- Eric Trump has refuted claims made by the New York Times that the United Arab Emirates was provided access to advanced computer chips in return for a deal involving the Trump-owned stablecoin USD1.
- In May, it was revealed that UAE-founded investment firm MGX invested US$2 billion worth of Trump-owned USD1 in crypto exchange Binance. Shortly after, the UAE got access to the chips.
- Eric Trump claims his father isn’t monetising the presidency, while analysts argue Donald Trump is monetising the presidency to an extent never before seen in US history.
Eric Trump appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box yesterday to refute claims made in a Monday New York Times report that any funny business was involved in a string of deals between the Trump family’s Defi platform, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the crypto exchange Binance, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) founded investment firm MGX.
The alleged dodgy dealing began in March of this year, when MGX announced plans to invest US$2 billion (AU$2.9b) worth of stablecoins in Binance. In May, it was revealed that the stablecoin used by MGX to make this investment was none other than USD1, the stablecoin at the heart of Trump-owned WLFI.
The New York Times reported that just two weeks after this deal came to light, the Trump administration apparently made the somewhat unusual decision to allow the UAE to “buy hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips.”
When asked by Squawk Box host Joe Kernan about the Trump administration’s decision to give the UAE access to these advanced computer chips so soon after MGX’s investment using a Trump-owned stablecoin, Eric Trump made the laughable claim that Donald Trump is the only president in US history that hasn’t monetised the office.
“My father’s the first guy who hasn’t made money off of the presidency,” Eric Trump claimed. “We’ve always been serial capitalists; we’ve always had companies. Crypto came out of a necessity that we were debanked by everybody and needed to find a new way.”
Related: Trump-Linked WLFI Faces Accusations of Withholding Funds as Backer Justin Sun Claims US$75M Stake Frozen
Donald Trump Aggressively Monetising Presidency, Say Analysts
Unsurprisingly, not everyone agrees with Eric Trump’s robust analysis.
An August report from the New Yorker estimated Trump and his family have so far made US$3.4 billion (AU$5b) from Donald Trump’s two terms as US President — with a whopping US$1.8 billion (AU$2.6b) of this coming from just the first eight months of his second term. Of the US$3.4 billion, around US$2.4 billion (AU$3.5b) are estimated to be related to crypto projects and investments, such as $TRUMP, WLFI and USD1.
Related: Trump Family Nets $1.3B Boost from Bitcoin Ventures and DeFi Gains
In a recent article for the New York Times, White House correspondent Peter Baker wrote that the Trumps “have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House.”
This analysis came before the WLFI token was listed on several large centralised crypto exchanges, which reportedly boosted the Trump family’s on-paper crypto earnings by a further US$5 billion (AU$7.4b).
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