The Growing Scandal of $TRUMP
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What is the Trump family’s overall crypto strategy and why does Ezra call it “muzzle velocity”?
Last week, the Trump administration formally accepted a Boeing seven forty seven luxury jet from the government of Qatar. This is, if you've not seen it, a very nice plane. Very nice plane. And Trump's plan at the end of his term is to donate this very nice plane to his own presidential library. Because as you know, no presidential library, no library really, is complete without a luxury airplane. Even if this is legal, the conflict of interest here is obvious. It is incredibly corrupt looking, at the very least. But here's the thing. Usually, something like this, I think, would come with a cover-up. With Trump, there's never a cover up.
They're giving us a free jet. I could say no, no, no, don't give us I want to pay you a billion or four hundred million or whatever it is. Or I could say thank you very much.
People are supposed to be hiding what they're doing. When it happens just out in the open like this, I think it becomes hard for a political system, even for the media to know what to do with it. But the biggest area of corruption for the Trump family right now, the soft underbelly, I think, of this administration, is not airplanes. It's crypto.
President Trump and his family's growing crypto empire.
Trump is a stakeholder in something he also is a chief regulator of. And the Trump family is indeed cashing in.
Chinese billionaire Justin Sun publicly disclosed a $75 million investment.
From a two billion dollar deal with a foreign government. Yeah, Pakistan becoming the latest to partner with the World Liberty Financial. World Liberty Financial. World Liberty
Financial. The Donald Trump meme coin. Which now has a value of about two point five billion dollars.
A high power
dinner
for a price. Ликньто бекутон'слар біткоінер, зондор п'я стабкоін юсді вон.
На тиску не чанчар модерний систем фревер.
Steve Vannen famously talked about using muzzle velocity as a strategy, doing so much so quickly, that you overwhelm the ability of the media to cover it. What the Trump family is doing with crypto is muzzle velocity for corruption. There are all these different companies and coins. It is almost impossible to keep track. So that's what I wanted to do with this episode. Try to track at least some of it. And the person who's going to help me out is Zeke Fox. He's an investigative reporter at Bloomberg, the author of the fantastic book Number Go Up, Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. And he's been reporting on many of these crypto projects. As always, my email, Ezra Kleinshow at NYTimes.com.
Zeke Fox, welcome to the show. Thanks, Ezra. So let's start back in July 2019. This is late in the first term, and you have Donald Trump tweeting as president. I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. So tell me about the Trump administration's first term. In terms of its relationship with crypto.
Yeah, that was pretty much his attitude whenever he was asked about crypto. It hadn't yet Entered the mainstream. The crypto super bowl. When we saw all these ads for Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX, where we had LeBron James endorsing crypto, that was 2022. It seemed like kind of a fringy thing for nerds. There's another time that he called Bitcoin a scam against the dollar. And During the whole
second Trump administration as a scam against the dollar, but that's a different situ
Um And he staffed his first administration with a lot of mainstream Wall Street people who viewed crypto as this kind of unregulated threat to the financial system. So At that time, the Securities and Exchange Commission under Trump had Initiated some lawsuits against big crypto companies, some of the same ones that they were still fighting and angry about years later.
You mentioned twenty twenty-two and this big cultural boom we have in that era. And this is the moment of NFTs are everywhere, and you have Matt Damon doing these ads, and Larry David telling you not to miss out.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the Trump family’s overall crypto strategy and why does Ezra call it “muzzle velocity”?
0:31–8:21
2
How did the Trump meme‑coin launch and what were the initial sales figures?
8:21–16:22
3
Who are the key players behind World Liberty Financial and how do they connect to the Trumps?
16:22–23:48
4
What role did Justin Sun and the $75 million purchase play in triggering Trump payouts?
23:48–31:09
5
How does the Trump stable‑coin “USD One” work and why is it compared to a private bank?
31:09–37:30
6
What are the mechanics of the Trump meme‑coin dinner contests and how do they generate political access?
37:30–45:06
7
How much money has the Trump family reportedly earned from crypto ventures to date?
45:06–54:01
8
What are the broader implications of Trump’s crypto activities for campaign finance and regulation?
54:01–1:03:07