Trump has amassed staggering wealth in ‘most openly corrupt’ presidency
Donald Trump’s use of his second presidency to grow his personal fortune has alarmed legal and ethics experts and congressional Democrats as he has reaped an “unprecedented” $2.2bn in 2025 revenues by amassing big cryptocurrency holdings, benefiting from wealthy foreign interests, expanding his Truth Social business and more, while federal oversight of his actions has waned.
Trump last year raked in at least $1.4bn from his crypto ventures according to financial disclosure forms he filed in June. Simultaneously, about one million investors in a Trump crypto scheme suffered almost $3.8bn in losses as their volatile crypto holdings tanked in value.
Monetizing his presidency further this summer, Trump’s Truth Social media business is pushing a new scheme that offers wealthy buyers special early access to his posts for a fee of $100,000 a month, which top Democrats and public interest groups say pose serious conflict of interest and corruption issues.
This is some of why at least some Americans probably wish the Iran plot succeeded
Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/trump-presidency-revenue-wealthOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
137 replies
I mean . . . Yeah. We know. We’ve been watching it happen every goddamned day.
Thanks for the reminder Guardian. Maybe you could name and shame a little more? It’s not happening magically. People with names and institutions are doing this corruption, so. Map it out. kthx.
What the hell should they do?? Investigate and do journalism???
I’m a rebel, Dottie. A loner.
I don't make monkeys, I train them
Personally I want them to tell me how Hunter biden's penis caused all of this.
Can we find a penis that isn't also mired in corruption scandals?
I don't think the Republicans can.
We should have never elected his peen
Then his wang should have stopped running around promising affordability and "no new wars" for the past decade.
Truetruetrue
Blows my mind that Americans are still expecting others to help them out of this. The responsibility rests solely in the people's hands. Journalists have and are doing plenty. You don't need more, yet you demand it.
For who???
How do any remaining supporters justify this?
They don’t, they will just scream ‘fake news!’
They only trust the news that reports the things they want to hear.
I think there’s others that think the things he does for the country are good. And they take the good with the bad. Like lowering taxes (even though mostly the rich benefitted from that). Or whatever the fuck DOGE claimed to do. Or brain worm measles you.
They believe that everyone does it, and that Trump is just better at it.
That's why if you point out something corrupt they point to someone else who the think did something corrupt, instead of saying both should be investigated and punished if actually guilty.
Exactly: "Hunter Biden and his laptop! And Hunter sold art, can you even believe it? Hillary's emails! Bill Clinton gets speaking fees, how is that even possible?"
Lol remember when Hillary's emails was this years-long scandal? And we just rolled over Signalgate in a couple weeks.
Was it even weeks? Also, how many magaferbrainz even know about Signalgate, I wonder?
The double standard is criminal
Yeah the problem I have with it is I can't tell how many of them are just excusing peoples crimes because others commit crimes or excusing their crimes because they would do the same thing if they could, and point to others doing potentially other crimes as a "well anyone would do it" type of shit. ,
"Look at what a good businessman he is!"
"If it was actually illegal, he'd be in prison!"
"He's so savvy to not pay for things when payment is due. Why would you pay if you didn't have to?"
"He's made more money while president than any other president because he's the first non-politician president."
My personal favorite: "he donates his salary, that proves he isn't in it to make money. That's why we elected him!"
They don't have to.
They'll never hear about it, and will tell you it's fake when you show them
The response you will get is "This is nothing new! Bill Clinton was worse..."
He's GOD ,so 💩
Easy, if you weren't such a mark and smart, you wouldn't have this happen to you. They fully believe these actions are worth merit, even salvation.
But he DOESNT take a Salary!
-Free Thinking NOT GULLIBLE Republicans!
Just call them fucking stupid at this point. If you voted for a conman TWICE you're a fucking idiot
A lot went three times.
I mean it’s technically not a salary if you steal money.
I so want him and all of his family thrown into prison. It is all so brazenly corrupt.
Don't forget to take every last cent the family has. Literally leave them with nothing as punishment.
Agreed. Because they are not likely to serve full sentences; they should have to come out and live as paupers.
