Sarah Gonzalez

What is like the total amount?

And almost all of it made this past year.

And disclaimer, this isn't just money that Trump himself has made, but his sons too.

And then there's some in there that his wife Melania and son-in-law have also made.

there's no real way to detangle Trump from his family.

Because even though Trump has transferred management of the Trump Organization to his sons, Trump still profits from the business deals that they make.

And Trump can withdraw profits or assets whenever he wants.

One of the reasons presidents get a salary is supposed to be so that they don't worry about personal gain.

The founding fathers also wanted to prevent presidents from being susceptible to corruption.

And also, while they're in office, presidents will essentially sell access to the president and even sell positions.

Like when they're running for reelection, raising campaign money.

There's examples of like you donate and then you become the ambassador to something.

So what are you counting?

Hello and welcome to Planet Money.

I'm Sarah Gonzalez.

That's almost $4 billion.

We go line by line and stop at the most interesting ways that Trump and his family have made all that.

David Kirkpatrick set out to not just come up with the number, the how much money Trump and his family have made number, that approaching $4 billion number.

He wanted to also show why some of their new deals probably would not have happened if Trump wasn't the president of the United States.

So how in the like scale of how, you know, perfect, would you say you're like 75 percent there, 50 percent there?