What Does a President Cost?

Less Than You'd Think

Photo Credit: MSNOW

When critics point out that Donald is profiting from the presidency, his response is remarkably consistent. He simply denies that there’s anything wrong with it. According to him, everybody’s profiting. The stock market’s up. Do you have a 401k? How’s your 401k doing? It’s up about 85 percent, thank you President Trump. As if the rising market is somehow his gift to America, and any private gain accruing to him and his family is simply the natural consequence of his economic genius.

But here’s the thing: there’s a difference between benefiting from a healthy economy and using the power of the presidency to enrich yourself and those closest to you at the expense of American interests and security.

Let me walk you through what this actually looks like.

On September 14th, ProPublica reported that Russian businessman Umar Kremlev, who has close ties to Vladimir Putin, paid well into six figures for celebrations surrounding Donnie’s May wedding in the Bahamas. Kremlev paid for multiple nights on a private island that rents for $100,000 a night, along with other major expenses. The fireworks display alone was put on by a company that typically charges around $70,000. ProPublica could not determine the exact total, but reported that Kremlev covered hundreds of thousands of dollars in wedding weekend expenses. After the story was published, Donnie and his wife confirmed Kremlev’s role, saying their “dear friend Omar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations” and called it an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend.

With friends like these, who needs money?

But Kremlev isn’t simply a wealthy Russian businessman. He heads the International Boxing Association, which has previously been financed by Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. In April of this year, Vladimir Putin awarded Kremlev Russia’s Order of Friendship.

This is what Donald said when asked about it:

It’s totally allowed and a lot of people have parties and all, but it’s totally allowed. But as I understand it, he paid him back. He didn’t want to have that. So I hear he paid him back. A person that he knows, I guess a friend of his, gave him a wedding party. That’s very common. I’ve heard of many people given wedding parties.

Let me be direct: Donald has never given anybody anything, at least not unless it came with a price. Second, the idea that Donnie paid this guy back is pure fiction, because Donnie is just as greedy and useless as Donald. And third, nobody needs a background check? It’s out in the open. This guy is one of Putin’s people. He is suspect on many levels. But why let a little oligarchy, why let corruption, why let a close friendship with a murderous dictator get in the way of your shared mutual love of hunting, boxing, and the outdoors?

In 2025, Donnie appeared with Kremlev at an international boxing association event in Istanbul after which the organization said additional joint initiatives would follow. After ProPublica revealed Kremlev’s role in the wedding celebrations, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee opened an investigation into their relationship requesting communications between Donnie and Kremlev and records of purchases made for the wedding by foreign nationals.

But the wedding is not the only place where enormous sums of private money have mingled with power. The closer you get to Donald, the bigger the numbers become.

On September 10th, we learned just how much money Donald’s personal friend and special envoy—and let me be clear, unqualified special envoy—Steve Witkoff made in 2025. According to Witkoff’s newly released financial disclosures, he made at least $257 million in 2025. But here’s where it gets interesting. Witkoff received nearly $107 million from a holding company containing dozens of investments, including his stake in World Liberty Financial. If that sounds familiar, it’s the cryptocurrency company co-founded by the Witkoff and Trump families.

World Liberty says Witkoff wasn’t involved in the company’s operations during 2025. So passive income, I guess. And yet he continued to hold a financial interest in the company while serving as Donald’s special envoy and has said he’s in the process of divesting from relevant holdings. Just as Donnie is likely in the process of paying back his Russian friend.

Witkoff is not simply one of Donald’s old friends. As Special Envoy, he represents this country in negotiations involving Russia, Ukraine, and the Middle East. Can you say conflict of interest? According to the New York Times, Witkoff’s 2025 earnings were more than seven times what he reported earning in 2024.

That’s a pattern. If you look at the amounts of money Donald has made over the course of his life, you will also see a massive spike in income over the last year and a half. Here’s where the two families’ business interests become very difficult to separate. Donald reported nearly $800 million from World Liberty Financial in 2025. Adding his other cryptocurrency businesses, Donald reported approximately $1.4 billion in crypto income for the year.

But the real question isn’t just how much money the Trump and Witkoff families were making from World Liberty. It’s who was putting money into it. To whom are they beholden?

In May 2025, Zach Witkoff, Steve’s son and co-founder of World Liberty, announced a massive deal in Dubai. A UAE investment firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoun, the country’s national security advisor, would use World Liberty’s new stablecoin to make a $2 billion investment in the crypto exchange Binance. For World Liberty, that meant a $2 billion deposit capable of generating tens of millions of dollars a year.

At the same time Sheikh Tahnoun’s money was flowing through the Trump and Witkoff family’s crypto company, he was negotiating with the Trump regime for access to something the UAE badly wanted: America’s most advanced AI chips. Two weeks after the crypto deal was announced, the White House agreed to dramatically expand the UAE’s access to those chips, including chips destined for another company controlled by Sheikh Tahnoun.

So let me lay this out clearly. In one deal,Sheik Tahnoun’s investment firm put $2 billion through the Trump and Witkoff family’s crypto company. In the other, the Trump regime agreed to give Sheikh Tahnoun’s company access to highly sought after American technology. Which is to say: Donald and his useless children benefited financially to the tune of almost $2 billion in exchange for giving away something that belongs to the American people.

That’s what it means when we say Donald is stripping this country for parts and selling them to whomever will pay him.

The White House and World Liberty say the two deals were completely unrelated. And again, Donnie paid back the Russian oligarch. Of course he did. The White House also says Witkoff complied with ethics requirements, calling the crypto transaction “totally unrelated to any government business.” Also untrue. The New York Times reported that some officials inside the Trump regime themselves raised concerns about conflicts of interest surrounding the negotiations. Maybe because they are so glaringly in your face.

On September 15th, the Senate tried to advance the so-called Clarity Act, an industry-backed bill establishing new federal rules for the $2.3 trillion crypto market. Democrats and some Republicans demanded stronger ethics provisions because Donald and his family are themselves making enormous amounts of money from crypto. A bipartisan proposal would require divestment or blind trust for certain large crypto interests along with other restrictions on federal officials.

The bill needed 60 votes to advance. It fell short, 50 to 49. It should not surprise us, because the Republicans are in charge of everything. The conflict at the center of this debate has been exposed. Congress is trying to regulate an industry while simultaneously confronting Donald’s enormous financial stake in that same industry.

When Donald was asked directly about the criticism that he and his family are profiting from the presidency, he didn’t dispute that they’re making money. Instead, he explained why he thinks that shouldn’t matter.

Donald: There was a large sum of money made in crypto. Well, I was here before. I was there before I was in office, but the way I view crypto is a little differently. We have to be at the top, otherwise China’s going to take it over. Like for instance, AI, we’re leading substantially in AI over China and everybody else. I mean, we’re leading. When I was with President Xi three weeks ago, he greeted me and these first words, we literally went, “Wow, you’ve really done a great job. You’ve really...” Because this country was dead. We had a dead country. Now we have the hottest country in the world. And the way I look at AI or the way I look at crypto is if we’re not going to do it, China’s going to get it, most likely China, but somebody else.

The reason his opinion of crypto has changed is because somebody in that really big industry realized that the best way for that industry to be unregulated was to buy off Donald Trump. So that $2.6 billion in crypto earnings over the last year and a half? That was a bribe.