Eric Lipton
speaker
759 appearances
6 recordings
4 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 5 Aug
Eric Lipton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
But whether or not it is legally, you know, he is acting corruptly, I think that has become a harder question to answer. Right. but it almost doesn't matter. These terms are important and we have to be careful with the words we use, but it doesn't matter because what's happening is unethical and wrong. And it's just damaging to American history and to democracy.
And we are committed and Susan is as well. We're documenting this. The thing that I think really matters is as a reporter is that let's get the primary details, the primary documents, the proof, and let's bring that to the public. And that's what we've been doing.
That's right. We are the only thing left of accountability. The Justice Department, the IGs have been fired. Oh my God. The Office of Government Ethics, the head has been fired.
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, unfortunately, campaign finance at this point, given the Supreme Court actions, is sort of a lost cause. And I don't really see, you know, unless you kind of completely remake the Supreme Court, how we're ever going back. And I mean, but what we're seeing is the personal enrichment aspect.
of, you know, with Trump, he is both, you know, effectively the chief regulator of securities and exchange by appointing the head of the SEC. And his family now runs one of the world's largest cryptocurrency stablecoin issuers that is regulated. So he is both the regulator and the regulated. And that's the threshold that we have crossed that really has no precedent. And that
Campaign finance and the corruption of government through influence and access that comes with campaign donations has been something we have written about for many years and tried to document. But we just have never seen something where the elected official is personally benefiting to the extent that Trump is through his family.
And and that and it just, you know, so like the whole campaign finance debate is important, but it's sort of like it's like tangential to what's going on here, which is direct personal enrichment in a way. You know, the fact is that that like President Trump will benefit from there's there's this legislation pending in Congress called the Genius Act that would.
for the first time, recognize the issuance of stable coins, which are a form of cryptocurrency, as legally part of the financial system in the United States.
As a security or just as a... As a form of currency, basically, as an alternative form of currency that in which you have a form of crypto that's worth a dollar consistently and it's backed up with treasuries and it's constantly worth a dollar. FDIC insured? It's not insured, but it would be recognized by the government and it would be regulated by the government.
But once that happens, while it does create a regulatory structure to some extent, you think the industry doesn't want that. But what the industry recognizes is as soon as that exists, then banks and other financial institutions will begin to embrace stable coins and they will really become almost a competitor of credit cards and financial cash.
And for the Trump family, they are the seventh largest stable coin issuer in the United States now. And so he is urging Congress to act. Wait, you issue stable coins? It doesn't have to be created through mining or anything? You just issue it? You issue it. And the Trump's got $2 billion worth of stable coin deposits from the government of UAE a few weeks ago, just before Trump flew over there.
And now, overnight, they became one of the world's largest issuers of stable coins. And Trump is urging Congress to act on this legislation, and he's going to sign it. But his family is already profiting, and he is profiting enormously off of the same industry that he is giving birth to as the top regulator. It's like we've never seen anything like that. That is such a blatant profit of interest.
I think you can answer that question by looking at the differences between the first term and the second term. And in the first term, the president and his family agreed to not do what they called new international deals. So they continued to run their real estate business. To avoid the conflict. Right. Right. And now we did all write about the Trump International Hotel in D.C.
and how it became a den of lobbyists and foreign diplomats that were buying, you know, $50 martinis or, you know, $100 Trump seafood towers at the Benjamin Bar and Mar-a-Lago.
Yeah. The Mar-a-Lago also became a magnet, and he tried to bring the G7 or the G20, I forget which, to Trump-Durell. But they were not, in fact, doing deals overseas, announcing new ones. Still small ball, right. But now, not only are they doing new international deals, but they're actually doing new international deals with foreign government entities.
So, you know, UAE is putting $2 billion into the World Liberty Financial, you know, in stable coins. Qatar, just a couple weeks ago, signed a deal to do a $5 billion real estate project that's going to have a Trump hotel. Oman has a project, it's leasing the land for another project that's going to have a Trump golf course.
Right. And Serbia at the site that NATO bombed during the Clinton administration to stop the Balkans war is now turning that same site over to Jared Kushner where there's going to be a Trump hotel. And Donald Trump Jr. was in Serbia and having dinner with the president of Serbia.
And the president of Serbia was posted on Facebook how I'm roasting a pig tonight to have dinner with the son of the president of the United States as he's trying to keep his job as president because there's huge protest in Serbia.
And he's giving land to the family of the president to build the Trump International Hotel. So having that kind of interactions with foreign governments at the same time that you are directing foreign policy and making decisions, for example, should Saudi Arabia be able to get F-35s?
Should the United States authorize the sale of advanced AI chips to Saudi Arabia or to UAE, Qatar, and what role is the military presence in Qatar? And Serbia, should the United States help Serbia's effort to get into the EU? I mean, these are all huge.
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