August 6, 2025 • 18 mins
Since President Trump kicked off his reelection campaign in November 2022, his net worth has more than doubled — to roughly $6.4 billion. No modern American president has positioned his family to make so much money while in the White House.
Today on the show, Bloomberg reporters Max Abelson and Annie Massa join host David Gura to discuss the sources of the Trump family’s wealth — from cryptocurrencies and sneakers to Trump-branded towers in the Middle East.
Read more: The Trump Family’s Money-Making Machine
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. The Gulf of Mexico
has been renamed the Gulf of Amara.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Now to Elon Muskin what's being described as a hostile
takeover of a government landmark decisions impacting the future of
birthright citizenship game. The President says he wants friendship with
our northern neighbor despite trade tensions, but won't give up
by the idea of turning Canada into the fifty first state.
It's been about six months since President Trump started his
second term, and if you're having a hard time keeping
(00:34):
track of everything that's happened since then, you're not alone.
The President has imposed eye popping tariffs on our largest
trading partners.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
She's calling the beginning of a new system of.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Trade, ramped up border enforcement and mass deportations, deploy about
seven hundred marines to the LA area in response to
the protests over ice raids, and overhauled large parts of
the federal government. Trump has also ordered military strikes on Iran.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
His massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Engaged in legal battles with universities in the media, and
signed a massive tax and spending bill into law. Passing
in the Senate, it was very close. Vice President jd
Vance with the tie breaking vote. The White House has
celebrated the last six months. The administration has argued the
president has delivered on campaign promises. He's cracked down on
illegal border crossings, reduced the trade deficit, and delivered tax
(01:27):
cuts to working class Americans. But during that time and
in the months leading up to his reelection, something else
has also happened. President Trump and his family have made
a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
The way that his wealth looks now in his second
term versus his first term is very different.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Annie Massa covers wealth for Bloomberg.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
In Trump's first term, I would say there were already
calls and protests over potential for conflicts of interest because
he was a businessman. He has the Trump organization. But
now as we come into the second term, it's just
a much more complex picture.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Today, President Trump's assets are in a trust controlled by
his oldest son, Donald Trump Junior, and his family says
they aren't doing any business with governments. Critics of the
president would argue it falls short of separating him from
his business interests, and he spent months working with a
team of reporters at Bloomberg crunching the numbers on how
the assets in that trust and the Trump family's wealth
(02:31):
have ballooned since the early days of his campaign for reelection.
In that time, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, President
Trump's net worth has more than doubled to about six
point four billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
He now has a publicly traded company that was not
true last time around, and that's Trump Media, which is
the parent company of Truth Social, making up a huge
portion of that wealth. The other really big thing to
zero in on is crypto and so you have the
these branches that simply weren't there in Trump's first term
at all. He didn't have these crypto ventures, he didn't
(03:05):
have a publicly traded company. His sons are now adding
themselves to advisory boards of various companies that are regulated
by the government in certain ways. So it's an even
more intricate picture and ballooning wealth.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I'm David Gerret, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News today on the show, the Trump Family's money
making machine. Where's their wealth coming from? And how is
Donald Trump's second presidency benefiting his family. Donald Trump is
certainly not the first president to profit from the presidency.
(03:42):
Presidents often have their windfall after leaving office, with multimillion
dollar book deals and speaking engagements, but Trump has seen
his net worth soar, so much so that when Bloomberg
wealth reporter Annie Massa and finance reporter Max Abelson were
trying to tallly the president's net worth, they kept having
to update their estimates as new projects were announced. Max says,
(04:05):
it's a remarkable transformation when you think of where Trump
was five years ago.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I mean, it is not exaggerating to say that Donald
Trump as a person, as a brand, as a businessman,
as the head of a company, was facing some serious
headwinds just a few years ago. I'm not talking about
the nineteen nineties. In the wake of his first presidency.
He left Washington with debts coming due, a lot of
(04:34):
money coming due. At the same time. Then he also
had a lot of legal trouble, not just because of
that four hundred and fifty four million dollar civil fraud judgment.