And then to die while in prison. He has to KNOW he lost. It’s not enough for him to just die. He needs to die in PRISON
I just want him to go away. Punished or not. Dead or alive. I don't care, as long as I never have to read about him doing any more atrocities.
And that $2.2B is just what he reported on his taxes--i.e. the technically legal income.
Well yes and also it doesn't include the money his family has made from deals made after he got office. It's on the order of 5bil+.
We could end this in a few weeks if we acted. Everyone wants to hold on to what little they have instead of losing it for a better future.
People will die. People have kids they need to raise. People have parents they need to take care of. If we burn the system down, all that is over. Your hopes of a good life in your lifetime end with revolution. You basically have to sacrifice an entire generation to burn this system down. Maybe we'll get there soon, but people are still hoping to make it to the other side in one piece.
Yeah, let's make our kids figure this out. It's not like they'll be kind of busy dealing with global warming and all those other nice challenges we've left them.
we sacrificed an entire generation stopping nazis before. we can do it again. they didn't sacrifice their lives for the rest of us years later to let these fascists rise up again. if they were still here, they'd be standing right up front, ready to do it again.
You're not wrong in a lot of ways, however that just means we're kicking the can down the road, and allowing the atrocities going on in our backyards to continue.
Feels irresponsible and lacks empathy to me.
I strongly disagree. My life is already pretty fucked up and doesn't seem like it'll be getting better without some massive political changes.
Yeah but we need a critical mass of people for whom that is true. I don't think we're there yet.
I think we've "been there" since at least the 1930's in terms of "the majority of people's lives suck for preventable reasons," but there's a lot of propaganda convincing people that their lives are actually awesome.
I believe part of the issue is that in addition to the regulatory system being captured, the media has been as well. Sure there are some late night shows poking fun, but major news networks are being bought up one after another.
It's difficult to organize when half the news pretends this is normal and the other half openly celebrates this degradation of our systems. Unfortunately I fear things will get worse before they get better.
Wishing tons of non viloent misfurtunes to happen to all republicans.
I'm also wishing violent ones. After all, republicans are nazis, and the only good nazi is the dead nazi.
I'm talking stuff like having bad diarrhea and a sneezing fit while stuck in traffic. Or forever having one cent less than the purchase they're trying to make. Getting comfortable in bed starting to drift off to sleep then suddenly having to piss. Every poop is a splasher. That kinda of stuff.
And I'm talking about being confused for an inmigrant by ICE and consequently beaten/shot to death. Or involved in a violent arrest by the police and consequently beaten/shot to death, or simply caught in a road rage incident with a fellow
republicannazi and consequently beaten/shot to death. That kinda stuff.Or chased down and eaten by large reptiles? Not that you would know anything about that...
Or needing a simple yet life saving drug/procedure done but their insuranc refuses to pay for it and they die slowly and painfully. Or get hit by a car and break their neck leading them to live the rest of their 'life' unable to move or communicate
Yeah… surely that’ll show em…
There is no need to stress. The next Democratic President will issue blanket pardons, will no do investigations, or Presidential Commissions, or anything that sort.
The Epstein Class always protects each other.
"Now is the time for unity, and to forgive our neighbors" Says every Democrat after a Republican president.
"The Democrats are all antifa-terrorists and should be rounded up into a camp." Says every Republican after a Democratic president.
A bellwether is whether the politician supports abolishing ICE. If they are willing to uproot institutions then that includes presidential immunity.
Also this.
Politicians have been doing the exact same thing as the pedoprez for the history of USA and they will continue to do so regardless of "party" branding.
Sorry, no they won't. They will be constrained by technicalities and obscure parliamentarian positions that we never heard of until a key issue.
However, they will have new tech and immunity to attack the progressive left. That won't be an issue at all
He has set the precedent that presidents and their families can not only continue to run businesses while in office, but make governing decisions that lead to profit for those businesses. Oh, and getting payments for advertisements from the Resolute desk, and putting up paid advertisements on government property. Oh, and punish federal funding to states, companies, Universities, etc. for not following his executive orders, which are not laws, but are being treated as such.
