David Kirkpatrick: Trump's Self-Enrichment

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Speaker 46 Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Speaker 48 He is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

Speaker 49 Previously, he was New York Times Cairo Bureau Chief during the Arab Spring. He was author of Into the Hands of the Soldiers, Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East.

Speaker 51 His new piece in The New Yorker is the number,

Speaker 52 How Much Is Trump Pocketing Off the Presidency? Spoiler, a lot.

Speaker 53 It's David Kirkpachto.

Speaker 6 Welcome to the podcast, man.

Speaker 54 It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 23 Good to have you, man. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 49 I want to spend most of it on the Trump corruption graft and richification of his family, whatever I want to call it.

Speaker 24 But first,

Speaker 55 you've covered some high-stakes diplomacy in your years.

Speaker 49 I'm curious what your impressions were of

Speaker 58 the multilateral, I guess we'll call it, visit to the White House yesterday of all the European leaders, giving Zelensky some backup and some support to ensure that the meeting didn't go as ugly as the one did a few months ago.

Speaker 50 I guess they achieved that goal.

Speaker 62 It was a little bit more affable, but unsure what the progress was beyond that.

Speaker 60 What would you make of what we saw yesterday?

Speaker 54 I thought one of the most striking things was the two photographs the White House put out, where President Trump sat at the resolute desk, surrounded by the European leaders like pupils before a teacher.

Speaker 54 At the end of the day, looking at the statements coming out of Moscow and out of Washington as of this morning, I think ultimately not that much has changed.

Speaker 54 It seems like the Europeans showed up with a mind to flatter Trump. Those pictures suggest that was successful.

Speaker 54 And they cagely focused on the question of security guarantees, which is the way to pretty much annul

Speaker 54 what President Trump and Putin talked about in Alaska.

Speaker 48 I did enjoy from the picture that they put out, the one that you're referencing, J.D.

Speaker 68 Vance is kind of in the cut couch in the background there.

Speaker 25 So he was not able to create as much trouble as he did last time.

Speaker 66 But look, I felt better about the meetings yesterday.

Speaker 59 The range of outcomes yesterday was on the good side, was, you know, Trump is susceptible to flattery, as you mentioned.

Speaker 60 You know, Trump is susceptible to kind of being persuaded by the last person he listened to. And maybe the Europeans and Zelensky could succeed with that.

Speaker 52 That'd be like kind of the best outcome, not like a permanent change, but at least, you know, a buying of time.

Speaker 25 The worst case outcome would have been essentially something like what we saw back in February with Trump Trump lecturing them.

Speaker 71 It felt like we got towards the better end of that.

Speaker 60 But again, like when you then see this morning, Trump on Fox, what you mentioned, he keeps talking about how good his relationship with Putin is.

Speaker 72 He talks about how Ukraine shouldn't have.

Speaker 73 gotten involved in this war, like it was their choice.

Speaker 60 You know, he talks about how he respects Putin so much he had to take the call with him privately.

Speaker 75 So I don't know.

Speaker 52 The interview with Fox this morning did not leave me a lot of hope that there was permanent progress in sort of realigning Trump towards the Ukrainian perspective.

Speaker 54 Yeah, but I think coming out of Trump right now is that the U.S. will have some role in security guarantees, that European forces, NATO members, will be on the ground.

Speaker 54 And coming out of Russia is that's a non-starter. Right.
You know, because if NATO forces in Ukraine are attacked by Russia, the U.S. is involved.
So that's, you know, kind of transitive property.

Speaker 54 That's a U.S. security guarantee.
I think that substantially undoes whatever was discussed in Alaska, personally, but we'll see.

Speaker 41 Yeah, hopefully.

Speaker 21 That's true.

Speaker 46 That was my whole issue coming out of Alaska.

Speaker 81 It's right, like the crux of this is essentially Putin doesn't want the so-called root causes, which weren't the real root causes. Like he doesn't want NATO on his doorstep.

Speaker 74 So instead, we're just going to do Article 5 by another name.

Speaker 75 Like that, I don't know.

Speaker 58 That just never really seemed workable to me.

Speaker 76 But as you said, we'll see. We'll see how it shakes out.

Speaker 3 I wanted to also just pick your brain on

Speaker 25 both Trump and J.D.

Speaker 69 Vance have given speeches to this effect, right?

Speaker 72 Which was this pivot from

Speaker 81 the naive democracy promotion of the past presidents in the Middle East towards more of a real politique.

Speaker 68 Some of us might call it more of a kleptocratic alliance in the Middle East, depending on how you want to look at it.

Speaker 74 And you covered this stuff on the front lines.

Speaker 79 I'm just curious, before we get into kind of the Trump business deal side of it, like what you make of the political realignment there in the Middle East and what the impact might be and how things have changed since you were, since you were in Egypt.

Speaker 54 You mean as far as the U.S. presence in the Middle East or as far as

Speaker 14 I guess just like the power dynamics, right?

Speaker 55 Like, I mean, we'd have changed from, you know, we had this Arab Spring moment where, you know, there felt like there was some opportunity.

Speaker 82 The U.S.

Speaker 60 is trying to kind of balance interests and values.

Speaker 34 And like that is kind of passed.

Speaker 60 That is essentially done, right?

Speaker 53 And now we've moved to this moment where a lot of the people you covered, like the autocrats, have now consolidated power.

Speaker 52 You know, maybe some of the more Muslim brotherhoods, some of the terrorist groups have lost a little bit of power.

Speaker 86 I guess I don't know.

Speaker 70 I'm just kind of curious to pick your brain on what you think about the landscape there.

Speaker 54 I think history will have to judge whether what we're seeing now is a change in policy or a more candid policy. You know, even during the period when...

Speaker 54 which probably reached a peak during the Obama administration and the Arab Spring, when the U.S.

Speaker 54 government was rigorously, with its rhetoric, rhetoric promoting democracy and the transition to democracy, that was always in tension with its simultaneous alliance with many of the authoritarians around the region.

Speaker 54 You know, the U.S. is comfortable with the status quo.

Speaker 54 It's an American-backed order across the Middle East. And to a certain extent, that's been restored.

Speaker 54 In a way, I don't think there's been that much change under Trump. You know, the U.S.
was close to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates under Obama, and they still are.

Speaker 55 Maybe the

Speaker 81 leaders are maybe looking over their shoulders a little bit less.

Speaker 8 I guess.

Speaker 80 I don't know.

Speaker 76 I feel like NBS and CC and that crowd have really

Speaker 78 have a stranglehold on power in a way that feels maybe that's wrong.