There was a conviction, talking criminal conviction. So I think
it's helpful to keep in mind when we talk about
this Trump money making machine, it's not just different from
the first Trump presidency. It's different from where we last
(04:57):
saw him in the wake of his first administration.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Annie mad This says, one good example is truth Socials
parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. For the full name.
And that's an example where okay, so that platform really
flourishes based on the President of the United States posting
on there, Donald Trump posting on there. He is the
largest shareholder. His shares are in a trust. The trust
is overseen by Donald Trump Junior, but Donald Trump Junior
(05:28):
is also part of the company, so it can be
very hard to untangle than not.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
I think there is just nothing nottier than the real
estate you've got, not like a nod not notier like
an untied knot because you know, you look at the
Middle East especially. Trump Organization has licensed its name to
brand new skyscrapers that are worth I think half a
billion each. Sometimes that total project cost reaches into the billions.
(05:58):
You've got them and cutter in Dubai and oman riodd
and it's not having in a vacuum.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
You look at this money making machine and divide it
into four parts. Can you just run through kind of
what the four categories are of the way in which
Donald Trump and his family make money.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Absolutely. You have real estate. I mean that is the
original Trump family money making endeavor. But now you have
these new pieces. You have corporate connections, which include the
memberships on advisory boards and other kind of relationships that
his sons have. And you also have other ventures, which
is really just a grab bad that kind of defy
(06:36):
a categorization.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
And you also have crypto, which includes the Trump family's
meme coins and a crypto platform. Trump was a crypto skeptic,
going so far as to call bitcoin a scam. More
recently he's embraced it, calling it amazing and great for
our country. I asked Danny to explain that about face.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Well, we can't one hundred percent get in side Trump's head.
We do know that he loves an opportunity to put
the Trump brand on something, and crypto has a lot
to do with branding and the kind of the attention
economy that Trump is such a master of. So he
did transform really in the past year into a crypto
(07:21):
entrepreneur of sorts. So he and his family promote a
platform called World Liberty Financial. So that's one piece, and
they earn money from this endeavor. It has something called
a stable coin affiliated with it. It's a crypto platform
that hasn't done all that much yet, but there's an
affiliated token you can buy, so that's one piece. There's
(07:42):
also a meme coin that was unveiled on his inauguration
weekend to much fanfare when everyone was paying attention to
Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
I want to pick up on something you said, and
I think that one of the great geniuses or evil
of bitcoin, depending on how you want to look at it,
is that it is certainly, among other things, a new
and potentially very lucrative way of turning attention into cash.
It financializes attention, and Trump is, I think it's fair
(08:12):
to say, at the forefront of figuring out how to
financialize attention. And it came from to refer to an
earlier story I wrote. This was many years ago. It
came from essentially a crisis in his career where things
were not going well for him in the late eighties
and the very early nineties. He was overlevered, companies were
going bankrupt, things were not looking good, and he really
rebuilt his career in the nineteen nineties and then into
(08:34):
the aughts as someone who would use other people's capital
and sell his name. It was a savvy move, and
now we're seeing versions of that now. As for what
the family's doing while he's in the White House.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Let's look at real estate, which for so many years
has been the bread and butter of the Trump organization.
How has the approach evolved or changed from the Trumps
to real estate. We see a lot of deals being
announced in the Balkans, in the Middle East. What's different
this time, it's black and white.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
What we're seeing now is a willingness for the Trump
family to partner quite literally around the world, sometimes in
ways where arms of the deals touch arms of foreign governments.
And that's just simply not something we saw. I think
in the first administration. The rule that Trump put on
his company was no new deals around the world. This
(09:28):
time around, the white paper that was a sort of
ethics plan that he put out was no new deals
with foreign governments, h directly with foreign governments. That opened
the door to deals from Vietnam to Serbia.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
In some cases, investment in a Trump affiliated property can
get you significant perks. According to a website for the
Trump International Hotel and Tower in Dubai, investors who spend
roughly five hundred and forty five thousand US dollars can
get a ten year Golden visa a Trump tower in Jetta,
Saudi Arabia. Anyone who spends a million dollars is eligible
(10:06):
for Saudi residency.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And I want to be clear about what's happening, and
I want to be clear about what's not happening. What's
not happening is Donald J. Trump, the president, starting hotels himself, because,
as he points out, his assets are in a trust
that are run by his son. What is also not
happening is the Trump organization getting into deals with the
(10:30):
Japanese government, quad the Japanese government, or I just use
that as an example. What they are doing now, because
we've seen photos of it and we've seen press releases
about it, is that they are working on deals where
government officials are involved in the signing ceremony. It's new,
and I think that the way we're figuring out how
to cover this is by just being like very precise.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Max and Any say that since the early days of
Trump's reelection campaign, the Trump name has powered more than
ten billion dollars of real estate projects coming up. Drones, sneakers,
and the difficulty of separating the president's financial interests from
his sons. We've talked about crypto, talked about real estate.