The only way to remedy this, I figure, is to have a democrat in office do every. single. thing. he is doing in office, until each thing has a law created by the other branches of government to make it illegal going forward.
If you think Ritchie Torres, Elissa Slotkin, and Pete Buttigieg are going to save the county, you're going to be very disappointed.
They’re saying that no one will make a law against a Republican, but Republicans may make laws against Democrats. Of course, that also won’t happen if it means the GOP can continue to score bitching points with their base while also profitting, but still.
The joke of the last 30 years has been the GOP crying "The media is against us!" through louder and larger corporate media megaphones with every passing election cycle.
But the punchline is that bitching about the media being mean is now a central function of federal government. Nothing fucking works because all the top leadership positions are occupied by professional whiners.
Nope. I believe a remedy is not coming and we are COOKED.
Pete absolutely would.
Yeah, but Bernie sanders, hunter Biden and Abdul El-Sayed will
:-|
Either I'm confused or perhaps you are. Bernie Sanders, while he happily had my vote a while back, is far past the need to retire. Hunter isn't running for politics, and El-Sayed is behind in the polls. How are any of these people supposed to help?
I believe he won his primary
Right. Behind in the polls against the Republican candidate.
Talk to me about general election polling in October, when people are actually beginning to vote.
GOP Nominee Mike Rogers ran uncontested with near-zero negative press coverage, and he's still in a dead heat. Voters "certain to vote" favor El-Sayed by the same margin voters "likely to vote" favor Rogers. So it's functionally a toss-up.
FTFY
If both parties are doing the same thing, nobody is every going to stop it. Just look at all of USA history. As a very obvious example, they're all talking bribes (aka lobbies), doing insider trading, etc. Ofc they're getting that crypto cash too... Nobody gonna fix any of this ever. It's a feature not a bug to them.
Trump is just the most corrupt president since Lyndon Johnson.
Doesn't the constitution ban all emoluments?
Or is this just saying that the other reps are only outraged by accepting foreign bribes, because they all accept domestic bribes..
All that money and still an utterly worthless man.
So worthless you could say it is a negative value.
What? How does that make money? Is he selling sugar pills that claim to make your penis bigger or sth?
Edit:
Oh, that sounds more correct
He's selling early access to his tweets for money laundering and stock manipulation
"You too can enjoy the same insider access as Barron Trump for the low, low price of $100,000 a month!"
So glad we elected this guy again instead of putting him in prison...
Many Americans seem to be fine with that, must be some kind of national kink.
As far as I can tell republicans chose this life for all of us because they were upset that:
They had to wear a mask during covid. Gay people are allowed to be happy. Obama wore a tan suit that one time. Buttery emails.
So now we all get to live shit hole life’s because the crabs at the bottom of the bucket decided to yank everyone down with them and install a king.
If you vote republican, fuck you, genuinely.
You forgot
Was it only republican politicians caught up in the Epstein files?
No but Trump will pardon the republicans
He has pardoned democrats in the past. Not many, but it's happened.
Maybe this is why. Lol.
Grok
Court records show more Republican politicians have been convicted of sexual offenses than Democrats. Since 2015, notable cases include Rep. Dennis Hastert (R) pleading guilty to child molestation-related charges and Rep. Mel Reynolds (R) convicted of sexual assault. On the Democrat side, fewer convictions exist—Rep. Bob Filner pleaded guilty to groping in 2013. Data leans heavier on Republicans historically. Check GovTrack for raw numbers.
I was thinking more about his pardons of Henry Cuellar, Rod Blagojevich, P.G. Sittenfeld, and Devon Archer who were all facing some sort of bribery or corrupt charges.
Yeah I'm sure the dems gonna fix all this if they ever get in "power" again. lmao.
"But he doesn't even take a salary!" -MAGA Morons
Trump is the most openly American president to ever live. The stuff he does in the open, were happening in secret for decades. The secret is out.
Hell yeah! Both parties are the same!
Who doesn’t remember the Obama beans Ponzi scheme?
Or Biden cryptocurrency?
All Democrats are billionaires in fact!
(/s if not obvious)
Nah I mean think about how long Senators and Congress people have engaged in insider trading. At least 30-40 years maybe longer. Trump just doesn't hide his criminal activity and he probably engages in it at a volume never seen before, but a lot of these actions basically amount to insider trading.