Speaker 60 I guess we saw what happened to Assad.

Speaker 52 These things can change very quickly.

Speaker 63 But,

Speaker 87 you know, maybe that might be one difference.

Speaker 54 Yeah.

Speaker 54 The one thing I would say is we all said said that in 2010 you know when i first arrived in cairo nobody thought the arab spring was coming and but at the same time if you're a strong man you're paranoid yeah right those guys are always looking over their shoulder if you rule with no legitimacy besides uh coercion and force your life is an anxious one and it will always be So let's talk about maybe the thing that has changed because I'm pretty sure that there aren't any Obama golf courses in Oman that I'm aware of or any direct direct financial dealings.

Speaker 60 Maybe not. I don't know who's backing the Netflix deal, so you never know, I guess.

Speaker 11 But the direct business relationship obviously has changed.

Speaker 74 And the article that you wrote just basically tried to gather up all of the different Trump

Speaker 69 interminglings of the presidency and business and add them up.

Speaker 85 A lot of the stuff is happening in the Middle East.

Speaker 83 But maybe just at the biggest picture first,

Speaker 85 where is all of the money that is going into Trump's coffers coming from?

Speaker 54 You know, all over the place. So I did an article which basically asked two questions.

Speaker 54 You know, of all of the businesses or income streams flowing into the Trump family coffers, which ones are really related to the presidency?

Speaker 54 Which ones are monetizing the presidency in one way or another? And then of those, can we put a dollar on it, right? What's the best estimate we can come up with for how much he's got?

Speaker 54 in terms of money in the bank. You know, maybe it's a commitment over the next 10 or 30 years.
Maybe it's payments he's already received. And I came up to $3.4 billion, which is a lot of money.

Speaker 54 But now in that, you have some real estate deals, which may involve direct or indirect participation by a foreign government, especially in the Middle East, also in Vietnam. But you also have

Speaker 54 money he's making off his own supporters.

Speaker 54 You know, the Trump organization is not above selling campaign-like merchandise on their own account, you know, to make 50 bucks off of a hat or, you know, 40 bucks off a pair of flip-flops that buyers might actually think is supporting the MAGA candidates and its movement, but is in fact just enriching Donald Trump.

Speaker 54 And then you get over into the crypto side, where domestically they've branched out of real estate, the family, the Trump family, and they've gone into crypto on a whole variety of different fronts at a blistering pace.

Speaker 54 Ultimately, that is the biggest source of the 3.4 billion that I came up with. The majority of that comes from crypto-related enterprises.

Speaker 63 It looks like what you sort of came up with.

Speaker 60 You're sort of estimating, you're gathering various things, making judgment calls, but about 2.5 billion essentially of the 3.5 billion give or take was coming from crypto.

Speaker 83 So like a huge nut of it.

Speaker 34 Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 54 I don't have the figure exactly in front of me, but that sounds about right.

Speaker 80 So I want to get into the details on the crypto scenes, but just again at the kind of macro, because I think it's hard for people to like wrap their heads around this.

Speaker 60 I was doing a like a podcast with one of these

Speaker 34 kind of

Speaker 69 anti-establishment kind of podcasts, right?

Speaker 60 People that like want to be like, everybody's corrupt, everything's corrupt.

Speaker 81 And

Speaker 50 they have some points on various things, but it was hard for them to wrap their heads around what like the scale of the Trump corruption, right?

Speaker 70 And I was, you know, they were bringing up things from the Clinton Foundation and other things that like there were legitimate concerns about, but like the scale is just so much larger compared to what we've seen in the past.

Speaker 71 So I just talk about that at the biggest level.

Speaker 74 And like, what is the difference we've seen both in this administration compared to others, but also even compared to the Trump first term?

Speaker 54 So a couple of things. You know, corruption is your word.
It's not mine. Okay.

Speaker 54 I went out of my way not to use the word corruption here because I don't have evidence and I don't think anybody has evidence of a quid pro quo, right?

Speaker 54 Nobody yet has an example of Trump, you know, shaking hands or signing a piece of paper to sell an official act in exchange for a person.

Speaker 50 I mean, enriching yourself

Speaker 60 off your public service is corruption, even if it doesn't change what your policies are, right?

Speaker 34 No?

Speaker 61 Wouldn't we call it that?

Speaker 54 I wouldn't. I mean, I would say it's undignified.
And I would certainly say that

Speaker 54 if the President of the United States appears to be in a big, big, big hurry to make as much money for his personal accounts as possible, that's going to raise some questions, right?

Speaker 54 If you're a foreign government thinking, should I do business with the Trump organization? Might that win me a personal favor, an official act out of the White House?

Speaker 54 If the Trump family is desperate to make money and broadcasting that around the world, yeah, it says, okay, I'm probably going to get something for this. Yeah, that's definitely a concern.

Speaker 54 But let's be careful. You know, just because it seems plausible doesn't mean we should just assume that corruption is taking place.

Speaker 9 Sure.

Speaker 48 I'll give my bipartisan bona fides in a different way.

Speaker 62 I'd call it the Clintons were doing with the Clinton Global Initiative corruption, too.

Speaker 61 I think that's a fair word to you.

Speaker 52 And I don't necessarily think they were changing their policies based on it.

Speaker 92 It's just like, you know, it's a question about whether whether you think that public officials should act that way or not.

Speaker 54 And I was supposed to get to that. That's right.
I mean, it's interesting. The response I've gotten from the right is 100% whataboutism.
And, you know, point well taken.

Speaker 54 Like, definitely, members of the Biden family have been profiting off of his position as a public official for a long time.

Speaker 54 Traditionally,

Speaker 54 presidents have cashed in on their office after they leave it. And I'm going to call that within the American system fair game.

Speaker 54 When I was doing my tally, Trump and Melania, I think they made 10 million, a little bit more than that, on book deals between their stints in the White House.

Speaker 54 I did not count that because they all do that, right? That's we expect the president to cash in in a book deal after they leave office. But the afterpart there makes a big difference, right?

Speaker 54 That Trump and his family are making this money while he has his hands on the levers of power. And that's that's novel.
And of course, as you suggested, the scale is different, right?

Speaker 54 So Hunter Biden may have been making money off of the fact that his father was president. I do think the market for his artwork has dried up substantially since his father left the White House.

Speaker 70 So it might be on the way back up now that he's doing, you know, wheels off podcast interviews.

Speaker 48 He might find a new marketplace.

Speaker 54 We'll see. Have you found podcasting to be that lucrative?

