Wednesday Afternoon Updates: The Most Corrupt President in History — 7/1/26
Wednesday Afternoon Updates: The Most Corrupt President in History — 7/1/26Your Wednesday updates have arrived
Hi all, Ben here. It’s Wednesday. Before I start, I want to take a second away from all the news to say happy birthday to my Meidas co-founder, and most importantly, my brother, Jordy. So proud of everything we’ve built together, but even more grateful to call you my brother! Remember to like and re-stack to spread the far and wide! Here’s what we’re tracking today:
Before I go any further, if you haven’t yet joined as a paid subscriber, consider doing so now by clicking here to support our work. This is how we grow. It will give you access to all recaps like this, our exclusive Ask-the-Editor series, and more. Plus, it is the best way to help support the growth of this network. Let’s get into it. Trump’s Qatari Jet PresserDonald Trump stood in front of his new Qatari Air Force One today to speak to the press. Qatar handed him a $400 million jet, and American taxpayers then spent well over a billion dollars renovating it. This was supposed to be the big reveal, the moment he got to show off his shiny new toy from a foreign government. Instead, a reporter asked him the one question he never wants to answer: how are you profiting off the presidency? His financial disclosures show close to $2 billion between crypto and stock trades, including 21,000 individual trades last year. We pored through Trump’s 927-page disclosure, and there is a detail buried within that nobody’s talking about yet, and it involves a company that just announced it’s “investing” a quarter billion dollars into something called Trump Accounts. Let me explain. The Micron Story Nobody’s Connecting YetBuried in the pages of Trump’s financial disclosure are three separate stock purchases of Micron Technology, all unsolicited, all made in March of this year. One for $100,000 to $250,000. Another for $50,000 to $100,000. A third for $15,000 to $50,000. A president personally buying up shares in a semiconductor company, months before anything newsworthy happened. Then this morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that Micron will be investing $250 million into Trump Accounts, calling it a “HISTORIC” investment from Micron’s “fantastic CEO” and declaring this the “GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA.” So to backup and run through the timeline: The president buys Micron stock in March. Months later, Micron announces a quarter-billion-dollar commitment tied directly to a Trump-branded financial product. “I’m Profiting Because Everybody’s Profiting”When a reporter pressed Trump directly on the disclosures showing nearly $2 billion in crypto and stock earnings, his answer was almost a parody of itself. He said he’s profiting because the stock market is going up, that everybody’s profiting, that if you have a 401k it’s up 85 percent, so really, thank him. He said he doesn’t get involved in his personal finances, that it’s all run through a blind account, that he never speaks to the people managing his money. Except the disclosure itself tells a different story. The graph making the rounds shows individual stock trades by presidents since 1990. Every president going back to George H.W. Bush made zero individual trades while in office. Zero. Trump’s first term saw 50. His second term, so far, sits at 3,642. That’s not a blind trust. That’s a man actively trading the market from inside the Oval Office, averaging about 80 trades a day.
And the crypto numbers are even more staggering. $635 million from the TRUMP memecoin, even as everyday people who bought in watched it crater from $74 to $1.68 and 764,000 wallets ended up underwater. Another $594 million from World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture he co-founded with his own sons. $65 million more from selling equity in that same company. Over $80 million in media settlements from ABC, CBS, Meta, and YouTube, funneled into his presidential library. His net worth has nearly tripled since he took office, from $2.4 billion to $6.3 billion. While the people who trusted his memecoin lost their shirts. How could ANYONE be okay with this blatant corruption?
Back to the JetSpeaking of corruption, back to that jet for a moment. When a reporter asked what it actually cost American taxpayers to bring the Qatari plane up to presidential standard, Trump’s answer was that it cost “very little relative to what it would cost if we did it a different way.” I’ve read that sentence a dozen times now and I still can’t tell you what it means, and I don’t think he can either. What I can tell you is that estimates on the renovation have run well over a billion dollars, funded by us. “Declassify Whatever You Want”While all this was happening, Trump also revealed that he told acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte, a man with no national security background and no security clearance process behind him, to go ahead and “declassify whatever you want.” Pulte is only in the role temporarily until Jay Clayton gets through his confirmation process, but in the meantime, he apparently has a blank check to release whatever classified material he feels like. Pulte, who has acted as Trump’s hatchet man, is also continuing to threaten Trump’s political enemies. Just yesterday, following the Supreme Court decision that Lisa Cook cannot be fired by Trump from the Fed Board, Pulte warned that Cook would likely be indicted. This is the stuff of banana republics. Iran, the Tankers, and the Reserve Running DryTrump insists things are “going very well” with Iran, that after hitting them “very hard for three nights,” we’re now getting along fine. But the data tells a more complicated story. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz over the last 24 hours shows the Oman route has gone completely dark, with inbound traffic funneling through routes controlled by Iran instead. Meanwhile, our Strategic Petroleum Reserve just fell to its lowest level since 1983. And even as crude oil prices get pushed down, the price at the pump isn’t following. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, responded to comments from Israeli officials about Iran’s supreme leader being “marked for death” with a warning of his own, accusing the U.S. of “muzzling its pets in Tel Aviv” and promising a powerful response to any threat. This is what “going very well” looks like right now. Hassett’s Excuses, Pre-LoadedNational Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett went on Fox Business to reassure everyone that the factories are coming, the jobs are coming, prosperity is right around the corner, just like it’s been right around the corner since day one, then the fourth quarter of last year, then the first quarter of this year. Now it’s the second half of this year. Maybe 2027. You’ll get rich soon, just you wait! Trust in Trump! But the more telling part of Hassett’s interview was him laying the groundwork for the next excuse. He brought up the Supreme Court’s liberal justices’ votes this week, then pivoted to worrying aloud about “libs” on the Federal Reserve raising interest rates and blowing up the whole plan. Never mind that Jerome Powell, the man he’s implicitly warning about, was Trump’s own appointee back in 2017. This is the setup. When the promised boom doesn’t arrive, you’ll hear that it was the Fed’s fault, not theirs. When interest rates rise, they won’t attribute it to rising inflation due to Trump’s tariffs and wars. They’ll blame the Fed. Trump always needs a scapegoat. Nothing is ever his fault. See: the Reflecting Pool, the Great American State Fair, the Kennedy Center, high gas prices, January 6th, the COVID response… I can keep going. But we have more to get to. Vance Flops With the Troops, Huckabee Makes Israel a Congressional DistrictJD Vance tried out some material in front of service members, joking about junior enlisted troops having to salute him now and mocking Joe Biden. The response was silence. Not laughter, not groans, just nothing. Trump, Vance, and everyone in this regime continue to politicize the U.S. military. And Mike Huckabee, our ambassador to Israel, told a crowd that Israel is essentially America’s 436th congressional district, since it has roughly the population of one. Don’t Let This Slip ByAlso tucked into today’s news: a new emergency declaration temporarily waiving duties on phosphate fertilizer imports from Morocco, because domestic production can’t keep up with what our farmers actually need. Just another quiet admission of how much strain is under the surface of the U.S. economy, and an issue directly linked to Trump’s illegal war. One More ThingIn offbeat news, in New York, two masked climbers scaled to the very top of the Empire State Building’s antenna at noon Wednesday, unfurling a banner that read “when the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace.” After NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit responded, the pair took the banner down and climbed to a lower platform, where one got down on one knee and proposed. They were later identified as Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, previously featured on Netflix’s Skywalkers: A Love Story. Both were taken into custody; charges are pending, and no injuries were reported. Never a dull day.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being here with us. Again, Happy Birthday Jordy! And shoutout to the Meidas Mighty! |
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