Fox News Struggles to Defend Trump Crypto ‘Grift,’ So He’ll Just Have to Do It Himself
Trump reportedly made a whopping $1.4 billion from crypto in 2025.
By Matt Novak Published July 6, 2026, 1:30 pm ET
Reading time 4 minutes
President Donald Trump speaks at the launch of Trump investment accounts in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 6, 2026. © Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images
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Donald Trump tried to defend the money he’s made from crypto while taking questions in the Oval Office on Monday. The president has raked in over $1 billion from cryptocurrency ventures, according to his latest financial disclosure documents, made public last week. And even MAGA-friendly news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News are having a difficult time spinning that as a good thing.
President Trump made more than $2.2 billion in 2025, according to his financial disclosure forms, $1.4 billion of which came from his two biggest crypto ventures. The president launched a memecoin shortly before he took office in January 2025 called $TRUMP and owns a considerable stake in the crypto company co-founded by his sons, World Liberty Financial.
Trump recounted Monday how, in his view, former President Joe Biden was “killing” crypto with “weaponization.” In reality, the Department of Justice and SEC were going after crypto-related fraud, including FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who’s now in prison. Trump acknowledged that he used to be a crypto skeptic, but insisted his mind was changed because he didn’t want China to become dominant in crypto.
“What he was doing to the crypto, they were putting people in jail,” said Trump of the Biden administration. “Good people, great, prestigious people. They were putting them in jail. And I said, ‘you’re going to be kidding.’ And they were trying to destroy the industry.”
The president went on to claim Biden became pro-crypto shortly before the 2024 election in order to gain favor with voters who cared about that issue, ignoring the fact that Biden wasn’t the one running on the Democratic ticket in the final months of the 2024 cycle. After rambling for a while about Biden, Trump volunteered that his sons are running his crypto businesses and suggested that he’s legally allowed to discuss those deals with them.
“So yeah, I’m very much for crypto because… I don’t…” said Trump haltingly. “It’s not a question of a personal thing. Because I let my kids do whatever the hell they do.”
Trump picked up the idea after stammering for a bit, insisting, “I don’t talk to them… ever talk to them about it. I’m allowed to, I think. I’m allowed to, but I don’t bother because this is a much higher… this office is a much higher calling.”
Trump then went on to note that he “waives” his salary as President, which amounts to $400,000 a year. The president’s defensiveness comes in an environment where even his most loyal defenders are becoming uneasy about the billions he’s making while in office, something without precedent in the White House.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote about Trump’s crypto dealings last week after the financial disclosure documents were released, and referred to his dealings as “honest graft.” The editorial referenced the “dubious deals with foreign actors” made by World Liberty Financial, and with its cryptocurrency. The Journal also noted that Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr., have invested in a company that will profit from a minerals deal with Kazakhstan, a country where the U.S. government invested $1.6 billion in public funds for a tungsten mine.
“Assuming all of this is legal, it’s still an unseemly display of using the Presidency for family profit,” the Wall Street Journal wrote. “It’s hard to believe the Trump boys would be able to do the same deals if Dad wasn’t in the Oval Office. The main difference between Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings and the Trump projects is that the Trumps are brazenly open about theirs.”
Fox News aired a segment on Friday discussing the Journal editorial and Democratic criticism of Trump’s deals with the chyron “Biggest Grift of All Times.”
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Holy shit.
This is Fox reporting on the “Trump family: biggest grift of all time.”
For once, they accidentally wandered into the truth.
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It’s rare for Fox News to air critiques of Trump, but if the president was at all disappointed by this short segment, he didn’t have to wait very long for Fox to come back around to his side. The entire weekend was filled with glowing coverage of the man, particularly when his Independence Day speech was delayed. Fox’s biggest anchors were stuck killing time for hours just regurgitating the most nauseating, pointless praise of the president.
Trump makes incredible sums of money from businesses like crypto, but you can’t forget about the money that’s being lost on the other end. Because in the world of fake money, it’s all about who’s left holding the bag. People who purchased Trump’s memecoin lost $3.8 billion, according to a tally from the New York Times. Trump reportedly made $800 million on that venture alone.
Trump addressed several other questions on Monday, and his responses were filled with the kind of malapropisms that in a previous era would’ve defined his entire presidency. Remember when Vice President Dan Quayle misspelled potato? Today, flubs like that are so common from Trump that they’re not even newsworthy. For example, in defending his 180° turn on TikTok (Trump previously wanted to ban the video platform before he orchestrated a sale of the U.S. business to Americans), the president bragged about how it helped him win the 2024 election. In the process, he called it “Tic Tac.”
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Trump: "You know who the number one person on Tic Tac is by far? Trump. Me. Taylor Swift was number 11."
Readers added context
Trump has 16.6M TikTok followers (not #1; top account @khaby.lame has 162.2M) and Taylor Swift has 33.5M (not #11). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_m… tiktok.com/@realdonaldtru… tiktok.com/@taylorswift
Context is written by people who use X, and appears when rated helpful by others. Find out more.
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The president may not get much attention these days for his frequent verbal slips, but the financial markets are certainly paying attention to the way his words can influence stock prices. Trump talked about Dell on Monday because founder and CEO Michael Dell was donating money to so-called Trump Accounts, new tax advantage investment accounts for babies.
“Go out and buy a Dell computer. He’s not doing it for that,” Trump said of Michael Dell, suggesting the founder wasn’t interested in benefiting financially from the PR stunt, “but I bet his business has gotten even bigger.”
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Trump: Go out and buy a Dell computer. I have a son that loves their... that loves their laptop. We're gonna get him that money back one way or the other.
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According to a recent government ethics filing, Trump bought somewhere between $1 million and $5 million worth of Dell stock back in February. In May, the company won a $9.7 billion Pentagon contract. On Monday, Dell’s stock popped 8% immediately after Trump told everyone to go buy a Dell computer. The stock is currently up 229% on the year.
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