Here's NPR's Sarah Gonzalez and Mary Childs.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

David Kirkpatrick set out to not just come up with the number, the how much money Trump and his family have made number, that approaching $4 billion number. He wanted to also show why some of their new deals probably would not have happened if Trump wasn't the President of the United States.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

And this was not an easy undertaking.

[David Kirkpatrick]

You know, the Trump family has left a variety of clues to their finances, but none of them are totally transparent. So you've gotta look at the court cases that have been about their reporting to their banks, and you've gotta look at what they say in their public financial disclosures, and you've gotta look at what they say publicly as well. So there's a lot of different ways to try to catch up their money. None of them are perfect. And you have to sort of extrapolate among them.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

So how in the, like, scale of how, you know, perfect would you say you're like 75% there, 50% there?

[David Kirkpatrick]

I'd say I'm 100% if your target is to be conservative.

[Babbel Ad]

Right.

[David Kirkpatrick]

So what I have here is a kind of at least number, a minimum.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Number, and just one thing before we get into the full accounting.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Okay, but what happened to the emoluments clause? Like, I thought the whole, I thought the whole deal was that you're not supposed to profit off of the presidency.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, the emoluments clause, there's two emoluments clauses.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

There's the one that restricts the president from getting paid by the federal government or states besides his salary. And the other restricts gifts from foreign leaders.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

So think of the D.C. hotel. Remember the D.C. hotel, that was like the first big instance in the first Trump term where people were worried about foreign leaders, but also CEOs booking rooms there to try to curry favor with the President as an impermissible emolument. There were lawsuits, but they were never fully litigated before he left office.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

It feels so quaint now.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It feels so quaint. I know we were, we were all. People were so strung out about those overpriced martinis. And really, that's nothing.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

David says Trump didn't make money off the D.C. hotel. It apparently repelled as many potential customers as it attracted some foreign leaders. And Lobbyists didn't want to be caught up in some emoluments scandal.

[David Kirkpatrick]

In the end, the D.C. hotel estimated gain, zero.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

That was from the first term. In general, from Trump's first term, he and his family did not profit all that much. Couple hundred million. But the second term is a different story. It's really the basis of David's hefty magazine article.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

If we were going to whittle down your list to the top three most fun or creative or unusual ways that Trump and the Trump family have gotten richer or profited off of the presidency, what are like, your highlights?

[David Kirkpatrick]

You know, the most lucrative ways and the most creative ways are different. I have to say, the one that surprised me the most is the merch.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Me too. I love the merch one.

[David Kirkpatrick]

So merch. Merch is the most surprising to me. Crypto is the biggest in its many forms. And then I would say the Gulf real estate is the other one. That's the most striking.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Those are the three we're gonna pause and go into detail on. But we're gonna tally up what the Trump family has made across a few different categories, like hospitality deals, finance. The full list.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

First up, the funnest category. Merch.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Everybody, every politician, every campaign sells merch. They all sell it for the campaign, right? But it's campaign money. You can't use it personally. The Trumps were very innovative. They actually sell a line of Trump branded merchandise that looks very much like you're supporting the Trump campaign or the MAGA movement. But in fact, that money goes into their own pockets.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

The Trump sneakers, Trump bibles, Trump guitars. Trump gets some of those profits, and technically, he is diverting money that would have gone to his own campaign when he does this.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, it's like a designer knocking himself off. That's basically what's going on here.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

From all the merch, Trump has made about $27.7 million.

[David Kirkpatrick]

So maybe it's small change, but hats off, that's a real innovation.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

And another real innovation is actually around official campaign money. Trump found a loophole, a way to convert campaign money into money that he could use to pay for his legal defense in lawsuits against him. Like when E. Jean Carroll sued for defamation after her sexual abuse allegation case. Or when Trump was charged with trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The campaign money loophole, according to David, earned Trump $100 million worth of legal defense. So add that to the other merch.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Money, legal fees, and Trump Merch Estimated gain, 127.7 million.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Next up.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Truth Social.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Truth Social. With a very, very generous estimate of about 25 million, it's safe to say that it owes all of its success to his status as president.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

David calls this the media category. It includes social media, but also media deals, like a payment from Amazon to Melania to make a movie about Melania's life. And also it includes suing the media.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Yeah, this category includes all the many lawsuits Trump has brought against big media companies like abc, C, cbs. Meta. The estimate for the gains from the lawsuits and deals is about $91 million.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I think, especially in the case of the lawsuits, all of which were deemed to be frivolous by most media law experts, it's fair to call those payments that he would not have received were he not the sitting president.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

So lawsuits plus the truth social gain, $116 million and counting.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Next up, the private jet, the Qatari Royal jet. The Qatari government technically gifted this jet to the US Government, but it's later supposed to go to the Trump Presidential Library. And David says that there is a way for presidents to benefit from their presidential libraries. So that's why he counted it.

