How Trump
Has Pocketed $1,408,500,000
One year ago, Donald Trump took an oath to
serve the American people. Instead, he has focused on
using the presidency to enrich himself.
President Trump has never been a man to ask what he can
do for his country. In his second term, as in his first, he is instead testing
the limits of what his country can do for him.
He has poured his energy and creativity into the
exploitation of the presidency — into finding out just how much money people,
corporations and other nations are willing to put into his pockets in hopes of
bending the power of the government to the service of their interests.
A review by the editorial board relying on analyses from
news organizations shows that Mr. Trump has used the office of the presidency
to make at least $1.4 billion. We know this number to be an underestimate
because some of his profits remain hidden from public view. And they continue
to grow.
Each stack of bills represents
the median household income in
the United States, $83,730.
The Trumps have made at least
$23 million from licensing Mr. Trump’s
name overseas since his re-election.
A hotel in Oman. An office tower in western India. A golf
course on the outskirts of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. These are a few of the
more than 20 overseas projects the Trump Organization is pursuing,
often requiring cooperation with foreign governments. These deals have made
millions for the Trumps, according to Reuters.
And the administration has sometimes treated those same governments favorably.
One example: The administration agreed to lower its threatened tariffs on
Vietnam about a month after a Trump Organization project broke
ground on a $1.5 billion golf complex outside of Hanoi. Vietnamese
officials ignored
their own laws to fast-track the project.
The Trumps are pocketing $28 million from
Amazon for a documentary about Melania Trump.
Amazon paid far more for the rights to “Melania” than the
next highest bidder — and far more than the company has previously paid for
similar projects, according to The
Wall Street Journal. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chairman and one of the world’s
richest people, has many reasons to curry favor with the administration,
including antitrust regulation, Amazon’s defense contracts and his space
company’s federal contracts.
Major tech and media companies
have paid Mr. Trump $90.5 million in
settlements since his re-election.
The settlements have come from X, ABC News, Meta, YouTube
and Paramount. None of them were justified on the merits. Paramount, for
example, agreed to pay the president $16 million for what he claimed was the
deceptive editing of a 2024 Kamala Harris interview. The editing was a normal
part of journalism. Three weeks later, the Federal Communications Commission
approved an $8 billion merger with Skydance.
Qatar gave Mr. Trump a $400 million jet
that he will use as Air Force One
while president and plans to take with
him after leaving office.
Mr. Trump seemed to acknowledge that the gift would
influence his treatment of Qatar. “We are going to protect this country,”
he said in
Doha shortly after Qatar offered the plane. Mr. Trump has said he
expects to transfer the plane to his presidential library after leaving office.
The Trumps have made
at least $867 million through
various cryptocurrencies.
Mr. Trump’s sale of crypto has been by far his biggest
moneymaker, according to Reuters.
People who hope to influence federal policy, including foreigners, can buy his
family’s coins, effectively transferring money to the Trumps, and the deals
are often secret. One that has become public: A United Arab Emirates-backed
investment firm announced plans last year to deposit $2
billion into a Trump firm — two weeks before the president gave the country
access to advanced chips.
All told, Mr. Trump has profited from
his return to the presidency by an
amount of money equal to 16,822 times
the median U.S. household income.
Mr. Trump’s hunger for wealth is brazen.
Throughout the nation’s history, presidents of both parties have taken care to
avoid even the appearance of profiting from public service. This president
gleefully squeezes American corporations, flaunts gifts from foreign governments
and celebrates the rapid growth of his own fortune.
When President Harry Truman left office in 1953, he did not
even own a car. He and his wife returned to Missouri by train and lived for a
time on his Army pension. He refused to take any job that he regarded as
commercializing his public service, explaining, “I knew that they were not
interested in hiring Harry Truman, the person, but what they wanted to hire was
the former president of the United States.” Mr. Trump has said that when he
leaves office, he plans to take with him a $400 million Boeing 747 that was a
gift from Qatar, and to display it at his presidential library.
This tally focuses on Mr. Trump’s documented gains. The $1.4
billion figure is a minimum, not a full accounting. It is probable that Mr.
Trump has collected several hundred million dollars in additional profits from
his cryptocurrency ventures over the past year. The Trumps have acknowledged as
much. When The Financial Times asked Eric
Trump, one of the president’s sons, about its estimated value of the family’s
crypto gains, he said they were probably even larger than the news organization
thought.
Our accounting also does not include other ways in which the
president has encouraged influence seekers to make donations that benefit him
politically, including to his planned White House renovation. During the
government shutdown, Mr. Trump even used a private gift to finance his policy
priorities. Other presidents did not behave this way.
Mr. Trump was already the wealthiest person to serve as
president of the United States. He began his second term with a large portfolio
of real estate holdings and an ownership stake in a social media company. Those
businesses have benefited from his presidency. His real estate company, for
example, is making millions from deals licensing Mr. Trump’s name for use on
new projects in foreign countries. Even more striking, however, are the
enormous profits the Trump family has reaped by creating and selling cryptocurrencies,
allowing Mr. Trump to collect money from those seeking his favor.
It is impossible to know how often Mr. Trump makes official
decisions, in part or entirely, because he wants to be richer. And that is
precisely the problem. A culture of corruption is pernicious because it is not
just a deviation from government in the public interest; it is also the
destruction of the state’s democratic legitimacy. It undermines the necessary
faith that the representatives of the people are acting in the interest of the
people.
Aristotle, writing more than 2,000 years ago, saw clearly
and warned that a government whose leaders worked to enrich themselves might
still call itself a republic, and might still go through the motions, but when
the aim of government shifts from public good to private gain, its constitution
becomes an empty shell. The government is no longer for the people.
The demands of avarice gradually corrupt the work of
government as officials facilitate the accumulation of personal wealth. Worse,
such a government corrupts the people who live under its rule. They learn by
experience that they live in a society where the laws are written by the
highest bidder. They become less likely to obey those laws, and to participate
in the work of democracy — speaking, voting, paying taxes. The United States
risks falling into this cynical spiral as Mr. Trump hollows out the institutions
of government for personal gain.
Methodology These numbers are based on publicly
available information and analyses by news organizations. Licensing and crypto
estimates are drawn from a
Reuters analysis published in October; the estimate for both categories is
based on data from the first half of 2025. $Melania meme coin estimates are
drawn from The
Financial Times. It is unclear how much of this money went to the Trumps
and how much went to their business partners. “Melania” documentary estimates
are drawn from The
Wall Street Journal. Legal settlements and Qatari
jet estimates are drawn from The New York Times. Some of the money
from these settlements will go to Mr. Trump’s presidential library and other
plaintiffs in the cases.
The Trumps and their business partners have disputed some of
these estimates, but we find the estimates to be more credible than the Trumps’
claims.
Published Jan. 20, 2026
