How Trump Corrupted the Presidency Into an ATM

Yahoo

19 hours ago

President Donald Trump's shady financial dealings have turned his second term into a brazen moneymaking scheme, says The Atlantic's David Frum.
On the latest episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, the conservative writer who recently launched the podcast 'The David Frum Show' told host Joanna Coles that while it's nothing new for Trump to use his office for personal gain, his dealings since the inauguration have spiraled into unprecedented territory.
'In Trump's first term… he made improper millions of dollars,' says Frum, who left the Republican Party after Trump's 2024 reelection. 'But in the second term, he's making improper billions of dollars through his coin operations, through other forms of payment, his relatives and family.'
While presidents have traditionally followed a series of norms and laws barring them from using their office for financial gain, Frum says Trump has 'trampled' that precedent.
For one, Trump has made billions of dollars on $TRUMP, a memecoin that gained ire on both sides of the congressional aisle when the president hosted a private dinner at his Virginia golf resort for the coin's top 220 investors. The top 25 investors were even offered an exclusive tour of the White House.
More recently, Frum says Trump's not-yet-constructed presidential library has become an avenue to launder several million, if not several billion, dollars through so-called 'donations.'
Perhaps the most glaring instance of Trump shuffling a gift through his library, argues Frum, was when he accepted a $400 million plane from the Qatari government in May.
At the time, the White House said the plane would be considered a gift to the Department of Defense while Trump is in office, then will be kept at his presidential library after his term ends.
'In this case, Trump is allowing you to think that 'library' means the plane's on the ground, but there's no guarantee of that,' says Frum. 'This plane is going to be flying him around and his relatives and friends. It's a personal gift to Trump from the government of Qatar.'
However, the Qatari plane is far from the only time Trump has raised suspicion while accepting a notable donation to his presidential library.
As part of his settlement with Paramount, the media giant agreed to pay $15 million to Trump's library. In a July 5 essay for The Atlantic, Frum argued that settlement amounted to bribery.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren seems to agree. On July 2, Warren announced she and fellow senators Bernie Sanders and Tom Wyden would launch an investigation into whether the settlement violated anti-bribery laws.
'In the Trump case,' says Frum, '[Presidential libraries] become ways to launder money again, and not millions, not single millions of dollars, but multiple millions of dollars and even billions of dollars.'
Not only do Trump's financial dealings break from presidential norms, but Frum says the lack of pushback from Republicans in Congress only exacerbates the issue.
'People who stood up to him found their political careers over,' says Frum. 'I would venture to say that probably many, certainly in the Republican Senate, disapprove of Donald Trump's financial operations. But they don't dare say so, and they certainly don't dare do anything about it. And if they tried, they fear they would fail, and they're probably right.'
The result, Frum tells Coles, is that Republicans have tacitly given Trump an unprecedented level of power to abuse his position as president for financial gain.
'What is happening with Trump, the scale of it and the fact that the president himself is a personal party, not just his ne'er-do-well children, but the president himself,' says Frum. 'The scale and the location, that you've never seen anything remotely like that in American history. Never.'
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