(11:24):
Let's move into the corporate side of things. A few
weeks ago, I was leaving the building Bloomberg Headquarters. In
came Donald Trump Junior, the President's son with a really
sized belentarage. He was here for an interview. We've talked
about him here during the course of this conversation. What
role is he playing now in this whole organization, the
s apparatus Donald Trump Junior.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Right, So we've talked about the Trump's affixing their names
to buildings. Nothing new there, the president of fixing his
name to a cryptocurrency. But you also have this phenomenon
of Donald Trump Junior and Eric Trump affixing their names
and their advisory services to various companies in all kinds
of industries.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Spell that out. What are we talking about.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
We're talking about drones. We're talking about a very small
investment bank that's headquartered in Trump Tower. We're talking about
a blank chech company that took an online gun retailer public,
so really a huge number. I mean, Eric Trump is
involved in a Japanese bitcoin stockpiling operation. There's really no
(12:27):
limit to the different industries that they've become involved in.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
We've advanced beyond the Trump Winery, all these outside businesses.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Exactly as the White House forwards this maga agenda. Donald
Trump Junior is, I think, forwarding a certain kind of
maga capitalism, and there once again is a certain kind
of financial political loop that we see that. You know,
if you want to be fair about it, Donald Trump
Junior himself will say, look like, I'm a private citizen.
(12:57):
That's what he told his first story. I'm a private citizen.
I've been a businessman and I've a serial investor my
entire life. It would be ridiculous to expect me to
stop doing what I've always done to provide. I think
he said to provide for my five children. And you know,
you could take that idea and extend it and say like,
it would be ridiculous to expect him to stop forwarding
a kind of maga financialization agenda simply because his dad
(13:20):
is doing the same.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Andy if I were to draw a ven diagram, so
it's like Donald Trump Junior's business interests and then President Trump,
is there any intersection here? I imagine back in twenty
sixteen twenty seventeen. You might have had a President Trump
who is interested in the state of his real estate portfolio,
for instance, any indication that he's taking a substantial interest
(13:41):
in what his son, what his sons are doing when
it comes to business, or is this very much their
own venture, yes, built on their shared surname.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Sometimes it can be hard to disentangle, and as Max mentioned,
there's often a kind of virtuous circle at play where
you have both the president and the activity of the
president and his family, so it can be hard to
fully disentangle.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Amazon, for example, plays a role in several Trump family projects.
It recently purchased the rights to Milania Trump's documentary, paying
forty million dollars to license the film. According to The
Wall Street Journal, that is almost tripled the next best offer.
Max Andanny say Amazon falls into their fourth and final
category of the Trump money making machine, what they call ventures.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
So one good example is Trump sneakers. You actually saw
Trump when he was on the campaign trail stop by
a sneaker head convention, and he's kind of hawking sneakers.
There are perfumes that are branded in a forty five
forty seven way, referring to the numbers of his presidencies,
and it just captures the range of different kinds of
(14:55):
material goods that he's applied his name to.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
I mean, I think it's only fair to point out
that we're not talking about someone who was elected to
the White House and then suddenly woke up and decided
to become a global businessman. It's Donald Trump's m O.
I mean, I'm pretty sure it's sort of exactly what
his fans and his voters and supporters are embracing, this
idea of a savvy businessman who is not held back
(15:23):
by the same standards of you know, for example, embarrassment.
He's certainly unembarrassed about being a brand, although it does
occur to me that I have never seen a picture
of him wearing the Trump sneakers.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
True, we're going to need to request that from the
White House.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
We're going to have to get to the bottom of that.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Could I ask you about something that's in this venture's bucket,
and that's settlements.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Right, there's this piece again, a pretty new phenomenon in
this second term, where various huge companies have come to
multimillion dollar settlements with Trump.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Law firms, media organizations.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Yes, that's right, a media organizations, other social media platforms
like Meta and x. And even if those dollars don't
necessarily go into the pocket of the president, and they
come in the form of a donation to the as
yet to be created Presidential Library, that's also a way
(16:20):
that the cash register rings.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
President Trump has said those settlements with law firms will
go to pro bono legal services to causes he supports
during his second term and beyond. He said the settlement
with Paramount will go toward advertising and public service announcements.
Let me end with a question I'd like both of
you to answer, and that is sort of how much
does this machine grow? Unconstrained at the top. We talked
(16:46):
about the criticism and pressure that the president was under.
What's your sense of where this goes from here?
Speaker 3 (16:52):
There's a sense that many are overwhelmed or kind of
inured almost to the scale of the money making happening.
And the question that I have is whether the resistance
that's out there, and there is some There have been
Democratic lawmakers who've for example, spoken out against the meme coin,
(17:16):
but has there been a unified front to shut it
down in some way? Would that even be viable. So
I guess the lingering question is whether there's any force
that could really resist a money making machine with this
many different arms.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
My mind is going to the changes that are happening
in the United States government, where a fellow billionaire, Elon Musk,
was called in by Trump to appreciate the government. And
that's like, it's not an abstract thing, and it includes
the agencies and offices that oversee Trump's own public company,
and it includes the agencies and offices that oversee his
(17:56):
crypto projects. It even includes the people who will see
the actual conflicts of interests themselves. So we're not necessarily
in the business of like predicting the future. But I'm
betting that it's going to become harder and not easier
to understand what people in power are doing and how
people in power are making money. And I am not
(18:16):
specifically referring to Donald Trump. I think it's going to
be true of Republicans and Democrats, and I think it
will take a kind of concerted effort to reverse some
of the things that have happened in these past few months.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David
Gera to get more from The Big Take and unlimited
access to all of bloomberg dot Com. Subscribe today at
Bloomberg dot com slash podcast offer. If you like this episode,
make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever
you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. The Gulf of Mexico
has been renamed the Gulf of Amara.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Now to Elon Muskin what's being described as a hostile
takeover of a government landmark decisions impacting the future of
birthright citizenship game. The President says he wants friendship with
our northern neighbor despite trade tensions, but won't give up
by the idea of turning Canada into the fifty first state.
It's been about six months since President Trump started his
second term, and if you're having a hard time keeping
(00:34):
track of everything that's happened since then, you're not alone.
The President has imposed eye popping tariffs on our largest
trading partners.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
She's calling the beginning of a new system of.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Trade, ramped up border enforcement and mass deportations, deploy about
seven hundred marines to the LA area in response to
the protests over ice raids, and overhauled large parts of
the federal government. Trump has also ordered military strikes on Iran.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
His massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Engaged in legal battles with universities in the media, and
signed a massive tax and spending bill into law. Passing
in the Senate, it was very close. Vice President jd
Vance with the tie breaking vote. The White House has
celebrated the last six months. The administration has argued the
president has delivered on campaign promises. He's cracked down on
illegal border crossings, reduced the trade deficit, and delivered tax
(01:27):
cuts to working class Americans. But during that time and
in the months leading up to his reelection, something else
has also happened. President Trump and his family have made
a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
The way that his wealth looks now in his second
term versus his first term is very different.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Annie Massa covers wealth for Bloomberg.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
In Trump's first term, I would say there were already
calls and protests over potential for conflicts of interest because
he was a businessman. He has the Trump organization. But
now as we come into the second term, it's just
a much more complex picture.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Today, President Trump's assets are in a trust controlled by
his oldest son, Donald Trump Junior, and his family says
they aren't doing any business with governments. Critics of the
president would argue it falls short of separating him from
his business interests, and he spent months working with a
team of reporters at Bloomberg crunching the numbers on how
the assets in that trust and the Trump family's wealth
(02:31):
have ballooned since the early days of his campaign for reelection.
