Video summary
Donald Trump's current approval rating has hit a historic low of 33%, largely driven by public perception that he is inappropriately profiting from his second term as president. Unlike his first term, where he publicly complained about restrictions placed on the Trump Organization, this administration has seen the president and his family aggressively leverage their power to increase personal wealth. Significant portions of these gains come from ventures like World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm backed by foreign sovereign wealth funds such as the UAE, which secured a massive 49% stake. Additionally, the Trump family has amassed over $2 billion through land deals, government contracts, and lucrative gifts for his future presidential library, including a $400 million jet from Qatar, while major corporations like Apple and Amazon have contributed millions to various funds associated with the administration.
The video argues that this behavior is not unique to Trump but rather represents a historical pattern of state power being used to enrich ruling elites, a practice dating back to kings and pharaohs and peaking during the era of absolutism and mercantilism. Although the American Revolution was supposed to end such corruption by establishing a government working exclusively for the people, the video contends that this was only a temporary reprieve. Over time, new ruling classes adapted to democratic ideals while continuing self-enriching schemes, first through the Progressive Era's manipulation of market regulations and later through the expansion of federal power under Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 and subsequent economic interventions allowed the political class to warp markets, bail out favored industries, and create a system where nearly every sector benefits from government favoritism.
The core issue highlighted is that while Trump's blatant self-enrichment is causing outrage among the public and the political establishment, the underlying corruption of the American state predates his presidency. The current ruling class has built a sophisticated political order that transfers vast amounts of wealth to well-connected elites across various industries, a system that requires the public to believe these regulations are legitimate and beneficial. Trump's failure to hide his actions behind vague appeals to the public good threatens this delicate balance; if the American people accept that corruption is solely Trump's fault, they risk overlooking the systemic nature of the problem. Consequently, the establishment views Trump as a dangerous rogue element not because he opposes state power, but because his lack of discretion risks exposing the long-standing reality that political power has always been used to enrich a small privileged elite at the expense of the broader population.
Read the full video transcript
Recently, Donald Trump's approval rating
has fallen to just 33%, the lowest of
his presidency. Last week, a new
Reuters/Ipsos poll exposed one reason
for this drop. Most Americans believe
that Trump is inappropriately profiting
from his role as president in his second
term. It's easy to see how people are
coming to that conclusion. After his
first term, Trump complained that he
got, "quote, absolutely no credit, end
quote," for turning over control of the
Trump Organization to his sons and
putting limits on what kind of business
they could do, especially with foreign
entities. Even before he was reelected
in 2024, it was clear he had no
intention of going through the same
motions this time around. Instead, he
seems to have leaned in to using his
power and status to increase his
family's wealth. Much of it has come
from a crypto company formed two months
before his reelection in 2024 called
World Liberty Financial. The firm is led
by Trump's sons and the sons of Steve
Witkoff, Trump's frequent golf partner
turned special envoy to the Middle East.
Almost immediately, the company received
massive investments from foreign
governments with sovereign wealth funds,
most notably the UAE, which invested
$500 million in World Liberty, enough to
secure a 49% stake. Another UAE fund
backed by sovereign wealth had
previously invested more than $200
million
in an investment fund that controlled by
Jared Kushner. Throughout this term,
Kushner and Trump's sons have made a lot
of money on foreign land deals,
especially in the Middle East, and by
partnering with firms like 1789 Capital
that are investing heavily in firms that
have just so happened to benefit a lot
from regulations changed and government
contracts awarded under this second
Trump administration. On top of that,
Trump has received an absurd amount of
money and assets from plutocrats and
foreign governments in the form of gifts
for his future presidential library in
Florida. The most famous contribution to
Trump's library was the $400 million
luxury Boeing jet from the Qatari royal
family, but it has also been a way for
many others from Commerce Secretary
Howard Lutnick and the Attorney General
of Florida to Paramount and Meta to
effectively buy their way in to the
president's good graces. And the library
is not the only way major corporations
are purchasing goodwill from the
country's ruling family. For instance,
many including Apple, Palantir, Lockheed
Martin, and Amazon among others have
contributed millions of dollars to
Trump's new ballroom fund. And Amazon
going further also paid $40 million to
license a documentary about Melania
Trump with well over half of that money
going directly to the first lady. In
total, the Trump family is estimated to
have made over $2 billion since Trump
returned to office. And that's of course
focusing exclusively on personal wealth.
The president has also been unusually
shameless in flexing his power to
protect and expand the fortunes of
well-connected people and firms he
likes. It is understandable why most
Americans find this upsetting,
especially after Trump launched a war
that predictably raised gas prices for a
population already struggling with a
years-long inflation crisis. A mere
decade after he first won the presidency
by selling himself as a billionaire who
was too rich to be bought off by special
interests, Trump is visibly using his
power to make his own family richer
while his policies leave most American
families worse off. But the key word
there is visibly because the truth is
that despite what establishment Trump
critics want us to think, Trump did not
bring this kind of corruption to the
White House. He's just not trying as
hard to hide it.
This is what states do and it's what
they have always done. That's not a
particularly controversial observation
if you go back far enough in history.
