Latest / THE DAILY BRIEF / Trump made $2.4B last year, 6,000x the presidential salary

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Trump made $2.4B last year, 6,000x the presidential salary · THE DAILY BRIEF

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  Speaker 1: President Trump made a staggering two point four billion dollars
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  Speaker 1: last year, according to a new report by our Next Guest,
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  Speaker 1: who went through tons of documents Trump's financial records and
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  Speaker 1: found that Trump made nearly as much money in twenty
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  Speaker 1: twenty five as he made in all four years of
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  Speaker 1: his first term combined. Dan, just walk me through how
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  Speaker 1: you get to this number of two point four billion
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  Speaker 1: dollars for a sitting president in one year.
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  Speaker 2: Well, the starting point is Donald Trump's own financial disclosure report,
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  Speaker 2: which he submitted a couple of weeks ago. Now, the
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  Speaker 2: problem with that document is that it's not made for
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  Speaker 2: somebody as rich as Donald Trump. So the income ranges
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  Speaker 2: are listed in millions of dollar ranges, and then there's
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  Speaker 2: also a category that's just anything over five million dollars. Well,
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  Speaker 2: Donald Trump has a lot of things that make over
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  Speaker 2: five million dollars. And so what we did is we
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  Speaker 2: went and looked at court records and bond filings and
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  Speaker 2: sec filings and layered those on top of the financial
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  Speaker 2: disclosure report to pinpoint exactly how much money he made
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  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty five, which was two point four billion dollars.
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  Speaker 2: And then we went back and looked starting in twenty
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  Speaker 2: sixteen and drawing it over that whole timeline and seeing
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  Speaker 2: just how dramatically the rise was last year.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a staggering number, all right.
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  Speaker 2: Now.
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  Speaker 1: Trump was recently asked about the money, how much money
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  Speaker 1: he's making, and he actually, I mean, you can look
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  Speaker 1: at the annual earnings here. I'm just putting it up here,
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  Speaker 1: all of your work from twenty seventeen on Dan. But
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  Speaker 1: Trump gets asked, hey, last year, in the context of
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  Speaker 1: all awarding on potentially corrupt dealings, how did you make
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  Speaker 1: the money? Here's what he said.
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  Speaker 3: You know, I have property. Because the stock market's going up.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody's property, Okay, Dan, So how much of that two
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  Speaker 1: point four billion dollars last year was because the stock
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  Speaker 1: market went up.
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  Speaker 2: Zero dollars? Donald Trump made a lot of stock trades.
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  Speaker 2: But that's not what we're counting here, nor is it
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  Speaker 2: what anybody was counting a couple of weeks ago. What
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  Speaker 2: we're looking at is what are the operating revenues of
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  Speaker 2: his business, and then what are the proceeds from asset
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  Speaker 2: sales that he has made, not stocks but actual herd assets.
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  Speaker 2: You add all of that up and you get to
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  Speaker 2: two point four billion dollars. You has nothing to do
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  Speaker 2: with the stock market.
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  Speaker 4: The president Social media company today said it will be
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  Speaker 4: selling quicker access to posts including the presidents to Wall Street.
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  Speaker 4: All the better and faster to turn whatever he says
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  Speaker 4: online into money. True Social says companies will be able
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  Speaker 4: to bot read items from the service's top ten accounts,
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  Speaker 4: quote within milliseconds of the poster hitting send, and then
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  Speaker 4: trade on them. The President, as you know, has nearly
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  Speaker 4: thirteen million followers. That announcement coming the same day as
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  Speaker 4: a CNN exclusive which found Trump praised more than twenty
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  Speaker 4: companies on his truth Social account just days after he
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  Speaker 4: bought stock in those companies, companies including the major chip
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  Speaker 4: maker Navidia, Boeing, and Apple. Here's CNN's Tom Foreman, My
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  Speaker 4: teens are plue.
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  Speaker 5: Three social media posts by President Trump about a clothing company.