Also both parties don't support universal healthcare, they both support Israel, they both don't support workers unions, they both believe in bailing out big business, they both support immigration camps at the border.
Yeah one doesn't support having the gestapo abducting and murdering people in broad daylight, but like is that the ONLY thing that needs to end to fix the country?
Something something peanut farm.
The biggest and best Ugly American ever
An interesting point. Has he invented new forms of corruption for government officials, or is he just bad at hiding it?
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
These Sociopathic Oligarchs have obvious OCD that manifests as Hoarding Syndrome, and their hoarding target is money. They have far, far more than they can ever use, and they have to have even more, even at the detriment of society, their fellow citizens, and even the world itself. They are literally destroying the planet to amass even more treasure, which they won't even be able to use when the planet is 150 degrees, and they can't leave their bunkers. Do we really have to wait until it gets to that point before somebody says Barney was right all alone ng, we should have shut this down long ago.
NOW is the time to stop them, and take away their money. Many of the businesses they've built are detrimental to society, and we would be better off without them, or with them in control of responsible people who don't have Financial Hoarding Syndrome, and will operate the company to benefit society, and not just make more useless profit.
I think they're just greedy, and they think that because they've got more money than everyone that means they're smarter, better, more deserving than everyone. It's not a far jump from there to "You will all kneel before me!"
It's obviously profoundly unhealthy for society to have extremely powerful individuals around who have this attitude. They need to be removed from society by whatever means necessary and steps taken to ensure their ilk cannot rise again.
Just pure robbery in board daylight. Trump cultists don't care mind you these people were stuck on a laptop for like 5 years lmao.
Early access for 100k? Fuck me sideways. Some twats will do it.
They do it and then cash in on Polymarket bets based on advance knowledge.
It's crazy that Martha Stewart went to prison for insider trading, and now the president is selling it.
And what's he even going to do with it? Dude is a walking caricature of American diet related health problems, in his 80s. Beyond the fact that so many groups would love to take a shot at him, he's pretty likely to take himself out within the next few years anyway.
So what's the point of getting absurdly rich? You can't take it with you, and he very obviously only cares about himself, so he isn't doing it for his family.
My father was a malignant narcissist.
They do live through their children. Not in any sort of nice, generous way. But they try to clone themselves via their offspring. Look like me, follow in my professional footsteps, have the same opinions about everything.
Know that well myself. Once I started deviating from his attempts to groom me to be like him he dropped me like a buncha rocks. When I asked for a modicum of help because of money troubles he laughed in my face. The man is dead now and my only regrets are I weren't involved in some way and it was quietly in his motherfucking sleep.
Interesting.
When I cottoned-on to the fact that my father was a completely selfish user of others and went no-contact at 14, he never gave up on grooming me as his “heir.”
Treated my younger brother, who worshiped the ground he waked on, like absolute shit.
I’d feel bad for my brother if he weren’t arguably even more vile.
Wish I could have ended the bloodline by not having kids but my brother had kids with an equally vile woman. We will find out if narcissism is inherited soon.
Maybe it cancels-out with two narcissistic parents.
I think he’s talked about building a dynasty a few times, and that might be part of it. If he is the origin of a dynasty he probably thinks the world will se him as a god or some delulu shit. His interest in building monuments all over Washington also seem to paint a similar picture.
My guess?
He's looking to make his descendants so rich that they can become America's royal family with the precedent he's trying to set up combined with the effect that wealth has for buying the government.
He has talked a fair bit about god, religion, and heaven recently. I wonder if he's taking the prosperity gospel to such heart that he thinks he needs MORE things to get into heaven.
I mean just look at what he's doing with it now. What he's always done with it. He wants literal monuments built to himself. He wants his name on absolutely everything. He wants a legacy.
Second only to whoever ran the country from 2016-2020
Now isn't that funny? It cost MORE to make a rich person richer than it does to make me rich.
Go figure.
