Our senators and representatives have not objected to Trump’s action. They no longer work for our interests; they work for President Trump and the crypto elites.
Patricia Wittberg
| Opinion contributor
Experts, senator warn of Trump’s push to profit from presidency
Trump has blurred traditional lines, seeking personal wealth through crypto, real estate, Truth Social and branded merchandise during his presidency.
A long-standing, unsavory pattern in American government is for relatives of the president to take advantage of familial ties for their benefit. Billy Carter, Neil Bush and, of course, Hunter Biden have all had business dealings that critics said exploited their relationships. Each time, both the president and his relatives vigorously denied that this was the case.
In contrast, President Donald Trump and his family do not even try to hide the way they benefit from this pattern. In fact, they are greatly expanding it. In so doing, they have vastly enriched the Trump family and his corporate cronies and expanded Trump’s influence over future elections.
The enrichment process works first through real estate deals. Trump and his family are finalizing plans to build hotels in Saudi Arabia and Dubai, a new golf course in Qatar and a new private club in Washington, D.C. They are pressing Scotland to bring the British Open to Trump’s golf course there. At least two more projects were recently announced in partnership with a Saudi company closely tied to that country’s rulers. The Trump family will profit from all of these deals, and foreign countries enter them to curry favor with the U.S. government.
Then, there is cryptocurrency. Both the president and First Lady Melania Trump have released “meme coins” marketed with their likenesses. These are electronic versions of the baseball cards we remember from our childhoods, and their value depends solely on how much someone is willing to pay to collect and trade them. To encourage their purchase, the top 220 Trump meme coin buyers are being offered a private dinner with the president. The top 25 purchasers will get a “special VIP tour” of the White House. The chief buyer so far owns 1.4 million of these tokens, supposedly worth $16 million. Another purchaser, a Mexico-based shipping company executive, says that he bought the coins to advance his company’s trade with the United States.
Trump’s business ventures increase his capital and political power
Not only do these funding ventures enrich Trump’s family and cronies, but they also increase his political power. As the Enquirer reported, David Sacks, the White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar, recently co-hosted a $1.5 million per plate dinner to raise money for the MAGA Inc Super PAC. President Trump is a lame-duck president, constitutionally barred from running for a third term, but he will be able to use the money from these fundraisers to support his preferred candidates for the 2026 congressional elections and to attack any GOP candidates who dare to oppose him.
Isn’t all this illegal? It used to be. But President Trump has recently fired the head of the government office that polices conflicts of interest, and purged nearly 20 nonpartisan Inspectors General who used to investigate corruption. He has voided rules that used to prohibit executive branch employees from accepting gifts from lobbyists, and his administration no longer enforces rules against lobbying by foreign corporations or governments. His new Securities and Exchange Commission has suspended its civil fraud case against Binance, a crypto company that admitted to money laundering.
All of this does not seem to matter to Congress. The Senate is currently considering a bill, “The GENIUS Act,” that will further loosen the guardrails against the fraud that crypto companies like Binance have already admitted to committing. Sacks, who is financially invested in crypto, and the Trump family with their meme coins, will profit if these guardrails are loosened.
Whether through their financial interests or fear of Trump’s power over their political careers, our senators and representatives have not objected. They no longer work for our interests; they work for President Trump and the crypto elites.
Patricia Wittberg is a Sister of Charity of Cincinnati and emerita professor of Sociology at Indiana University.
