(Roughly) Daily

Since he kicked off his campaign, Trump’s business empire has landed billions of dollars of deals at home and abroad. Max Abelson and Annie Massa bring the receipts…

The way Donald Trump sees it, he’s the greatest businessman to campaign for the White House.

“I’m the most successful person ever to run,” he told an Iowa reporter in 2015. “I have a Gucci store that’s worth more than Romney.”

That might have been an exaggeration, but this isn’t: A decade later, no modern American president has positioned his family to make so much money while in the White House. Already, since the early days of his reelection campaign, he’s more than doubled his net worth to about $5.4 billion.

In that time, the Trump name has powered more than $10 billion of real estate projects, a multibillion-dollar valuation for his money-losing social-media company, more than $500 million in sales from just one of his crypto ventures and millions of dollars more from stakes in companies that offer financial services, guns and drone parts. Family members have also scored an array of corporate positions — at least seven new roles as an adviser or executive for his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., alone.

Compared with the tumult of the presidency, the empire’s approach is consistent and clear: Sell the family name. In any other era, this scale of presidential moneymaking would threaten to be the story of the year, but political uproar has hogged most of the attention.

In his first months in power, Trump put tariffs on and took some off, blamed Ukraine for Russia’s attacks, sent immigrants to a foreign prison and teased a third term that the Constitution doesn’t allow. And as he’s hacked away at the government’s workforce and budget, he’s shrunk the agencies and offices that oversee his public company, crypto projects and even conflicts of interest.

Trump has loosened constraints on overseas dealmaking that were put in place in his last administration. (He also let Elon Musk, the billionaire leading an effort to slash government spending, police his own conflicts). This week, he’s scheduled to dine with his new memecoin’s top holders.

What makes this era even more remarkable is how close Trump came to ruin. His first term ended with a riot at the Capitol, later followed by a $454 million civil fraud judgment and his conviction for falsifying business records. Trump has appealed both.

Now, his assets are in a trust overseen by his oldest son. And despite talk of a recession, the clan stands to get richer than ever.

“President Trump has been the most transparent president in history in all respects, including when it comes to his finances,” said a White House spokesperson. “President Trump handed over his multibillion-dollar empire in order to serve our country, and he has sacrificed greatly. President Trump has disclosed his financial holdings through his annual financial disclosure report and he will continue to do so.”

Trump Jr. said he shouldn’t be expected to change his career on account of his dad’s power.

“I’m a private citizen who has been a businessman and serial investor my entire adult life,” he said in a statement. “It’s ridiculous to expect me to stop doing what I’ve always done to provide for my five children just because my dad was elected president.”

These are the corporate connections, crypto projects and licensing deals — all of them since the 2024 campaign began — that the Trumps are using to climb higher than ever…

The gory (and mind-boggling) details: “The Trump Family’s Money-Making Machine” (gift link) from @bloomberg.com‬.

Apposite: “A World of MAGA Liquor Is Exploding Online. But What If It’s Not Real?“

* “Everybody is talkin’ these days about Tammany men growin’ rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin’ the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. There’s an honest graft, and I’m an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.”  —  George Washington Plunkitt, New York State Senator and “Sage of Tammany Hall” (See also)

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As we ponder probity (and its absence), we might spare a thought for Jonathan Wild; he died on this date in 1725. An English thief-taker and a major figure in the organization and growth of London’s criminal underworld, he was notable for operating on both sides of the law: posing as a public-spirited vigilante known as the “Thief-Taker General,” he simultaneously ran a significant criminal empire, and used his crimefighting role to remove rivals and launder the proceeds of his own crimes (fencing, but also selling goods he’d stolen back to their owners).

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