In that time, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, President
Trump's net worth has more than doubled to about six
point four billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
He now has a publicly traded company that was not
true last time around, and that's Trump Media, which is
the parent company of Truth Social, making up a huge
portion of that wealth. The other really big thing to
zero in on is crypto and so you have the
these branches that simply weren't there in Trump's first term
at all. He didn't have these crypto ventures, he didn't
(03:05):
have a publicly traded company. His sons are now adding
themselves to advisory boards of various companies that are regulated
by the government in certain ways. So it's an even
more intricate picture and ballooning wealth.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I'm David Gerret, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News today on the show, the Trump Family's money
making machine. Where's their wealth coming from? And how is
Donald Trump's second presidency benefiting his family. Donald Trump is
certainly not the first president to profit from the presidency.
(03:42):
Presidents often have their windfall after leaving office, with multimillion
dollar book deals and speaking engagements, but Trump has seen
his net worth soar, so much so that when Bloomberg
wealth reporter Annie Massa and finance reporter Max Abelson were
trying to tallly the president's net worth, they kept having
to update their estimates as new projects were announced. Max says,
(04:05):
it's a remarkable transformation when you think of where Trump
was five years ago.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I mean, it is not exaggerating to say that Donald
Trump as a person, as a brand, as a businessman,
as the head of a company, was facing some serious
headwinds just a few years ago. I'm not talking about
the nineteen nineties. In the wake of his first presidency.
He left Washington with debts coming due, a lot of
(04:34):
money coming due. At the same time. Then he also
had a lot of legal trouble, not just because of
that four hundred and fifty four million dollar civil fraud judgment.
There was a conviction, talking criminal conviction. So I think
it's helpful to keep in mind when we talk about
this Trump money making machine, it's not just different from
the first Trump presidency. It's different from where we last
(04:57):
saw him in the wake of his first administration.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Annie mad This says, one good example is truth Socials
parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. For the full name.
And that's an example where okay, so that platform really
flourishes based on the President of the United States posting
on there, Donald Trump posting on there. He is the
largest shareholder. His shares are in a trust. The trust
is overseen by Donald Trump Junior, but Donald Trump Junior
(05:28):
is also part of the company, so it can be
very hard to untangle than not.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
I think there is just nothing nottier than the real
estate you've got, not like a nod not notier like
an untied knot because you know, you look at the
Middle East especially. Trump Organization has licensed its name to
brand new skyscrapers that are worth I think half a
billion each. Sometimes that total project cost reaches into the billions.
(05:58):
You've got them and cutter in Dubai and oman riodd
and it's not having in a vacuum.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
You look at this money making machine and divide it
into four parts. Can you just run through kind of
what the four categories are of the way in which
Donald Trump and his family make money.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Absolutely. You have real estate. I mean that is the
original Trump family money making endeavor. But now you have
these new pieces. You have corporate connections, which include the
memberships on advisory boards and other kind of relationships that
his sons have. And you also have other ventures, which
is really just a grab bad that kind of defy
(06:36):
a categorization.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
And you also have crypto, which includes the Trump family's
meme coins and a crypto platform. Trump was a crypto skeptic,
going so far as to call bitcoin a scam. More
recently he's embraced it, calling it amazing and great for
our country. I asked Danny to explain that about face.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Well, we can't one hundred percent get in side Trump's head.
We do know that he loves an opportunity to put
the Trump brand on something, and crypto has a lot
to do with branding and the kind of the attention
economy that Trump is such a master of. So he
did transform really in the past year into a crypto
(07:21):
entrepreneur of sorts. So he and his family promote a
platform called World Liberty Financial. So that's one piece, and
they earn money from this endeavor. It has something called
a stable coin affiliated with it. It's a crypto platform
that hasn't done all that much yet, but there's an
affiliated token you can buy, so that's one piece. There's
(07:42):
also a meme coin that was unveiled on his inauguration
weekend to much fanfare when everyone was paying attention to
Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
I want to pick up on something you said, and
I think that one of the great geniuses or evil
of bitcoin, depending on how you want to look at it,
is that it is certainly, among other things, a new
and potentially very lucrative way of turning attention into cash.
