Letter to the editor: The bucks stop there

First published in the Brunswick Beacon, 07.16.26

In 2000, Trump told Fortune magazine, “It’s very possible I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”

In 2019 Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, told a House Committee: “Donald Trump ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great, to market himself and build his wealth and power. He would often say this campaign was going to be the greatest infomercial in political history.”

Six years later, Trump’s infomercial is paying off, bigly. He made over $2.2 billion in 2025.

Trump once called crypto “a scam.” He wrote, “I’m not a fan of ... cryptocurrencies, which aren’t money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” adding that crypto “can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.”

Now, Trump calls himself “the crypto president.” Nearly one million investors lost $3.8 billion buying Trump’s crypto coins. Trump made $1.4 billion, including $500 million from the United Arab Emirates’ government. The Emiratis say it was a coincidence that they simultaneously won Trump’s approval to import advanced A.I. microchips, despite concerns from Trump’s national security officials that the chips could end up in Chinese weapons systems.

“It’s completely unprecedented,” said Megan Gorman, author of “All the Presidents’ Money,” a study of presidential wealth. Gorman called Trump’s profiteering “a betrayal of the American social contract: that those who lead the country prioritize country over self — a premise that goes back to George Washington.”

The Wall Street Journal wrote, “The Trump clan is cashing in on the Presidency in big and sketchy ways.”

The NY Post wrote, “Insider deals, finders’ fees and backdoor introductions to family members are business-as-usual in Third World banana republics, but these slimy practices have now been normalized in the White House, to the shame of the nation.”

“The Buck Stops Here,” read a sign on President Truman’s desk. Trump replaced it with a cash register.

Michael Rush

Leland