Inside Trump's Growing Crypto Fortune

0:00This podcast is brought to you by ReliaQuest. Cyber criminals are constantly attacking. They want your data. They want your identity. They want your innovation. ReliaQuest fortifies your business with agentic defense, AI that detects, contains, and eliminates cyber threats in minutes. It helps your security team move faster at the work that matters most to protect the business now and delivers insights to help them predict what's next. ReliaQuest, agentic defense for the enterprise. Learn more at ReliaQuest.com. That's R-E-L-I-A-Q-U-E-S-T.com.

0:33President Trump made more than a billion dollars in cryptocurrency last year. We'll dive into his latest financial disclosures. Plus, Anthropic and the Trump administration agree to restore access to Fable following a shutdown of the model that roiled the AI industry. And Colorado's Democratic primaries see yet more centrists fall amid a far-left groundswell. The establishment, pundits, and so many others said this wouldn't be a race at all. It would be a coronation. They counted us out and they underestimated all of you. It's Wednesday, July 1st. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

1:25President Trump's forays into cryptocurrency have delivered him a windfall of more than a billion dollars last year, according to his latest financial disclosures. It's an unprecedented surge in income that came alongside earnings from royalty deals, real estate and legal settlements. And for more, I'm joined by Journal Finance Editor Alex Frangos. Alex, it seems that the bulk of this income has come from cryptocurrency, no? Yeah, it's really quite, quite astonishing. Trump and his family started these businesses in the months before he was elected while promising to make America the capital of crypto.

2:01And the ventures really brought in a huge amount of real cash, over a billion dollars. And what's notable is while the Trump family did really well, the investors in those coins, some of them didn't. The value of those coins dropped quite a bit after that. In addition to crypto, we should note there's been a wealth of other deals here with other companies involving real estate and even Trump-branded products. Yeah, sure. He's always had those Trump stakes, Trump watches brought in$4.7 million. I'm quite envious of a$6 ,484 a month pension from the Screen Actors Guild from his time hosting The Apprentice.

2:40But it's the crypto stuff that has dwarfed everything else. This is a guy who is known for building condos and building hotels. And that is now a much smaller part of his business. And you look at the money that was brought in from Mar-a-Lago and the Trump Doral, which obviously got a lot of extra business after he came into office, pulling in$77 million last year at Mar-a-Lago. But that's peanuts compared to Trump coin or the World Liberty Financial token, which both brought in over$500 million. Just pulling back, Alex, I appreciate that perspective, but how just unprecedented is it for a president to be making this amount of money while in office?

3:21Totally unprecedented. There have been rich presidents, not quite any who have so many things going on while they're in office. His and his son's and daughter's attitude in this term especially is we're not going to stop doing business. We're going to go out and do deals, even if they are in areas that overlap with the administration's policies like on crypto or foreign real estate projects with countries in which we have diplomatic business. But we should be very clear here, Alex, the White House says that neither the president nor his family have ever engaged or will engage in conflicts of interest and that all of his actions and the actions of his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.

4:02Yeah, absolutely. They say that. And there's also critics who say, well, they can say that. But in fact, you know, if you look at these deals and the overlaps, they are concerning. Another unusual element of the wealth report here are these legal settlements that Trump struck with major companies, Meta, Paramount, which was the owner of CBS, Disney, the owner of ABC, over legal cases that he threatened against those companies over, in some cases, the way that he was portrayed. And critics will say that those settlements were made in order to prevent him from using the apparatus of the government to squeeze those companies.

4:38So it's a huge amount of money,$86.5 million from those legal settlements, certainly a lucrative line of business for anyone. As Journal Finance Editor Alex Frango's talent agents take note, this man wants to be in syndication. Let's see what we can do about that. Alex, thanks as always. Yeah, absolutely. I look forward to it. Thank you.

5:01Anthropic has reached an agreement with the Trump administration to restore access to Fable, the public version of the company's mythos model that's capable of carrying out powerful cyber attacks. As part of the deal, Commerce Secretary Howard Ludnick said that Anthropic had agreed to address the workarounds that researchers at Amazon had used to evade guardrails for Fable, which are critical for making it public. The more than two-week shutdown and efforts to resolve it is likely to shape future AI development and government oversight. Anthropic said it's working with the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in order to develop a consensus framework for gauging the severity of so-called jailbreaks that bypass safety measures and how AI developers should respond, though Anthropic said it was probably impossible to make any model jailbreak-proof.

5:49Democratic socialists are continuing to notch upsets in midterm primaries. The latest to do so, 29-year-old Maylott Kuros, who bested incumbent Democrat Diana DeGette for a Denver congressional seat. Here was Kuros addressing a raucous victory party courtesy of Denver 7. We will not wait to take the fight to Donald Trump and the oligarchy. We will not wait. We will not wait to abolish ICE and pass Medicare for all.

6:25We will not wait to put an end to the politics of the past, to get big money out of our politics, and to reject corporate PACs and AIPAC. Kiros was backed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who tapped his list of supporters to fundraise on her behalf. Meanwhile, centrist Colorado Senator Michael Bennett lost his bid to represent Democrats in a race for governor. Ousting him was Attorney General Phil Weiser, who you heard from in the introduction to the podcast, who'd criticized Bennett's votes to confirm some of President Trump's nominees and to boost funding for ICE. Fellow Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper, however, did manage to hold off a progressive challenger and is favored to win re-election in November.

7:08And President Trump has announced that Republicans will hold a national convention in Dallas on September 9th and 10th to boost voter turnout for the midterm elections. The unusual event is aimed at helping the party protect its slim majorities in Congress and stopping Democrats from blocking Trump's agenda.

