What a great country we live in. You tell me: in whatever other country could you receive a personal email from your president? Yet that’s what happened to me this weekend.
I couldn’t believe it. I was so excited when this message popped up among incoming emails: “Email from the President.” Of course, I opened it right away. I couldn’t wait. Was President Trump asking my advice on ending the war in Ukraine? Or how to get his “big, beautiful bill” out of the Senate? No, no. Nothing so important.
It turned out Trump was just doing what he does best: asking for money. “I signed collectable golf balls for you,” read the email. “BUT we’ll only have a few of these left in stock, so if you want them, you’ve got to ORDER BEFORE MIDNIGHT.”
There they were, the president emailed, just waiting for me: three “Trump Signature Golf Balls” (not actually signed by him) for anywhere from $35 to $3,300, depending on how big a check I wanted to write. As much as I hate to disappoint the Don, I decided to pass.
Actually, I felt lucky. At least I didn’t get an email inviting me to have dinner with Trump last Thursday night at his golf club in Potomac Falls, Va. That would have set me back a bit more than $35. The minimum price for steak and halibut was a cool million — for which you didn’t even get a handshake with the Orange Man.
But 220 fat cats did show up, specially invited because they were the biggest investors in Trump’s latest money-making scheme, which he launched just before his second Inauguration: a $Trump meme coin. Buyers from China, Germany, Singapore, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and around the world flew in for the dinner with the explicit intent, they told reporters, “of influencing Mr. Trump and U.S. financial regulations.”
In addition to dinner with the president, the top donors were given a private tour of the White House the next morning. And, to be clear, this was not a campaign fundraiser. This event was a business venture lining the pockets of Trump and his family — from which, according to the New York Times, they have already collected $320 million in fees.
Stop! That rumbling sound you hear? It’s the sound of Thomas Jefferson, or Abraham Lincoln, or Jimmy Carter, or any of our other 42 deceased presidents rolling in their grave. It’s no stretch of the imagination to conclude that anyone of them would be appalled at the way Trump has turned the presidency from the highest form of public service to the most disgusting display of personal enrichment. He’s replaced the revered title “commander-in-chief” with the disgraced “grifter-in-chief.”
After all, last week’s dinner is hardly the first money-making scheme Trump has launched recently. In January, in addition to hawking Bibles, trading cards, sneakers and watches, he unveiled a new crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, with a $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi.
Since the inauguration, sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have been bouncing around the world, signing a breathtaking bounty of new business deals for the family. That includes a $1 billion, 80-story luxury hotel in Dubai; a second high-end residential tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; a new golf course and villa complex in Qatar; a Trump skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City; and a $1.5 billion golf complex outside Hanoi. They’ve also opened a private club in Washington, the “Executive Branch,” where for a $500,000 entrance fee, members can rub elbows with members of the Trump administration.
Again, all of these projects have one purpose only: to exploit the office of president in order to funnel money to Trump and his family. Eric Lipton, investigative reporter for the New York Times, concludes: “Mr. Trump is estimated to have added billions to his personal fortune, at least on paper, since the start of his new term, much of it through crypto.”
How times have changed. There’s hardly a peep of protest this time about Trump’s money-grubbing. Yet not that long ago, Hillary Clinton was roasted for having made $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures — 12 years before her husband was elected president.
Looking back, it’s hard to believe we made such a big deal about so little. But at least we had some standards of decency then. We have none today.
Bill Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”