Mark Halperin on Trump Cashing In On The Presidency

**Michael Smerconish** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:34)
Ditch the Clowns on the left, and the Jokers on the right, and join Michael Smerconish right here, in the middle.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:40)
This is The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (0:44)
It's a tale of two newsletters. One is smerconish.com, the other is the wide world of news. Lead story today, I linked to the Associated Press, headline Trump filing shows. He took in about 1.2 billion from crypto businesses last year. The lead, Bernard Condon, wrote it. President Donald Trump took in nearly 1.2 billion from his crypto businesses last year. A federal filing released on Tuesday shows locking in profits while his investors were socked with losses. Mere startups, when he took the oath of office, the new ventures have now eclipsed in revenue much of his vast property portfolio that took him decades to accumulate. Fueling their rise were billionaire investors and Trump's own move to quash a federal crackdown on the industry.
At the Wide World of News, which of course is Mark Halpern's daily newspaper for his subscribers, he begins this way.
Donald Trump's new financial disclosure forms released on Tuesday provide only the latest confirmation that the president and his family has gotten richer while he has served as president, stemming from a set of actions that have been openly brazen, if not illegal, and Trump would argue, what he has done is no different in kind than some of his predecessors. Mark Halpern joins us every Wednesday in the third hour of the program, so grateful that he's here each Wednesday, including right now. Mark, can I begin this way? I remember thinking in the latter stages of the campaign, it is all on the line for Donald Trump. His personal liberty and his financial security, it could easily have gone the other way. If he'd lost that election, who knows what would have become from the January 6 case, from the Mar-a-Lago case, even from Fonny Willis' case. And financially, he was in a very perilous situation. That E. Gene Carroll verdict alone could have probably taken him down, but for his victory and all the things you write about today.

**Mark Halperin** (2:52)
You know, Donald Trump, two things I've learned about him that I think are applicable to what he's doing.
And one is he score cords his life about being rich. You see in the public remarks, but also in private remarks. He's obsessed with the Forbes list. He's obsessed with which of his friends has made more money, how to make money.
And it's an extraordinary, I'd say one of the most extraordinary narrative moments or themes of Donald Trump. He's the president of the United States. He's a term president, and he wants to be considered one of the greatest presidents of all time. But I'd say if he said to Donald Trump, you could die being considered one of the greatest presidents of all time or the richest person who ever lived. I think he might choose the latter. He just he's just that's how he's learned to score cord, not just his own life, but the lives of others.

**Michael Smerconish** (3:40)
My short hand has been my short hand has been to say Donald Trump judges a man by the size of his wallet.

**Mark Halperin** (3:47)
Yeah, that's absolutely better said than I did. And then the other thing is, he's a student of the presidential history. And his view is, I know what other presidents did. I know Jack Kennedy made his brother the attorney general. I know Dick Cheney and George Bush said, yeah, there's a unitary executive and the president during wartime could do pretty much whatever he wants. And I know that LBJ seemed to get really rich while he was president. I know that Joe Biden had Biden Inc. So Donald Trump's attitude is the difference in quantity is not a difference in quality. He's just doing what others did, in this case, getting rich while president. And the fact that he's starting new businesses, which other presidents didn't do, the fact that other presidents wait till they leave office to cash in, he doesn't care. His view is those guys are suckers. Why leverage your presidency after you leave office for personal wealth when you can leverage it as president? And he knows that the ethics scolds and the media and the democrats and the few republicans with the temerity to criticize them.