Peter Wade (ROLLING STONE) reports,
House Speaker Mike Johnson wants you to know he is a very "busy" man. Too busy, in fact, to care about Donald Trump's blatant corruption.
When confronted with legitimate concerns that Trump is using the power of the presidency to enrich himself by launching a crypto meme coin and allowing the scheme's top investors to dine privately with him at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, Johnson essentially shrugged.
House Speaker Mike Johnson wants you to know he is a very "busy" man. Too busy, in fact, to care about Donald Trump's blatant corruption.
When confronted with legitimate concerns that Trump is using the power of the presidency to enrich himself by launching a crypto meme coin and allowing the scheme's top investors to dine privately with him at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, Johnson essentially shrugged.
Well of course he's too busy. UNDERGEAR is having a 20% off Memorial Day Sale. And he can't decide between the neon lace posing strap or the Pride Metro Rio Bikini with Plus Pouch?
(For the record, UNDERGEAR is having a 20% sale. I was going to make an International Male catalog joke but thought to Google first and found out that they discontinued their catalogs in 2007. So I had to hunt down something else for the joke.)
Trump hosted more than 200 top investors in his personal $TRUMP meme coin on Thursday night at an exclusive, high-profile dinner at his private golf club in Sterling, Virginia. Some analysts say Trump's ownership of this coin creates a potential conflict of interest amid his support of the cryptocurrency industry at large.
The coin, which launched in January 2025, currently has a market cap of about $2.5 billion. The event rewarded the largest investors in his cryptocurrency venture, something that even some ardent "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) allies have raised concerns over.
Johnson, a Trump ally, was asked about the recent crypto dinner during a Sunday interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on State of the Union. The House speaker largely dodged the question, saying he didn't know "anything" about the event.
"I really have a difficult time imagining that if this was a Democratic president doing the exact same thing, you wouldn't be outraged," Tapper told the GOP leader.
But when the president and his partners launched a contest of sorts last month, it took the story to a new level: Those interested in investing in Trump’s meme coin — and by extension, giving the president money — were told they’d have a chance to win special access to Trump and the White House.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said of the scheme, “This isn’t Trump just being Trump. The Trump coin scam is the most brazenly corrupt thing a president has ever done. Not close.”
Incredibly unsurprising news: The people who paid millions of dollars to get into Trump’s lavish cryptocurrency dinner did so to directly influence the president’s financial policy in their favor.
“I will definitely not hesitate to share my perspective,” Vincent Liu, CIO of Taiwanese-based crypto firm Kronos Research, who bought enough of Trump’s crypto to attend the dinner Thursday night, told The New York Times. “It’s great to see the current direction that everything’s going.”
“It’s kind of a fund-raiser” for Mr. Trump, Korean crypto executive Sangrok Oh and another dinner attendee, told the Times. “And he’ll always be good to his sponsors.”
The dinner was held at Trump’s private golf club in northern Virginia on Thursday evening for the top 220 holders of the president’s meme coin cryptocurrency—after an auction that brought in $147,586,796.41. Protesters lined the entrance to the building, chanting “Shame, shame, shame!” and holding up signs while attendees arrived.
At WSWS, Kevin Reed's commentary on the corrupt dinner includes:
This event, attended by hundreds of the largest investors in the $TRUMP cryptocurrency, was likely the most grotesque display of wealth and political influence in US history. It was a symptom of the decline of the American capitalist class, whose highest office is now openly leveraged for personal profit through Ponzi schemes, gangsterism and swindling.
The dinner was billed as the “most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION” in the world, a phrase that, in the context of the Trump White House, is synonymous with shameless self-promotion and the monetization of the presidency.
Access to the dinner was based on a “leaderboard” that ranked individuals by the amount of money they had poured into Trump’s meme coin coffer. The $Trump cryptocurrency, like all the others, has no underlying utility, no productive purpose, no actual value and no reason for existence beyond speculation and the enrichment of its creators.
The leaderboard golf metaphor was not based on any kind of performance other than a literal auction for access to the president. The top 220 buyers secured seats at the dinner, while the top 25 were promised an even more exclusive cocktail hour and a tour of the White House.
The names on the leaderboard—“MEOW,” “LSD,” “REKt,” “elon”—made the identity of the attendees anonymous, highlighting the separation of the financial elite from public scrutiny and accountability.
The top seven investors each spent $10 million or more on the coin, with billionaire crypto investor Justin Sun reportedly paying out $18.5 million to become the largest known holder. Sun was rewarded with a gold watch and private time with Trump, an emblem of the transactional nature of the event.
Sun is a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur, billionaire and founder of the blockchain platform TRON. Born in 1990, he studied at Peking University and the University of Pennsylvania, later attending Hupan University, a business school founded by Alibaba’s Jack Ma. He began his career working at Ripple Labs, a major cryptocurrency startup, before launching his own ventures.
Other attendees included Nick Pinto, who invested $500,000 for his seat at the table and was ranked 72nd on the leaderboard. Pinto is a 25-year-old American social media influencer, entrepreneur and active cryptocurrency investor. Pinto first achieved financial success at age 13 by founding a scooter wheel company, which he leveraged into a career as a social media personality with 2.6 million Instagram followers.
In other news of Chump's malfeasance, Madison Pauly (MOTHER JONES) reports:
Late last night, a federal district court judge in Massachusetts ordered the US government to “facilitate” the return of a Guatemalan man who was deported to Mexico despite having presented evidence that he had been kidnapped and raped there on his way to the United States last year.
The man, known in court documents as O.C.G., won an order in his immigration case in February protecting him from being deported to Guatemala, which he said he fled after facing violence and persecution for his sexuality. Two days later— thinking, according to court documents, that he was being released from immigration detention—he was loaded onto a bus with other men and brought from the US to Mexico, where authorities then deported him to Guatemala anyway.
O.C.G. is now living in hiding in Guatemala, avoiding going out or being seen with family, according to a sworn declaration filed in his lawsuit. “The people who targeted me before know who I am and they have shown me twice before what they’re capable of,” he said. “I can’t be gay here, which means I cannot be myself. I cannot express myself and I am not free.”
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