BEST OF: David Kirkpatrick on Trump’s Shameless Profiteering

About this episode

In this Best Of episode, Al Franken revisits a conversation with David Kirkpatrick about the Trump family's profiteering during his presidency.

One of Donald Trump's most successful initiatives in his second term has been making himself and his family richer than ever. In this Best Of episode, we revisit our November 2025 conversation with The New Yorker’s David Kirkpatrick, who wrote a piece outlining all the ways the legendary grifters have cashed in during Trump’s presidency. The Trump family has long been associated with shameless cash grabs, but we have reached new levels of corruption by using his office for their money-making schemes: international real estate deals, Trump-branded merchandise, and cryptocurrency. David lays out the long list of ethical implications involved and calculates the staggering amount of money Donald Trump and his family have made off his presidency. READ David's piece “The Number” in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/08/18/the-number

People in this episode

Host: Al Franken

Guest: David Kirkpatrick

Topics covered

• Trump's presidency
• profiteering
• ethical implications
• corruption
• real estate deals
• merchandise
• cryptocurrency

Keywords

• Trump
• profiteering
• David Kirkpatrick
• The New Yorker
• corruption
• ethical implications
• real estate
• merchandise
• cryptocurrency

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The New Yorker

Books & works: The Number

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