7:27The United Nations has staved off a financial collapse, even as the U.S. refuses to fork over some$4 billion in dues, and China is late in paying some$400 million. To buy at more fiscal breathing room, members agreed yesterday to ditch a rule that would have seen the UN refund unspent money to countries even if they were late in paying their dues or didn't pay at all. That move was originally designed to limit financial bloat, but had lately become counterproductive as major donors withheld support. The UN's controller welcomed the rule change. We have a leaking boat almost on the verge of sinking.

8:04And what you have done is plugged some of those holes to give us a chance to get to ashore and begin to fix the boat gradually. American officials didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the U.S.'s continued non-payment of U.N. dues. They've previously conditioned future support on deeper U.N. job and budget cuts, including less business class travel and a greater use of machine translators. For the first time in decades, Russia says it's planning to begin importing fuel. As we mentioned on yesterday's podcast, that comes as Ukraine's relentless drone campaign has resulted in fuel shortages that are now rippling across the country.

8:44So every night, there are now hundreds and hundreds of drones crossing the Russian airspace and hitting various targets, including the energy infrastructure, including refineries, and knocking them off one by one. And the refining capacity was higher than the consumption, but not that much higher. And so now, all of a sudden, you have a crisis. That's our chief foreign affairs correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov. It's the first time since this war began four and a half years ago that every single ordinary Russian is feeling the impact of the conflict in Ukraine because every single person either needs to fill up their car or is taking public transportation.

9:24So for the last couple of weeks, moderates in Moscow, either Rome looking for an open gas station. And if they found one, they would spend one or two or three hours waiting in line. The situation is much worse in other parts of Russia. In parts of Siberia, motorists are reporting that they're spending one or two nights waiting to fill up. And across Russia, there are now limits on how much gasoline you can put into your car. And at the same time, the black market is now springing up across the country. Yaro says the deepening political crisis now has the Kremlin considering what was once unthinkable.

10:00So for the first time since the 1990s, Russia is now planning to import gasoline. It has already banned the export of gasoline, and it's also planning to ban the export of diesel fuel. Russia produces much more diesel than gasoline, so the shortage of diesel is not as acute, but it's also starting to be felt. And that's a remarkable thing. The late Senator John McCain used to call Russia a gas station masquerading as a country. Well, guess what? Russia because of this war has ran out of gas. So that's a huge blow to the image of the government. In remarks over the weekend, Putin showed no intention of seeking a ceasefire with Ukraine and rejected the idea of limiting Russia's own long-range strikes.

10:43A Kremlin spokesman said Moscow is negotiating with several nations on imports, though he declined to name them. Coming up, we've got the day's top market stories as Ukraine inks a deal with Saab for new fighter jets, and Chinese competition tests Western businesses across retail and mining. That and more after the break. AI isn't just changing how we do business. It involves a new kind of leadership. On the season one finale of Tech Pluential, we trace the through lines across episodes, revisiting powerful insights from executives who are helping redefine technology leadership for the age of AI.

11:20Learn why tech is now a shared enterprise agenda and how you can drive real, durable value for your organization. Where technology and influence converge, new opportunities can emerge. That's Tech Fluential, a podcast from Deloitte and custom content from WSJ.

11:39In markets news, the European Union is limiting tariff-free steel imports in order to protect its domestic industry from oversupply from countries like China. To do that, it's instead setting aside half of its 18-plus million-ton quota for free trade partners like Turkey, India, South Korea, and the UK. While Chinese competition is also weighing on U.S. aluminum giant Alcoa, in a bid to counter Beijing's dominance, it's buying Australia-based South32's bauxite, alumina, and aluminum assets in a deal valued at up to$5.6 billion. Shares of Nike are down off hours after the company reported another quarterly sales decline, with weakness in China offsetting some recovery in North America.

12:25CEO Elliot Hill, who was brought in to execute a turnaround plan in 2024, said he was moving with urgency to rethink Nike's strategy in China and promised a reimagined approach that was centered around deep local partnerships. We have hired and are resourcing our greater China local product creation team. they will be delivering locally designed, developed, and manufactured product in China in holiday 27. Nike's struggles in China come as a number of Western brands, especially carmakers, battle eroding market share in the country. According to consulting firm Alex Partners, American automakers held just 5 % market share in China last year, down from 12 % in 2014.

13:13Meanwhile, demand for memory chips sent South Korea's exports surging more than 70 % in June to a record$102 billion, the country's fastest growth in nearly 50 years. Chip exports hit a historic high of nearly$45 billion, tripling on insatiable demand from the AI build-out. And finally, drumroll. The two-seat Gripen was created in true collaboration for the new battle space, where military operations occur simultaneously across all domains. That's Swedish defense company Saab touting the benefits of its Gripen fighter jet, which it will eventually be delivering to Ukraine. A deal signed yesterday for 16 of the jets is valued at around$2.5 billion and is part of a prior agreement that could see the export of up to 150 of the planes.

14:04Though Ukraine will need to defend its own skies for several more years until then. Deliveries of an older round of donated Gripins from Sweden isn't due to start until 2027, with the newer models due to arrive between 2029 and 2030. And that's it for What's News for this Wednesday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer is Sandra Killhoff, and I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.

14:41This podcast is brought to you by ReliaQuest. Cyber criminals are constantly attacking. They want your data. They want your identity. They want your innovation. ReliaQuest fortifies your business with agentic defense, AI that detects, contains, and eliminates cyber threats in minutes. It helps your security team move faster at the work that matters most to protect the business now and delivers insights to help them predict what's next. ReliaQuest, agentic defense for the enterprise. Learn more at ReliaQuest.com. That's R-E-L-I-A-Q-U-E-S-T dot com.