How Trump made $2.2B US in his first year back in office

US President Donald Trump has received at least 2.2 billion dollars from investments since he returned to the White House in 2025.

Most of that money comes from cryptocurrency, including his business, World Liberty Financial, and “meme” coins. American historians say that no president has ever earned so much money.

Washington reporters Paul Hunter, Willy Lowry and guest host Katie Nicholson examine how Trump makes money in crypto, how it compares to the income of past presidents and how important it is to voters in the end.

We’ve included the best photos below, sorted by height and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the podcast.

Willy Lowry: Let’s give this a little context. How does all this compare to what previous presidents have done to avoid accusations of using their positions for personal gain?

Paul Hunter: However, this is the thing. I mean, and it’s not just presidents. I mean, Mark Carney put his commitments on blind loyalty when he was prime minister. Bill Clinton did that. George W. Bush did that. Barack Obama and Joe Biden did not. But whatever they had in stock and what have you, they sold for cash or mutual funds. They withdraw money basically during their office hours.

What presidents usually do is make their money afterwards, and it’s a very lucrative afterlife with speeches, commanding tens of thousands of dollars per speech. Former presidents, especially Barack Obama, including his books, have made a lot of money outside of the Oval Office. But that’s the point, right? For many people, it is acceptable to make money when you are not in a position to influence policy. And that, I think, gets to the heart of all of this.

The difference with Donald Trump is that all this is happening while he is in a position to influence policy, laws and regulations that govern the things he invests in, even if it is because of his family, which is not a blind trust. When Eric manages his money, that’s not unreasonable trust. A blind trust is another person with whom you have no real relationship, there is a wall between you and the person who oversees all that. That’s the difference here. Trump, it is not a blind trust, and this happened while he was in office as the president of the United States and in a position to influence policy.

Willy Lowry: So Katie, is this, this can’t be, uh, is this outside? I mean, have previous presidents been surrounded by this kind of potential conflict of interest?

Katie Nicholson: I mean you go back and Andrew Jackson brings in the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and here’s a guy who had been a land speculator for years, right?

Lyndon Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, her family media. Questions were always raised as a member of parliament and as president. Others are the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] decisions that seemed likely to benefit those regimes, even though they held, or the family held, the media empire with blind trust while in the Oval Office.

And of course, Nixon, right? So, the way that, in a period of five years, he was able to enrich himself, and that included the purchase of large properties with the help of an industrialist friend, which raises many problems in terms of influence. And the New York Times did a great report on that back in the ’70s.

You see vice president Spiro Agnew, of course, who is accused of taking kickbacks from Maryland. These boys are walking under this kind of shame placed upon them. And then you see a wave of new changes in accountability, in what’s presidential and presidential power laws, laws that have been in place for several decades.

And now we’re in this moment where you see some legal scholars saying, wait a minute, it’s time to build on this, give yourself teeth and face this moment now. So I guess the question is, so what happened exactly? When there is a change in government, finally, do you deal with this, do you make changes or do you just hope that all the practices that were destroyed in the last eight years to whatever, in 12 years, you just hope that they will go back?