Speaker 46 Well, I'm doing okay. You know, I'm doing okay.

Speaker 48 I had to see Oasis this summer, but no, nobody's buying my art, I guess.

Speaker 54 Yeah. But again, the scale is different.
The scale is different. And the degree of participation by the president himself.
I mean, he, you know,

Speaker 54 the most dramatic example is he not only, as president, began selling this meme coin, right, a bit of crypto that doesn't represent anything except for a kind of novelty associated with Trump, he held a big dinner while president for people who had bought his meme coin.

Speaker 54 And he stood behind a lectern with the White House seal on it, and he arrived and left in Marine 1. I mean, that felt like a presidential appearance to promote, you know, his personal product.

Speaker 53 Just talk about like the scale compared to that other stuff and compared to the first term.

Speaker 83 Or maybe it's even just more fair just to talk about it as the scale of what he's doing now compared to the first term.

Speaker 54 Yeah, I mean, I haven't done the math on what Hunter Biden made. So, right, not a legit comparison, but it's definitely an order of magnitude.
But right, first term.

Speaker 54 You know, looking back, I do feel like a lot of the allegations from the Democrats and the left during the first term were insubstantial.

Speaker 54 You know, the focus then was on the Trump hotel in Washington and was the president using that to sell influence or to make money off of the White House.

Speaker 54 In retrospect, it turns out that the fact that it was his hotel and he was the president drove away probably as many people as it brought in.

Speaker 54 You know, the hotel lost money during his four years, in each of his four years in the White House, and it's done better as a Waldov Astoria, you know, under Biden and now under Trump.

Speaker 54 So that I think voters were right to ignore that. You know, and a lot of the concerns.

Speaker 69 We did make Jimmy Carter sell his peanut farm.

Speaker 54 Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm, and God bless him. I think nobody's going to fault him for that.
That is a gesture of integrity.

Speaker 54 But yeah, in the comparison we're talking about first term, second term for Trump, there was nothing like this in the first term.

Speaker 54 I mean, the acceleration in money making happened shortly after he left the White House the first time when Jared Kushner opened his private equity shop and began soliciting soliciting money from Saudi Arabia, and it's taken off since then.

Speaker 96 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 99 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 102 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 105 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 99 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 104 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 107 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 15 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 21 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust.

Speaker 27 MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 30 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

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Speaker 60 So while we're doing semantics, before I get into some of the details of some of these deals,

Speaker 60 a couple of these things I didn't, you know, I'm obsessed with this stuff and I had missed a couple of them.

Speaker 25 But on our semantic discussion, this question of what are we calling this?

Speaker 71 You cover this a little bit in the article, oligarchy or kleptocracy.

Speaker 60 You know, you talked to some experts who are saying it's not yet oligarchy or kleptocracy as bad as Putin or Najib Razik, the former prime minister of Malaysia, who stole billions of dollars from the country while also managing to avoid assassination at the hands of Zoolander.

Speaker 46 So like that, like level of whatever kleptocracy, we haven't quite reached.

Speaker 48 What are we calling it, though?

Speaker 9 Because it is different.

Speaker 54 It's substantively different from what you know we traditionally see in western democracies yeah i'm going to use the word self-enrichment you know that i think is is safe or monetizing it's apples and oranges with those other countries right there's a lot of countries around there where the the federal budget is not disclosed where the strong man can just embezzle basically you know millions hundreds of millions of dollars and in some ways those strong men live a more dignified life right they don't have to sell baseball hats to make money they don't have to hawk meme coins but we're not in that world.

Speaker 54 We're still in a rule of law situation where the president has to do things that are extraordinary compared to his predecessors to try to make money on the side. And it still raises some eyebrows.

Speaker 54 But I think, yeah, I think personal enrichment is definitely a safe term. And it's terra incognita because he's a real innovator in this area.

Speaker 6 I think that's right.

Speaker 91 I actually think that's a good point, actually, right?

Speaker 108 Where it's like, sometimes you get into the political science of it all, and it's like, well, we've got to, you know, figure out a term that like puts him in context with what we've seen in other leaders around the world.

Speaker 48 But he is,

Speaker 83 this is just different. Like he's different.

Speaker 79 Like this, he might be a first of his kind.

Speaker 77 I hate to ever give him compliments on anything, but I think that that's fair, that this is, that there is some,

Speaker 47 I don't know, maybe entrepreneurial spirit in the self-enrichment of public office from the Trumps, something we haven't seen.

Speaker 71 The properties.

Speaker 52 So again, in some of the comparisons, you imagine how this story would look if it was a Democrat. The Vietnam story stands out to me because this is one that I hadn't focused that much on.

Speaker 52 In September of 2024, the General Secretary of Vietnam's ruling Communist Party visited New York and dispatched a central committee member to wrap up a Trump resort deal that turned out to be the biggest Trump resort deal

Speaker 85 he's ever done. So, the Vietnam Communist Party was like closing the deal on this

Speaker 34 with our president.

Speaker 18 That's noteworthy, I think.

Speaker 54 Yeah, it is noteworthy. And the New York Times, excellent reporting, the New York Times unearthed a letter showing that the Vietnamese government is treating this project with

Speaker 54 special care because he's the president. They're expediting it.
They're pushing aside some local rules and customary regulations to make it happen as fast as possible.

Speaker 52 Abundance communism.

Speaker 109 They're cutting out the rest of the country.

Speaker 56 Abundance communism.

Speaker 15 In Vietnam.

Speaker 54 You know, you say that it's the biggest, I think, in terms of square footage for sure. We're talking about three times the size of Central Park, 54 holes of golf.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 54 The project that he's doing with a Saudi company in Oman might ultimately be

Speaker 54 a bigger thing in dollars. Coming up with a guess, an estimate, a credible estimate, a minimum for how much money he's going to make off that Vietnam thing was very difficult for me.

Speaker 54 And that's the place actually where I think my estimate is the most likely

Speaker 64 too low.

Speaker 50 So to your point, you're kind of back to this question on quote quote,

Speaker 60 yes or no.

Speaker 56 Like, part of the reason why it's hard to determine this is just like the nature of trump and he's just so just haphazard in the way that he does a lot of the stuff but like you know you look at vietnam for example

Speaker 82 and the tariff negotiations right like on the one hand you can look at that and say well this obviously wasn't a quid pro quo like trump they tried to butter up trump and he got money and he you know took it bag and didn't give him anything because they still have a 20 tariff on them which is bad for an export company that's one way to look at it another way to look at it is like well it's a lower tariff than some of the other Southeast Asia countries that do these kind of

Speaker 85 exporting to the United States.

