Axios: Trump’s personal profits

Posted on May 22, 2026 by michelleclarke2015
 Trump’s personal profits
 
Photo illustration of Donald Trump opening his jacket with hundred dollar bills falling out.
Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images
 
Never in 250 years has America witnessed a sitting president shield himself and his family from tax scrutiny, after leveraging policies that benefit his own businesses and personal portfolios, as Donald J. Trump has done, Axios’ Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a “Behind the Curtain” column.

Why it matters: This isn’t a hidden scandal. Trump has done this publicly and proudly. Last year, we called it the “most unprecedented presidency in 250 years.”

In doing so, he has set a precedent — once so unfathomable as to be laughable — that it’s OK for presidents and family members to make billions off deals affected by government decisions, then use the Justice Department to secure lifetime protection from scrutiny of their past tax returns.

Trump’s crypto venture alone has been a windfall unlike anything in the history of presidential business, generating more cash for the Trump family in 16 months than the entire Trump real estate empire produced from 2010 through 2017, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“I let my kids … do business,” Trump said in a January interview with The New York Times. “I prohibited them from doing business in my first term, and I got absolutely no credit for it.

“We were debating how to capture just how unprecedented Trump’s actions are, when every week of every year seems filled with unprecedented words and actions. Let’s try this. Imagine America put these questions to a public referendum:

Presidents and their family members, unlike other U.S. citizens, shall be granted lifetime immunity from federal audits and criminal investigations of their past tax returns.

Presidents and their family members can maintain active ownership of global business empires, profiting when government decisions directly benefit those specific businesses.

Presidents, while in office, can maintain massive personal crypto and stock portfolios that buy and sell hundreds of millions of dollars in industries directly regulated by their own administration. 

How would you vote?

It’s hard to imagine more than single-digit support for any of these. Yet Trump is doing all three and paving the way for future presidents to do the same. That’s why precedents by presidents often matter as much as laws themselves.

Between the lines: This is more than just a Trump problem. Look at the astonishing number of lawmakers trading and making money off stocks, often with insider knowledge of looming congressional action.

Pollsters have asked how Americans feel about officials trading stocks while in office, and it’s one of the rare genuinely bipartisan issues in politics today.

Flashback: After Watergate, modern presidents from both parties built elaborate legal and ethical structures designed to separate public office from private enrichment.

Jimmy Carter placed his peanut farm into a blind trust. Ronald Reagan, both Bushes and Bill Clinton followed suit. Barack Obama held only diversified assets like Treasury bonds and index funds. Even wealthy businessmen entering politics generally treated direct entanglements as toxic.

Over the same decades, congressional stock trading and post-Citizens United money normalized self-enrichment around political power. Trump pushed that trajectory into terrain previous presidents viewed as untouchable.

Vice President Vance said during a White House briefing this week: “The president doesn’t sit at the Oval Office on his computer on his, like, Robinhood account, buying and selling stocks — that’s absurd. He has independent wealth advisers who manage his money. … He’s not making these stock trades himself.”

The bottom line: Trump’s net worth today is $6.1 billion, Forbes estimates, up from $5.1 billion last year, $4.3 billion in 2024 and $2.4 billion in 2021.Axios’ Zachary Basu and Shane Savitsky contributed reporting.Go deeper on Trump’s moves while in office … Share this column.
    
 

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About michelleclarke2015

Life event that changes all: Horse riding accident in Zimbabwe in 1993, a fractured skull et al including bipolar anxiety, chronic fatigue …. co-morbidities (Nietzche 'He who has the reason why can deal with any how' details my health history from 1993 to date). 17th 2017 August operation for breast cancer (no indications just an appointment came from BreastCheck through the Post). Trinity College Dublin Business Economics and Social Studies (but no degree) 1997-2003; UCD 1997/1998 night classes) essays, projects, writings. Trinity Horizon Programme 1997/98 (Centre for Women Studies Trinity College Dublin/St. Patrick's Foundation (Professor McKeon) EU Horizon funded: research study of 15 women (I was one of this group and it became the cornerstone of my journey to now 2017) over 9 mth period diagnosed with depression and their reintegration into society, with special emphasis on work, arts, further education; Notes from time at Trinity Horizon Project 1997/98; Articles written for Irishhealth.com 2003/2004; St Patricks Foundation monthly lecture notes for a specific period in time; Selection of Poetry including poems written by people I know; Quotations 1998-2017; other writings mainly with theme of social justice under the heading Citizen Journalism Ireland. Letters written to friends about life in Zimbabwe; Family history including Michael Comyn KC, my grandfather, my grandmother's family, the O'Donnellan ffrench Blake-Forsters; Moral wrong: An acrimonious divorce but the real injustice was the Catholic Church granting an annulment – you can read it and make your own judgment, I have mine. Topics I have written about include annual Brain Awareness week, Mashonaland Irish Associataion in Zimbabwe, Suicide (a life sentence to those left behind); Nostalgia: Tara Hill, Co. Meath.
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