This is how Trump is proving he is THE America-first, swamp draining President: pardoning his Bitcoin investor, demanding $230 million from the DOJ, and destroying the East Wing after saying he wouldn’t. The administration’s blatant corruption is rapid and expansive, so often it can be hard to keep up with all his schemes and scams.
Thankfully, American Progress has unveiled the Trump Take Tracker, a “real-time financial tracker documenting the cash and gifts that President Donald Trump and his family have received by selling the presidency.” Will Ragland, VP of Research for the Advocacy and Outreach Department at American Progress, joins Jen to walk us through the new tracker and how it’s sharp, honest recording is a step towards accountability.
The tracker can be found here and on the American Progress website.
Will Ragland is the VP of Research for the Advocacy and Outreach Department at American Progress. Ragland has previously served in the U.S. Department of Education as a special assistant in Secretary Arne Duncan’s Office of Legislation and Congressional Affairs. He also helped manage the Obama administration’s budget, appropriations, and education policy priorities on the Hill.
Transcript has been edited slightly for clarity.
Jen Rubin: Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. We are delighted to have with us Will Ragland from the Center for American Progress. Welcome, Will.
Will Ragland: Hi, great to be here, Jen.
Jen Rubin: You are the head of research, and you have put together a fascinating tracker. Tell us about it.
Will Ragland: The big takeaway, the big number, is over $1.8 billion in cash and gifts that the Trump family has brought in since the election. And this is primarily from his 3 crypto ventures, legal settlements, documentary, offer from Amazon for Melania and a, $400 million plane from Qatar. The vast majority of this is from, is from his crypto ventures, and is yet another bucket for his family to gain cash, and for especially foreign actors in this case, to curry favor.
Jen Rubin: And how much of that money can you determine is foreign money, or is it too hard to tell because the crypto sales are not transparent?
Will Ragland: Well, you know, it, there are some people that have looked at this, and there’s quite a number of foreign, investments being made in these, in these crypto ventures. One in particular I’d note is a UAE firm that used Trump’s stablecoin to purchase, or to invest in one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, Binance. Now, today we learned the CEO of Binance, Cheng Peng Zhao, was pardoned by Trump. This is someone who was convicted, spent time in federal prison for enabling money laundering schemes on his exchange, including some that the Department of Justice said threatened our national security. So, this is, is something that we’re keeping a close eye on. The thing about some of these crypto ventures is that they, a lot of the transactions are pretty transparent. We can see how much money is being moved around. That’s kind of an interesting thing about the blockchain. The harder piece of this is actually figuring out, which one of these wallets belongs to whom. But we do know that this stablecoin was used to purchase this, and the Trump family is making upwards of at least $90,000 per day. from the interest of this, of the stablecoin holdings. So, the person he just pardoned is partially responsible for one of his steadiest income streams.
Jen Rubin: And how much can you calculate from this one investor who has… Trump has turned around and now pardoned?
Will Ragland: I think we can come close to about $18 million, and I think that is a very low count because that he’s also partnered with and is friends with, the Witkoffs and the World Liberty Financial stablecoin. That’s the, that’s the Trump, affiliated Cryptocurrency scheme that is, that started the stablecoin. They have also partnered to allow, to, to work with, with Binance on a number of this, on a number of these schemes. So there’s a number of other things that we aren’t for sure of. We can say that around…$18 million is likely from this one Binance deal.
Jen Rubin: So, one guy… gives Trump $18 million, and then he winds up with a pardon for a serious conviction of money laundering. Is that what we’re talking about here?
Will Ragland: That’s what we’re talking about, and this is, you know, part and parcel of what we’ve seen throughout the Trump administration. He has dropped dozens of, investigations, civil suits, into a number of crypto firms. That who have donated not only, or invested, not only in his crypto ventures, but into his Super PAC and his inaugural fund. One in particular are the Winklevoss twins, who run a crypto exchange called Gemini. They donated $3 million, and shortly thereafter, you know, investigations were dropped. Now, we have investigations that have been dropped, we have pardons that have been given, but we also have…Policy and regulatory relief for a number of crypto firms, a number of other industries as well, who have contributed to one of these buckets. So you have his crypto ventures, you have legal settlements, you have his super PAC and inaugural fund. They… I wouldn’t be surprised to see more buckets, created for these, for this cash, for a number of different interested parties to curry favor with this administration. Bob Bauer, in a recent Financial Times story, called it open transactionalism. You know, and that appears to be a very kind way to put it. From where I sit, these efforts really appear to be selling the presidency, and it started soon after he was elected during the transition.
Jen Rubin: Now, we have learned, with these horrifying images of the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, that he is proceeding with his $300 million, now, ballroom. The people who are listed as donors, who will be paying $300 million for this, are these people Individuals or companies that do business with the federal government and are regulated by the federal government?
