Trump Crypto, Political Power, and the Grift That Keeps on Giving

When Power Meets Personal Profit

I have spent my entire career warning people about financial fraud. I warned about Madoff. I warned about Enron before I even had a show. I wrote columns about it. I have ripped into the Clintons over the Foundation. I have covered Biden and Burisma. I made fun of Hunter Biden selling his finger paintings for absurd sums of money. None of it compares to what is happening right now with the Trump family and their cryptocurrency operation.

This is not partisan commentary. I am not a member of any party. I am a consumer advocate. And what I am watching unfold is, in my view, the biggest political grift of all time.

What They Actually Did

Let me be precise about the mechanics here, because the news keeps calling this a “cryptocurrency business” without explaining what that actually means.

• They did not invest in existing cryptocurrencies
• They did not build a blockchain platform or a technology product
• They created their own coins, essentially manufacturing money out of thin air
• They sold those coins to supporters through vehicles like World Liberty Financial
• The Trump coin, the Melania coin, and related tokens generated revenue for the family while buyers absorbed all the risk

That is the business model. Make up money. Sell it to people who trust you. Collect real dollars in return.

Personal Responsibility Still Applies

I believe deeply in personal responsibility, and I am not going to pretend otherwise just because the victims are sympathetic. If you bought the Trump coin or the Melania coin, I am going to be direct with you: that was a bad decision. You knew, on some level, that it was speculative at best and promotional at worst.

A wise philosopher named Forrest Gump once said, “stupid is as stupid does.” That cuts both ways. The family exploiting their position of power is one kind of problem. The buyers who handed over real money for a coin named after the First Lady is another kind of problem. Both things can be true at the same time.

The Legal Question Is the Wrong Question

Here is where it gets genuinely troubling. When I ask whether this is illegal, the honest answer appears to be: probably not. Cryptocurrency regulation in this country is a patchwork at best. When these tokens were being issued and sold, the legal framework was murky enough that the Trump operation seems to have stayed just inside the lines.

I actually thought about this myself about ten years ago when the whole crypto and NFT craze was kicking off. I joked on this program about creating a “Watchdog Coin.” I thought about it seriously for about thirty seconds and concluded I probably could do it legally. I did not, because it felt wrong. It felt like taking advantage of people who trusted me. That instinct, the one that says “this feels wrong even if it might be legal,” apparently does not apply to everyone.

Why This Matters Beyond Politics

Regardless of your political affiliation, the pattern here should concern you:

• Elected officials and their families are using proximity to power to generate personal wealth
• Retail buyers, ordinary Americans, are absorbing the downside risk
• Regulatory gaps in the crypto space are being exploited before lawmakers can respond
• Trust, the one asset that makes any financial system function, is being systematically eroded

I think about what the founders would make of any of this, and I genuinely do not want to answer that question. What I do know is that every generation gets the financial scandals it tolerates. The question is whether enough people are paying attention to demand better.