Saturday, 4th July, 2026: Bruce Wolpe, Senior Fellow, US Study Centre, 250th anniversary of American Independence
As the USA leads into the 250th anniversary of American Independence, Bruce Wolpe talks Macca and Paul through what’s going on in the USA right now.
Bruce also discusses his review of the hottest new book on Trump by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of the NY Times. It will be in Saturday’s AGE print edition.
Trump earned $US2 billion+ in his first year as president. This issue will metastasize.
“American Pride Falls to 25-Year Record Low,” found Gallup.
“Just a third of the public believes the American Dream still exists,” found the AP.
“Nearly identical shares of adults from Trump, Harris and swing states say they believe the nation’s best years are in the rearview mirror — 58% in all,” NBC News.
President Trump returned to the White House with an epiphany about mixing business and politics during his first term in office.
“I found out that nobody cared,” Mr. Trump told The New York Times in January [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trump-interview-transcript.html], revealing a remarkable indifference to potential conflicts of interest.
That was months before Mr. Trump’s latest financial disclosure [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/us/politics/trump-financial-disclosure-crypto-windfall.html] revealed on Tuesday that he made about $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses during his first year back in office — even as the Trump administration has relaxed regulation of crypto companies.
By tradition, American presidents have generally tried to avoid [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/us/politics/trump-moneymaking-presidential-history.html] appearing to profit from the presidency, often taking actions to separate themselves from the kinds of corporate entanglements that could create conflicts of interest.
Mr. Trump has chosen a different path, smashing through the few norms he paid even glancing attention to in his first term, like having his family restrain its international business activity.
“I got no credit in the first term,” he said in January.
Now, he and his family have amassed a mammoth windfall, and so far at least, Mr. Trump appears largely unconcerned that he will face the kind of political fallout that would discourage other leaders from similar moneymaking endeavors.
Even before the release of his financial filing, polling showed disapproval among Americans when it came to Mr. Trump’s handling of his family’s business. One Pew Research Center survey from September [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/08/most-americans-think-trump-is-trying-to-exercise-more-power-than-previous-presidents/] found that more than 60 percent of Americans felt that Mr. Trump in his second term “definitely or probably” had “improperly” used the office of the presidency to enrich himself, friends and his family.
The same poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans believed that Mr. Trump had not set a high moral standard for the presidency.
Overall, Mr. Trump pulled in at least $2.2 billion during his first year back in office, a figure that includes other parts of his vast holdings, like real estate assets. That is compared with at least $622 million his enterprises brought in for all of 2024, before he returned to the White House.
And it eclipses the revenue reported [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/us/politics/trump-financial-disclosure.html] by Mr. Trump’s family business in 2020, the last full year of his first term, when it suffered steep declines as the pandemic upended the hospitality industry. And Mr. Trump and his family in his second term have only doubled down when it comes to business ventures that are profiting from his administration’s actions. Donald Trump Jr. has also expressed similar sentiment to his father, saying that his family got no credit for its restraint in Mr. Trump’s first term.
That includes legislation that Mr. Trump signed last July to promote a form of cryptocurrency called stablecoin, four months after his family-backed firm introduced its own stablecoin.
With his two sons standing just feet behind him on Wednesday, Mr. Trump appeared unconcerned when asked about criticism that he was profiting from his presidency.
“We’re all profiting,” Mr. Trump said as he once again spotlighted the stock market. “I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash and I give it to institutions. I don’t know if they know what they’re doing or not, but they buy a vast array of things.”
Donald Trump Jr. [https://www.wsj.com/topics/person/donald-trump]’s venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, invested in Vulcan Elements three months before the company received a $620 million government loan. Investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, which is headed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s sons, has been a financial adviser or underwriter for many startups that have received government support.
The post Saturday, 4th July, 2026: Bruce Wolpe, Senior Fellow, US Study Centre, 250th anniversary of American Independence [https://joy.org.au/saturdaymagazine/2026/07/saturday-4th-july-2026-bruce-wolpe-senior-fellow-us-study-centre-250th-anniversary-of-american-independence/] appeared first on Saturday Magazine [https://joy.org.au/saturdaymagazine].
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