( bài viết của Lê diễn Đức tựa là Canada viết về TRUMP )
Trump, Inc Exposed. — Ten Months of Self‑Dealing in Broad Daylight
Bonds, jets,
insider trading, crypto, and a Presidency that trades like a hedge fund.
Dean Blundell
Nov 27, 2025
November 27,
2025
If you’ve felt like the last ten months of Trump 2.0 were less “administration”
and more “family office with nukes,” you’re not wrong.
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Strip away
the noise and the pattern is stupidly simple:
Trump
makes policy → the market moves → Trump and his family are already positioned
to profit.
Bonds.
Defense contractors. Big Tech. Meme coins. A $400 million jet from Qatar that
just happens to be a Boeing while he’s stuffing his portfolio
with Boeing debt.
Is it all
technically “legal”? Mostly. Which is completely F*****.
Is it grotesque, self‑interested, and completely incompatible with democracy?
Absolutely.
Let’s walk
through it.
1. The
“Free” Qatari Jet That’s Anything But
Start with
the flying metaphor for this whole mess.
In February,
the U.S. government “accepted” a luxury Boeing 747‑8 from Qatar as a donation
to be the next Air Force One. The thing is basically a flying palace: VIP
suites, lounges, gold‑adjacent everything.
Retrofitting
it with secure comms, defenses, and all the bells and whistles? The Air Force
Secretary told Congress it’d cost “under $400 million”—which everyone who can
count translated as “could easily be closer to a billion once you add
everything up.”
Now the fun
part:
- The donor is a foreign monarchy
with deep interests in U.S. policy.
- Ethics groups and constitutional
lawyers are already screaming that this looks like a massive foreign
emolument—the exact thing the Founders tried to ban.
- And behind the scenes, there’s
talk the jet could eventually land in the lap of a Trump‑controlled
library foundation when he leaves office.
So we’ve
got:
A foreign
regime buys the plane.
U.S. taxpayers pay to pimp it out.
Trump’s circle floats a path for it to end up in his post‑presidency orbit.
And just to
make it extra on‑brand, that flying bribe is a Boeing—a company in which Trump
has been quietly buying millions of dollars of bonds while his Pentagon signs
massive contracts with them.
If that
doesn’t smell like self‑dealing to you, check your nose.
2. Trump
the Bond Trader: “Crash It, Buy It, Call It Patriotism”
Remember
when presidents tried not to trade markets they control? Cute era.
Trump has
turned the bond market into his personal trampoline.
Step 1:
Torch the market
He slaps
triple‑digit tariffs on China, throws out a rolling trade war via press
conference, and sends U.S. bond prices tanking. Yields spike, volatility
indices light up, and everyone from pension funds to foreign central banks
watches the value of their “safe” assets get smoked.
Then, after
he tweaks or pauses some of the tariffs, Trump strolls out and says:
“The bond
market now is beautiful.”
Yeah. For
who?
Step 2:
Go on a bond shopping spree
While all
this chaos is playing out, his ethics filings show:
- Since January, Trump has bought
well over $100 million worth of corporate, state and municipal bonds.
- Between late August and early
October alone, he added at least $82 million more—with the reported ranges
making the real number possibly north of $300 million.
He’s not
buying grandma’s savings bonds. He’s loading up on:
- Intel, Boeing, Broadcom,
Qualcomm, Meta, Netflix, UnitedHealth, Home Depot
- JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan
Stanley, Citigroup, Wells Fargo
- A thick slice of muni and public‑sector
debt (cities, school districts, utilities)
All in
sectors he’s actively smashing and rescuing with policy.
Step 3:
Direct conflicts, no blind trust
Two greatest
hits:
Intel
- Trump’s government takes roughly
a 10% equity stake in Intel—around $9–11 billion worth—by converting CHIPS
Act money into shares.
- Almost immediately, his personal
portfolio buys up to $5 million of Intel bonds.
The
government is literally propping the company up while the President positions
himself as a creditor. You don’t need a CFA to see the problem.
Howard
Lutnick’s sons are doing the same thing with a tariffs rebate program. That’s
another post al together.
Boeing
- Ethics filings show he buys up
to $6 million in Boeing bonds across a few weeks.
- His Pentagon, meanwhile, hands
Boeing multi‑billion‑dollar fighter and helicopter contracts and cozy ties
around that Qatari Air Force One.
Trump’s
lawyers swear some outside financial firm is making the picks with “algorithms”
and model portfolios. That’s meant to reassure you. It shouldn’t.
He knows
what he owns.
He knows what decisions he’s about to announce.
He chooses to keep trading anyway.
That’s not a
conflict of interest. That’s a business model.
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3. Stocks
With Benefits: Nvidia, Apple & the Policy Pump
Underneath
the bond casino sits a boring‑looking stock portfolio that isn’t boring at all
once you line it up with his decisions.
Trump’s
latest disclosure shows big, concentrated bets in:
- Nvidia – about $615K–$1.3M in
stock
- Apple – about $650K–$1.35M in
stock
- Plus sizable stakes in
Microsoft, Broadcom, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Blackstone.
