Conflicts of interest? Trump only has one interest: himself | Robert Reich

In financial disclosures released on Tuesday, Trump reported earning more than $1bn last year from his several cryptocurrency ventures.

All told – including other parts of his vast holdings, such as his real estate assets – Trump made at least $2.2bn last year, as opposed to the roughly $622m his businesses raked in in 2024, before he returned to the presidency.

In other words, it’s a fair guess that last year he made more than $1bn off his presidency.

We’re talking big money and big looting.

For example, Trump embraced crypto as a candidate in 2024. Then he and his family invested like mad in it – through CIC Digital, a Trump Organization affiliate that is behind his memecoin, $Trump, and through another Trump family-backed crypto company, World Liberty Financial, co-founded by Trump, his sons and the family of the special envoy Steve Witkoff in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign (but which the White House says Trump has divested from). World Liberty is now behind several prominent crypto tokens.

The problem here is more than potential conflicts of interest, more than the mere appearance of conflicts of interest.

Since taking office, Trump has installed friendly regulators to oversee digital assets, and he’s pushed for landmark crypto legislation that would further free crypto from being treated as a security (in which case all sorts of disclosures would have to be made about it).

And this is just crypto. His investment accounts made more than 20,000 trades last year – and many appear to be timed to take maximum advantage of his public announcements that moved markets.

Just one day before he announced a 90-day pause on his sweeping tariffs, for example, his investment accounts made 327 individual stock purchases, each valued as much as $250,000. It was one of the largest single-day buys disclosed in Monday’s financial disclosures. The following day, when Trump announced the pause, the S&P soared nearly 10% – one of the biggest single-day gains in the index’s history.

He’s made a bundle from real estate deals that foreign governments have been eager to strike with him and his family, presumably because he’s given them – or will give them – something in return. Entities from the Middle East paid about $300m to Trump’s businesses last year, more than any other foreign region identifiable in his financial disclosures.

On Wednesday, he traveled to North Dakota on the maiden flight of the new Air Force One, a $400m jet gifted to him by the Qatari royal family whose ownership will transfer to Trump when he leaves office (technically, it will go to Trump’s own presidential library foundation, but there’s nothing stopping him from using it for private purposes).

This is called corruption, folks. And it’s on a massive scale.

A White House spokesperson says neither Trump nor his family “has ever engaged – or will ever engage – in conflicts of interest”.

Oh please. Next we’ll be told Trump never tells a lie, either.

These deals make it impossible for the public to judge whether Trump is working for America or for himself when he advocates for or implements a particular policy, such as his crypto policy or his moves in the Middle East.

We don’t even know for sure that Trump has disclosed all his investments. How can anyone be certain Trump has ever come clean about anything?

But perhaps the most troubling thing about all this is Trump doesn’t give a shite.

In his first term, when asked about conflicts of interest, he said: “The president can’t have a conflict of interest … because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest.”

He’s also said Americans “don’t care at all” about his unreleased tax returns or his personal finances.

Now, in his second term, he has nothing to lose by making as much money as possible off his presidency.

He probably figures he’s survived two impeachments so far, and won’t be impeached for pesky conflicts of interest. He won’t be running for the presidency again, so he doesn’t have to worry that his self-dealing will be used against him in a future campaign. Why not rake in as much as he can?

As to his legacy, Trump isn’t worried, either. He probably believes he can create his own history. That’s what he’s tried to do for the 2020 election and the subsequent attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021. That’s what his “Presidential Walk of Fame” in the White House is all about – framed portraits of all US presidents accompanied by Trump’s own partisan, gold-lettered plaques, many written by Trump himself.

In other words, we’re dealing with a malignant narcissist who thinks only about his own wealth and power, and about vengeance against those who have tried to stop him from acquiring even more.

How can we possibly expect that he’s working for the people of the United States rather than for himself?

Trump doesn’t have any conflicts of interest. That’s because he really has only one interest: himself.

• Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK