{"id":22678,"date":"2026-04-14T01:58:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T01:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/?p=22678"},"modified":"2026-04-14T01:58:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T01:58:27","slug":"power-profit-and-the-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/power-profit-and-the-presidency\/","title":{"rendered":"Power, Profit, and the Presidency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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For many voters, Donald Trump’s first term carried a rough kind of logic. He was volatile, abrasive, and often self-defeating, but there was at least a recognizable argument for him from the right: fewer regulatory instincts than the modern administrative state, a more skeptical posture toward foreign entanglements, tax policy that many businesses welcomed, and a broader rejection of the polished bipartisan consensus that had spent years wasting money, expanding bureaucracy, and calling it statesmanship. Even critics could understand why some Americans saw that version of Trump as a blunt instrument against a bloated political class.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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That is part of what makes the second term so ugly. The complaint now is not simply that Trump is combative or unconventional. It is that the line between public duty and private enrichment appears to have collapsed almost completely. What was once sold as disruption has curdled into something far more cynical: a presidency in which official power, family business, foreign money, and presidential clemency keep surfacing around the same financial networks and the same beneficiaries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The clearest example is crypto, because the numbers are so large and the self-dealing is so shameless. Reuters reported that the Trump family pulled in more than $800 million from crypto asset sales in the first half of 2025 alone. Reuters also reported that the family took control of 60% of World Liberty Financial and became entitled to 75% of net revenues from token sales and 60% from operations. That is not some side hustle accidentally bumping into public office. That is a family cash machine operating in the shadow of the presidency, fed by political access, regulatory posture, and a market that understands exactly whose name is on the door.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

World Liberty’s structure only makes the stench worse. Reuters reported that its USD1 stablecoin launched on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain after the venture had already raised $550 million through token sales. Reuters later reported that USD1 was chosen for a $2 billion Abu Dhabi-backed investment into Binance. AP reported that this arrangement allowed the Trump-linked company behind the stablecoin to earn interest on those reserves, potentially worth tens of millions of dollars. In plain English, the President of the United States now sits beside an arrangement in which foreign-linked capital, a family crypto venture, and one of the world’s largest exchanges intersect in a way that would have set Washington on fire if anyone named Biden had tried it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That takes us directly to Changpeng Zhao, or CZ. In November 2023, the Justice Department announced that Binance and Zhao pleaded guilty in a $4.3 billion resolution. DOJ said Binance failed to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program, violated sanctions and money-transmitting laws, and failed to report more than 100,000 suspicious transactions involving designated terrorist groups. AP later reported that Trump pardoned Zhao on October 23, 2025, after Zhao had served prison time for failing to stop criminals from using Binance to move money tied to child sex abuse, drug trafficking, and terrorism. So yes, the founder of a crypto giant with deep business overlap around Trump-world’s stablecoin got a presidential pardon. Very normal. Very clean. Nothing to see here except the smoke, the accelerant, and the grinning men holding the matches.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The problem is not only the pardon. It is the setting in which it happened. AP reported that Binance benefited from a $2 billion investment executed with World Liberty’s stablecoin. AP also reported that Teresa Goody Guillen, speaking for Zhao, denied any quid pro quo and rejected claims that Binance’s business with the Trump family was tied to the pardon. That denial should be included. It also does not cure the obvious. The sequence remains grotesque on its face: Trump-linked crypto infrastructure becomes part of a major Binance transaction, policy shifts favor the relevant foreign players, and Binance’s founder then receives presidential clemency. Maybe the administration would like the public to believe all of this is one long coincidence. The public is not required to be that gullible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The wider pardon record points in the same direction. NBC reported in January 2026 that more than half of Trump’s 88 individual pardons during the first year of his second term were for white-collar offenses. NBC also found that the 87 people and one corporation pardoned in that period had been ordered to pay more than $298 million in fines and restitution. This is not mercy in any serious moral sense. It is a pattern. Fraudsters, financial offenders, and well-placed white-collar defendants keep finding that the road to redemption runs straight through a president whose political culture treats accountability as something for little people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some cases underline the point with almost cartoonish clarity. DOJ clemency records show that Adriana Isabel