Now look at
the scoreboard:
Nvidia
& AI chips
Trump’s
administration cooks up a deal: Nvidia and AMD can sell certain AI chips to
China again if they kick 15% of that revenue back to the U.S. government. Trade
lawyers say it dances on the edge of unconstitutional export taxes, but it
certainly boosts the companies’ China business prospects.
Who owns a
fat stack of Nvidia? The guy signing the policy.
Apple
& tariffs
In an era
where Trump is slapping 100% tariffs on damn near anything that moves, Apple
gets a carve‑out: exempt from the worst of the semiconductor tariffs after Tim
Cook promises big U.S. investments after showing up to the Oval Office with a
gold Bar. Apple stock rips higher.
Who’s
holding up to seven figures of Apple shares when the carve‑out drops? You
already know.
No, this
isn’t a smoking‑gun email saying “Dear Tim, lower tariffs for stock pump, hugs,
Don.” It’s worse, in a way:
A sitting
president quietly holds big, individual positions in companies whose profit
margins and share prices he personally re‑writes with bespoke deals.
We used to
call that “the appearance of corruption.” Now it’s just Tuesday.
4. The
Trump Family’s Crypto Rake: “Regulate Me, Daddy (But Make It Soft)”
If the bonds
and stocks are bad, the crypto side is pure cartoon villainy.
The
numbers are insane
A Reuters
investigation found the Trump family dragged in more than $800 million in cash
from crypto asset sales in just the first half of 2025, with billions more in
on‑paper gains from tokens they still sit on.
The
Financial Times put their crypto profit over the last year at north of $1
billion.
A House
Judiciary Democrats staff report estimates they’re sitting on up to $11.6
billion in crypto value, built largely while Trump was in office rewriting the
rules.
How they
did it
1. World Liberty Financial (WLF)
o Co‑founded by Trump’s sons.
o Sells hundreds of millions of dollars
in governance tokens (WLFI) with a Trump‑linked entity taking the lion’s share.
o Issues a stablecoin, USD1, backed by
U.S. Treasuries—exactly what Trump’s regulators then move to bless in
new crypto‑friendly frameworks.
2. Trump meme coins
o Trump‑branded tokens and a Melania‑branded
coin pump out nine‑figure trading profits and fees.
3. Pay‑to‑play $TRUMP coin
o Top holders of his $TRUMP coin are
promised a private dinner at his D.C. golf club. The coin moons on the news.
o Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Adam
Schiff literally ask ethics officials if this is a “pay‑to‑play” crypto scheme
dressed up as memecoin fun.
4. Foreign flows
o UAE‑linked money uses Trump‑linked
stablecoins for big Binance deals.
o A Canadian‑listed firm, ALT5 Sigma,
raises hundreds of millions to buy 7.28 billion WLFI tokens, giving the Trumps
a colossal windfall while ALT5 shareholders get wrecked in an 80% crash and
governance scandal.
Meanwhile,
in Washington…
While all
that cash is flying in:
- The SEC and DOJ suddenly go soft
on crypto enforcement, shelving or watering down cases against big
platforms.
- The administration pushes to
make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the world,” with stablecoin policies
that are a direct gift to exactly the kind of product the Trumps are
selling.
Trump isn’t
just regulating an industry where he has a small ETF.
He is the brand of a massive chunk of that industry—and investors, foreign and
domestic, are effectively paying him in tokens and hype for access and
alignment.
If
“legalized bribery” feels too polite, you’re getting it.
5. This
Is What a System Built for Corruption Looks Like
Add it all
up:
- A $400 million+ jet from a
foreign monarchy, flying under the flag of Boeing—a company whose bonds
Trump is buying while his Pentagon feeds it contracts.
- Nine‑figure bond trades in
companies and sectors he’s actively tilting with tariffs, bailouts, and
subsidies.
- Seven‑figure stock positions in
firms getting bespoke deals and carve‑outs from his own administration.
- A family‑run crypto machine that
has pulled in hundreds of millions in cash while Trump’s regulators redraw
the map to favor exactly those products.
Is any one
thing the “gotcha” that sends him to jail tomorrow? Probably not.
But that’s
the point.
He’s not
hiding envelopes of cash in a freezer. He’s showing every future president
exactly how to:
Use the
office to move markets, funnel foreign and domestic money through your family
brand, call it policy, and dare anyone to stop you.
If you’re
waiting for the cavalry, don’t. The only way this stops is if we change the
rules:
- Total ban on presidents and VPs
trading individual stocks and bonds while in office.
- Mandatory blind trusts or index‑only
holdings, audited in real time.
- Clear rules that foreign
“donations” like the Qatari jet are either blocked or seized outright as
property of the U.S. government, full stop.
- Treat presidential‑family crypto
schemes as the giant ethics hazard they are, not just a cute new
fundraising gimmick.
Until then,
Trump isn’t breaking the system.
He’s showing everyone how to use it exactly as designed—for self‑dealing at
scale, in plain sight.
And if that
doesn’t scare the hell out of you, wait until the next guy learns from this
playbook. Because the next guy will be way worse.
