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The Ezra Klein Show

The Growing Scandal of $TRUMP

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.611K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Steve Bannon famously talked about using “muzzle velocity” as a strategy: doing so much so quickly that you overwhelm the ability of the media to cover it. I think what the Trump family is doing with crypto is muzzle velocity for corruption. What they’re doing isn’t necessarily illegal. It would be if these were official campaign donations; the sums involved are so large, and the buyers include foreign nationals. But the Trump family is making this money personally. And they’re doing it across so many different crypto ventures, it’s almost impossible to keep track. So that’s what I wanted to do with this episode: try to track at least some of it. The person I’ve enlisted to help me out is Zeke Faux. He’s the author of the fantastic book “Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall” and an investigative reporter at Bloomberg, where he’s been covering many of these strange Trump family crypto schemes. This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: “Trump Crypto Venture Has Talked to Binance About Doing Business” by Zeke Faux Book Recommendations: A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman Nixonland by Rick Perlstein Gretel and the Great War by Adam Sachs Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Richard Painter.

Transcript

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0:00.0

The

0:07.0

The Last week, the Trump administration formally accepted a Boeing 747 luxury jet from the government of Qatar.

0:39.0

This is, if you've not seen it, a very nice plane. Very nice plane. And Trump's plan at the end of his

0:46.6

term is to donate this very nice plane to his own presidential library, because as you know, no

0:52.7

presidential library, no library really,

0:55.2

is complete without a luxury airplane. Even if this is legal, the conflict of interest here

1:01.6

is obvious. It is incredibly corrupt looking at the very least. But here's the thing.

1:10.6

Usually, something like this, I think,

1:13.5

would come with a cover-up.

1:15.4

With Trump, there's never a cover-up.

1:18.0

They're giving us a free jet.

1:20.0

I could say, no, no, no, don't give us.

1:21.9

I want to pay you a billion or 400 million or whatever it is.

1:26.4

Or I could say, thank you very much.

1:29.1

People are supposed to be hiding what they're doing.

1:31.4

When it happens just out in the open like this,

1:34.5

I think it becomes hard for a political system,

1:36.6

even for the media to know what to do with it.

1:39.2

But the biggest area of corruption for the Trump family right now,

1:43.1

the soft underbelly, I think, of this administration

1:45.6

is not airplanes. It's crypto. President Trump and his family's growing crypto empire. Trump is a

1:52.6

stakeholder in something he also is a chief regulator of. And the Trump family is indeed cashing in.

...

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