Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Republicans in disarray!

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Repub Corruption Open Thread: Don TACO, King of All Scammers

Repub Corruption Open Thread: Don TACO, King of All Scammers

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Trump’s Finances Were Shaky. Then He Began to Capitalize on His Comeback
Contrary to the president’s assertions, records filed in the NYAG fraud case against him suggest that his riches were not the product of a steady and strong empire
by @russbuettner.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/u…

[image or embed]

— Wendy Siegelman (@wendysiegelman.bsky.social) July 2, 2025 at 12:32 PM

I’ve seen some discussion in the comments about the Oval Office Occupant being ‘untouchable’ because of his wealth… but maybe people have forgotten how much of that wealth is directly tied to his success in taking over the Republican party. From the NYTimes (paper of record for Our Serious Media), actual reporter Russ Buettner explains “Trump’s Finances Were Shaky. Then He Began to Capitalize on His Comeback”: [gift link]

Last spring, even as Donald J. Trump’s march back toward the White House dominated public attention, his finances, largely out of view, faced serious threats.

His office building in Lower Manhattan generated too little cash to cover its mortgage, with the balance coming due. Many of his golf courses regularly lacked enough players to cover costs. The flow of millions of dollars a year from his stint as a television celebrity had mostly dried up.

And a sudden wave of legal judgments threatened to devour all his cash.

Then, with his clinching of the Republican nomination, everything began to change.

In the following months, Mr. Trump, along with his two eldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr., refocused the family business, forming a series of partnerships, especially in cryptocurrency, with investors who were willing to bank on his victory.

Once Mr. Trump won the presidency in November, that approach kicked into overdrive.

His family business announced numerous new deals that would financially benefit Mr. Trump directly, even as he made policy decisions that affected those industries or that involved countries in which the United States had political interests. Most glaringly, Mr. Trump is now both a partner in several crypto ventures and, as president, crypto’s chief policy regulator, and he has signaled that he wants his administration to have a hands-off approach to digital currencies.

Today, those moves are seen by Mr. Trump’s detractors as a money grab of historic proportions. But an analysis by The New York Times of thousands of pages of internal Trump Organization documents filed in one of the legal actions against him suggests a more urgent motivation for Mr. Trump’s behavior: a need, rather than simply a desire, for easy money to keep his empire intact.

In late 2023, Mr. Trump boasted of having between $300 million and $400 million in cash when he testified as part of that legal action, a lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general that accused the Trumps of defrauding their lenders. His cash stockpile, Mr. Trump said, showed “how good a company I built,” and, he added in earlier testimony, “especially for a developer.”

Contrary to those assertions, records filed in the fraud case suggest that Mr. Trump’s cash was not the product of a steady and strong empire. His balance had fluctuated wildly, hitting a low of $52 million in 2018, a small figure for the size of his operation. The subsequent increase came largely from the sale of properties and a payout of more than $150 million from a passive investment.

Moreover, the version of Mr. Trump’s business that he projects — a real estate development company that executes large, complex tasks — hasn’t existed for a nearly a decade, since the Trumps’ last two major construction projects failed to make money.

Instead, Mr. Trump’s wealth is now built on monetizing the family name in new ways and, intentionally or not, the office of the presidency. It is an enterprise in pursuit of multimillion-dollar checks — from actual real estate developers, from cryptocurrency and social media enterprises run by others. It is also a business that hawks Trump-branded trinkets like watches and gold-toned mobile phones to the president’s passionate supporters.

Many of the deals open multiple channels for anyone to funnel cash to a sitting president, often in ways that are untraceable under current disclosure requirements. And because some of what is being sold is use of the president’s name, there are no clear metrics to gauge whether he has received market rate, a premium because of his office or, in effect, a hopeful bribe…

Reader Interactions

70Comments

  1. 1.

    Fair Economist

    “Intentionally or not”.

    The NYT is always carrying water for Trump. Yeah, it might be purely an accident that he’s allowing top bribers working through his crypto scam to have special official meetings with him.

  2. 2.

    Splitting Image

    The New York Times seems to be using a lot of words to admit that they helped a crook get away with his crimes and the power to commit more.

  3. 3.

    Jeffro

    Many of the deals open multiple channels for anyone to funnel cash to a sitting president

    ooo! ooo!

    I think I sense the outlines of a Constitutional amendment that might actually pass our ridiculously high thresholds here!!

  4. 4.

    hells littlest angel

    … a need, rather than simply a desire  for easy money to keep his empire intact.

     

    The pretense that this is some sort of objective fact rather than the writer’s opinion is really sickening. “He’s not bad; he’s just drawn that way.”

  5. 5.

