President Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed he had nothing to do with the billion-dollar windfall reported on his financial disclosures, insisting it all comes from the work of unnamed financial advisers rather than his deliberate efforts to profit from the presidency.
Taking questions from reporters traveling with him to North Dakota, and with his sons Don Jr. and Eric standing a few yards behind him, Trump maintained that he doesn’t “get involved” in his own personal finances because he has “funds that run my money well.”
“I’ve made a lot of money before I became president, and they invest my money, and I don’t talk to them. I never – I don’t even speak to them,” Trump said before boarding a brand-new Air Force One for the first time on his way to tour the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. The $400 million Boeing VC-25B aircraft was presented to him in Doha last year, and that gift also stirred concerns about influence-buying.
“I think it’s called the blind account, but they basically, they take it, and I purposely, I never speak to any of the people that run the money, but they’re at big institutions, and they invest in whatever they invest.”
The president then claimed his record good fortune was no different from that of any American with a retirement fund, adding: “Well, you know why I’m profiting? Because the stock market’s going up, everybody’s profiting … so we’re all profiting. I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash, and I give it to institutions.”
Despite his claim not to have any involvement in his own finances, the president has never followed the example of predecessors by placing his assets in a blind trust.
Instead, his various business holdings have long been held by a trust controlled by him and his eldest two children, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
Additionally, his claim to have profited handsomely from the stock market doesn’t hold water when compared to his financial disclosure as released by the Office of Government Ethics.
The president earned more than $1 billion from two cryptocurrency businesses that now outpace what he earns in revenue from his extensive property portfolio.
Trump disclosed over $500 million in earnings from World Liberty Financial crypto venture, including “governance tokens,” according to an Office of Government Ethics filing, while another firm, CIC Digital LLC, brought in more than $600 million from sales of Trump-branded “meme” coins featuring his image.
Both the tokens and the coins have plunged in value since the sales, leaving everyday investors and purchasers in ruin while Trump and his family pulled the rug out from under them.
The massive windfall has been a direct result of Trump’s own actions as president over the last year and a half.
Once a skeptic of cryptocurrency, he has embraced the burgeoning sector in response to massive campaign contributions from crypto advocates and entrepreneurs.
Trump reversed the Biden administration’s tough stance on the crypto industry and pushed policies friendly to it after he returned to the White House. He has also pardoned several major cryptocurrency figures who’d been charged or convicted of federal crimes.
The White House has steadfastly denied that Trump has deliberately acted to boost his own financial interests, with deputy press secretary Anna Kelly claiming in a statement that he “only acts in the best interests of the American public” and asserting that the president has “no conflicts of interest.”
