How Trump made an estimated $2.2 billion last year

**Terry Gross** (0:00)
This is Fresh Air, I am Terry Gross. President Donald Trump made an estimated 2.2 billion dollars last year, which was the first year of his second term. How did he manage to do that? That's what my guest, New York Times reporter Eric Lipton has been investigating. He's uncovered business deals made by Trump and or his sons, Don Jr. and Eric, that exploit the power of the presidency for self-enrichment, present conflicts of interest and violate norms. Lipton also uncovered conflicts of interest related to Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, as well as Lutnick's two sons. This year, Lipton won a Pulitzer Prize as part of a team of Times reporters who investigated how the president and his family have profited from White House deal-making. This was Lipton's fourth Pulitzer. Last month, Lipton and four other Times reporters got something else as a result of their reporting, subpoenas from the Justice Department. The DOJ wanted to know the reporter's sources for a story about the luxurious plane donated as a gift to Trump from Qatar. At Trump's insistence that it serve as Air Force One, it had to be retrofitted with security measures it wasn't designed to accommodate. And it had to be finished within a year to meet Trump's deadline of the July 4th sesquicentennial celebration.
Later in July, Trump made his first international flight in it for a NATO summit in Turkey. But he used an older Air Force One on the way back. The Times reporters uncovered that this was because after a ceasefire with Iran fell apart and the war resumed, there was a credible threat against Trump, and the retrofitted plane lacked sufficient security measures despite Trump's earlier insistence that it was secure.
Other recent stories Lipton has written about pertain to the industries the Trump administration regulates or makes decisions about, and how he or his sons also made business deals in those sectors, including cryptocurrency, mining rare earth metals, and nuclear power. We recorded our interview yesterday.
Eric Lipton, welcome back to Fresh Air. Congratulations on your fourth Pulitzer.

**Eric Lipton** (2:19)
Thank you so much for having me.

**Terry Gross** (2:20)
So before we get to the subpoena, can you briefly add more to the Air Force One story that got you, I was going to say won you, the subpoena?

**Eric Lipton** (2:34)
Yeah, I mean, we have been tracking Trump's interest in having a new Air Force One since early 2025
After he returned to the White House, he was immediately obsessed with having a new plane. He felt like the old Air Force One does not kind of meet his standards, and it wasn't worthy of a leader like the Middle East leaders have these luxurious planes. He was very jealous, and he said so, and he wanted a fresh new plane with luxurious trappings. So as of early 25, we started to look at this plane that he identified that he wanted to get a hold of from the Qatari government, and we were already skeptical by what we were told by people at the Air Force, that it could ever be actually ready to serve as a mobile White House command center for the United States government. And so once it was delivered, we immediately began investigating that, and it became obvious based on the conversations that we had that there were shortcomings, there were shortcuts that were taken to get the plane to the president quickly, not only with its air defense systems, but with other smaller things like special exits that are there that are more secure, that are lower, and that have built in stairs that the president has to land in an airport without notice and there's not ground crews, or a second backup power system for the plane that allows its engines to start faster so it can get off the ground quickly if it has to, or if it has a power failure, it can still communicate internationally with military leaders or other world leaders. So these are things that are missing in the retrofitted plane and the rush to get it to them and get them a luxury ride.

**Terry Gross** (4:03)
And even little things like a lot of the seats face sideways instead of facing forward, why is that basically prohibited on Air Force One?

**Eric Lipton** (4:12)
Well, the FAA, when it certifies planes, it assumes that the plane is prepared for an emergency landing that's going to have a pretty intense g-force on your body. And so it tests the chairs to anticipate that force of an emergency landing. But when it's a sideways facing chair, it has a different stress on your body.
So this plane has sideways facing chairs. It's a luxury environment. It's a lounge kind of a setup. It's not really like a passenger plane. So they had to get certification from the FAA to be kind of a special condition outside of the normal FAA. And that didn't come until the day the plane started flying on July 1st of 2026