[David Kirkpatrick]

The Qatari Royal Jet. I give that a value of about 150 million. It's a used jet, after all.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Now, we are going to get into bigger categories, like a category that David calls hospitality. These are hotel and real estate deals and earnings both abroad and in the US we will start domestically with Mar A Lago.

[David Kirkpatrick]

All right. Mar a Lago estimated gain, 125 million.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Obviously, this was a club that Trump owned before he ever became president. And David says he really went out of his way on this one to calculate only how much extra in profits Trump's presidencies have brought him. So, for example, after the in the 2016 election, Trump started hiking up the initiation fee for Mar A Lago members. It used to be about $100,000. In 2017, it went up to $200,000. Now it's a million dollars. Okay.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Hotel deals abroad. There's a Trump hotel in Vietnam.

[David Kirkpatrick]

The Trump Hotel, Hanoi. In Vietnam, some documents have emerged to show that the Vietnamese government is providing favorable, expedited treatment to a truly vast hotel, golf and condominium project under the Trump name. Because Trump is the president, that estimated gain comes to about 40 million. And there, I think I'm being quite conservative.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

And listen, Trump makes hotel deals, right? This is what he was doing way before he was ever president. And there's an argument that the Trump Organization should be allowed to still make these kinds of hotel and golf Course, deals. And this is why David is not counting every deal, right? He is only counting, he says, deals that seem special, striking deals or terms that he says are unlikely to have happened if Trump wasn't the president or incoming president. Like these other deals in the Middle east, for example, specifically in the Persian Gulf.

[David Kirkpatrick]

The Trumps had not done much business in the Persian Gulf. Suddenly, as he's on his way to being the Republican nominee and on his way back into the White House, they get a string of enormous deals with the same Saudi company across Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Would those deals have happened if he weren't the president? No, of course they wouldn't have.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Why?

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Of course they wouldn't. Why?

[David Kirkpatrick]

If you're going to open a big resort in the Persian Gulf and you could go to the Four Seasons, you could go to Marriott, you could go to the Ritz, you could go to a lot of these giant companies that can lower costs because of their size. Why would you go to the Trump Organization, which has so little track record in the Gulf? The Trump Organization is a very small management firm. Usually if you're going to hire somebody to run your hotel and license a name for your hotel, if it's Marriott or one of the behemoths, they'll hold out for a 30 year contract. But if it's David Kirkpatrick Hotel Management, you're lucky if you can get a 10 year contract. But reportedly, according to the New York Times, the deal he got in Oman for a giant hotel, condo, golf course operation there was a 30 year deal. So that's another clue that this is an extraordinary kind of a thing.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Those are not the kinds of deals that the Trump Organization has gotten ever, certainly not abroad.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

In these Persian Gulf hotel deals, I.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Come up with an estimated gain of 105.8 million.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

So David finds between the Persian Gulf hotels, Vietnam and Mar a Lago, the Trump family has made about $271 million.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Next category, Finance deals.

[David Kirkpatrick]

All right, so Jared Kushner, Trump's son.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

In law, Jared Kushner, after he was senior adviser to President Donald Trump in Trump's first term, he gets into private equity. After basically being a real estate guy.

[David Kirkpatrick]

All his life, he opens a private equity firm. But he reaches out to Saudi Arabia, the rulers of Saudi Arabia, who he'd been very good to in office, and he asked them for a $2 billion investment. Now, I was able to obtain years ago the minutes of the meeting of their advisory board evaluating that investment, and it was unanimously negative. Everybody Said, this guy has no experience in private equity. We have no reason to believe that he is going to be successful. No. US Investors have gone in and he's asking us to be the first with $2 billion. We shouldn't do this. The government of Saudi Arabia did it anyway. Now, would they have done that if his father was not the former and possible future president? No, no. I think we can say they wouldn't.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Have Jared's cut of that investment, $320 million.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

And if you think that Jared Kushner's gain here shouldn't count towards the whole family gain, David says, fine, subtract it. He made this list as a sort of choose your own adventure.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

The same goes for this other finance deal that Don Jr got as partner.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Of an investment fund, 1789 Capital.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

David says here also, it is unlikely Don Jr would have gotten this job based just on his work experience had his dad not been President.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Estimated gain, 19.6 million.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

All right, we're just going to do a little running total check here from the finance deals, the hotel deals, the lawsuits, all the way down to the merch deals. We are at about a billion dollars in gains for Trump and his family. But there is one final category with a bunch of things in it. So now we're getting to the big stuff. Like now we get into much bigger profits here, right?