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  Speaker 5: Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the hottest ad out there,
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  Speaker 5: about a computer giant building new AI assets. All necessary
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  Speaker 5: permits will be expedited and quickly delivered. And about a
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  Speaker 5: plane with components from several large defense contractors, the greatest
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  Speaker 5: and most beautiful fighter jet ever made. Pure boosterism, maybe
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  Speaker 5: but revelations from a new CNN investigation have watchdog groups
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  Speaker 5: alarmed because each of those positive posts came just days
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  Speaker 5: after some of Trump's own money was invested in those firms,
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  Speaker 5: raising eyebrows over his role regulating American business.
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  Speaker 2: Is he negotiating on what's best for the American people
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  Speaker 2: or is he negotiating what's best for him and his family.
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  Speaker 5: CNN found the president promoted more than twenty companies through
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  Speaker 5: truth social posts soon after he became invested in them.
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  Speaker 5: He got stock in ge Aerospace, Eli, Lilly, and Apple
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  Speaker 5: and shared good words for them. He's racked up numerous
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  Speaker 5: investments in Tesla saw him just days before he appeared
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  Speaker 5: with CEO Elon muhyu admiring the electric cars at the
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  Speaker 5: White House. Does any of this prove the billionaire president
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  Speaker 5: is promoting his own investments or that any of these
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  Speaker 5: businesses did anything wrong. No, but worry over possible conflicts
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  Speaker 5: of interest remains.
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  Speaker 3: Nobody really knows exactly why President Trump's stockholdings of tripled
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  Speaker 3: or quadrupled in the last year, but there are inferences
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  Speaker 3: that you can draw that are not very pretty.
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  Speaker 5: The White House says there are no conflicts of interest
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  Speaker 5: the Trump Organization says neither President Trump, his family, nor
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  Speaker 5: the Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or
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  Speaker 5: approving specific investments, which are handled by outside firms which
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  Speaker 5: give no advanced notice of trading activity. So it's not
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  Speaker 5: clear whether Trump was aware of any of his purchases
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  Speaker 5: when he was posting about the companies. But every other
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  Speaker 5: president for fifty year has sold assets, put stocks into
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  Speaker 5: blind trust, switched to widely diversified mutual funds where they
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  Speaker 5: can't know what investments they hold. It's not the law,
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  Speaker 5: but it has been the norm.
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  Speaker 6: We have a president to go to great lengths to
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  Speaker 6: try to avoid even the appearance of any kind of
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  Speaker 6: impropriety or any accomplished of interest.
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  Speaker 5: To be clear, more than twenty one thousand transactions were
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  Speaker 5: made in Trump's name in twenty twenty five alone. He
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  Speaker 5: did not remark on all of them. He's always held
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  Speaker 5: big stakes in business, and sometimes he posts negative comments.
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  Speaker 5: He invested in the cable company Comcast, then ripped its
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  Speaker 5: news channels, calling it Concast Still for however much that
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  Speaker 5: might muddy the water, Critics say this remains clear. The
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  Speaker 5: president appears to be straddling a very thin line. Between
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  Speaker 5: his politics and his pocket John.
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  Speaker 4: Tom Forman, thank you very much joining me now to
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  Speaker 4: discuss the four Federal prosecutor Jeffrey. But jeff you heard
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  Speaker 4: the reporting there as he went through it. Ethical questions,
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  Speaker 4: legal questions, what do we raise here?
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  Speaker 7: Well, there's certainly ethical questions, legal questions. I don't think so.
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  Speaker 7: I mean, you know, as the CNN report pointed out,
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  Speaker 7: every other recent president has had his assets in a
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  Speaker 7: blind trust where there is really no way the president
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  Speaker 7: can know what he's what he's invested in. Trump has
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  Speaker 7: not done that, and you know, this is why his
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  Speaker 7: family and his own assets have exploded in the past
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  Speaker 7: couple of years, largely because of his investments in the
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  Speaker 7: crypto business, which his administration is very actively promoting in
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  Speaker 7: terms of the stock. Again, it's not clear exactly how
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  Speaker 7: the process works. The administration says he doesn't know when
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  Speaker 7: the investments are made, but he knows now and he
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  Speaker 7: knows whether his words can help the companies that he's
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  Speaker 7: invested in. This is why other presidents have done operated differently.
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  Speaker 7: But you know, President Trump has operated outside of scrutiny,
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  Speaker 7: and there hasn't been any so far, at.
