President Donald Trump on Tuesday was asked about how he’s profited off the presidency—and did not take kindly to the line of questioning.
Ahead of Trump’s state visit to the U.K., John Lyons, an editor at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, asked the president how much wealthier he is now than when he assumed office.
“Well, I don’t know,” Trump replied. “The deals I made, for the most part, other than what my kids are doing—you know, they’re running my business. But most of the deals that I’ve made were made before.”
The president quickly changed the subject to his latest hobby horse—the new ballroom he’s having built at the White House—before Lyons asked, “But is it appropriate, President Trump, that a president in office should be engaged in so much business activity?”
“Well, I’m really not,” Trump answered. “My kids are running the business. I’m here.” The president then derailed his own response, asking where Lyons is from and suggesting that he would hold the reporter’s queries against his home country.
“In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right now, and they want to get along with me,” Trump said. “You know, your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I’m going to tell him about you. You set a very bad tone.”
As Trump turned to another reporter, Lyons asked another question, and was shushed by the president, who pointed at him and sternly said, “Quiet.”
‘You’re hurting Australia’: Donald Trump criticises ABC journalist John Lyons in White House clash pic.twitter.com/rlR4glUEVF
— Ben Knight (@benknight38) September 16, 2025
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is scheduled to travel to New York next week for the U.N. General Assembly. Trump had not previously announced, as he seemed to hint during his quarrel with Lyons, a one-on-one sit down with Albanese. But the president apparently couldn’t help but mention it as leverage against a reporter.
Lyons’s questions come amid reports of Trump’s fortune having ballooned while in office—and of scandalous ways he’s profited off the presidency. On Monday, for instance, The New York Times published an exposé of two overlapping deals: one in which an Emirati royal’s firm invested $2 billion in a Trump family crypto business, and another in which the United Arab Emirates will receive hundreds of thousands of advanced A.I. chips.
The White House denies the deals were linked—and, per the Times, there’s no evidence they constituted an explicit quid pro quo. (If they did, though, it would represent the biggest public corruption scandal in U.S. history by far, according to a former White House economist.)
Trump’s rapid-response social media team declared his outburst at Lyons to be a moment of strength, triumphantly tweeting that the president had “smack[ed] down a rude foreign Fake News loser.”
The post Trump Goes Full Fascist After Simple Question on His Business Deals appeared first on New Republic.
