Trump scammed MAGA — and they 'admire' him for it

In the wake of financial disclosures showing that President Donald Trump has profited wildly off his presidency over the past year, the Newsweek editors have published a detailed analysis in which they assert that he is “raking in eye-watering sums of money from cryptocurrency gamblers, most of whom were losers in this trade, and also his supporters.”

According to Newsweek, while his supporters theoretically set out to “drain the swamp” in corrupt Washington, “The truth is, MAGA always knew Trump was like this. In fact, it’s a big part of why they backed him in the first place.”

As Newsweek details, “Trump’s 2025 disclosure lists CIC Digital LLC, described as wholly owned by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, receiving royalties from a license agreement with Celebration Coins and reports the amount as $635,068,835. The same filing reports $236.25 million in token-sale proceeds distributed by World Liberty Financial, plus $65.6 million from the sale of equity in its holding company. Those numbers are politically explosive… because they involve a sitting president, his family business network and an industry his administration is figuring out how to, and if it should, regulate.”

Critics say crypto is “a haven for criminals and scammers,” and Newsweek suggests it’s the most “Trumpian” of Trump’s grifts yet.

“The $TRUMP coin launched days before Trump returned to office and surged from under $10 to as high as $74.59 before falling back, with four-fifths of its supply held by CIC Digital and an entity called Fight Fight Fight,” explains Newsweek. “The coin described itself as ‘an expression of support,’ not an investment or a security — a distinction that should have cooled anyone foolish enough to be treating it as a retirement plan.”

Ultimately, “there were losses, though not for Trump. Roughly two-thirds of investors in the memecoin are underwater, according to the Wall Street Journal, and the Reuters tally put buyers’ collective losses near the family’s $2.3 billion in gains.”

As Newsweek notes, “No supporter deserves to be fleeced because a favorite leader put his name on a speculative asset,” but “the naivete defense has limits.” Experts and regulators have long warned not only about the “exceptionally volatile and speculative” nature of crypto, which poses a significant risk of total loss, but about the shady nature of Trump’s dealings. With that in mind, “a voter can call Trump’s crypto dealings unseemly all they like, but a speculator who bought a president-branded token after years of such warnings has a hard time arguing the house owed him a win.”

According to Newsweek, “It is easy to see the new crypto numbers as a betrayal of Trump’s voters, many of whom are struggling middle-and-working class voters who can never hope to own even a tiny fraction, if that, of what these deals alone made for him. But this is the kind of transaction many Trump supporters were primed to admire… The problem was not his instinct for aggressive self-interest, in Trump’s telling, but stupid leaders who failed to turn pursuit of self-interest into national advantage.”

Whether all the crypto corruption scandal will impact Trump depends on “how his voters parse it, especially those who bought the coin and experienced losses — as personal betrayal, or as the cost of playing near power. Will the Trump supporters among the two-thirds of memecoin buyers now sitting on losses begin to defect, or simply shrug and stay with him?”

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