Speaker 36 So

Speaker 52 maybe it would have been worse for them if they hadn't done the deal.

Speaker 73 You know, maybe they'd be looking at the India tariff or the China tariff level.

Speaker 52 Did you kind of navigate that at all when you're doing this article or just sort of wanted to put the facts out there and just see and that everybody can make a choice for themselves?

Speaker 54 I'm definitely in the put the facts out there and let people make a choice for themselves, Camp. I did try to figure out how that went down, right?

Speaker 54 Is this an example where Vietnam got something or didn't? And ultimately, I came to the conclusion that we don't know yet. Right?

Speaker 54 Because if you look at what happened, Trump announced this deal with Vietnam, which looked some good, some bad, kind of half empty, half full, 20%, not 50% or whatever.

Speaker 54 And then Vietnam said, oh, no, no, no, there's no deal yet. We're still negotiating.
No customary trade deal. You know, lots of pages, plenty of lawyers on both sides.

Speaker 54 Nothing like that has happened yet. So we don't actually know what the tariffs on Vietnam are going to end up like.

Speaker 60 So outside of Vietnam, just on those other kind of deals in the Middle East, I just see other stuff that's just wild, like as far as the scale of the money.

Speaker 52 So you have it estimated here as about $105 million, essentially, for these

Speaker 85 kind of bucket in these other.

Speaker 72 essentially real estate deals, right?

Speaker 85 You have Muscat in the Middle East.

Speaker 85 You have the one that you mentioned, Oman, Dubai.

Speaker 9 I mean, again, this is a huge change from the first term.

Speaker 54 Yeah, totally. So in the first term, the Trump family said that voluntarily the Trump organization was not going to do any deals abroad at all to avoid the appearance of a possible payoff.

Speaker 54 Trump himself said he didn't like the way that looked. Now the family has said that's out the window, right? Basically, Don Jr.
has said, look.

Speaker 54 Even though we exercise that restraint, people kept criticizing us for profiteering anyway.

Speaker 64 So we're not going to to hold back.

Speaker 54 We're not going to lock ourselves in the proverbial padded room, as he said it. But you know what? The truth is they've gone even a step further.

Speaker 54 Not only are they doing deals abroad, they're doing deals with foreign governments, right? They're doing deals connected to the government itself, not even a private entity. Now,

Speaker 54 having covered the Persian Gulf a bit, my own view is that there aren't really

Speaker 54 meaningful differences between a big private tycoon in the Persian Gulf and the ruler of that country country because they're so dependent on the rulers.

Speaker 54 But in some places, like in some of their crypto enterprises, World Liberty Financial, a Trump family crypto operation,

Speaker 54 did a big deal with a company owned by the rulers of the United Arab Emirates without, you know, no pretense of independence.

Speaker 62 And that's another thing that is different.

Speaker 55 We can just say, as we, again, I'm just trying to make these things as simple for when people are talking in other voices.

Speaker 46 Because your point about the whataboutism,

Speaker 52 this has not been a safe space for Hunter Biden's graft on my show.

Speaker 75 Like, there have been a lot of

Speaker 70 past politicians that have made money off access.

Speaker 73 But again, this is something that is just meaningfully different than hasn't happened before.

Speaker 78 Like, it's not as if we have had other presidents that had real estate deals that they were doing with dictators in the Middle East.

Speaker 54 The thing that's so remarkable about the arc of Trump's career is that as he moves from builder to television personality to political entrepreneur, he's selling goods which are less and less substantial, right?

Speaker 54 So he starts out building buildings and selling buildings, renting space, and then he moves on to just licensing his name, right?

Speaker 54 Once he's apprentice, television famous, then he can just sell licensing deals, you know, use his name to sell steaks or pizza or mattresses or shirts or put his name on a hotel that someone else owns and runs.

Speaker 69 I'm just waiting for my first licensing deal.

Speaker 80 That sounds nice.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 54 You're right.

Speaker 54 It's almost free money, as one of his sons put it in testimony. And now he's selling even less.

Speaker 54 I mean, there's a variety of deals there where the Trumps are just getting paid, it seems like, you know, for being the Trumps.

Speaker 96 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 99 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 102 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 94 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 99 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 104 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 107 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 6 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to.

Speaker 7 and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 15 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 23 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 30 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 35 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 38 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 41 Learn more at ms.now.

Speaker 60 The crypto is the most direct example of this.

Speaker 87 And I guess now it's the crypto is now interwoven with Trump Truth Social and the Trump media stuff too, in a way.

Speaker 34 As I was going through all of this, I guess I think the best way to do it to talk about with folks is you break it up into kind of five separate elements

Speaker 81 when it comes to the crypto.

Speaker 34 And it had a couple of them that I wasn't really

Speaker 110 like that weren't really even on my radar.

Speaker 78 And you had the Trump kind of meme coin that everybody is

Speaker 78 very aware of that he launched, I guess, right before he went into the presidency.

Speaker 70 We already mentioned there, the

Speaker 60 World Liberty Financial.

Speaker 108 These things all have very great names.

Speaker 32 The World Liberty Financial.

Speaker 85 And then you had those NFTs that they were doing for a while, where it was like the Trump, which is like the digital baseball cards.

Speaker 55 And then you had another thing that I didn't even realize he was doing, which was the American Bitcoin.

Speaker 110 I'm still not even 100% sure what that is, but yeah, that's included in here.

Speaker 54 Yeah, and that's his sons. Trump is all over the website for World Liberty Financial, and the meme coin and the NFT are actually clearly the president.

Speaker 54 American Bitcoin is his sons, is Don and Eric, with less involvement by their father. Of course, you know, everyone knows they have the same last name.

Speaker 86 So you got the meme coin, the NFT,

Speaker 54 the World Liberty Financial, what his sons are doing with Bitcoin, and then the Trump media now is like managing cryptocurrency etfs essentially which are like right that is the biggest nut on here you have that as estimated gain of 1.3 billion yeah that's worth that's worth talking about i mean i honestly so when i report started reporting this you know in march or april they were by my estimates a billion dollars poorer i mean that's how fast it's coming in and a lot of that is this one transaction at Trump media and technology.

Speaker 54 Now, maybe some people will disagree with my reasoning, but let me lay it out here. Sure.
So Trump media media and technology, which owns Truth Social,

Speaker 54 is effectively a meme stock, right?

