Trump's $2B income in 2025 raises fresh questions about profiting off presidency

[0:00] Welcome to the NewsHour. President Donald Trump's latest financial disclosure shows his various [0:05] businesses generated more than $2 billion in income in 2025, his first year back in the White House. [0:12] That is more than triple his reported income from the year before. The biggest gains came from the [0:17] Trump family's cryptocurrency ventures. The president was asked about his finances this [0:21] morning before leaving for North Dakota. You know, you saw the cash and you report the different [0:27] things. And what they do is we gave it, I think it's called the blind account, but they basically [0:32] they take it. And I purposely, I never speak to any of the people that run the money, but they're [0:37] big institutions and they invest in whatever they invest in. For more on this, we turn now to Eric [0:43] Lipton. He's an investigative journalist for The New York Times and has reported on President Trump's [0:48] business interests for years. Eric, thanks for joining us. Before we talk more broadly about his [0:53] finances, I want to ask specifically about a big chunk of it that's from cryptocurrency specifically. [0:58] The president made more than a billion dollars just from crypto businesses in his first year as [1:03] president. Break that down for us. How did he do that? The two biggest chunks come from his meme coin, [1:10] which he launched three days before his inauguration. It was a kind of a collectible that surged in value [1:17] initially. And the people who quickly invested made a boatload of money, but then it crashed. And [1:23] hundreds of thousands of people then lost money. Trump made, you know, hundreds of millions of [1:28] dollars from that gamble that he asked people to follow him on. And many of his followers ended up [1:34] as losers. The second big chunk of revenue comes from World Liberty Financial, a company that he and [1:39] his sons started in October of 2024. That company is now one of the biggest issuers of what's called [1:45] stable coins in the world. And it was bought secretly, half of it, by the United Arab Emirates in January of [1:52] 2025, just as he was being sworn in to be president. And the UAE separately has invested [1:57] two billion dollars into its stable coin, making it one of the biggest stable coin issuers in the [2:02] world. So, I mean, it is it is really intensely tied up with a foreign government. And the president [2:09] is profiting from that foreign government's investment in his own business at the same time [2:14] as he is acting as commander in chief and working with that foreign government to negotiate a war in the [2:19] Middle East. And we should say it's not just crypto that's fueling the president's wealth. What other [2:22] businesses and ventures and deals and settlements contributed to his income last year? I mean, [2:29] there are new real estate deals in the Middle East, in Vietnam, in Romania, in the Maldives. He's, [2:37] you know, struck a bunch of deals that include some deals that are actually with foreign governments, [2:41] like the government of Saudi Arabia and in Qatar as well. And then there are, as you mentioned, [2:46] settlements from lawsuits that are being paid to him from media companies. And there's also money in [2:54] there from Melania, from Jeff Bezos and Amazon for the documentary. I mean, there's just, you know, [2:59] it's quite a crazy array of sources of revenue going to a sitting president. We just, there's nothing [3:05] like this in American history. And more than 80 million in settlements, according to your reporting [3:10] there, from some various networks and others. What about what we just heard from the president there [3:14] about how his finances are structured? He says his investments are run by other people. It's in a [3:19] blind account that he doesn't talk to the people making those investments. Is that all true? [3:24] He was referring there specifically to his stock trades and his stock trades are handled by [3:30] professional investors who they assert to my colleague, Ben Protest, that they are making those [3:35] individual stock purchases. And there are thousands of them, but they're making them without consulting with [3:40] President Trump or his family. So that specific quote that you pulled from, he was referring only [3:45] to his stock and trades, which there are, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock [3:51] trades. Again, unheard of that a president is, at least in his name, is seeing this much buying and [3:57] selling of stocks while he's president of the United States. [4:00] And, you know, in a statement to our White House correspondent, Liz Landers, the White House [4:03] spokesperson Anna Kelly said this in part. She said, neither the president nor his family has ever [4:10] engaged or will ever engage in conflicts of interest. All actions by President Trump and his [4:15] administration are taken in the best interest of the American people. Eric, I guess the big question [4:21] here is if Mr. Trump was not president, could he or would he have made the same amount of money that [4:26] he did? [4:28] It's hard to imagine that, if he were not president, that there would that his meme coin or it would be [4:35] as profitable as it has been, or that there would have been the scale of investment in World Liberty [4:41] Financial on the stable coin. It is it seems as if his status as president is like intimately intertwined [4:49] with the success of those companies. [4:51] And I mean, the fact that he launched the meme coin as they were gathering at an auditorium in D.C. [4:59] three days before his inauguration for what was called the Crypto Ball. It was a bunch of crypto [5:03] executives and administration, you know, soon to be administration officials there to celebrate his [5:08] inauguration. And that's the night he launched it. And it was like, follow me as I lead the world. [5:14] These things are so intertwined. I think it's hard to imagine he would have made as much money. [5:18] He's never made this much money in his entire life as he's made in this one year. [5:22] So I think that's part of your answer right there. [5:25] And in less than minutes or we have left, how does that compare to how past presidents have [5:28] handled their finances while in office? [5:31] Again, nothing, anything remotely like this from any president in the history of the United States. [5:36] Other presidents, for the most part, have attempted to disassociate themselves from investments that [5:41] could create conflicts of interest. Famously, Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm into an independent with [5:47] an independent trustee. You know, Lady Bird Johnson sold off radio stations. I'm sorry, [5:53] had hired an outside lawyer to run radio stations when her husband became president after Kennedy [5:58] was killed. I mean, again and again, we see, you know, George W. Bush sold his stake in the Texas [6:03] Rangers. We see presidents who are looking for ways to avoid conflicts, whereas President Trump has [6:08] embraced all kinds of new businesses that bring conflicts. [6:11] Eric Lipton, investigative journalist for The New York Times, joining us tonight. Eric, [6:15] thank you so much. [6:17] Thank you.