We're going to do corruption like no one has ever seen before! It's going to be huge, so big... Beautiful, the corruption. Has anyone seen how beautiful my daughter, she isn't at all, God she's hot. No corruption there? Am I right? We're going to do corruption like the Democrats never could, there too weak. Medical people, you know we have the best, and the smartest, they all tell me I could be a doctor too, I'm so smart. Like Ivanka, and her soft thighs. A doctor like no other! One, not unlike Jesus, a man who I'm sure would also find Ivankas breasts lovely and full... and endorse, your favorite president for doctor. I have to talk to Harvard about making me one. Right?
Look! We have trolls/bots now! 🎉
Fediverse is seriously picking up with the major social networks 😍
Bot! Get a stick and kill it!
The fuckers are like ants - first you see one, then all its mates turn up too.
Yup, report this junk. Outright disinformation of the highest caliber and probably a troll or Russian bot.
My parents believe that it's because he's smart or something so he's not convicted for anything because if he did something wrong then "why wouldn't anybody convict him by now"
And sadly, if the Dems do retake the House, this is the exact reason they'll claim any indictment is a witch hunt. Dems should be in full on protest mode every single day. Finish every speech on the floor, no matter what topic with, "and furthermore, Trump should be indicted." Every one of them should start and finish every interview the same way. Most people don't hear about it, so they figure everything must be kosher.
He has been convicted. He is a convicted felon. He was also found liable in court for raping a woman.
But he is still president, not bankrupt (in fact, even richer than he started with) , not in jail
They're alarmed and yet nobody will do a damned thing to stop this crap . I'm so tired of this mess
Why stop something that they're dying to do themselves ASAP?
Alarmed‽ tf you mean "alarmed", it's openly criminal. Nobody's fucking surprised by this
Like my dad's retirement, he'll enjoy nothing of it.
Misspelled "raped"
When people say that crypto has no use... they just sound ignorant, naive, etc.
No shit.
Wealth is meaningless when everyone hates you.
To you, but Sociopaths don't care that people hate them. They don't even understand love and hate, they just view people as tools to help them get what they want.
Was anyone surprised. Dude had a track record of swindling for decades prior to his presidency.
Trump is practically wasting all of our net gain and allowance just to procrastinate our civic regulations, have our privacy dismantled in high oligarchy enforcements and postpone all climate vulnerability and forestation sedimental deployment just to pressure out incriminatingly virulent fuel sources to our atmosphere.
He's not governing, He's dictating!!!!!!!!!!
Actually outranked Hitler, Pinochet, and King Tarquin as the most inhumanely corrupt cretin ever put in leadership.
And yet his party of gutless and insecure terrorist grifters are not doing anything to contempt his crime streak.
GOP is officially pro corruption pro sectarianism and pro austerity
more than a billion in crypto and during the white house Tesla infomercial he said he only uses cheques and doesn't use crypto
Good. Less money for Americans who voted for him or didn't show up to vote against him.
It's very funny to say that, considering how close Trump has been to the Clintons, Cuomos, and assorted Bloombergcrats for his entire adult life.
Republicans hate Democrats, then find the most nakedly corrupt, incompetent, and repulsive Dem in the country to make their new king.
He fired 17 of 21 Inspector Generals inside his first month in office, then never replaced them.
It's laughable how absolutely false this claim is.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/08/569394885/pentagon-announces-first-ever-audit-of-the-department-of-defense
The decision to audit the Pentagon was made back in 2010. Obama did try to audit it, but Congress gave the Pentagon another 7 years to get their shit together. Trump didn't do anything, except be president when that audit was scheduled (7 years earlier, mind you) to run.
See, the problem with you maga types, is you just lick up the dribble coming from trump's dirty diaper, and assume that since he insists that it is really chocolate, and it's brown like chocolate, it must be chocolate, and everyone who isn't eating the president's free chocolate must be an idiot because it's obviously free chocolate coming from the most amazing president who keeps runny chocolate in his diaper.
I don't really blame you though, in the same way I don't blame a victim of a carnival conman. The conman is the criminal doing something wrong, the marks are just too fucking naive to understand the con, and it's really fucking disappointing to watch a long line of people lose their money to the same conman, doing the same trick while openly laughing with his buddies about how stupid you all are.