“You can do two things,” Donald Trump told reporters as he stood beside the new retrofitted Air Force One on Wednesday. “You can low-key it, or you can show it.”
He always does the latter. The presidential plane is, as everyone knows, a $400 million present from Qatar. The famous light blue hull is gone. It is painted in Trump’s preferred color scheme – navy blue, red, gold stripes. The Air Force says it spent less than $400 million implementing “security upgrades.” And the aircraft began active service this week and will be used by the President until the end of his second term at least.
It’s hard to know if Americans really care about their Commander-in-Chief flying around in a jet given to him by a sheikh who didn’t need it. But the timing of the Air Force One launch was curious, coming as it did one day after Trump’s staggering latest financial disclosures landed on the public. The President may well have preferred “to low-key” that document, which over 927 pages showed his fortune growing at a rate only matched by tech barons and kleptocratic dictators.
Trump’s crypto-related earnings come in at $1,430,390,415
Trump reported $635 million in royalties from something called “Celebration Coins,” which is understood to be the venture behind the now infamous $TRUMP meme coin. The filings also revealed Trump’s business empire had made more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial – a cryptocurrency firm founded by his own sons and the children of his special envoy, Steve Witkoff – much of it from a very large investment from the UAE.
Trump’s crypto-related earnings come in at $1,430,390,415. (Yes, that’s one billion, four hundred and thirty million, three hundred and ninety thousand, four hundred and fifteen dollars). And his total income was $2.2 billion. Trump, of course, says he has nothing to do with the day-to-day running of his family business. But he’s becoming increasingly shameless about becoming richer than Croesus while in office. “I prohibited [The Trump organization] from doing business in my first term, and I got absolutely no credit for it. I didn’t have to do that. And it’s really unfair to them… I found out that nobody cared, and I’m allowed to.”
We may soon find out if nobody cares. As the midterms approach, voters increasingly list corruption as one of their major concerns: an IPSOS survey last month found that 38 percent of Americans are “worried about financial/political corruption” – the highest level in ten years.
If the American public was feeling better off, the Trump family’s rampant profiteering might be less aggravating. But the cost of living is causing widespread pain and US employment – which has been robust for years – is starting to dip, and the latest Labor Force Participation Rate figures suggest the next few months may get worse.
Trump 2.0 promised a golden age. The Democrats will enjoy spending the rest of the year pointing out that it’s chiefly the Trump family and a coterie of billionaires who have been gilded, in large part thanks to lavish bungs from the Middle East.
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