Speaker 54 Nobody pretends that Truth Social has a path to ever being profitable, and yet the Trump media and technology company stock trades at a very hard justify inflated price.

Speaker 54 It goes up and down basically based on how people feel, how Trump supporters feel about President Trump. So that means among other things that he can't really sell his shares, right?

Speaker 54 If he starts to unload, then that's going to go through the floor because all you know, all they're selling is association with Trump.

Speaker 54 So, some people have said, Well, look, he's got this many shares in Trump Media and Technology. I'm going to count that as X billion dollars.
I did not do that.

Speaker 54 I'm going to consider that illiquid assets that he can't ever really touch.

Speaker 8 But

Speaker 54 around June, Trump Media and Technology Group did something different, which is they effectively sold their meme stock at its inflated prices, and they used the proceeds to stockpile cash and to buy Bitcoin.

Speaker 54 Now, say what you will about Bitcoin. You might say, well, that's, you know,

Speaker 54 that goes up and down. You can't really count on the price, but it's liquid, right? They bought $2.4 billion of Bitcoin.
And they did it without significantly moving the market up or down.

Speaker 54 So they could sell that $2.4 billion of Bitcoin. And they've stockpiled maybe nearly 800 million dollars of cash.

Speaker 14 With whose money did they buy all that Bitcoin?

Speaker 54 So they did a private placement of stock to 50 different investors. And

Speaker 54 with the money they got from selling those shares of stock, they went and they bought Bitcoin. Now those investors can turn around and sell that.
So I'm a big investor.

Speaker 54 I'm going to say, okay, all right, Trump Media Technology Group here, you can have some of my money. In exchange, give me some of those shares.

Speaker 54 I see that they trade at this crazy price that just reflects Trump's popularity. But since I'm not Trump, I can sell those.
So I can turn around tomorrow and monetize this stake that I've just gotten.

Speaker 54 And that's fine by me. So you've got some money.
I've got some money.

Speaker 56 Who are the 50 people?

Speaker 89 Do we know who they are?

Speaker 54 You know, I am not sure that those 50 investors have been listed. But the company said 50 investors in their disclosure.

Speaker 91 Why couldn't they have just bought the Bitcoin themselves?

Speaker 49 I just, again, trying to understand how this is not corruption, right?

Speaker 108 Like if you're a rich person who wants a stake in a cryptocurrency, you could just go buy Bitcoin or Ethereum or anything.

Speaker 82 Why would you use a Trump Media middleman to do this?

Speaker 54 But those people were buying shares in Trump Media and Technology Group. So Trump Media Technology Group is now saying to the world, But Trump Media Technology Group is worth nothing.

Speaker 54 Well, Truth Social is worth nothing. But Trump Media Technology Group is now worth something because they've got it.

Speaker 88 Because it bought Bitcoin, though.

Speaker 49 Not because it invented something or because it says its own product, because it bought other products.

Speaker 88 They could have just bought those products themselves.

Speaker 57 Why go through the Trump middleman?

Speaker 56 Well, media company middleman.

Speaker 54 Now you're getting into a broader phenomenon. This is happening across the stock market right now.
There's a trend for publicly traded companies to stockpile crypto.

Speaker 12 But why do it through Trump?

Speaker 14 That's my point. It's a broader phenomenon.
They could do it.

Speaker 48 My brother's a big crypto guy.

Speaker 31 He is in an ETF where it's like Ethereum 3X or whatever.

Speaker 62 And like my friends, so there are a million places

Speaker 46 you could buy crypto ETFs.

Speaker 82 Why would you buy it through Devin Nunes and Trump's media company?

Speaker 54 I would say you are a bear about Trump Media and Technology. And that is a perfectly fine argument.

Speaker 54 What I'm saying is the 50 large investors or institutions that did this transaction where they gave cash in exchange for new shares, they may not even be thinking this is a good way to own Bitcoin.

Speaker 54 They might just be thinking, I can flip these, right? I can flip these shares and then I come out ahead.

Speaker 54 So from the Trump media technology perspective, what they've done is this kind of financial alchemy where they've turned their meme stock, which did not have a real value, into an actual liquid asset, cash and Bitcoin.

Speaker 49 I'm sorry.

Speaker 60 I still don't understand why this has more value than Hunter's art.

Speaker 49 This is Hunter's art.

Speaker 25 It's just a digital, it's just a fancy version of Hunter's Art.

Speaker 61 It's a digital coin.

Speaker 62 These guys aren't doing anything.

Speaker 24 They have no product, and it's just Hunter's art, but in crypto.

Speaker 54 That's a conversation that you can have with the people who are buying shares in Trump, media, and technology.

Speaker 109 But we can't, I can't because we don't know who they are.

Speaker 8 Are they foreign?

Speaker 39 Are they American? It's a good question. We don't know.

Speaker 54 We don't know. That's a good question.

Speaker 109 That's insane. This is insane, right, David?

Speaker 6 I mean, were you not looking at this going, like, what in the fuck, like, who, what in the fuck is happening?

Speaker 6 Where is this money coming from?

Speaker 54 I did scratch my head because they've changed something. You know, serious investors all write off Trump, media, and technology.
The buyers are mostly retail investors who just like Trump.

Speaker 54 And to turn that insubstantial bubblish meme stock into an actual asset, something that they could feasibly sell, is a neat trick. And that's what they've done.

Speaker 54 So I went and said, okay, after selling all these new shares, Trump's stake in the company is diluted to about 42%.

Speaker 54 So he indirectly owns 42% of a stockpile of Bitcoin and cash that is about $3.1 billion.

Speaker 61 And we're going to create a federal crypto reserve.

Speaker 52 We're going to create a federal Bitcoin reserve.

Speaker 74 He's got 42% of that stockpile.

Speaker 34 That seems interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 8 I'm not for a federal Bitcoin reserve. I don't know.

Speaker 13 I've been pushing for a federal Mardi Gras bead reserve because I think that I've got a lot of those, and I think that that would be good.

Speaker 52 And I feel like we might want to keep them in case we get into an emergency.

Speaker 73 What if there's a hurricane and we don't have beads for Mardi Gras?

Speaker 54 I think you should publicize that strategy some more and see if you can get others to stick to

Speaker 54 fairness to Trump. The Bitcoin reserve that they're talking about right now, the crypto reserve, they're just talking about holding crypto assets that they have seized through various legal actions.

Speaker 54 Right now, there's no plan to take U.S. tax dollars and go out on the open market and buy crypto.