    Elizabelle

    What slippery editing of that article.

    What detractors see may be …. a need, rather than a desire.  Hey — can’t both of those motivations be true?

    And please tell me the finest minds at the FTF NY Vichy Times don’t believe that Trump’s monetizing of the presidency is “unintentional.”

    Trump is sleazy, but so is the management of the NY Times.

  6. 6.

    SpaceUnit

    A hands-off approach to regulating crypto is just going to make it all the more unstable and risky and subject to scams and manipulations.

    And I’ll have precious little sympathy for all the MAGA bros who lose their shirt.

  7. 7.

    BretH

    To pile on:

    Instead, Mr. Trump’s wealth is now built on monetizing the family name in new ways and, intentionally or not, the office of the presidency.

    For chrissakes NYT, the whole story lays out the evidence that Trump needed cash fast, and started gearing up to monetize the Presidency while running. So why weasel around with “intentionally or  not”???

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    @Geminid:  As Kay used to say, he was in their back yard.

    I guess I will skim the whole article.  I wonder if they mention he ran for the presidency in 2024 (1) to stay out of jail and (2) to monetize it and pull in everything that he could that was not nailed down.  [Possibly unintentionally.  *snort* ]

    Sad!

  12. 12.

    Chetan Murthy

    @SpaceUnit: if they would forbid regulated (and backstopped) firms (e.g. banks) from getting involved in any way with crypto, that’d be enough.  But they’re not doing that.  Perhaps you saw that new regulation allowing mortgage issuers to consider borrowers’ crypto “assets” in assessing their creditworthiness?  Ugh.

    I’m sure there are bankers everywhere trying to figure out ways to bet on crypto with house money (insured by the FDIC).

  13. 13.

    bbleh

    … there are no clear metrics to gauge whether he has received market rate, a premium because of his office or, in effect, a hopeful bribe …

    The clear subtext being “nobody cares“.  And by and large it’s correct, thanks in part to FTFNYT themselves.

    (Although it’s not entirely true that nobody cares.  The MAGAts think it’s perfectly okay — that’s what an Alpha Man does, laws shmaws — and the Respectable Republicans are jealous and positively itching to get in on the action.)

    Ladies and gentlemen, the party of VALUES.

  14. 14.

    Martin

    Trump has always been cash poor. Yeah, he’d own $5B in properties on which he’d owe $5B. And his self-worth was so tied up in the presentation that he was wealthy that he lights enormous sums of money on fire with nothing in return. You know how much a 757 costs to own? It’s like $20K per hour to operate. This is a plane that normally needs hundreds of paying customers a day to pay for. And the only return on that is pride.

    His success always depended on this constant game of hide the ball with lenders and contractors and courts and everyone else, and he couldn’t slow down because he needs the next grift to cover the last one.

    @Splitting Image: They’ve been doing that for half a century. Why stop now?

  15. 15.

    JML

    The goddamn Times still can’t bring themselves to call this sh!t out as being corrupt AF.

    Because Joe Biden wouldn’t bend the knee.

    Their reputation is deservedly in the trash. Very old friend of mine works there, and I’ve had to avoid talking about any of this with her (not her desk anyways) because I’d rather not say to my friend that she’s now part of a corrupt enterprise that sold out any pretense to journalistic integrity.

  16. 16.

    West of the Rockies

    Something super shitty happened today.  Our wonderful Sheepadoodle (Sadie) has been diagnosed with Sudden Aquired Retinal Degeneration Syndrome (overnight blindness).  Anyone have any experience with this?

  17. 17.

    Martin

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I’m sure there are bankers everywhere trying to figure out ways to bet on crypto with house money (insured by the FDIC).

    Oh buddy, they figured that out a long time ago.

    The current craze is when your startup goes tits up, announce a pivot to crypto, dump all of your remaining VC cash into bitcoin (say $100M) and the market will reliably reward you by bidding your valuation up by $500M. Why buy the stock instead of just buying crypto? Because lots of funds including S&Ls can buy stock and not crypto.

    When the crypto market collapses it’s going to be a fucking bloodbath.

  18. 18.

    Geminid

    @Elizabelle: There are parallels. Both Trump and the Times present themselves to their audiences as their champions, thereby cloaking their own self-interested motives.

  19. 19.

    Elizabelle

    That article is entertaining.  Here are a lot of words to say “he is toxic to his own brand.”:

    In 2021, Deutsche Bank, which held Mr. Trump’s mortgage, hired the firm Newmark to appraise Doral, Mr. Trump’s highest-revenue resort, with four courses and 643 hotel rooms. The resulting analysis concluded that Mr. Trump had spent $379 million buying and renovating the resort, and that it was worth only $297 million.

