A top anchor on Donald Trump’s most hated network just roasted his second-term grift with a montage of all the times he has torched the D.C. establishment for the same thing.
“The insiders wrote the rules of the game to keep themselves in power, and in the money,” Trump, then only a White House hopeful, told crowds at a New York event in July 2016. “Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit, and even theft,” he said of his Democratic opponent at the time.
Trump has, on other occasions in the years since, accused “corrupt politicians” of getting rich by “bleeding America dry,” suggested officials “ran for office promising to protect American workers” only to “line their pockets with special-interest cash,” and promised to “dethrone the failed political class” and “drain the Washington swamp.”
“For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government, while the people have borne the cost,” he said in his 2017 inauguration speech.
CNN anchor Laura Coates, after playing the clips for viewers on Wednesday, remarked that Trump’s rallying cry for the better part of 10 years appears to have since come firmly back to bite him. “For nearly a decade, that has been his case against Washington,” Coates said. “Now, his own financial disclosure—is it Exhibit A against him?”
Trump’s disclosure, filed on Monday, shows just how closely his investments have tracked his policy decisions throughout his second stint at the White House. His accounts snapped up 327 stocks valued at up to $12.8 million last April, just one day before he hit pause on his global tariffs, sending the S&P 500 stock market index up almost 10 percent, according to an analysis of the 927-page document by Sludge.
The April haul was not the only buy with lucky timing. One of his accounts picked up Intel stock worth between $250,000 and $500,000 on Aug. 18. Four days later, he revealed that Washington would take a nearly 10 percent stake in the chipmaker, worth roughly $8.9 billion, prompting its shares to climb 6 percent. Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan had sat down with Trump at the White House only a week ahead of the purchase.
The accounts also kept buying Palantir Technologies stock through the year as the Trump administration widened the data firm’s federal work, including through deals with ICE. GEO Group, a private prison operator and major contractor with the agency, was picked up on at least 10 days as detention capacity grew.
The disclosure clocks more than $1.4 billion flowing to Trump from crypto holdings in 2025. His $TRUMP memecoin, widely derided as a scam, raised $635 million, while World Liberty Financial, the digital asset venture founded by his sons, brought in north of $500 million. The president has spent the same period rolling back regulations across the sector.
The White House has insisted that the money is out of Trump’s hands, with the investments run by outside traders with no input from the family. A spokesperson told CNN in January that the holdings sit in “computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes.” The Daily Beast has contacted Trump’s office for further comment.