Speaker 54 Maybe that'll happen someday, but I think that would be quite controversial.

Speaker 96 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 99 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 102 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 105 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 99 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 104 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 107 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 15 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 23 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 29 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 35 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 38 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 41 Learn more at MS.now.

Speaker 62 I want to talk about one of the other crypto deals, the stable coin, because that one seems like the normal one.

Speaker 34 Unlike this, this is real, right?

Speaker 73 It's stable. It's right there in the name.

Speaker 48 It's back to the U.S. dollar.

Speaker 24 So they start a stable coin.

Speaker 62 This was World Liberty Financial.

Speaker 6 That's right.

Speaker 25 Yeah, they start a stablecoin, stable

Speaker 74 put that out into the marketplace.

Speaker 80 A lot of stable coins out there.

Speaker 67 Again, for people who are not familiar with this, this is going out in their head, over their head.

Speaker 74 There are a bunch of options.

Speaker 52 You could invest in several different stablecoins on Coinbase or other platforms.

Speaker 57 Trump has one.

Speaker 48 He makes a stablecoin deal, which you referenced earlier with the UAE.

Speaker 57 And then I guess the group that puts the money into that stable coin is called Binance.

Speaker 25 They've got 90%.

Speaker 25 Is that in your article?

Speaker 52 90% of the World Liberty stablecoin

Speaker 108 investment came from Binance.

Speaker 54 Yeah, can I back up for a minute? I think we need to explain to people what a stablecoin is.

Speaker 56 Yeah, please.

Speaker 54 Because it's not really an investment. The stablecoin is like a surrogate currency.
Basically, you get some and it's supposed to stand for a dollar.

Speaker 54 You don't get interest on it. You don't make money on it.
It doesn't appreciate. It's not like Bitcoin.
It's just a dollar.

Speaker 24 So why would you want it instead of a dollar?

Speaker 54 Well, you can move it around digitally and maybe that's attractive to you. It's an easier way to pass things around.
Of course, maybe you're criminal. Maybe you're interested in money laundering.

Speaker 54 Maybe you're committing some crimes. It also can be very appealing in that way.

Speaker 62 So a non-crime reason to have a stablecoin instead of a dollar would be what?

Speaker 54 Some people think it's pretty neat that you can transfer it very quickly from one digital wallet to another. They think it's a good way to make transactions.

Speaker 54 That would be the argument.

Speaker 54 The seller of a stable coin, in this case, World Liberty Financial, which is substantially owned by the Trump family, says, okay, I'm going to give you a stablecoin for a dollar.

Speaker 54 While it's out there circulating, while you're passing it around like a kind of digital currency, I'm going to take that money and I'm going to invest it in short-term treasuries.

Speaker 54 I'm going to earn, you know, 4% a year on that money. So I've sold you a stable coin for a dollar.
I've got that dollar. And each year I'm making, you know, 4 cents on that dollar.

Speaker 54 In this transaction, World Liberty Financial, new entry into the market, right? They're selling. There's lots of other stablecoins out there.
They've got one.

Speaker 54 A company controlled by the rulers of the UAE says, we're going to be the first customer. We're going to buy $2 billion of your stablecoin, World Liberty Financial.

Speaker 54 And we're going to use it to buy a stake in a crypto exchange called Binance.

Speaker 54 So they take the $2 billion in stablecoin, they give the $2 billion to World Liberty Financial, and they move the stablecoin over to Binance.

Speaker 54 Now, Binance is a company with a checkered history that's been in trouble with U.S. law, now under monitoring by the SEC.

Speaker 48 And the owner of Binance was born in what country?

Speaker 54 I believe he's Canadian.

Speaker 91 China, actually. He was born in China.
But he's a Canadian current.

Speaker 56 He's a Canadian. He's born in China.
Let's not get it.

Speaker 62 Okay, well, he's a Chinese-Canadian citizen.

Speaker 54 I'm just saying. I'm not going to go too far in demonizing people of other people.

Speaker 34 I'm just saying where he's from.

Speaker 50 I'm just saying where he's from.

Speaker 68 A lot of money.

Speaker 63 It was a bunch of money that just went from over to a company run by a Chinese national.

Speaker 54 He's a Canadian.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 6 He's both.

Speaker 54 So, but just because somebody is from another country, you know, if he's a Canadian, he's a Canadian. Sure.

Speaker 54 So, but right, Binance has its own interests with the U.S. government because it's under, it's been, you know, it's been penalized, it's under this regulatory umbrella.

Speaker 54 The founder you're talking about is a felon, a convicted felon who did some time. He's now asking for a pardon.

Speaker 54 So, Binance, which received all this stable coin, you know, that the UAE bought from the Trump family company, they now control how long that stable goes unredeemed, how long World Liberty Financial can continue to earn that 4% a year on that $2 billion.

Speaker 54 So, they have some leverage over World Liberty Financial here. Are they going to redeem that while Trump is still president? No, I would bet they are not.
I would not do that.

Speaker 62 Is the SEC looking into this at all,

Speaker 54 to your knowledge? Under the current administration? No.

Speaker 54 I'm sure that a cynic like you will say, look, the Trumps are making money from crypto, and that's why the SEC has stopped

Speaker 54 its enforcement actions. There's some evidence that Trump just would have stopped all the SEC enforcement actions against crypto anyway, just because of campaign donations.

Speaker 86 Even if they weren't paying in billions?

Speaker 89 Sure, maybe. I don't know.

Speaker 92 SEC stopped enforcement actions and other things.

Speaker 60 It is notable, though, just to put that one more time.

Speaker 6 So this group creates a stable coin.

Speaker 48 There's a lot of stable coins in the market. They create one in a free marketplace.

Speaker 67 They'd be competing against other stable coins.

Speaker 70 The UAE decides to spend $2 billion on it and then transfers it over to a company that is under investigation and they're holding that money.

Speaker 52 So they paid essentially.

Speaker 54 Under monitoring, already convicted of crimes and undermining.

Speaker 34 Under monitoring. Okay, thank you.

Speaker 60 So they paid 90% of 2 billion, 1.8 billion or something.

Speaker 69 And on that, Trump's making 4%.

Speaker 54 So the 90% figure is if you look at the amount of World Liberty Financial stablecoin in circulation, according to Bloomberg, 90% of it is that $2 billion. So right now,

Speaker 54 their only customers...

Speaker 54 at least, you know, as of the most recent reporting, basically their only customers was the UAE buying stablecoin in order to give it to Binance in exchange for a stake.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I'm sure.