Camberos received a pardon on January 15, 2026, after a June 2025 sentence that included nearly $48.8 million in restitution. NBC reported that she had previously received a commutation from Trump in his first term for a different crime. DOJ records also show a January 2026 pardon for David Levy after a securities-fraud conviction. At some point the word pardon stops sounding like justice and starts sounding like customer retention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Even voices on the political right have had trouble pretending this smells fine. Ann Coulter said, “I think this is the most corrupt presidency in US history,” adding that “the money they are raking in with the NFTs and the memecoin” is “so blatant” and “right in front of our eyes.” Ben Shapiro, attacking a separate Trump conflict issue, called it “shady behavior,” said it “undermines his agenda and credibility,” and described it as “political poison.” He also said that if the same story were about Hunter and Joe Biden, “conservatives would be screaming.” Alex Jones, after Trump turned on parts of his own media ecosystem, said, “I have made it very clear that I no longer support Trump,” called him “a rotting husk of the old Trump,” and said, “I will now stand against this new Trump who by the day becomes more demonic, more twisted, and more sick.” When Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, and Alex Jones all manage to find the corruption through the fog, the fog is no longer the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And this is before even getting to the Epstein cloud that still hangs over Trump-world and keeps forcing its way back into public view. This piece is not even about that mess. It does not need to be. The administration has already supplied more than enough open-air corruption without us having to take the scenic route through every other moral sewer connected to the same political universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The larger danger is institutional. AP quoted Princeton historian Julian Zelizer saying, “I don’t think there’s any line right now between policy decisions and political calculations and the interest of the Trump family.” AP also quoted Columbia historian Timothy Naftali saying the constraints visible in Trump’s first term appear to have “completely disappeared.” That is the real issue. Trump is not merely accused of benefiting from office. He has helped normalize a presidency in which private monetization sits right on top of public power, barely disguised and often not disguised at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That is the deeper shift, and it is poison. The problem is not just that Trump and his family appear corrupt. The problem is that they have spent years training millions of Americans to watch corruption happen in broad daylight and call it winning. Many of his voters were sold a fairy tale about a tribune of the forgotten man. What they got instead was a presidency run like a family vending machine for influence, indulgence, and cash extraction. The grift is no longer hidden. It is the governing style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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  1. Reuters, “Inside the Trump family’s global crypto cash machine,” October 28, 2025.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Reuters, “How the Trump family took over a crypto firm as it raised hundreds of millions,” March 31, 2025.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Reuters, “Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture says it will launch stablecoin,” March 25, 2025.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Reuters, “Trump-linked stablecoin to close Abu Dhabi investment in Binance, co-founder says,” May 1, 2025.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Associated Press, “Trump pardons Binance founder Changpeng Zhao,” October 23, 2025.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Associated Press, “Trump family deal spree could open door for future presidents to profit from office,” April 13, 2026.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. Department of Justice, “Binance and CEO plead guilty to federal charges, 4B resolution,” November 21, 2023.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  8. NBC News analysis summarized in House Judiciary hearing materials, “Trump’s pardons forgive financial crimes that came with hundreds of millions in penalties,” January 20, 2026.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  9. Department of Justice, “Clemency Grants by President Donald J. Trump (2025-present).”<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  10. Triggernometry \/ Apple Podcasts listing, “Trump is the Most Corrupt President in History – Ann Coulter,” August 2025.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  11. TheWrap, “Ben Shapiro Slams Trump Qatar Jet as ‘Political Poison’,” May 12, 2025.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  12. TheWrap, “Alex Jones Slams Trump as a ‘Rotting Husk’ of His Old Self,” April 9, 2026.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  13. Media Matters, “Alex Jones responds to Trump’s attack on him,” April 10, 2026.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    For many voters, Donald Trump’s first term carried a rough kind of logic. He was volatile, abrasive, and often self-defeating, but there was at least a recognizable argument for him from the right: fewer regulatory instincts than the modern administrative state, a more skeptical posture toward foreign entanglements, tax policy that many businesses welcomed, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22691,"href":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22678\/revisions\/22691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/american2day.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}