It financializes attention, and Trump is, I think it's fair
(08:12):
to say, at the forefront of figuring out how to
financialize attention. And it came from to refer to an
earlier story I wrote. This was many years ago. It
came from essentially a crisis in his career where things
were not going well for him in the late eighties
and the very early nineties. He was overlevered, companies were
going bankrupt, things were not looking good, and he really
rebuilt his career in the nineteen nineties and then into
(08:34):
the aughts as someone who would use other people's capital
and sell his name. It was a savvy move, and
now we're seeing versions of that now. As for what
the family's doing while he's in the White House.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Let's look at real estate, which for so many years
has been the bread and butter of the Trump organization.
How has the approach evolved or changed from the Trumps
to real estate. We see a lot of deals being
announced in the Balkans, in the Middle East. What's different
this time, it's black and white.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
What we're seeing now is a willingness for the Trump
family to partner quite literally around the world, sometimes in
ways where arms of the deals touch arms of foreign governments.
And that's just simply not something we saw. I think
in the first administration. The rule that Trump put on
his company was no new deals around the world. This
(09:28):
time around, the white paper that was a sort of
ethics plan that he put out was no new deals
with foreign governments, h directly with foreign governments. That opened
the door to deals from Vietnam to Serbia.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
In some cases, investment in a Trump affiliated property can
get you significant perks. According to a website for the
Trump International Hotel and Tower in Dubai, investors who spend
roughly five hundred and forty five thousand US dollars can
get a ten year Golden visa a Trump tower in Jetta,
Saudi Arabia. Anyone who spends a million dollars is eligible
(10:06):
for Saudi residency.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And I want to be clear about what's happening, and
I want to be clear about what's not happening. What's
not happening is Donald J. Trump, the president, starting hotels himself, because,
as he points out, his assets are in a trust
that are run by his son. What is also not
happening is the Trump organization getting into deals with the
(10:30):
Japanese government, quad the Japanese government, or I just use
that as an example. What they are doing now, because
we've seen photos of it and we've seen press releases
about it, is that they are working on deals where
government officials are involved in the signing ceremony. It's new,
and I think that the way we're figuring out how
to cover this is by just being like very precise.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Max and Any say that since the early days of
Trump's reelection campaign, the Trump name has powered more than
ten billion dollars of real estate projects coming up. Drones, sneakers,
and the difficulty of separating the president's financial interests from
his sons. We've talked about crypto, talked about real estate.
(11:24):
Let's move into the corporate side of things. A few
weeks ago, I was leaving the building Bloomberg Headquarters. In
came Donald Trump Junior, the President's son with a really
sized belentarage. He was here for an interview. We've talked
about him here during the course of this conversation. What
role is he playing now in this whole organization, the
s apparatus Donald Trump Junior.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Right, So we've talked about the Trump's affixing their names
to buildings. Nothing new there, the president of fixing his
name to a cryptocurrency. But you also have this phenomenon
of Donald Trump Junior and Eric Trump affixing their names
and their advisory services to various companies in all kinds
of industries.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Spell that out. What are we talking about.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
We're talking about drones. We're talking about a very small
investment bank that's headquartered in Trump Tower. We're talking about
a blank chech company that took an online gun retailer public,
so really a huge number. I mean, Eric Trump is
involved in a Japanese bitcoin stockpiling operation. There's really no
(12:27):
limit to the different industries that they've become involved in.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
We've advanced beyond the Trump Winery, all these outside businesses.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Exactly as the White House forwards this maga agenda. Donald
Trump Junior is, I think, forwarding a certain kind of
maga capitalism, and there once again is a certain kind
of financial political loop that we see that. You know,
if you want to be fair about it, Donald Trump
Junior himself will say, look like, I'm a private citizen.
(12:57):
That's what he told his first story. I'm a private citizen.
