Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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💰 Trump reaps $1.4 billion from crypto

Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

President Trump pulled in more than $2.2 billion in his first year back in office, powered by roughly $1.4 billion from crypto ventures, new financial disclosures show, according to his 927-page disclosure, released yesterday. The filings offer the clearest picture yet of a president profiting from an industry he regulates. The disclosure pegs Trump's assets at a minimum of $2.4 billion, but ranges cap at more than $50 million per holding, so the real total could be higher, The New York Times reports. He also reported $86.5 million from settling five suits against ABC, CBS, YouTube, Meta and X. The White House told The Washington Post that Trump has never had a conflict of interest and any suggestion otherwise is a "tired, false narrative." Go deeper (gift link).

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Federal judge denies effort by Trump administration to get New Hampshire’s detailed voter data

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by the Justice Department aimed at compelling New Hampshire to turn over its voter rolls, dealing the Trump administration another setback in its quest for detailed information about the nation’s voters.

https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-voter-list-new-hampshire-trump-8d490c0f19b8658abe00f0b6b2cba408?

• Trump announces first-ever midterm convention for Republicans
   
• Republican Tom Kean Jr. reveals depression diagnosis after four-month absence from Congress
   
• House GOP deadlocks over Trump’s demands, sending lawmakers home early
   
• Trump’s actions signal a move toward institutionalizing people with disabilities, advocates warn 
   
• Filing shows Trump took in about $1.2 billion from crypto businesses last year
   
• Trump administration suspends funding for New York’s Medicaid fraud unit
   
• Harvard professor with polarizing alien theories is picked to lead new White House UFO council 

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How Secrets of Trump’s First Rally Show He Was Always Fake

Donald Trump held his first rally in 1990. This is the true story of its brazen fakery.

On Saturday night, Donald Trump will take over the National Mall to turn the nation’s 250th birthday party into a celebration of himself.

“We are going to host the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all, a ‘TRIBUTE TO AMERICA,’” he announced on Truth Social.

The event—which is to end with what Trump is hyping as the “largest fireworks show in history”—will be the most grandiose of the 80-year-old’s self-celebrating rallies, whose history now stretches back nearly four decades.

But its tacky, tawdry essence will be the same as the very first Trump rally. It will be all about one man. It is certain to include attacks on the press. It may even be just as fake as that very first one.

That event was a public-relations stunt touted as “a grassroots show of support” by employees at his four Atlantic City, New Jersey, casinos, two days after his 44th birthday on June 16, 1990.

That was also one day after he missed $42.65 million in payments on $1.3 billion in debt. The need for counter-publicity was made clear by newspaper headlines such as “Donald Duck$” and “Uh-Owe.”

The $1 billion-plus Taj Mahal casino that towered 44 stories above the boardwalk where the rally was held had been hyped by Trump at its opening as “the eighth wonder of the world.”

It was now being called “the eighth blunder.”

What was supposedly a spontaneous show of support had been orchestrated by a Trump advertising executive.

Trump management estimated to journalists that 3,000 employees attended the rally. The Associated Press counted around 800—a pattern of numerical inflation that has become very familiar.

More importantly, New York Newsday reported that one of the employees said supervisors had ordered them the day before to attend the rally.

A reporter who was at the scene, but who has since left the news business and asked not to be identified, told the Daily Beast that the rally “was definitely organized” and that he got the impression “from the few people I talked to… it was a company-mandated activity they had to attend.”

As Trump arrived, moving through the crowds and shaking hands, mid-level management called out, “Happy Birthday, Donald!… We Love You, Donald!”

A five-piece band, booked by the ad executive, played Happy Birthday as Trump mounted a stage that had been erected for what his people called a grassroots expression of solidarity. A banner hung overhead:

“We’re behind you 400 percent… P.S. Happy Birthday.”

The show continued, and Trump was presented with an outsized birthday card signed by hundreds of well-wishers. He was also given a 6-by-4 rug with a woven portrait of his favorite person, himself.

“Trump’s portrait on a rug,” the former reporter recalled. “I thought it was kind of tacky… like a portrait of Elvis in a motel room or something.”

Trump seemed delighted by the portrait and by the rest of the rally, dedicated entirely to his favorite person.

“This is unbelievable,” he told the crowd. “Nobody’s going to believe that this had nothing to do with me.”

All the themes of a Trump rally were there to see. There was defiance of authorities, in this case, the banks, and attacks on the press, who had been invited to the event.

Trump was reported to have been given 10 days to work out an arrangement with the banks for a bailout loan or face bankruptcy, but he dismissed reports of his financial difficulties and insisted the Taj Mahal was “setting records.” He launched into an attack against what was even then his favorite target.

“I know there are reporters here, but you don’t see them writing this story,” he said. “Nobody wants to write the positives.”

He then said, “Well, over the years, I’ve surprised a lot of people. And the biggest surprise is yet to come.”

He repeated his remarks at the rally almost verbatim at a birthday party that night in the ballroom of the Trump Castle casino.

