Let's start with a number. Not a poll number, not an approval rating, not the deficit, a personal net worth number. In January 2024, Donald Trump's fortune was estimated at $2.4 billion. By the time Forbes ran the math in April 2026, the figure had ballooned to $6.3 billion. That's nearly $4 billion in personal wealth accumulated over the course of roughly two years, most of it traceable (not to any clever investment strategy, not to a hot stock tip, not to the kind of patient capital accumulation your financial advisor drones on about) but to the fact that Donald Trump is the President of the United States and has treated that office the way a raccoon treats an unsecured trash can.

There are conflicts of interest, and then there is Todd Blanche testifying before Congress on Tuesday. The distinction matters. A conflict of interest implies the possibility of being pulled in two competing directions. What Blanche has constructed is something simpler and more brazen: there is only one direction, and that direction has always been Donald Trump.

On July 31, 2025, White House Press Secretary KKKaroline Leavitt walked to the podium, held up a rendering of a gleaming, gilded, gaudy, tasteless ballroom, and announced that Donald Trump planned to replace the East Wing of the White House with a state-of-the-art event space. Cost: approximately $200 million. Funding source: Trump himself and private donors… patriots, she implied, who simply loved their country enough to write very large checks. Not a single taxpayer dollar would be involved. She said it with a straight face. You have to respect the commitment to the bit.