What are the $Trump $trumpets up to?
The president's sale of crypto coins to foreign buyers during tariff war certainly looks corrupt
By Sam Bellamy
While Elon Musk is busy shaking down foreign countries for Starlink contracts, his pet president is in another room scraping money off the table from anonymous international investors in his memecoin scam — all amid a worldwide tariff war.
Hello, Republican Party. Anybody home?
Is there no amount of corruption that catches your eye and jogs your memory on where you left your spines hanging in the House and Senate cloak rooms?
A new analysis by Bloomberg News shows that at least 56% of the top 220 purchasers of $Trump memecoins to date bought them on foreign exchanges that do not sell to U.S.-based buyers.
And all but six of the top 25 bought their memecoins from those exchanges, according to research by reporters Leonardo Nicoletti, Anthony Cormier and David Kocieniewski.
The buyers, as I detailed in a recent column, are vying for a chance to have what Trump describes as an “intimate dinner” with him on May 22 at his golf club just outside of Washington D.C.
The top 220 buyers get the dinner – which Trump’s people have promised will not be recorded – and the top 25 will be invited to a reception beforehand, plus a tour of the White House. (At this point, a kettle has probably been set up outside the Oval Office for additional donations. Who’s the bell-ringer? Lindsey Graham first shift and Mike Johnson on the second, perhaps?)
Secrecy is deliberately part of the process. Bloomberg reports that Trump’s memocoin sale “raises questions about how attendees at the promotional dinner, who are publicly identified only by three- or four-letter usernames they’ve chosen, will be vetted.”
Bloomberg also notes that two of the three foreign exchanges involved in the $Trump sales “have run afoul of U.S. law previously. Binance paid the U.S. more than $4 billion after it pleaded guilty in November 2023 to violating federal anti-money laundering and sanctions laws through lapses in internal controls. OKX pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering violations in February and forfeited more than $420 million.”
The Associated Press reported a few days ago the memecoin sales generated more than $320 million in fees since January for Trump and his partners, according to the blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.
Are these buyers representing foreign countries and companies trying to win favorable treatment from Trump in his tariff war against the world?
We may never know for sure, or at least anytime soon.
Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren have called for an investigation, but they’re relying on cooperation from Republican leadership at the Capitol, and it appears they’re all (1) delighted by Trump’s corruption, (2) afraid of a primary challenger if they speak up or (3) sitting at a distance, teeth chattering, as they ponder a MAGA mob attacking them.
On Tuesday, Democrats in the Senate submitted a bill called the End Crypto Corruption Act that would bar the president, vice president, lawmakers and Senate-confirmed appointees from issuing, sponsoring or endorsing crypto.
Damn fine idea. But see the above for the likely level of interest among Republicans.
In the quaint days of yore – say, six months ago – such activities would have been the subject of nonstop talk on Fox News, Newsmax and the fever swamps of MAGA land online. A tsunami warning might have been issued for all the froth pouring from angry Republican lawmakers. QAnon might even have re-emerged with news that JFK or maybe JFK Jr. was really, really on his way this time.
While it’s true that Hunter Biden left a trail of slime nearly everywhere he went, his trading off his father’s presidency is kid stuff compared with what the actual president is now doing.
I’m not sure if the duck would walk any more convincingly or quack any more loudly here. Does anyone not see the duck?
At any other time in American history, a scenario like this – where the president and one of his top advisors are actively soliciting personal financial gain from foreign countries – would be the subject of bright lights, clicking cameras and probably a few early-morning FBI raids.
Yet this – this gets a “grifters gonna grift” reaction from the party of Honest Abe.
But, yes, it’s probably best Democrats wait until they’re absolutely, positively certain, not the teensiest bit anxious, about the chances of successfully impeaching the president for selling something that has absolutely no material value – other than a potential discount on tariffs.
Nothing to see here. Let’s all go back to our regularly scheduled analysis of why Kamala Harris lost.