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  Speaker 3: Least from Congress.
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  Speaker 4: Operated differently because that was the norm, because that was
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  Speaker 4: the advice they get from White House counsel or ethics advisors.
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  Speaker 4: But there's no law requiring the president to do that,
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  Speaker 4: to put assets in a blind trust.
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  Speaker 7: Why not, because it is there is a separation of
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  Speaker 7: powers issue of how much Congress can tell the president
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  Speaker 7: what to do in terms of his personal conduct. But
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  Speaker 7: most presidents want to be seen as above suspicion. It
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  Speaker 7: has not been controversial in the past. All those recent
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  Speaker 7: presidents of both political parties have put their money in
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  Speaker 7: blind trust because they want to be seen as ethically cleaned.
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  Speaker 7: Trump has very clearly said, my family's going to continue
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  Speaker 7: my business, and particularly in the second term, they've been
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  Speaker 7: actively investing in companies that the government has a great
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  Speaker 7: deal of interest in. I should add that, as far
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  Speaker 7: as I can tell, there is no legal question here
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  Speaker 7: in terms of criminal law. There is no insider trading
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  Speaker 7: evidence that I can see. You know, some that would
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  Speaker 7: take the president intentionally puffing up a stock that he
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  Speaker 7: knows is going to go up. And as suspicious as
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  Speaker 7: this evidence is, nothing I've seen suggests that the president
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  Speaker 7: has committed a crime.
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  Speaker 8: Now I see an investigation has found that an investment
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  Speaker 8: firm where Donald Trump Junior is a partner, has skyrocketed
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  Speaker 8: during his father's presidency, and there's been a jump in
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  Speaker 8: federal contracts given to companies the firm invest in. CNN
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  Speaker 8: senior investigative producer Kurt Devine joins US Now with the latest, Kurt,
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  Speaker 8: what have you found?
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  Speaker 6: Good morning? Right, So, Trump Junior announced he joined that
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  Speaker 6: firm seventeen eighty nine Capital days after his father's reelection
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  Speaker 6: in twenty twenty four, and since the time, assets the
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  Speaker 6: firm manages have more than tripled. So they've grown from
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  Speaker 6: less than a billion dollars to what its leaders say
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  Speaker 6: is more than three billion dollars today. And we found
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  Speaker 6: that ten businesses the firm invested in have been awarded
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  Speaker 6: more than one point six billion dollars from federal contracts
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  Speaker 6: and grants, and so in under two years, they got
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  Speaker 6: more during President Joe Biden's full term. And that's also
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  Speaker 6: not counting more than a billion dollars in federal money
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  Speaker 6: that may go to other startups the firm has invested in.
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  Speaker 8: And so, how has Trump Junior talked about the firm?
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  Speaker 6: Right? When asked why people should invest with seventeen to
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  Speaker 6: eighty nine Capital, Trump Junior said this last year out
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  Speaker 6: of Business Forum.
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  Speaker 8: We underst what the administration wants to do because we
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  Speaker 8: help craft some of that messaging, so we can be
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  Speaker 8: on the outside but still have that understanding of what
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  Speaker 8: they plan to do it. So, just to be clear,
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  Speaker 8: is there any connection between the president's son and these contracts?
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  Speaker 6: To be clear, we have seen nothing that shows seventeen
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  Speaker 6: eighty nine as try to influence federal contracts, and other
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  Speaker 6: funds like this have invested in some of these same companies.
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  Speaker 6: But government watchdogs still say this trend raises questions because
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  Speaker 6: taxpayer dollars are boosting companies that the firm has invested in.
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  Speaker 6: I asked Donald Trump junior spokesman about all this, and
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  Speaker 6: he sent a statement saying don does not interface with
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  Speaker 6: the federal government as part of his role with any
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  Speaker 6: company that he invests in or advises. We also got
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  Speaker 6: a statement from an attorney for seventeen eighty nine Capital.
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  Speaker 6: He said the firm has done nothing with respect to
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  Speaker 6: these private companies other than making the same smart investments
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  Speaker 6: as other well respected funds and investors, and the White House,
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  Speaker 6: as spokeswoman there said there are no conflict, ks of interest,