[David Kirkpatrick]

We're on our way to bigger stuff. So crypto. Now, the crypto category has to be broken down into a variety of smaller categories. The first form of crypto that the Trump family got into were non fungible tokens, which are basically kind of digital cartoons of President Trump and later his wife.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

This is like where Trump looks like super muscular and he's like a superhero, right? Those are the NFTs, right?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Or biker Trump with an electric guitar. I put their estimated gain from the sale of those non fungible tokens at 14.4 million. Then we get to what I call token investments.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Token investments are another crypto category. The Trump family profited from the sale of digital tokens from a crypto company called World Liberty Financial, with an estimated gain of 974.5 $0.5 million. So almost a billion dollars there.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Then there's a form of crypto known as a stablecoin, which they gave a pretty Fun name to.usd1.usd1, like the US dollar.

[David Kirkpatrick]

And their first customer, and really their main, possibly only customer so far has been the government of the United Arab Emirates. The United Arab Emirates agreed to buy $2 billion in stablecoin. I Put the profits from that at about 243 million.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Just. I'm curious what you think of the USD1 crypto thing. It seems very intentional.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, in crypto, in broad strokes, the Trump play, the Trump family play, is to use the credibility and imprimatur of the sitting president to build trust in what otherwise strikes people as a pretty sketchy asset. That is crypto. So calling it USD1 and reminding everybody that's associated with the president of the United States is a good way to build faith and credibility as this digital currency as the equivalent of a dollar. So that makes sense to me. That's really what they're up to.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Then there is American Bitcoin.

[David Kirkpatrick]

American Bitcoin is a bitcoin mining company that the Trump brothers have founded with a friend.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

David says the Trump sons contributed mainly their name.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Their share at 20%, would be worth about 115 million.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Okay, okay. Next up, Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social, has reinvented itself as a kind of bitcoin holding company.

[David Kirkpatrick]

This is the big ticket item. This is the biggest of the bunch.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Trump Media has been selling shares of its own company, which David and analysts say trades at a wildly inflated value because of its association with President Trump.

[David Kirkpatrick]

And then they've used some of that cash to buy bitcoin. So President Trump owns a stake of about 41% in that company. If you just look at the bitcoin and cash on its books, a 41% stake of that was worth $1.3 billion at the time that the magazine went to press. Bitcoin has gone down a bit in price since that time. I did another little back of the envelope calculation last night. That number would come out to 1.08 billion if I did the math.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Now, okay, so a little down, A.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Little down, but still a lot of money.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Anything over 1 billion is, you know.

[David Kirkpatrick]

That's right.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Yeah.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Okay. All right. And we've got. Are we on the last one?

[David Kirkpatrick]

We're on the last one, which is Dollar Trump.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

That is the Trump meme coin, right?

[David Kirkpatrick]

That is the Trump meme coin. Now, a meme coin does not purport to hold value. It's just a novelty. In fact, it's not even something you can show anyone. It's really just a mark on a digital ledger that says, I own one Trump meme coin. I put the estimated gain from Trump and Melania meme coins at 385 million.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

And that makes $3.8 billion. So that's how David got to that. Almost $4 billion.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Number we did reach out to the White House Press secretary Caroline Levitt has said many times that President Donald Trump does not profit off of the presidency and that actually Trump has sacrificed money that he could have made had he just been working on his businesses. But the White House doesn't seem to disagree that Trump is making money. So we asked them, how can the president be making money and yet you still say he's not profiting?

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Their response was to refer us back to Caroline's earlier comments.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

But I mean, surely Trump is not the only president to make money, not just after their term, but while they are president. That's after the break.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Foreign.

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[Sarah Gonzalez]

All right, we wanted to know how common it is for a US President to make money like Trump has while they are the sitting president. And we called up someone who would know.

[Fred Wertheimer]

My name is Fred Wertheimer.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Your name sounds so familiar, Fred.

[Fred Wertheimer]

Well, at least the last name.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Fred's wife, Linda Wertheimer, is considered one of the founding mothers of NPR, recently retired.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

And Fred is the president of Democracy 21. It's a nonprofit that works to reduce the influence of big money in politics. Nonpartisan.

[Fred Wertheimer]

I've worked with Republicans and Democrats for decades.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Fred is a big government ethics and campaign finance reform guy. And he says the US has never seen a president make so much money.

[Fred Wertheimer]

It doesn't exist at the level of which President Trump is making money.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

I mean, okay, like this in terms of scale, but like, famously, infamously, Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden made money.

[Fred Wertheimer]

Hunter Biden was not a president. You asked me about president.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

No. Yes.

