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How Trump Made $2.2 Billion Since Taking Office

Steve Hayes , Jonah Goldberg , Kevin D. Williamson , & Surya Gowda

The Dispatch Podcast

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Morning Dispatch Reporter Surya Gowda joins Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and Kevin Williamson to explain how Donald Trump made $2.2 billion in 2025 and discuss whether or not his financial gains are ill-gotten.

Then, Kevin and Jonah discuss Graham Platner dropping out of the Maine Senate race and the end of the ceasefire with Iran.

— Trump’s presidential payday

—Binance founder pardon

—Public perception of corruption

— Allegations against Graham Platner

—Platner's working class cosplay

— Is the Iran war back on?

—How Iran keeps winning

—NWYT: A Kevin Williamson solo Remnant?

— Trump: "I found out that nobody cared."

— False allegations against a University of Virginia official

Steve Hayes is CEO and editor of The Dispatch, based in Annapolis, Maryland. Prior to co-founding the company in 2019, he worked at The Weekly Standard for 18 years, covering Washington, politics, and national security. Steve is the author of two New York Times bestsellers. He also worked as a contributor at CNN and Fox News, and currently serves as a political analyst at NBC News. When Steve is not focused on The Dispatch, he’s probably traveling with his family, grilling, or riding his mountain bike.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Dispatch, based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, enormous lizards roamed the Earth. More immediately prior to that, Jonah spent two decades at National Review, where he was a senior editor, among other things. He is also a bestselling author, longtime columnist for the Los Angeles Times, commentator for CNN, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. When he is not writing the G-File or hosting The Remnant podcast, he finds real joy in family time, attending to his dogs and cat, and blaming Steve Hayes for various things.

Kevin D. Williamson is national correspondent at The Dispatch and is based in Virginia. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 15 years as a writer and editor at National Review, worked as the theater critic at the New Criterion, and had a long career in local newspapers. He is also a writer in residence at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. When Kevin is not reporting on the world outside Washington for his Wanderland newsletter, you can find him at the rifle range or reading a book about literally almost anything other than politics.

Surya Gowda is a Morning Dispatch Reporter, based in New York City. Before joining the company in 2026, she worked at USA Today and the political economy publication ProMarket. When Surya isn't writing for The Morning Dispatch, she's probably experimenting with watercolor paints or trying out a creative makeup look.

The podcast transcription below was generated using artificial intelligence and may include occasional errors or misspellings.

[upbeat music] Greetings, D-- no, that's not right. Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Jonah Goldberg. Now, I'm not, in fact, hosting most of today's podcast, just some of today's podcast, because Steve Hayes, as is his want, had a technology failure of biblical proportions, and so he started it, then he couldn't finish it. And so I jumped in with Kevin Williamson and recorded the second half 'cause we lost the first half. There were plagues. There were locusts. Small children were hiding behind their mothers' skirts, terrified to see the spectacle that it had become. And so we start out with Steve moderating and Surya Gowda, a reporter for The Dispatch, joined me and Steve and Kevin to talk about Donald Trump's two point two billion dollar financial gains since taking office. Then Surya left voluntarily. Steve was ejected by the technology gods. And so Kevin and I just had a conversation about the latest developments with Graham Plattner, some of the Iran stuff, and I think it all will come together just fine. But I figured as long as you guys know about it, you won't be freaked out about it. So there you have it, and let's get on with the show. [upbeat music]

Welcome, everybody, and a special welcome to you, Surya. We're very happy to have you with us on the Dispatch Podcast. You worked on Monday's Morning Dispatch item, big item, that was headlined Trump's Presidential Payday, and it followed some reports about Donald Trump's nine hundred and twenty-seven-page financial disclosure forms last week that detailed the money that the president has made thus far in his first term. I wonder if you could just give us sort of a big-picture view of what we learned from those financial disclosures and the angle that you chose to focus on for the TMD item on Monday.

Yeah. So I guess just to give some kind of background context, so Trump did make money while in office his first term. So I believe in twenty nineteen, he reported four hundred and forty million dollars in revenue, and it was mostly from real estate. But the most recent disclosure from twenty twenty-five, he reported two point two billion dollars, and this is in comparison to last year before he wa-- the twenty twenty-four, so before he was president again in his second term, he reported only six twenty-two million. So that's a pretty big jump. And maybe to give some other context, Biden in twenty twenty-one, he only reported six hundred and ten thousand. So

these are kind of the levels of income or revenue we're talking about here. And so one of the big kinda differences that we noticed from the first-term Trump to the second-term Trump, like why did he make so much more money this time around, was because of his crypto investments, which basically he didn't have crypto investments the first term. He was calling crypto a scam, like even as late as twenty twenty-one. And so now he has these, like, different investments in terms of meme coins with the Trump meme coin, the Melania meme coin, and also his own crypto company, which is called World Liberty Financial. So those are the two main sort of crypto investments that caused this big shift that I wanted to focus a bit on.

And for people who aren't familiar with crypto or who, like me, have read dozens and dozens of articles about crypto over the years and have read beyond just the Morning Dispatch on Monday to understand this windfall to President Trump and his family, we'll get into his, his family a little bit later, what is World Liberty Financial, and how does one make money on crypto and m- meme coins?

Interactive transcripts are available to Premium members. Join to follow along with the audio.

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