Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. Its corruption is unprecedented. Qatar's gift of a jet is just one example.
Dan Merica and Matthew Choi at WP:
Trump launched his meme coin — $Trump — just days before his inauguration and has not been shy about promoting it. The coin thrust the president into an unregulated and volatile world where public figures can launch a cryptocurrency, use their notoriety to draw attention to the coin and benefit when the price surges.
The coin has no intrinsic value and is instead seen as a sign of support for Trump — the people behind it openly say it is “not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type,” and Trump said when the coin launched that it was meant to “celebrate everything we stand for.” But The Washington Post has found that small-time buyers have seen their investments in the coin collapse, while Trump allies and his businesses have benefited from the project in a host of ways.
The coin is now being used to buy direct access to Trump. The group behind the coin — a Trump Organization affiliate and a company run by a Trump friend — has been encouraging purchases of the coin with the promise of an “intimate private dinner” with the president for the top 220 Trump-coin holders. Democrats and government ethics experts have expressed concerns that the meme-coin dinner could be used in a foreign influence scheme. After its promoters offered access to Trump, the coin’s price surged from around $9 to more than $14. Drew Harwell and Jeremy B. Merrill found that nearly two dozen crypto wallets acquired more than 100,000 meme coins, worth roughly $100 million.
David Yaffe-Bellany and Eric Lipton at NYT:
A struggling technology company that has ties to China and relies on TikTok made an unusual announcement this week. It had secured funding to buy as much as $300 million of $TRUMP, the so-called memecoin marketed by President Trump.
GD Culture Group, a publicly traded firm with a Chinese subsidiary, has only eight employees, its public filings show, and recorded zero revenue last year from an e-commerce business it operates on TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing app.
But on Monday, GD Culture Group became the latest business with foreign ties to seize on Mr. Trump’s crypto venture, which channels profits directly to the Trump family and has generated conflicts of interest that have alarmed ethics experts. (Memecoins like $TRUMP are a type of cryptocurrency based on an online joke or celebrity mascot and have traditionally not had any utility beyond speculation.)
In its statement, GD Culture Group, which is traded on the Nasdaq, said it would spend $300 million on a stockpile of Bitcoin and $TRUMP, using proceeds from a stock sale to an unnamed entity in the British Virgin Islands, a popular tax haven. It confirmed that investment plan in a securities filing late Tuesday.
The purchase would create clear ethical conflicts, enriching Mr. Trump’s family at the same time that the president tries to reach a deal that would allow TikTok to keep operating in the United States rather than face a congressionally approved ban.
The announcement also shows how investors around the world, including some that have virtually no public footprint, have latched on to the president’s crypto ventures to boost their own business prospects.
Just asserting a connection to Mr. Trump’s business can quickly raise a company’s profile. GD Culture Group’s struggling stock rose 12 percent on Monday, before losing those gains the next day.
“Make no mistake. These foreign entities and governments obviously want to curry favor with the president,” said former Representative Charles Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican who was the chairman of the House Ethics Committee. “This is completely out of bounds and raises all sorts of ethical, legal and constitutional issues that must be addressed.”
