Are you better off than you were a year ago?
President Donald Trump sure is. And so are his sons and cronies.
The New York Times estimates that Trump has made $1.4 billion in the past year, leveraging his name and power to extract payments from foreign governments, major tech companies, and ridiculous cryptocurrency deals.
None of this is a surprise. It’s been obvious since before he even won that he would use his power and position to benefit himself.
To mark the first year, I wanted to provide in one place the links to some of the reporting and commentary I’ve done on Trump-era cronyism:
Back during the 2024 campaign, Trump used the attention of being the GOP nominee to sell Bibles, sneakers, and coins. These were not campaign fundraisers. This was simply him working for himself instead of for his election.
After Trump won, he hired his chief of staff and attorney general from a lobbying firm run by his former attorney and major fundraiser, Brian Ballard. Then this Trump-cozy firm brought in clients affected by Trump’s announced policy moves. In Trump’s first full calendar quarter, Ballard set the record for the most revenue by any lobbying firm in history, in part because Trump’s attacks drove business toward them (and other Trump-cozy lobbying firms).
In office, Trump was an activist investor with taxpayer money, the quid-pro-quo president, and 100% transactional. “Government by deal,” I called it, as well as “venture socialism.”
One of his first proposals was a cronyism slush fund, but even without that fund, he fostered cronyism with his high but supremely malleable tariffs, which are tailor-made for lobbying.
Trump pocketed a $17 million legal settlement from CBS’s parent company, Paramount, while Paramount was counting on the Trump administration’s approval for a merger.
Trump accepted a plane from Qatar, which has lots of business before the U.S. government and the world’s governments. It’s worth recalling here what Trump said about Jeb Bush in 2015: “He’ll be a lousy negotiator. … He will owe everybody because you know all of this money that he’s raising. … Every person that gives that money to him has his eye on something.” The days when Trump couldn’t be bought are over, I suppose.
Then there’s all the crypto deals. Cryptocurrency is a digital asset that is famously backed by nothing. A new cryptocurrency, like the one Trump launched last year, is an entirely speculative thing. Trump owns a crypto-trading platform that makes money every time someone buys his Trump Coin.
So when Trump held a gala in May at Mar-a-Lago for the 220 biggest investors in Trump Coin, he was giving facetime to the businessmen and investors (mostly foreign) who were paying him for basically nothing besides that access.
Then there’s the old family business of hotels and golf courses. The president still owns that business. So while Trump runs the nation’s foreign affairs, including tariffs, trade deals, and wars, his sons line up business deals in places such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
I could go on. Here are some more headlines from this past year on Trump’s corrupting effect:
Let’s see what Year Two holds!