Inside Trump's Growing Crypto Fortune

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Luke Vargas (0:33)

President Trump made more than a billion dollars in cryptocurrency last year. We'll dive in to his latest financial disclosures. Plus, Anthropic and the Trump administration agree to restore access to Fable following a shutdown of the model that roiled the AI industry.

And Colorado's Democratic primaries see yet more centrists fall amid a far left groundswell.

Yadira Caraveo (0:56)

The establishment, pundits, and so many others said this wouldn't be a race at all. It would be a coronation.

They counted us out and they underestimated all of you.

Luke Vargas (1:11)

It's Wednesday, July 1st. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

President Trump's forays into cryptocurrency have delivered him a windfall of more than a billion dollars last year, according to his latest financial disclosures. It's an unprecedented surge in income that came alongside earnings from royalty deals, real estate and legal settlements. And for more, I'm joined by journal finance editor Alex Frangos. Alex, it seems that the bulk of this income has come from cryptocurrency, no?

Alex Frangos (1:50)

Yeah, it's really quite astonishing. Trump and his family started these businesses in the months before he was elected while promising to make America the capital of crypto. And the ventures really brought in a huge amount of real cash, over a billion dollars. And what's notable is while the Trump family did really well, the investors in those coins, some of them didn't. The value of those coins dropped quite a bit after that.

Luke Vargas (2:16)

In addition to crypto, we should note that there's been a wealth of other deals here with other companies involving real estate and even Trump branded products.

Alex Frangos (2:26)

Yeah, sure. He's always had those Trump stakes, Trump watches brought in 4.7 million.

I'm quite envious of a $6,484 a month pension from the Screen Actors Guild from his time hosting The Apprentice. But it's the crypto stuff that has dwarfed everything else. I mean, this is a guy who was known for building condos and building hotels, and that is now a small, much smaller part of his business. And you look at the money that was brought in from Mar-a-Lago and the Trump Doral, which obviously got a lot of extra business after he came into office, pulling in $77 million last year at Mar-a-Lago, but that's peanuts compared to Trump coin or the World Liberty Financial Token, which both brought in over $500 million.

Luke Vargas (3:13)

Just pulling back, Alex, I appreciate that perspective, but how just unprecedented is it for a president to be making this amount of money while in office?

Alex Frangos (3:21)

Totally unprecedented. There have been rich presidents, not quite any who have so many things going on while they're in office.

His and his sons' and daughters' attitude in this term especially is, we're not going to stop doing business. We're going to go out and do deals, even if they are in areas that overlap with the administration's policies, like on crypto or foreign real estate projects with countries in which we have diplomatic business.

Luke Vargas (3:49)

But we should be very clear here, Alex, the White House says that neither the president nor his family have ever engaged or will engage in conflicts of interest and that all of his actions and the actions of his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.

Alex Frangos (4:02)

Yeah, absolutely. They say that. And there's also critics who say, well, they can say that. But in fact, if you look at these deals and the overlaps, they are concerning. Another unusual element of the Wealth Report here are these legal settlements that Trump struck with major companies, Meta, Paramount, which was the owner of CBS, Disney, the owner of ABC, over legal cases that he threatened against those companies over, in some cases, the way that he was portrayed. And critics will say that those settlements were made in order to prevent him from using the apparatus of the government to squeeze those companies. So it's a huge amount of money, $86.5 million from those legal settlements. Certainly a lucrative line of business for anyone.