How Trump has made billions as president
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The Washington Post
4.1 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
On this episode, The Washington Post's Libby Casey, Rhonda Colvin, James Hohmann and JM Rieger break down how President Trump is trying to remake Washington in a MAGA image – from hanging huge photos of himself from federal buildings to taking over cultural institutions and firing people, in some cases, seemingly simple for their gender or skin color.
Then, the crew breaks down Trump's long history of financial conflicts of interest with the presidency, how he has ignored norms, how past presidents have divested from those conflicts of interest – and the vast amounts of money Trump has made in the early months of his second presidency.
Plus, the crew reveals the weirdest gifts in presidential history – and whether or not presidents got to keep them.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Look what happened. Is this crazy? We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in the history. |
| 0:08.6 | Make America great victory. How can you be against them? |
| 0:16.9 | It's typical for the president's portrait to hang in federal buildings, but Donald Trump and his team are taking it to a whole new level. |
| 0:24.7 | Just this week, a huge image of Trump was unfurled on the building of the U.S. Department of Agriculture alongside Abraham Lincoln's. |
| 0:32.5 | But deeper than the cosmetic changes that Trump is making from gilding the Oval Office to trying to upgrade |
| 0:38.6 | Air Force One, he's also trying to remake Washington in a MAGA image by taking over cultural |
| 0:44.2 | institutions like the Kennedy Center and the Library of Congress. And of course, there's all the |
| 0:48.6 | changes and firings happening throughout the federal government. We'll talk about the remaking of |
| 0:53.7 | Washington today on Sidebar |
| 0:55.4 | from the Washington Post. I'm Libby Casey here with Rhonda Colvin, James Holman, and J.M. Rieger. |
| 1:01.0 | Thanks for joining us, J.M. We're going to check in on that whole Katari plane thing, because |
| 1:05.2 | that has not gone away. And James and Rhonda are going to take us on a tour of historical presidential gifts, |
| 1:12.1 | reaching back into the archives. What's the weirdest gift, guys, or one that you wish you could |
| 1:17.0 | have? Well, Van Buren was gifted to lions and stay tuned for what happened there. Pretty weird. |
| 1:25.9 | When Barack Obama went to Australia in 2011, they gave him a insurance policy against a crocodile attack. |
| 1:33.9 | Is that a gift? |
| 1:35.1 | If he would have been attacked by a crocodile, Michelle Obama would get $50,000 cash. |
| 1:41.1 | Oh, okay. |
| 1:42.4 | Well, we'll hear more in just a few moments but let's start in the present |
| 1:46.3 | and i just want to talk about the the trump photo for a minute because it's kind of making the rounds |
| 1:50.2 | and people were like is that for real because there's like this huge banner that was unfurled |
| 1:53.6 | from the side of usda and it's it's trump's official portrait ronda but the portrait is unusual |
... |
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