[Fred Wertheimer]

Hunter Biden is an example of a close relative of a president using the president's name to make money.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Yeah. When you look at the relatives of presidents profiting or even benefiting, yeah, there are plenty examples of that in our history, Fred says, but still, all those examples very different in terms of the amount of money. Even Hunter Biden, he did not make.

[Fred Wertheimer]

Anywhere near the amount of money that President Trump's sons are making.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Fred says there are examples of presidents having conflicts of interest, though, and profiting, you know, some from the presidency.

[Fred Wertheimer]

There are a couple. There aren't a lot. There is President Lyndon Johnson.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Okay, we're going a little back.

[Fred Wertheimer]

His wife owned a small radio station and then bought a television station in Austin, Texas. And reportedly he got favorable rulings from the fcc. So he had a conflict of interest. And I don't know how much you could quantify the value he got from that, but I can tell it's a conflict of interest.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

But also profit. Right.

[Fred Wertheimer]

But.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

It couldn't have been that much.

[Fred Wertheimer]

It was nothing.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

And we can go back Farther to the 1920s with President Warren G. Harding. Remember him?

[Fred Wertheimer]

President Harding owned early on a small newspaper. And when he became president, he and his wife owned it. He turned it over to his wife, and again, he would have profited.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

So I guess you could make the argument that maybe certain companies were placing ads in that paper, in that newspaper to maybe try to curry favor With Warren G. Harding. Right. Like that could have been. Was that a concern that people were throwing around in the 1920s?

[Fred Wertheimer]

I'm old, but I wasn't there.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

That's not what I meant.

[Fred Wertheimer]

But they had conflicts of interest.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Tell us about that time, Fred. No, I'm just kidding.

[Fred Wertheimer]

I have no idea.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

You have no idea?

[Fred Wertheimer]

They were conflicts of interest. Certainly when Johnson became vice president, it was reported that his aides urged him to sell the TV station, but the family did not.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

I mean, so I guess you could make the argument that, well, this is a guy who owned a TV station and radio station. Or with Harding, this is a guy who owned a newspaper and then they became president. And it's not their fault that they used to own a business. They didn't sell the business during the presidency. That's kind of like what's happening with Trump, except right now, the business. Well, it's not like what's happening with Trump.

[Fred Wertheimer]

Let me give you an example.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

There's more money on the line.

[Fred Wertheimer]

Trump has made billions. He and his family in cryptocurrency. At the same time, he is controlling the policy of the United States on cryptocurrency.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Yeah.

[Fred Wertheimer]

And his policies are totally favorable to cryptocurrency.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Yeah. You could kind of make this argument for Trump's first presidency. Like, he was a businessman before. What is he supposed to do? Sell all of his businesses? He'd probably get criticism for that, too. Like, maybe somebody pays generously to buy a Trump business to get in good with the incoming president. But for the second term, Fred says Trump is currently setting policies that benefit his and his family's businesses and grow their profits. And that is different.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

Fred says it is not something that a US President has done before.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

What about. Okay, what about other countries? What other president is he like in another country?

[Fred Wertheimer]

A leading example of this is Mr. Putin.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Oh, I think that might strike people a certain way.

[Fred Wertheimer]

Well, no, no. You asked me about foreign countries, and Putin is probably the leading head official of a country in terms of wealth, in terms of potential wealth. People can't figure out how much he has put away while being president, but estimates range from $20 billion to hundreds of billions of dollars.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

So there's Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, and a few others.

[Fred Wertheimer]

You have dictatorships all over the world where the leaders make sure that they become very wealthy in their job. It just has never existed like this in our country until now.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

David Kirkpatrick, who has done all the accounting on just how much Trump and his family have profited, he's not done. He's still keeping track and will keep updating the number.

[Ayesha Roscoe]

When we spoke to him four months after his magazine article came out, that number had already gone up by about half a billion dollars.

That was hosts Sarah Gonzalez and mary childs of NPR's Planet Money. This episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Andrew Mambo. The original Planet Money episode was produced by James Sneed. It was edited by Jess Jiang and fact checked by Ciara Juarez. Robert Rodriguez engineered it. The executive producer of Planet Money is Alex Goldmark. The Sunday Story team also includes Justine Yan, Jenny Schmidt and Liana Simstrom. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. Up first. We'll be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

[Fred Wertheimer]

No, that's a problem. My phone is ringing.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Oh, your phone went off. Okay. Okay.

[Fred Wertheimer]

I'm doing an interview at npr. Call you back.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Was that Linda? Yes, it was. You should have put her on the phone real fast.

[Fred Wertheimer]

Well, I'll send her your regards, even though she doesn't know.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

As it should be when you're a superstar.

[Fred Wertheimer]

Okay.

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