Speaker 81 I mean, I'm sure that if Kamala Harris had gotten 200,000 more votes, then the UAE and this

Speaker 75 Binance

Speaker 41 would really

Speaker 33 see the World Liberty stablecoin as

Speaker 48 the one that they would want to put the billions in.

Speaker 56 Honestly, I think that that's

Speaker 54 I can see the World Liberty business proposition, right? So stablecoins are, you know, they've gotten in trouble over the years.

Speaker 54 They're often used for money laundering or, you know, illicit activities. Some of the people who sold stablecoins have taken the money they got.

Speaker 54 And instead of putting in treasuries, they've invested in crypto policy schemes. They've done all kinds of things.

Speaker 54 So now comes a stable coin that basically says we're endorsed by the president of the United States. We're really credible.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 54 You can trust us.

Speaker 48 Well, no, I understand that proposition. What would the proposition be if

Speaker 71 he was just a retired former president, though,

Speaker 85 living in his beach?

Speaker 54 Yeah, that's why I'm going to count all that money as presidential profits. I don't think that would happen if he weren't in the White House.

Speaker 96 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 99 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 102 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 105 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 99 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 104 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 107 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 15 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 23 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 29 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 35 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 38 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 41 Learn more at MS.now.

Speaker 80 I want to ask you about one other guy.

Speaker 66 Also happens to be born in China, I should just mention, Justin's son.

Speaker 77 How much money do you think he's put into the Trump crypto operation?

Speaker 54 You might have it. I'm not sure I've got it in front of me right now.
I mean, he's bought shares.

Speaker 25 More than 50?

Speaker 29 Do you think more than 50 million?

Speaker 54 Yeah, I think that's probably right because he, and some of it is still ongoing.

Speaker 41 He bought 75 million in World Liberty tokens and signed on as a formal advisor.

Speaker 54 That's right, but they don't get all of that money. I think

Speaker 54 they get 75% of that, about 75% of that 75 million in payments for World Liberty Financial tokens. Now, those tokens are different than the stablecoin.

Speaker 54 Those tokens are just a kind of digital certificate that allows you to participate in the governance of World Liberty Financial. Those are not yet tradable, but soon will be.

Speaker 66 Interesting. And

Speaker 72 he was also investigated by the SEC, and that investigation seems to have gone away.

Speaker 54 They put that on hold to negotiate a resolution. He's also the number one holder of Trump's meme coin.

Speaker 54 He's a big booster.

Speaker 21 That's in addition to the $75 million?

Speaker 54 Yeah, that's in addition to the 75 million.

Speaker 87 Okay, I missed that.

Speaker 88 You know, a lot of coincidences out there, I would say.

Speaker 25 Things are turning up for Justin Sun.

Speaker 24 So he got a watch.

Speaker 68 You went to the, they had the dinner, Trump's golf course.

Speaker 54 That's right.

Speaker 39 Where he got a reward.

Speaker 60 You know, it's like a person that was under investigation by the U.S.

Speaker 67 government before Trump came in, then put in tens upon tens of millions into his crypto.

Speaker 89 gets to go to a dinner and like be honored at the dinner and the investigation is dropped.

Speaker 67 That's a decent decent summary of what's happening with Chinese national Justin Sun.

Speaker 54 I would add to that that you know after Trump just flew in for the dinner, right? So he flies in on Marine One, he talks for about half an hour and he hits the road.

Speaker 54 After he left over dessert, Justin Sun took the podium and gave a few remarks of his own as the biggest holder of the Trump meme coin.

Speaker 54 And among the things he said was, you know, I just love the Trump administration for everything it's done for crypto.

Speaker 54 Look at this. You know, he kind of implied this part, but it's well known that under Biden, Justin Son was afraid to come to the U.S.
for fear of arrest.

Speaker 54 And he said in his toast, look, if I can come to the U.S., everybody's going to come.

Speaker 8 Well, unless you're Venezuelan, I guess, probably.

Speaker 48 Unless you're a poor Venezuelan.

Speaker 34 If you're a wealthy crypto scammer, though, life is good.

Speaker 62 Well, it's an interesting situation we find ourselves in.

Speaker 46 David Kirkpatrick, any other big picture thoughts on

Speaker 73 what you,

Speaker 62 what you saw looking at all of Trump's anything I didn't ask you about that piqued your interest?

Speaker 54 No, I mean, we hit it. I mean, the two takeaways are, one, you know, this is not particularly dignified.
And to

Speaker 54 a certain extent, I think that people on both sides of the aisle would agree this demeans the office of the presidency.

Speaker 54 More people are worried about the question of corruption, about the question of quid pro quo.

Speaker 54 And they're, you know, nobody's got evidence yet of a specific quid pro quo, but we can say that that the velocity of this money making and the evident third.

Speaker 60 I mean, the Justin Sun evidence is pretty close.

Speaker 36 You know,

Speaker 56 he's here.

Speaker 25 He's here. He's queer.
He's Chinese.

Speaker 13 He's celebrating. He's getting free watches.

Speaker 109 And he wouldn't have been here otherwise.

Speaker 39 I'm not going to talk about his.

Speaker 88 I don't know.

Speaker 52 I think it's pretty safe to say that if Justin's son was, instead of somebody investing $70 million into his crypto, if he was somebody who was under investigation for, I don't know, narco-trafficking and

Speaker 79 he wanted to come into the country, probably wouldn't have been honored as much, maybe.

Speaker 54 On the contrary, I would say the Trump administration was on its way to roll back all the investigations into everybody in crypto before Justin's son invested a dollar.

Speaker 54 So yeah, the timing looks pretty fishy. You know, he puts up a bunch of money and then things go right for him and with the SEC.

Speaker 54 But on the other hand, he can make a strong case that Trump would have done that anyway.

Speaker 92 Yeah, I guess I'm just saying hypothetically, have Justin's son been like

Speaker 52 under a different type of investigation, he probably wouldn't have had such a a deal.

Speaker 48 So I guess your point is: maybe had he given nothing, he still,

Speaker 79 Trump might have let him off the hook for nothing, is possible, I guess, is true.

Speaker 54 Yeah, right, because there's a there's a policy change around crypto.

Speaker 64 And

Speaker 54 I won't bore your, your, uh, your listeners with the details.

Speaker 2 No, I'm obsessed with this.

Speaker 62 I'm obsessed.

Speaker 51 And I hope that you learn more because I got to tell you, I've been following this stuff pretty closely.

Speaker 67 And the scale of what is of the investment into the Trump media ETF is like

Speaker 36 is really astounding.