    The appraisal included an even more jarring finding. While Doral, like several of Mr. Trump’s properties, was known to benefit from people looking to buy proximity to a president during Mr. Trump’s first term, his managers believed even more potential customers stayed away because of him.

    Mr. Trump’s divisive public comments over time had pushed down bookings and room rates for six years running, his managers told the appraisers. The managers believed that “the Trump brand has negatively impacted” revenues at Doral.

    Newmark’s experts agreed, writing that “we believe that with a different brand, the subject might perform better.”

  20. 20.

    SpaceUnit

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I’m not a finance guy (I’ve got an advisor for that), but I’m not sure the big banks are terribly keen on getting in on the crypto grift.

     

    Okay maybe Wells Fargo.

  22. 22.

    Elizabelle

    WRT Trump Media, his shares are worth about $2 billion, although he is not involved in the company’s operations.  Lucky for them, too.

    …. he would most likely crush Trump Media if he unloaded his stock, even as the company continues to lose money and struggles to produce $1 million per quarter in revenue, roughly the average of a single McDonald’s restaurant.

  25. 25.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Martin: You’re probably aware of Microstrategy, yes?  Crazy, eh?

    [The guy who runs the company bought a ton of crypto; at this point, that’s their main asset, and investors in the company are basically buying it for the crypto.  But somehow, they’re paying over-the-odds for that crypto.  Which is …. insane: just buy the crypto directly, instead of paying a premium to buy it via microstrategy stock!]

  26. 26.

    Elizabelle

    …. Perfectly assessing Mr. Trump’s privately held businesses at any point in time is nearly impossible. But within months of his testimony in the New York civil fraud trial, all of his cash and liquid investments looked to be at risk.

    His businesses had often required cash infusions before a judge in the trial entered a judgment against the Trumps of $355 million. Mr. Trump faced a second judgment of $88.3 million in the sexual abuse and defamation lawsuits brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

    Mr. Trump has not yet had to pay the judgments, which now total more than $600 million with interest. But he did have to put up cash totaling $175 million in the fraud case, and cash and bonds totaling $97 million in Ms. Carroll’s cases, to pursue appeals.

    You know what word never appears in the FTF NY Times article?  Convicted. They glide right past that.  You get to infer it from the judgments he is facing.

    Or that Trump ran for office in 2024 for the sweet presidential delay in getting his ass dragged into court some more  — now with enhanced immunity for his, um, unconventional approach to his office.

  27. 27.

    Elizabelle

    He also faced a potential hit of $100 million from a longstanding tax audit, though it now appears unlikely that his political appointees at the Internal Revenue Service would sign off on such an assessment — another benefit of having returned to the Oval Office.

    To be sure, Mr. Trump was not facing a calamity. He could have sold more properties, at the expense of his family’s future wealth, to cover any shortfall.

    The Trumps found a different path.

    “His approach to almost everything at this point now seems to be that he’s going to get away with whatever he can get away with, and sort of dare people to try to find legal or political ways to stop him,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal-leaning nonprofit group.

  28. 28.

    Jackie

    @Elizabelle: I just looked it up. Irreversible and no cure :-(

    The article further stated that doggos are great at adapting, so there’s that for poor Sadie.

  29. 29.

    Martin

    @Chetan Murthy: Oh, there are loads of those now. Microstrategy renamed to Strategy, btw. They’re notable for being so heavily focused on crypto, but loads of firms are doing it. Hell, Tesla did it 4 years ago.

  31. 31.

    stinger

    @Elizabelle: ​
     Thank you — I was wondering if the Times happened to mention the millions he owes for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll. Seems like a timely factoid to include in their story.

  33. 33.

    Ramona

    Marc Elias is on Brian Tyler Cohen’s YouTube channel and they are both discussing the possibility that Ms. Comey has been fired from the SDNY because she was one of the senior prosecutors in the Epstein case and so in a position to know the contents of the files. Marc Elias says we don’t yet know at what tier of the administration was the decision made to fire her or the grounds on which she was fired but it seems as though Trump is taking actions in the expectation that something is going to come out soon and he wants to be in a position to discredit anybody disclosing the contents of the files.

  34. 34.

    Fair Economist

    @Anonymous at Work:

    DoJ just fired the lead prosecutor of Epstein and Maxwell.

    So Trump fired one of the few people who actually did their job with respect to Epstein and Maxwell. What a surprise.

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    @NotMax: I think you put up the youtube of the Sphinx Observatory in Valais, Switzerland?  That goes on my 1-2 year bucket list.  Wow.

    How. Unlike Hawaii.

  38. 38.