Will Ragland: Yeah, I mean, so this story broke this morning, and my cursory glance at the list, there were a couple… there were 3 that jumped out to me, Tether, Ripple. And I believe Coinbase. So, all crypto-related, all have big, profitable industries that are regulated by this administration. And then there’s a number of big tech corporations in there that are contributing. You know, when you’re talking about crypto and kind of what they’ve done already aside from the investigations, they’ve disbanded the Department of Justice’s crypto investigations unit. They’ve installed a very crypto-friendly head of the SEC. They passed the Genius Act, they’ve… They’ve made this, You know, they’ve done a lot to work to make sure that, there are very little, there’s very little oversight, or rules, really, for an industry where a lot of, a lot of, financial work can be done. So yeah, I mean, it’s concerning. I mean, just the images of the East Wing being completely obliterated is it’s really disheartening to see that, you know, it’s being financed by some of the largest corporations, some of the largest corporations that we all use in our daily, daily lives, is, is, is really frustrating.
Jen Rubin: Now, there are two numbers. One is $1.8 billion. That’s the, if you will, on a cash basis, what he’s actually taken in. There’s another number that’s even bigger, that’s about $7.5 billion. What does that number represent?
Will Ragland: So the $7.5 billion is what a lot of earlier reports have reported. This is his worth, his gain in worth since roughly early 2024, and most of that is based on the value of his Trump media stock, so this is Truth Social’s parent company. And the value of his, one of his crypto tokens, the World Liberty Financial Governance Token, and how much he hold… the worth of how much he holds. So, that is paper worth, that is the value of his worth. We decided not to track that as closely because it’s super volatile. It kind of goes up and down with the fluctuations in his crypto tokens and his Trump Media stock. So, we wanted to find and really have a conservative and definitive number of cash in his pocket, money made, and that’s what we’re doing, and we decided to put it together in a tool that looks like the debt clock. So, that will be… that is regularly ticking up. That regular ticking up is in real time, and is tracking the interest from a stablecoin, and is also based off of sales and fees that he’s able to. From his various… from his three crypto ventures. And those will be… those are all… all will be updated in real time.
Jen Rubin: Has any president that you’re aware of done anything approaching this, in terms of soliciting money, receiving over a billion dollars, nearly $2 billion, while he is in office?
Will Ragland: I mean, let’s… I think that, that… Corporate influence and money in politics is nothing new. This is something that happens all… far too often, and is something that, has been exacerbated, especially since Citizens United. Unfortunately, however, the scale, openness, and transactional nature of all of this is nothing like I’ve ever seen or I am aware of in history. The interesting part about this openness, they think that if they can just, you know, talk about it, that it’s, it’s fine. And, you know the… I am really concerned about how this is going to impact how policy’s made moving forward. They’ve structured a lot of the money in politics to funnel all the way to the top, to the Trump family, instead of a lot of what had happened before, where it was kind of a small, a much smaller amount was spread around, maybe. you know, to members of Congress or whatever, you know, that, you know, all probably within the roles, and this Obviously, it probably falls with a gray area of ethics laws as well, but I would say that You know, I’ve never seen anything like the scale, and it’s clear to me that they’re trying to structure this so that, all of this comes into the Trump orbit.
Jen Rubin: And, as you say, it’s hard not to see, it… the ramifications. The got a jet worth $400 million, we think, and now he is giving Qatar a… base in…Idaho, or part of a base in Idaho, in order to, use for their military purposes. Not clear whether we would have done that had it been, just an arm’s length transaction. Is part of the difficulty here that you can no longer tell whether things are being done on the merits as opposed to being bought? I mean, we really don’t know whether any of this is being done for the benefit of the country, or for the benefit of Donald Trump.
Will Ragland: Yeah, I mean, appearances don’t look good, I’ll tell you that. I mean, you know, this is… you mentioned Qatar, I mean, it goes through UnitedHealthcare, who made a big contribution. Earlier in this term, and, you know, lo and behold, Medicare, they are a big player in Medicare Advantage. And they approved a big increase, and I think that…we’re seeing more and more of this. One of the interesting things that I’m seeing in some of the political money, which our tracker, it doesn’t count, that goes into a super PAC and an inaugural fund, is over $90 million was contributed to those buckets after the election by a dozen people who have seen a direct impact or a favorable result soon after those contributions and donations were made. So, you know, the Financial Times did a great job of putting a lot of this together, recently. I want to encourage folks to take a look at that, but, you know, this is… this… this seems to be the way, things… the way things are getting done in town, in this town now.
Jen Rubin: It’s truly, truly shocking, and of course, other presidents have abided both by the letter of the Constitution, the Emoluments Clause, for example, that prohibits both domestic and foreign emoluments, as well as the spirit that the president shouldn’t be selling his office. But neither one of those, seem to appear, applicable now. Will, if people want to follow this, where should they go to see your tracker, and what would they find there?
Will Ragland: You can go to trumpstakecounter.org, or you can go to our homepage, and you should be able to find it there at AmericanProgress.org.
Jen Rubin: Well, thank you so much for what you’re doing, Will. It is an eye-opener, and perhaps now that they have seen the people’s house being torn down, more people will be attuned to the level of this corruption and really desecration of our democracy. So thanks so much. We’ll look forward to having you back.
Will Ragland: Thank you, Jen.
