Jonathan Chait

That is most of them under Trump.

They're getting a payoff from it.

And their payoff is the advancement of their traditional priorities.

They would rather have slightly lower taxes in an authoritarian right-wing government than higher taxes in a democracy.

Thune is a perfect example.

I think he was enthusiastic about this.

Yeah.

I mean, I think he was actually like really excited about it.

So why did, why did he do it?

I mean, it was unpopular.

They spent political capital to get this done.

Yeah, they really opened a trap door into just direct payments to the president's family, right?

Like in the first term, they could collect hotel bookings and some licensing.

But they've like a thousand X'd the scale of the payments they're able to collect through crypto.

Which is also, you know, it's the main use of crypto as opposed to normal currencies is just for criminals.

So it's just another way in which they're just tied into scammers, criminals, you know, the world's worst people.

Just all the most natural Trumpian constituencies all come together.

It's almost overdetermined that they would be heavy into crypto.

There was a Gore fundraising scandal from the second Clinton term.

And maybe you're a little too young to remember this, but like the Buddhist monks and he was raising monies, but they had some connection to the Chinese government.