Thursday, May 8, 2025

LIVE: MeidasTouch RESPONDS to MAJOR Breaking News - 5/8/25

 

American consumers & businesses STOCKED UP on CHINESE PRODUCTS - we did! There are a few products only available from CHINA - they will never be made in the U.S. Don't penalize other nations because U.S. CORPORATIONS off shored jobs. CHINA has promoted CHEAP CLEAN ENERGY, making friends, building roads & their economy is prospering while the BULLY TRUMP threatens & offends ALLIES & FRIENDS... CHINA figured out that RENEWABLE CLEAN ENERGY is the solution while TRUMP wallows in DIRTY ENERGY! The greatest offense is PROMOTING DIRTY COAL!

SURGEON GENERAL who isn't a DOCTOR?


MeidasTouch

4.8M subscribers


A Tale of Two Billionaires

 


A Tale of Two Billionaires

The profiteer and the philanthropist


Credit: Getty Images

When it comes to the wealthy, there are those who are “good rich” and those who can generously be described as “bad rich.” Let’s begin with the latter.

As Donald Trump is telling American consumers that their children can make do with fewer toys this Christmas because his Grinch-like tariffs will make prices jump and supplies shrink, he is getting richer by the hour. Quite literally.

You may not have heard much about this, but Trump and his family are profiting from his presidency in unprecedented ways and in staggering amounts. And the deals they are making are ethically murky at best, corrupt at worst. Illegal? We may never know. Is it buying access to Trump? That’s what one Democratic senator calls it. If it walks like a duck …

While most American presidents have gone out of their way to avoid even a whiff of a conflict of interest or profiteering, Trump is brazenly embracing the practice.

Among other things, Trump is getting rich(er) off of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a digital currency where transactions are made independent of traditional banks, using a decentralized system that has no restrictions or paper trail and in which confiscation is nearly impossible.

Once a derider of the industry as a place for “drug dealers and scammers,” Trump is now its biggest cheerleader and policymaker. He is directly benefiting from his administration’s loosening of crypto regulations.

Last fall, Trump and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric started a new cryptocurrency venture called World Liberty Financial (WLF). It has been highly lucrative for the Trump family, making them almost $3 billion in just six months! That’s according to a report by State Democracy Defenders Action, which also says the scheme now accounts for 40% of Trump’s net worth.

A large share of those billions has come from the sale of something called “meme coins.” One of Trump’s coins, named $TRUMP, was launched the Friday before he was inaugurated. The digital coins have no intrinsic value — just what someone is willing to pay for them. And folks are willing to pay a lot, if it means access to Trump.

Usually crypto transactions are anonymous, but WLF says they vet every buyer, which means they know who they are, which means Trump knows who is supporting him. WLF isn’t trying to hide the obvious quid pro quo. The company has made gaining access into a game.

On its website, WLF advertised recently that the 220 wallets, or accounts, worth the most would be invited to an “intimate private dinner” with the president. The top 25 wallets would also get a White House tour. The website has since scrubbed mention of the White House, but sales of the coins jumped 80% on this news. Keep in mind the Trump family collects a large percentage of each transaction.

Trump’s crypto enterprise is also allowing foreigners access to the president in new ways. By law, foreign nationals cannot donate to a presidential campaign or inauguration fund. But they can buy Trump’s meme coins. And boy are they. Bloomberg estimates that a majority of the top 220 wallets are owned by foreigners.

Foreigners buying influence is not simply hypothetical. After Chinese billionaire Justin Sun invested $75 million in Trump coins, an SEC investigation (begun during the Biden administration) into whether Sun had fraudulently inflated crypto prices was suddenly halted.

Many in finance and the government are raising the roof over Trump’s latest scheme. “It’s a black spot on our industry,” says crypto firm founder Andre Cronje, who has had his own run-ins with the SEC.

The Senate Subcommittee on Investigations is looking into possible conflicts of interest. “Donald Trump is selling cryptocurrency like snake oil in the Wild West, and he’s put a for sale sign on the White House for his meme coin,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee.

Senator Chris Murphy was even more blunt: “Donald Trump is essentially posting his Venmo for any billionaire CEO or foreign oligarch to cash in some favors by secretly sending him millions of dollars. The Trump meme coin is the single most corrupt act ever committed by a president.” Republican senators are silent.

It’s not just the money Trump is making — it’s the funding he’s taking away from places in need, all over the world, that America has supported for generations. And that’s where Bill Gates comes in.


Gates is the anti-Trump. He’s also the 13th richest person in the world, and he announced today that the Gates Foundation would give away all of his money in the next 20 years. When he and his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, started the foundation in 2000, they planned to sunset the organization several decades after their deaths. But those plans were “BT,” or before Trump.

Gates is moving up the timeline because he, like many Americans of more modest means, now sees an urgent need for quicker action.

The Gates Foundation has reshaped global public health, saving tens of millions of lives by strategically spending $100 billion. The foundation will spend its endowment, as well as what remains of Gates’s considerable fortune — which it estimates will be $200 billion — and then shutter its doors at the end of 2045.

Gates believes the wealthy have a responsibility to use their money for the betterment of society. Robber baron and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie has long been a major influence for Gates. He cites as a guiding force the essay “The Gospel of Wealth,” in which Carnegie wrote, “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”

The Gates Foundation will focus on several areas: ending preventable deaths of mothers and children; eradicating diseases such as polio, malaria, and measles; and lifting millions out of poverty by improving education, nutrition, agriculture, and access to technology.

The timing of the announcement is no accident, as the Trump administration continues to defund international aid programs. The journal Nature estimates that Trump’s elimination of U.S. foreign aid could result in as many as 25 million deaths worldwide over the next 15 years.

But Gates saved his sharpest barbs for another billionaire, Elon Musk, the architect of funding cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates told the Financial Times.

“You can accuse me of being by nature an optimistic person. But I just think I’m being realistic. I think it’s objective to say to you that things will be better in the next 20 years. In any case, let’s say somebody convinced me otherwise. What am I going to do? Just go buy a bunch of boats or something? Go gamble? This money should go back to society in the way that it has the best chance of causing something positive to happen,” Gates said in an interview with The New York Times.

As Trump is erasing the critical line between private enterprise and government action, and getting richer because of it, Gates is shedding his billions by filling in the holes caused by the president’s heartless policies, which will cause death and despair around the world.

“Good rich” for the win.

To support my team’s efforts to protect our democracy through the power of independent journalism, please consider joining as a paid subscriber. It keeps Steady sustainable and accessible for all. Thank you.


No matter how you subscribe, I thank you for reading.

Stay Steady,
Dan

Today in Politics, Bulletin 126. 5/8/25



Sen. Warren Blasts Wells Fargo, Fed, and Republican Bill THANK YOU SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN!

  Senator Elizabeth Warren 138K subscribers