How Much is he pocketing off the Presidency? Must Read
The Number
How much is Trump pocketing off the Presidency?
By David D. Kirkpatrick
August 11, 2025
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/08/18/the-number
At a press conference on January 11, 2017, President-elect Donald Trump explained for the first time how he would handle the many conflicts of interest that his business empire posed for his new role. His company, the Trump Organization, collected money from all over the world for luxury condos, hotel rentals, development projects, and club memberships, and he had made deals that put his name on everything from mail-order steaks to get-rich-quick courses. Could citizens trust him to put the common good ahead of personal profit? How would he assure Americans that payments to his business weren’t doubling as payoffs?
A journalist asked Trump if he would release his tax returns, as Presidents had done for decades. Trump said no, and then explained just how unconstrained he felt by such conventions. He’d recently learned that the President, being beholden only to the voters, is subject to none of the regulations that restrict subordinate officials from conducting private business on the side. He called the loophole “a no-conflict-of-interest provision,” as if it were a perk of his employment contract.
To illustrate just how glaring a conflict the law allowed him, Trump volunteered that, during the transition, he’d entertained a two-billion-dollar offer “to do a deal in Dubai.” The offer had come from Hussain Sajwani, an Emirati real-estate tycoon with close ties to his country’s rulers. Trump emphasized that he “didn’t have to turn it down.” Nevertheless, he’d passed, because he didn’t “want to take advantage of something”; he disliked “the way that looks.” Therefore, he continued, his eldest sons, Donald, Jr., and Eric, would assume daily management of his businesses until he left office.
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Last edited Tue Aug 12, 2025, 01:38 AM - Edit history (1)
with whatever the "real" stash amount might be...
I haven't read the whole thing yet, but does the New Yorker come up with a total?
"... The family isn’t just passively accepting the Saudi private-equity investments, the Persian Gulf licensing deals, and Justin Sun’s millions for digital tokens. They’ve sought those payments eagerly, and at a speed suggesting that they badly want—or need—the money. The family’s thirst for cash makes questions about conflicts of interest all the more pressing.
Did Trump strike tacit deals with Justin Sun or C.Z., or with the media companies that paid him big settlements, or with Gulf monarchs? Will Qatar’s airplane gift protect it from another blockade? Did the U.A.E.’s two-billion-dollar stablecoin purchase give it access to sensitive American technology? Did payments from the Arab monarchs incline Trump toward air strikes against Iran? Quid pro quos are exceedingly difficult to prove. But Wertheimer, the government-ethics reformer, said of Trump, “The way he pursues every possible avenue he can think of for money gives people who provide that money a clear sense that they are going to get something in return. Almost anyone who sees what’s going on has to assume that this money is buying the President’s favor.”
Trump has been back in the White House for a little more than six months, and his family’s zeal is unflagging. In June, Donald, Jr., and Eric celebrated the tenth anniversary of their father’s first Presidential run by announcing yet another licensing deal: they sold the Trump name for use on a mobile-phone service, which Donald, Jr., said was “building on the movement to put America first.” Dial 888-TRUMP45 to sign up, and pay $47.45 a month.
A few weeks later, the brothers travelled with their father to promote a newly opened Trump golf course in Balmedie, Scotland, which the President touted as “an unbelievable development.” On August 4th, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump brothers had been given a total of five million shares in a new blank-check company that aims to raise and spend at least seven hundred million dollars to buy American manufacturing companies. The brothers are advisers to the new venture, and so is their friend Kyle Wool.
Like the digital clock counting the national debt, the meter on the Trump family’s Presidential profits ticks ever faster. ♦
Whew ... hard to decide if he's a felon or military dictator or member of the global oligarch network. 
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