Speaker 60 And it's really, it's a lot of money.

Speaker 84 It's as much money as Trump was worth when he first got into the presidency.

Speaker 34 Just that.

Speaker 54 I'm going to correct you again because there's two things going on here at Trump Media Technology. One is what they're calling their Bitcoin treasury strategy, right?

Speaker 54 That's where they swap their meme stock for cash and Bitcoin. The other thing is a separate ETF business.

Speaker 54 So one of the regulatory changes that the Trump administration has brought about is that crypto companies have an easier time selling stocks, which will trade, they'll trade on the New York Stock Exchange, and they will track a basket of crypto.

Speaker 54 So, whereas before it was actually quite difficult for just ordinary investors to get into crypto, which is logistically a pain in the neck to try to buy and sell crypto, this makes it much, much easier for even you to buy some crypto, you know, just by going to your regular online brokerage.

Speaker 54 So, the Trump Media and Technology Group is going to get into that, selling these ETFs, which are these baskets.

Speaker 39 I want to make sure if I'm wrong about this, that's fine.

Speaker 15 But like there are other non-Trump crypto ETFs. Like you can just get on Robin.

Speaker 34 You can just get on Robin Hood. Tons.
Yeah.

Speaker 56 Everybody. But it's not like it was an innovation.

Speaker 60 It sounded like it was an innovation that was unique to them.

Speaker 54 No, they're jumping on the badwag. They're jumping on the bad one.

Speaker 39 But it's just a lot of people.

Speaker 87 It's just a staggering amount of money, though, in that, in that, that kind of bucket of goods underneath the Trump media, I guess, is all I'm saying.

Speaker 54 But

Speaker 54 they haven't actually sold their first ETF yet. Their Bitcoin treasury strategy is a little bit different.
They expect to make more money selling ETFs, which will track Bitcoin Ethereum.

Speaker 16 Got it.

Speaker 62 So the 1.3, right?

Speaker 13 So it's important to get this right.

Speaker 85 So the money that your estimated gain of 1.3 billion is based then on

Speaker 76 just the

Speaker 53 stockpile of Bitcoin.

Speaker 54 Right, exactly. That's the meme stock to Bitcoin and Cash.

Speaker 34 And that was the money that came from the 50 investors, or the 50 investors are this prospective ETF that's coming?

Speaker 52 Which one?

Speaker 54 No, that's the money from the 50 investors. They're still finalizing the deal to sell the ETFs, which they're doing with a company called Crypto.com, which I think also is Singapore-based.

Speaker 88 It's the 50 investors.

Speaker 60 Just to be 100% clear, I think this is very important to understand what this business deal was with these 50 anonymous investors that we don't know who they are, and they definitely aren't Chinese.

Speaker 80 We don't see any evidence of that.

Speaker 59 These 50 investors, they got

Speaker 3 the Trump stock.

Speaker 54 They got Trump Media and Technology Group stocked. She's stuck.

Speaker 60 Yeah, which was then traded into Bitcoin.

Speaker 52 Right.

Speaker 54 So the company bought Bitcoin. I would guess that I wouldn't get too hung up on those 50 investors.

Speaker 54 I'd say chances are they've already unloaded that.

Speaker 80 They flipped it, you think?

Speaker 54 Yeah, I bet they took their Trump Media Technology Group stock and they flipped it to unsuspecting Trump fans out there in the retail investor market.

Speaker 34 It'd be a good deal if that was true for them.

Speaker 19 But the Trump folks would know who they were, though.

Speaker 110 They didn't just put it anonymously onto the...

Speaker 54 Yeah, that's probably right.

Speaker 40 You would think.

Speaker 89 We don't know for sure, I guess, but you would think that they would know who they were.

Speaker 54 Yeah, the Wall Street firm that acted as their intermediary certainly would. Yeah.
And I think it's Kenner Fitzgerald.

Speaker 89 What a deal.

Speaker 41 Who worked there?

Speaker 6 Was that the Commerce Secretary?

Speaker 8 Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 109 The Commerce Secretary's firm and his son, is it the thing? Okay, well, all right, nothing to see here.

Speaker 80 I'm sure you won't have any more reporting on this to come, David Patrick.

Speaker 64 Thank you so much.

Speaker 11 It's an important story, and it's like really hard to follow.

Speaker 25 And despite the fact that I misinterpreted a couple of things, you make it quite easy to follow.

Speaker 80 So I encourage people to check it out in the New Yorker.

Speaker 52 I hope you'll come back sometime soon. I appreciate you very much.

Speaker 54 Thanks a lot.

Speaker 56 All right.

Speaker 80 Thanks to David Kirkpatrick for dealing with my sarcastic bullshit and educating us on all this money that's coming into the Trump, the various Trump organizations.

Speaker 51 Appreciate him very much for coming on the show. And tomorrow, we got one of my old buddies coming on.
You're going to like it.

Speaker 24 So we'll see you all then. Peace.

Speaker 56 He didn't do

Speaker 56 Didn't do it for me. Didn't do it for the love.
Didn't do it for the priest. Down on his knees.
I didn't do it for the sex. Didn't do it for the law.
Didn't do it for the I did it for the money.

Speaker 56 I did it for the money.

Speaker 56 You all did it for the money.

Speaker 56 We did it for the money.

Speaker 56 He didn't do it for the girl, didn't do it for the boy, didn't do it for the mother, father, sister, daughter.

Speaker 56 Didn't do it for the speed, didn't do it for the peace, didn't do it for the neon. Jesus,

Speaker 56 didn't do it for you, didn't do it cause it could, didn't do it for all the pain and suffering. Bye, bye, freestand.
Sharing out me do a dance. I didn't do it for a thing, man, other than the money.

Speaker 56 We get it for the money.

Speaker 56 You know, we get it for the money.

Speaker 56 Come on, we don't get it for the money.

Speaker 56 We did it for the money.

Speaker 56 We did it for the money.

Speaker 56 We all did it for the money.

Speaker 56 La la la la la la la la la.

Speaker 71 The Bullworth podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 42 This week, on a very special episode of Health Discovered, we take a closer look at MS.

Speaker 44 Every week in the U.S., approximately 200 people are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Speaker 45 I grew up with parents that were divorced, and so when it was time for me to find care for these symptoms, it kind of just fell on me.

Speaker 44 We'll also address the deeper challenges patients face, like health disparities that delay diagnosis in underserved communities.

Speaker 43 Listen to Health Discovered on America's number one podcast network, iHeart.

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