Three billion dollars. That’s what Trump has added to his own net worth since he walked back into the White House, according to the Brennan Center’s tally. Not the country’s net worth. Not your net worth. His. Two-thirds of it from crypto schemes he launched days before putting his hand on the Bible.
Funny how that works. The man who spent a year promising to drain the swamp looked at the swamp, saw the real estate potential, and bought the whole thing.
Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsHere’s the part the experts keep explaining in their measured, credentialled way, as if the math is complicated. It isn’t. Trump launched a memecoin called $Trump just before his inauguration. It pulled in $636 million for him personally in 2025. Meanwhile, a million regular people who bought in lost nearly $3.8 billion. Warren and Schiff wrote a letter about it. A letter. I’m sure the billionaires are shaking.
Then there’s World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture Trump set up with his sons and the family of Steve Witkoff, who is now Trump’s special Middle East envoy. That one netted roughly $799 million. An Emirati royal bought a 49 percent stake for half a billion dollars before Trump even took the oath. Two weeks after an Emirati state fund agreed to use Trump’s stablecoin for a $2 billion Binance deal, the White House announced the UAE would get access to America’s most closely guarded computer chip technology. Ask yourself who benefits from that arrangement. Not you. Not me. Not the factory worker in Ohio whose job just got outsourced to a country with documented ties to China.
The American Bar Association laid it all out in March. Elon Musk dropped nearly $300 million on the 2024 campaign and got handed the Department of Government Efficiency, where he promptly inserted himself into FAA decisions about whether his own Starlink satellites would handle air traffic control. A poultry company called Pilgrim’s Pride gave $5 million to the inaugural fund and got a production speed waiver from the Agriculture Department plus SEC approval for a stock listing it had been chasing for years. A billionaire named Jared Isaacman donated $2 million, got nominated to run NASA, had his nomination pulled, donated another $1.4 million, and got nominated again. Trump said it himself out loud: “I found out that nobody cared, and I’m allowed to.”
The White House (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsHe’s right about the first part. Nobody with the power to stop him cares. The FEC is a ghost town. The SEC dropped enforcement actions against Coinbase, Ripple, Robinhood, and Gemini after they wrote checks to Trump’s inaugural fund or super PACs. The Justice Department settled Trump’s own lawsuit against the IRS in a deal that gives his family immunity from prior tax audits and could save him $100 million. A federal judge found there was no real adversary in the case because Trump controlled both sides. He used the courts to rubber-stamp a gift to himself at taxpayer expense.
Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the Binance founder who pleaded guilty to money laundering violations after his exchange let terrorists and sanctioned users in Iran and Russia move billions of dollars. Binance had helped launch Trump’s stablecoin. When asked on 60 Minutes whether that looked corrupt, Trump said he’d rather not have the question asked. That’s not a denial. That’s a man who knows the answer and dares you to do something about it.
Kidfly182 (CC BY 4.0) via Wikimedia CommonsThe Brennan Center put the numbers in historical perspective, and they’re worth sitting with. Credit Mobilier, the railroad graft scandal that burned through the 1860s? About $1.4 billion in today’s dollars. Teapot Dome, the oil bribery scandal that sent a cabinet secretary to prison? Eight million. Watergate’s financial component? $170 million. Trump made more in one year than all of them combined, multiplied several times over.
Sixty-six percent of Americans told CNN in July that Trump puts his own gain ahead of the country’s. The other 34 percent either weren’t paying attention or are hoping for a slice. That’s the real coalition now. It isn’t left versus right. It’s the people cashing in versus the people getting cashed out.
The establishment didn’t disappear. It just stopped pretending it had rules.