“Just remember one thing…” he said, then repeating, “I’ve surprised you before, and the biggest is yet to come.”

Among the B-list celebrities and entertainers in attendance was comedian Fred Travalena, who had been flown in to deliver an impersonation of President George H.W. Bush.

“I keep hearing Donald Trump would make a great president,” Travalena’s President Bush joked.

Exactly a quarter century later and two days after his 69th birthday, Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower with his latest wife, Melania, to announce what had seemed just a jest in 1990.

He had survived a prolonged financial crisis involving more than $2 billion in debt by giving up actual building and simply licensing his name. The power of the Trump brand had grown exponentially as The Apprentice demonstrated reality TV’s ability to create an illusion. He announced he was running for president, and many rallies followed, some with almost as many supporters in attendance as he claimed.

But even Trump was surprised by the outcome.

“Do you believe this s---?” he told a longtime New York politician who called him the morning after he was elected.

As we came to his 80th birthday on June 14, Trump was in his second term. He has been doing all he can to conflate his birthday with America’s 250th anniversary. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

Thirty-six years after the publicity stunt outside the Eighth Blunder of the World, Trump and the equivalents of his ad executive have been weaving another show—Freedom 250—that is often proving as tacky as a portrait on a motel-room rug. He acts as if it were an expression of support for him, as if all of America were out on a continent-sized boardwalk, chanting, “We Love Donald” along with, “USA! USA!”

On the Fourth of July, Trump will hold another rally. This one will be on a much grander scale, but it is sure to be much like his first in all its damning pretense and denial.

We can only hope that we are not in for an even bigger surprise in the days ahead.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-trumps-very-first-rally-eerily-foreshadowed-his-july-4-takeover/?

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First-Term Trump Lawyer Torches President’s ‘Onslaught of Corruption’

The president’s staggering fortune was revealed in financial disclosures.

Donald Trump’s former White House lawyer Ty Cobb accused the president of squeezing an historic amount of “corruption” into just 18 months.

Trump’s staggering personal fortune got a public airing this week when the U.S. Office of Government Ethics released a 927-page financial disclosure revealing just how lucrative his second presidency has proved.

The document shows Trump raked in at least $2.2 billion in 2025 alone—from cryptocurrency, real estate, legal settlements, and an array of other income streams.

More than $1 billion of that came from crypto, including profits from World Liberty Financial, the venture he founded with his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, that sells “governance tokens,” and the $TRUMP meme coin he launched three days before his inauguration.

This, Cobb surmised, amounts to an “onslaught of corruption.”

“I don’t think it was contemplated by the founders when they created the Emoluments Clauses,” he said on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront on Monday, referencing the provisions in the Constitution designed to prevent corruption.

He said crypto is a “slimy industry,” and added that the way Trump is “going around it, where he creates policies that can only enrich himself and his family, is something that I think the average American should be staggered by.”

Getting straight to the point, Cobb, who served as a White House lawyer during Trump’s first term, said, “There’s no question. I mean, we are seeing the greatest onslaught of corruption in the history of mankind in the last 18 months.”

He said Trump, whose fortune Forbes estimates at $6 billion, has a daily “devotion” to accumulating wealth and power and added that the “grift” is at a “stunning” scale.

Cobb left the first Trump administration in 2018 after managing the White House’s internal legal team on matters related to Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Russian election interference in 2016.

In response to Cobb’s comments, White House Spokesperson Anna Kelly told the Daily Beast: “This is the same, tired narrative that Democrats have pushed against President Trump, his family, and his administration for a decade.

“President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public—which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media. There are no conflicts of interest.”

In a previous statement, shared on Tuesday, Kelly said: “Neither the president nor his family has ever engaged—or will ever engage—in conflicts of interest.

“President Trump proudly made the United States the crypto capital of the world through executive actions, supporting legislation like the GENIUS Act, and other commonsense policies to drive innovation and economic opportunity for all Americans. All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people—and any so-called ‘reporters’ pushing otherwise are recycling the same, tired, false narrative that Democrats and the legacy media have been pushing for a decade.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/first-term-trump-lawyer-torches-presidents-onslaught-of-corruption/?

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Ex-CIA Director John Brennan seeks court order requiring records from investigations be preserved

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former CIA Director John Brennan sued the Trump administration Wednesday, demanding a court order that would require officials to preserve records from investigations that he says are targeting him for “what amounts to phantom criminal conduct.”

https://apnews.com/article/brennan-cia-russia-justice-department-investigation-0953e358307a391d6f1c0da14b18bf4e?

• ✈️ President Trump took flight today on his new Air Force One: a Boeing 747-8 given to the U.S. by the Qatari government. He told reporters ahead of takeoff: "This was a gift from a country that's treated us very well." How Trump got a "palace in the sky."
• 🇺🇸 The White House will not renew the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The administration is setting up years of annual reviews that bring fresh uncertainty for businesses that depend on trade with two of America's largest trading partners. Go deeper.