By Robert Weiner and Tomas Alves
Former President Donald Trump was the keynote speaker July 27 at the nation's largest Bitcoin Conference in Nashville to proclaim himself as a pro-Bitcoin President. At the start of June, Mr. Trump posted his first video to Tik Tok showing a flashy montage of his visit to a UFC event in Las Vegas. In May, the New York Times reported that at a private Mar-a-Lago event, Trump asked big oil executives to donate one billion dollars to his presidential campaign in exchange for rolling back environmental regulations. On all of these occasions, Trump has mastered corruption.
For Bitcoin, Former President Trump had long been known to consider the cryptocurrency "not money" and "based on thin air". In comments that can hardly be ignored in front of the world's largest owners of Bitcoin, he said, "I stand before you today filled with respect and admiration for what the Bitcoin community has achieved."
As Trump's outlandish promises brought the crowd at the conference to a roar, he spoke robotically at times and ended his speech wishing the crowd to have fun with "your Bitcoin and your crypto and everything else that you are playing with". A group that was once alienated by Trump the President should not be fooled by Trump the candidate.
Most egregiously, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, entrepreneurs of the crypto firm Gemini, led the charge in crypto donations that amounted to four million according to a CNBC report. The Winklevoss donations violated Federal Election Commission (FEC) limits on individual contribution levels and came only after Trump embraced Bitcoin in late June.
In May, at another private event at Mar-a-Lago, Trump met with crypto tycoons to tell them that they "better vote" for him while promoting his own non-fungible tokens. According to his 2023 financial disclosures, the former President made anywhere from 100,001-1,000,000 dollars on selling NFT tokens priced at $99 each. The digital collector's items with Trump's name and face proved highly lucrative and convinced Trump that cryptocurrency was worth his time and attention.
Similarly, Trump's major switch on TikTok was noticeable after President Joe Biden's decision to sign a bill banning TikTok. The decision was slammed by Trump saying Biden was "responsible for banning TikTok". It was a complete one-eighty reversal by Trump from being the first President to issue an Executive Order regarding a ban for Tik Tok to starting an account and using the platform for his campaign. Trump, on the lookout for his own personal benefit, abandoned his previous platform of being tough on China in pushing for a ban on Tik Tok and switched the blame for the ban to his political rivals despite the measure receiving overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress.
Trump also maintains a vendetta against Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who barred Trump from Facebook after the January 6th Capitol riots. A vindictive Trump even referred to Zuckerberg as "Zuckerschmuck", while also saying that banning TikTok would give Facebook more power in the social media landscape. Thus the new decision to promote Tik Tok altogether had the sweet undertone of vengeance for Trump's list of priorities.
Of the most blatant moments of corruption, on April 11 Mr. Trump, according to CNBC, had a private meeting with top oil executives, asked them to "raise one billion dollars to return me to the White House," a donation to his presidential campaign. He assured them, "The amount of money saved in taxes would more than cover the contribution." Senate Democrats responded by launching an investigation where the potential financial abuses "must be scrutinized".
Trump's flip-flop on Bitcoin after huge contributions, after the same for Tik Tok and big oil, endanger the nation with a political corruption strategy. Trump has shamelessly abused his position to tell special interests that his policy platform can be theirs if they pay up. By putting his platform on a fire sale, he has become the swamp he always said he would drain.
Tomas Alves is a policy analyst, research coordinator, and writer at Robert Weiner Associates News and Solutions for Change. Tomas was also a Senior Staff Writer for The Highlander Newspaper at the University of California, Riverside.