    2liberal

    wired.com/story/enshittification-of-american-power/

    (paywalled)

    For decades, allies of the United States lived comfortably amid the sprawl of American hegemony. They constructed their financial institutions, communications systems, and national defense on top of infrastructure provided by the US.

    Ever since Trump retook office in January, in fact, rapid enshittification has become the organizing principle of US statecraft. This time around, Trumpworld understands that—in controlling the infrastructure layer of global finance, technology, and security—it has vast machineries of coercion at its disposal. As Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, recently put it, “The United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony.”

  42. 42.

    Archon

    If Trump ends his term as somehow the richest man in the world but actually leaves office with the Republican Party disgraced and discredited I’ll be prepared to consider that a win for our country.

  43. 43.

    West of the Rockies

    I’m thinking the odds of him even being alive three-and-a-half years from now are a crapshoot.  His stress will increase the worse his policies backfire and his approval craters. And his cognitive abilities will only get worse with each passing season.  Hang tight, folks.

  44. 44.

    JCJ

    Yeah, but a couple of days ago there was a story about President Obama speaking at a fundraiser and he told the people there to “toughen up”.  But he didn’t do it correctly so I will just have to accept that not voting for any future Democrats is a very reasonable conclusion.

  46. 46.

    danielx

    @Ramona:

    At this point I can’t believe Ghislaine Maxwell hasn’t had an accident or “committed suicide”. Or maybe fallen out of a high window, as seems to happen to a lot of people who irritate Vladimir Putin.

  47. 47.

    MattF

    It’s entirely fair to complain about how the NYT has treated Trump— but one can be certain that this article went through a word-by-word-by-word legal sieve. Every word in the article (and every word not in the article) has a fully documented and fully paid-for explanation.

  50. 50.

    p.a.

    Love those comments.

    THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.

    Such a great snark meme, and way more usable than “HEREBY” (which I originally spelled “hearby”.)

  53. 53.

    ryk

    @Baud: But his nutty Secretary of HHS says sugar is poison. Who are  the rubes to believe? It’s MAGA vs MAHA.

  55. 55.

    mappy!

    @Anonymous at Work:

    I’m guessing that there are a lot of monied Republicans and monied sycophants on that list that isn’t worth releasing. It sure feels like it’s circle the wagons time. We know Taco is prominent so that’s old news and maga doesn’t care about Taco’s involvement in the least. The question is who is really being protected…

  57. 57.

    Princess

    @2liberal: “The Us is beginning to monetize its hegemony.” This, but without actually getting any money for it from outside the country at this point. At the same time, my impression is that Americans see tariffs imposed and removed and, knowing that the ones that remain are being paid by Americans, think that the tariffs are having no real negative effect on the countries where they are imposed. This is false. It doesn’t matter if other countries aren’t paying the tariffs ; orders to those countries are drying up and people are being laid off. It’s going to get a lot worse, too.

  60. 60.

    Baud

    TOKYO, July 16 (Reuters) – An upstart party is gaining support ahead of elections in Japan by railing against a ‘silent invasion’ of immigrants, pushing the government to tackle fears about foreigners as it drags into the mainstream rhetoric once confined to the political fringe.

    Birthed on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites, the party, Sanseito, is widening its appeal with a ‘Japanese First’ campaign ahead of Sunday’s upper house vote.

  61. 61.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Anonymous at Work: all these comments about the lead prosecutor of Epstein and Maxwell and nothing about it being Jim Comey’s daughter. You can’t make this shit up. The blurb I read said that she was part of Diddy’s prosecution team who did not get convicted on the bigger charges. My guess is Orange Dbag will use that as the excuse to have fired her. At the same time I wouldn’t put him beyond pardoning Diddy on 12/31/28.

  63. 63.

    Baud

    @Princess:

    The conservative M.O. in a nutshell.  Take control of institutions others have built over years and milk it dry for short term personal gain. Not necessarily monetary gain either.

  65. 65.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @ryk: in a few years when the damage at HHS+FDA+NIH+CDC  resulting from RFK Jr is obvious and generally accepted by everybody, FOX News will ID RFK Jr tfg’s  Democrat HHS secretary RFK Jr. The chyrons will have a big fat D after his name.  Heck, they might not even admit that he was tfg’s appointee and just do the time travel thing and have him as Obama’s HHS guy.

  66. 66.

    MagdaInBlack

    I am fully expecting the brain trust of Comer and Jordan to start investigating the “Epstein Hoax” any minute now. trump said he wants the hoax investigated and they’re just the clowns to do it.

  70. 70.

    artem1s

    @Elizabelle: Trump had spent $379 million buying and renovating the resort, and that it was worth only $297 million.

    who knew fake gold spray paint was that expensive?

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