It's widely understood and accepted that
for thousands of years political power
was used to enrich kings, pharaohs, and
emperors who wielded it, along with the
aristocrats, religious authorities, and
warlords who helped them maintain that
power. As it's popularly understood,
that peaked in the 17th and 18th
centuries with the rise of absolutism
and its economic counterpart,
mercantilism. States were using their
perceived power to create companies that
were explicitly state-backed monopolies.
And then the two worked together using
state power and the monopolies' special
legal privileges to obtain as much
wealth as they could at the expense of
everyone outside of their small,
privileged bubble. Again, this is not
that controversial to point out.
However, as most of us were taught in
school, this was supposed to have come
to an end with the so-called liberal
revolutions. The people were tired of
the government taxing them and warping
markets on behalf of state-backed
companies, so they rose up and overthrew
these absolutist monarchs and replaced
them with democratic republics that
ensured the government would finally and
forever work exclusively in the interest
of the people. Or at least, that's what
the current political class wants us to
believe. But the truth is, these
revolutions were only a temporary
reprieve from the expropriation. The
popular conception of the liberal
revolutions is largely accurate when it
comes to the beginning or early days of
these movements, but in every case, the
old absolutist regime was simply
replaced by a new ruling class that
adapted to changing popular conceptions
of state legitimacy and then carried out
its own self-enriching schemes. As Ryan
McMaken laid out in an article last
week, that happened almost immediately
with the French Revolution, which has,
unfortunately, greatly held France back
in the centuries since.
In the United States, though, it took
quite a bit longer. For the better part
of a century after the American
Revolution and the patriots' victory in
the war to secede from Britain, the
United States was truly that, a loose
union of countries with very weak
governments. Most Americans lived under
political conditions that bordered on
statelessness, which helped turn the US
into one of the wealthier regions in the
world. However, that began to change
under Abraham Lincoln, who by going to
war to prevent states from leaving the
union, helped transform the US from a
union of independent states into one
single large state with provinces
confusingly called states. That laid the
groundwork for the real betrayal of the
revolution which would come later. It
began with the so-called progressive
era, when under the guise of popular
reforms that were purely in the public
interest, the heads of industry began
maneuvering and lobbying to use
government power to protect their market
share and hamper future competitors.
With that, the government was fully back
to warping markets to benefit
well-connected and now, once again,
legally privileged companies. All that
had been required for the ruling class
to carry out the same basic
expropriative scheme from the days of
absolutism was a new legitimizing myth.
The scheme was accelerated at first by
Woodrow Wilson, who greatly expanded
federal power during World War I, and
even more crucially, signed the Federal
Reserve Act in 1913, stealthily bringing
a European-style central bank US. Then,
FDR used the Great Depression, itself a
result of the Federal Reserve's credit
expansion, as an excuse to do away with
nearly all limits on how the federal
government could intervene in the
economy, freeing the political class to
enrich themselves and their friends even
more. Finally, the period of
financialization that took place
primarily throughout the term of former
Fed chair Alan Greenspan helped bring
about the situation we find ourselves in
today. Through government regulations,
nearly every industry is warped in favor
of the companies and firms already on
top. Industries like healthcare,
agriculture, pharmaceuticals, energy,
air travel, food processing, higher
education, big tech, and much, much
more.
>> And through the government's near total
control over the monetary and banking
system attained over time by the Federal
Reserve, the political class is able to
help greatly enrich the financial sector
with a steady stream of easy money,
favorable regulations, and massive
bailouts whenever the artificially and
unsustainably boosted market enters
correction territory. And finally, of
course, there are all the private
companies that get all or most of their
revenue directly from the government,
such as the so-called defense
contractors. All in all, the current
American ruling class has been able to
build and maintain a political order
that moves far more wealth into their
own pockets and the pockets of their
well-connected friends in various
industries than the mercantilist regimes
of the past could have ever dreamed of.
But, it wasn't built in a day. It took a
long time, a lot of patience, and the
careful management of public perception.
The only way an ongoing political wealth
transfer from the broader population to
a small privileged elite of this caliber
is possible is if a sufficient portion
of the population truly believes these
laws and regulations are not only
legitimate, but are actively benefiting
them.
That is an especially delicate balance
to strike with the people who pride
themselves on their ancestors'
opposition to government tyranny. But,
except for a few cracks that have
emerged in the last 20 years or so, the
American establishment has managed that
quite well. Then, along came Trump.
In this second term especially, Trump
has shown almost no interest in being a
good team player in hiding his
self-enriching actions behind some
vague, but effective appeal to the
public good. Make no mistake, the
political establishment is truly furious
that Trump is so blatantly using the
presidency to enrich himself and his
family. But, that is not because they're
opposed to using state power in that
way. That's essentially all they do.
Their problem with Trump is that he
risks giving away the game. He simply
doesn't care about hiding it. It is
therefore imperative from the
establishment's perspective that Trump's
actions are seen by the public as a
rogue president corrupting what had been
a sound federal government. Trump of
course deserves no sympathy or support
for what he's doing. But if the American
people accept that the corruption begins
and ends with him, then the truly
corrupt will have won.
>> [music]