Trump wants to get rid of the world’s safest money – the U.S. dollar and
replace it with Bitcoin cryptocurrency – or so says Trump and his new economic
BFF and monetary sidekick, Elon Musk – what could possible go wrong with that
twosome in charge of the Treasury Department; the Federal Reserve; U.S.
currency overall; and well, your wallet, cash in hand, and in our bank and
other accounts? Ouch…
Story here from VANITY FAIR and in other media sites on that same subject with this
headline:
“Trump’s Bizarre Crypto
Cash-in is Actually Perfectly on Brand”
When he was
president, Trump said
he was “not a fan” of cryptocurrency, adding
a Tweet in 2019: “We have
only one real currency in the USA. It is called the United States Dollar!”
Also, while in
office, Trump sharply criticized crypto. In 2019, he derided digital assets in a post on X as “Highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated
Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade.”
Oops… as former TX Gov. Rick Perry once said say.
It was an unusually sensible position for an otherwise incorrigibly foolish man. Given Trump’s appetite for grift — and the overlap between his movement and crypto true believers — it was only a matter of time before he got into the digital currency.
He’s done so wholeheartedly lately — albeit in that fumbling, bumbling way of his that makes clear he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. He has repeatedly described himself the “crypto president”—including in a video last week hawking his scammy digital trading cards. He promised in an Economic Club of NY appearance to make America “the world capital for crypto and Bitcoin.”
He’s even dipping a toe into the muddy waters himself, as the chief crypto advocate for his family’s forthcoming startup: “World Liberty Financial” (run by Don Jr. and Eric – what could go wrong there, I wonder)?
That project has gone about as well as you might expect a
venture headed by his sons Donald Jr. and Eric to
go: Earlier this week, soon after Trump himself promoted his family’s latest scheme on his
TruthSocial page, the X accounts of his daughter Tiffany Trump and
his daughter-in-law Lara Trump were apparently
hacked, with links posted to the pages directing followers to what
Eric Trump indicated were “scam” World Liberty Financial sites.
The alleged hack of Lara Trump — who serves as a co-chair of
the RNC — underscores the political liabilities of the former president’s
clumsy foray into cryptocurrency.
Trump supporter Nic Carter, founding partner at Castle
Island Ventures, told Politico
of the Trump family’s latest undertaking: “This is a huge mistake. It looks like Trump’s inner circle is just
cashing in on his recent embrace of crypto in a kind of naive way, and frankly
it looks like they’re burning a lot of the good will that’s been built with the
industry so far.”
Of course, Trump’s naivety — and evident disregard for the welfare of even those who support him — is
part of what makes him an asset to a freewheeling industry resistant to real
regulation. At the annual bitcoin conference in Nashville this summer, Trump
compared crypto to the “steel industry
of 100 years ago” and he promised to deregulate it, including by firing SEC
Chair Gary Gensler, who has criticized the industry as the “wild west.”
Trump said: “I will appoint an SEC chair who will build the future, not block the future.”
Then Trump called for the establishment of a national bitcoin “stockpile” — even as he
suggested he didn’t really know all that much about the digital currency,
adding: “Most people have no idea
what the hell it is. So what happens when everyone figures it out?”
The Trump family’s current crypto misadventure from Don Jr. and Eric could be yet another conflict of interest for the former president.
For example, Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for the watchdog
group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) told the
AP: “Taking a pro-crypto
stance is not necessarily troubling. The troubling aspect is doing it while
starting a way to personally benefit from it.” But Trump’s embrace of
crypto also seems to reflect his increasingly cozy symbiotic relationship with
what’s been called the new tech right — a cast of characters that
includes Elon Musk.
Musk framed
his support for Trump in libertarian terms, and JD Vance’s patron Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist
whose politics can be best described as fascist, as the writer John Ganz has put it: “It’s
a confederation of figures who support Trump for the same reasons rich assholes
always do — because of his promise to cut their taxes and, as he said at the
Economic Club of New York, to liberate our economy from crippling regulation.”
But Trump's movement also serves as a vessel for some of the
new tech right's stranger and more corrosive visions, which are chock-full of
far-right junk— but with a fresh coat of technocratic paint.
Trump told the
Economic Club, endorsing an idea pitched by Musk in an interview last month:
“I will create a government efficiency
commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of
the federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms.”
Musk responded (see my earlier post) saying: “I
look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises.”
My 2 Cents: Trump and family might outta research this guy: Sam Bankman-Fried before you try to change from the world’s famous and trusted dollar to some kind of Bernie Madoff scam cryptocurrency grift rip off, okey dokey?
All this is classic Trump: “Do, say, pay, try, lie, imply, or deny everything, then blame others, even those close to him all the while he ducks, dodges, deflects, denies, and distracts.
Trump is a classic con artist par excellence.
Thanks for stopping
by.
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