How the Presidency is Making Trump Richer

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4.6 • 59K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2026

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

Before President Donald Trump’s first term, he was in a “tight spot” financially, according to New Yorker writer David Kirkpatrick. At the start of his second term, Kirkpatrick says, Trump was in an “even tighter” spot. But six months later, Trump’s financial situation had substantially improved.
Kirkpatrick has done a full accounting of the money, that’s flowed into the Trump family coffers. Kirkpatrick says even using the most conservative estimates, the Trumps have made almost $4 billion dollars “off of the presidency,” in just about a year.
Today on The Sunday Story, we turn to our friends at NPR’s Planet Money to help us understand how President Trump and his family have found ways to profit from the presidency.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Aisha Roscoe and you're listening to The Sunday Story from Up First, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story.
0:10.6	After he was first elected president in 2016, Donald Trump bucked tradition and refused to release his tax returns.
0:18.4	Although some of his tax information has come out, Trump has continued to try to
0:23.4	shield information relating to his personal wealth. Since Trump's re-election in 2024, there's
0:29.9	been increasing evidence that Trump and his family are personally profiting from his presidency.
0:35.9	To learn more about how the Trumps may be cashing in,
0:39.9	we're bringing you a story from our friends
0:42.0	over at NPR's Planet Money,
0:44.1	where host Mary Childs and Sarah Gonzalez
0:47.1	went on a little presidential accounting adventure.
0:50.7	We are one year into President Donald Trump's second term,
0:53.9	and some things are really different this time around.
0:57.0	Going over some math to be all up to date.
0:59.8	That's New Yorker reporter David Kirkpatrick.
1:02.9	Now, as we go through this, I turn pages. Is that a problem?
1:07.2	No. No, I think we actually like that sound.
1:09.0	Oh, is that right? Okay. All right. Okay. Fine.
1:11.1	David has been doing the near impossible task of following every new business and business deal and financial transaction that Trump and his family have made this past year and in the first term. And he's noticed this shift.
1:24.1	You know, in the first term, they said voluntarily, we're not going to do any hotel or other
1:29.0	business deals overseas, because that would be bad optically. That's gone. That's out the window.
1:34.9	This term, they've done deals all over the place overseas. In the first term, we actually said,
1:40.7	we're not going to do any, any foreign deals. That's Donald Trump Jr. talking.
	...

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