When Hillary Clinton was first lady, a furor erupted over reports that she had once made $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures. Even though it had happened a dozen years before her husband became president, it became a scandal that lasted weeks and forced the White House to initiate a review.
Thirty-one years later, after dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket — 280 times the Clinton lucre and in this case from a person with a vested interest in policies set by her husband’s government. Scandal? Furor? Washington moved on while barely taking notice.
The Trumps are hardly the first presidential family to profit from their time in power, but they have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House. The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking. The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and is opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone.
Just last week, Qatar handed over a luxury jet meant for Mr. Trump’s use not just in his official capacity but also for his presidential library after he leaves office. Experts have valued plane, formally donated to the Air Force, at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/us/politics/trump-money-plane-crypto.html
Hillary Clinton Turned $1,000 Into $99,540, White House Says
The White House said today that in 1978 Hillary Rodham Clinton invested $1,000 in commodities futures and that the investment grew in 10 months of trading in the notoriously volatile market into a gain of nearly $100,000.
Seeking to dispel suggestions that the trades were risk-free and improperly arranged by an Arkansas lawyer who represents one of the state's most powerful companies, the White House issued a statement this afternoon that said the First Lady had put up her own money and that she bore all of the financial risks in a marketplace where three out of four investors lose money.
The officials also released a year's worth of brokerage statements from one of Mrs. Clinton's two accounts. They show winnings outrunning losses about three-to-one. 'Too Nerve-Racking'
Senior advisers to President Clinton and his wife said in a briefing this afternoon at the White House that Mrs. Clinton based her trades on information in The Wall Street Journal, and that she stopped trading by 1980, despite her success, because, as one senior aide put it, "she did not have the stomach for it any more and found it to be too nerve-racking."
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/30/us/hillary-clinton-turned-1000-into-99540-white-house-says.html
I'd be willing to wager not many people have heard of the sweet $28M deal Bezos made for Don's absentee wife. Conversely, Hillary's $90K profit after putting her own principle at risk invited so much scrutiny financial documents detailing the transactions she made were released to the public.
Perhaps what has allowed the unparalleled, rampant corruption of trump 2.0 to go on without objection from rank and file Repubs and POT congressmen is the precedent set by trump 1.0 and the grifting Don has engaged in his whole life.
He is and always has been a white collar criminal. He's come to realization no one is going to stop him, so his actions become more brazen.
Whatever the reason, the acquiescence to overtly corrupt acts, or maybe better said their normalization, is a definitive sign we are not slipping towards authoritarian governance......we have arrived. What makes it worse is it didn't happen by force. Half the country voted for it.
www.bbc.com
