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  "path": "/2026/07/03/donald-trump-looted-america-need-change-rules-29030398/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-07-03T15:43:04.000Z",
  "site": "https://metro.co.uk",
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  "textContent": "The President has used his office to enrich himself (Picture: Getty)\n\nBy the time you finish reading this sentence, Donald Trump is a few hundred dollars richer.\n\nGive it a minute and he’s cleared what you’ll spend on a summer holiday. By the end of the day he’s banked around $4m.\n\nThat’s what the average American family earns in 45 years of getting up, clocking in and paying the bills.\n\nBecause the 47th President has turned the White House into the world’s most lucrative grift.\n\nThat isn’t a typo and it isn’t hyperbole. In his first year back in the White House, Trump added about $1.4bn to his fortune, according to Forbes\n\nA working lifetime, every morning, before his first Diet Coke.\n\nTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tvideo\n\nUp Next\n\nPrevious Page\n\nNext Page\n\nI worked on Kamala Harris’ campaign, so feel free to knock a few points for bias. But these aren’t my numbers. They’re from the same experts who have continually counted the President’s net worth – and that he’s previously even criticised for _underselling_ his earnings.\n\nWhen Trump started running again he was worth about $2.4bn. He’s now worth around $6.5bn. He has, in effect, nearly tripled his money by becoming leader of the free world.\n\nIn America, they are raised on a story about the highest office in the land being about duty. About Service. Sacrifice. God, country, family. The president being the one who gives the most to their country and takes the least from it.\n\nTrump has quietly rewritten the whole thing into a single word, said three times: me, me, me.\n\nTrump’s defining principle is me, me, me (Picture:Getty)\n\nWhen he leaves office, even though he can’t be pursued for his ill-gotten gains, we need to change the rules so that self-enrichment on this, or any scale, can’t happen again.\n\nMost of the increase in Trump’s coffers came from crypto – a memecoin and a family firm called World Liberty Financial that barely existed before he ran. Days before his inauguration, an Abu Dhabi fund poured $500m into it, sending roughly $187m towards Trump family entities.\n\nShortly afterwards, his administration waved through the export of advanced AI chips to the UAE. Funny how these things turn out.\n\nAnd as Trump got richer, it was Americans who often got poorer.\n\nReuters estimated that while Trump and his sons made at least $2.3bn from their main crypto ventures, the ordinary punters they lured in lost almost exactly the same.\n\nTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tvideo\n\nUp Next\n\nPrevious Page\n\nNext Page\n\nHe didn’t conjure that wealth from thin air. He moved it, out of hundreds of thousands of small pockets and into his own.\n\nThe most galling bit is that almost none of this is illegal.\n\nEvery other person in the federal government has to steer clear of decisions that fatten their own bank balance. They have to declare interests or excuse themselves from any conflicts of interest.\n\nThe president – whoever they are – has always been exempt.\n\nPast occupants of the office squared that circle by locking their wealth in blind trusts and looking away, aware of how bad even the perception of feathering their own nest would look.\n\nJimmy Carter famously handed off the peanut farm that had been in his family for generations.\n\nTrump looked at that tradition, in his first term and again in his second, and binned it.\n\nSo here is the question nobody seems ready for. What happens when he finally goes?\n\nThe tempting answer is nothing. Exhale, pour a drink (or several) and be grateful it’s over. That would be the single biggest mistake his opponents could make.\n\nEven Jimmy Carter gave up his peanut farm (Picture: Bettmann Archive)\n\nYes, part of me wants to simply forget it and move on.\n\nCount what the presidency made him, and take it back. An exit tax on presidents. A leaving fee for the world’s most expensive tenant. But a law aimed at one man by name is what lawyers call a bill of attainder, and the constitution forbids it. So tempting as it is, we have to park that fantasy.\n\nWhat can’t be parked is the clean-up. Because the lesson of the last few years isn’t really about one uniquely shameless man. It’s that the rules were always held together by good manners, a sense that public service was just that, not an attempt to make yourself richer.\n\nPast presidents, both Democratic and Republican, no matter their other failings, chose not to profit from an office that never actually stopped them from doing so.\n\nTrump has shown every future occupant exactly how far you can push those boundaries, and if you want it, how much is lying around, unguarded, for the taking.\n\nTrump has desecrated the White House (Picture: Getty)\n\nWhich is why being the party of decency and restored norms won’t cut it.\n\nDecency has been mugged. The White House has been looted. The Presidency has been desecrated.\n\nWhen Democrats get their turn again, the job isn’t to wag fingers, tut and tidy up.\n\nIt’s to come in swinging. Ram through laws that actually stop a president cashing in on the office, force them to hand their businesses to someone independent so they can’t profit from their own decisions, and – this time – make it hurt when they don’t.\n\nMake the next Trump impossible, not just a bad memory.\n\nRight now, this isn’t doable. A Supreme Court that handed presidents sweeping immunity has bolted the door. The man who benefits most is holding the pen. The whole machine, top to bottom, is built to protect the people picking the lock.\n\nAnyone who cares about democracy must hold onto the fury they currently feel. Forget the fleeting relief of him leaving. We need a clear-eyed determination that nobody gets to do this again.\n\nIf the only response to a president making $1.4bn off the job is to be glad he’s gone, then he didn’t just get rich. He wrote the manual. And someone slicker, quieter and more careful will read it. Perhaps sooner than we realise.\n\nYou can finish reading now. He just made another few thousand bucks in the meantime.\n\n**Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailingRoss.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. **\n\n**Share your views in the comments below.**\n\nComment now Comments \nAdd Metro as a Preferred Source on Google\nAdd as preferred source\n",
  "title": "Donald Trump has looted America – we need to change the rules"
}