I've been a businessman and I've a serial investor my
entire life. It would be ridiculous to expect me to
stop doing what I've always done to provide. I think
he said to provide for my five children. And you know,
you could take that idea and extend it and say like,
it would be ridiculous to expect him to stop forwarding
a kind of maga financialization agenda simply because his dad
(13:20):
is doing the same.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Andy if I were to draw a ven diagram, so
it's like Donald Trump Junior's business interests and then President Trump,
is there any intersection here? I imagine back in twenty
sixteen twenty seventeen. You might have had a President Trump
who is interested in the state of his real estate portfolio,
for instance, any indication that he's taking a substantial interest
(13:41):
in what his son, what his sons are doing when
it comes to business, or is this very much their
own venture, yes, built on their shared surname.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Sometimes it can be hard to disentangle, and as Max mentioned,
there's often a kind of virtuous circle at play where
you have both the president and the activity of the
president and his family, so it can be hard to
fully disentangle.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Amazon, for example, plays a role in several Trump family projects.
It recently purchased the rights to Milania Trump's documentary, paying
forty million dollars to license the film. According to The
Wall Street Journal, that is almost tripled the next best offer.
Max Andanny say Amazon falls into their fourth and final
category of the Trump money making machine, what they call ventures.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
So one good example is Trump sneakers. You actually saw
Trump when he was on the campaign trail stop by
a sneaker head convention, and he's kind of hawking sneakers.
There are perfumes that are branded in a forty five
forty seven way, referring to the numbers of his presidencies,
and it just captures the range of different kinds of
(14:55):
material goods that he's applied his name to.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
I mean, I think it's only fair to point out
that we're not talking about someone who was elected to
the White House and then suddenly woke up and decided
to become a global businessman. It's Donald Trump's m O.
I mean, I'm pretty sure it's sort of exactly what
his fans and his voters and supporters are embracing, this
idea of a savvy businessman who is not held back
(15:23):
by the same standards of you know, for example, embarrassment.
He's certainly unembarrassed about being a brand, although it does
occur to me that I have never seen a picture
of him wearing the Trump sneakers.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
True, we're going to need to request that from the
White House.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
We're going to have to get to the bottom of that.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Could I ask you about something that's in this venture's bucket,
and that's settlements.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Right, there's this piece again, a pretty new phenomenon in
this second term, where various huge companies have come to
multimillion dollar settlements with Trump.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Law firms, media organizations.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Yes, that's right, a media organizations, other social media platforms
like Meta and x. And even if those dollars don't
necessarily go into the pocket of the president, and they
come in the form of a donation to the as
yet to be created Presidential Library, that's also a way
(16:20):
that the cash register rings.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
President Trump has said those settlements with law firms will
go to pro bono legal services to causes he supports
during his second term and beyond. He said the settlement
with Paramount will go toward advertising and public service announcements.
Let me end with a question I'd like both of
you to answer, and that is sort of how much
does this machine grow? Unconstrained at the top. We talked
(16:46):
about the criticism and pressure that the president was under.
What's your sense of where this goes from here?
Speaker 3 (16:52):
There's a sense that many are overwhelmed or kind of
inured almost to the scale of the money making happening.
And the question that I have is whether the resistance
that's out there, and there is some There have been
Democratic lawmakers who've for example, spoken out against the meme coin,
(17:16):
but has there been a unified front to shut it
down in some way? Would that even be viable. So
I guess the lingering question is whether there's any force
that could really resist a money making machine with this
many different arms.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
My mind is going to the changes that are happening
in the United States government, where a fellow billionaire, Elon Musk,
was called in by Trump to appreciate the government. And
that's like, it's not an abstract thing, and it includes
the agencies and offices that oversee Trump's own public company,
and it includes the agencies and offices that oversee his
(17:56):
crypto projects. It even includes the people who will see
the actual conflicts of interests themselves. So we're not necessarily
in the business of like predicting the future. But I'm
betting that it's going to become harder and not easier
to understand what people in power are doing and how
people in power are making money. And I am not
(18:16):
specifically referring to Donald Trump. I think it's going to
be true of Republicans and Democrats, and I think it
will take a kind of concerted effort to reverse some
of the things that have happened in these past few months.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David
Gera to get more from The Big Take and unlimited
access to all of bloomberg dot Com. Subscribe today at
Bloomberg dot com slash podcast offer. If you like this episode,
make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever
you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
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