In 2023, I published “Filthy Rich Politicians,” a bipartisan exposé of how wealthy politicians get elected and how elected officials enrich themselves. I roasted Democrats, Republicans, lobbyists, and lawmakers' spouses with uncanny stock-picking abilities. But that book now feels like a museum piece. Compared to what President Trump is doing in his second term, the corruption I documented looks like petty theft.
Consider insider trading. I devoted a chapter to Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul's suspiciously timed stock trades. Pelosi had policy influence and access to inside information. But Trump possesses something far more valuable: the power to create market-moving information. According to the Associated Press, Trump executed more than 3,600 buy and sell orders in the first quarter of 2026 alone, many involving companies directly affected by his government decisions.
One stark example: MSNBC’s Michael A. Cohen reported that Trump bought up to $5 million in Nvidia stock just before the AI chipmaker received permission to export advanced processors to China. It has been a lucrative bet. Martha Stewart, who went to prison for insider trading, must be muttering in disbelief.
The Trump family has also turned self-dealing into an industry. Since Trump’s re-election, his family has pocketed $1.8 billion, according to last October’s figures. Compare that to Hunter Biden’s Burisma salary and art sales, which critics decried as grubby. The Trump haul makes Hunter look like a kid running a lemonade stand. The scale matters: a million seconds is 12 days; a billion seconds is 31 years. A million buys a beach house; a billion buys the beach.
False equivalence abounds. Some point to Biden’s pardon of Hunter, but Trump used a settlement from his own lawsuit against his own administration to secure lifelong IRS audit immunity for himself and his family—through the same settlement that created a taxpayer-funded $1.8 billion slush fund. As Senator Thom Tillis recently blasted, this fund is “beyond the pale,” and even some Republicans are speaking out. The difference is qualitative and quantitative.
Trump’s net worth has nearly tripled in his second term, reaching $6.5 billion, as Steve Rattner noted. The sources: licensing his name, an Amazon documentary about Melania Trump, and large settlements from tech and media companies—settlements likely influenced by his presidential power. But the bulk comes from crypto deals. Beyond the gaudiness of profiting from office, these tokens offer foreign governments a convenient way to curry favor. Poor MAGA fans who bought $TRUMP coins and lost 90% are collateral damage.
What’s remarkable isn’t just that Trump is doing this, but that the country has stopped caring. Critics rarely raise it; defenders don’t bother to justify it. If any previous president had attempted this, constitutional scholars would be hyperventilating. I am guilty of underreacting too, and I wrote the book. Compared to today’s Trump, most of the corruption I documented looks like pen-stealing.
Trump has more than two and a half years left to fully monetize the Oval Office. He’s only getting started.
