President Trump, whose family has done more to profit from the presidency than any other in modern history, complained in an economic speech on Thursday that he was a “schmuck” to donate his presidential salary and falsely claimed that he was the only one to do so.
The Constitution mandates that the president receive a salary, but John F. Kennedy and Herbert Hoover donated theirs to charity because they were among the wealthiest to serve in the role. For several years in his first term, Mr. Trump donated his presidential salary, often directing it to government agencies like the National Park Service, but appeared to stop doing so by 2020, according to his tax returns.
“We’ve had wealthy presidents before,” Mr. Trump said in an address in Rome, Ga., on Thursday, before falsely saying that “in the history of our country, there’s never been a president that waived his salary. I’m the only schmuck. I get no credit for it. You know what, I get no credit for it. Nobody writes about it.”
He added, “It’s a couple million bucks, it’s not peanuts.”
Little is written about Mr. Trump’s $400,000 annual salary. He has aggressively profited from the presidency at a scale that dwarfs his constitutionally-mandated paycheck, embarking on an audacious moneymaking campaign in his second term. The Trump family and its business partners have collected at least $320 million in fees from the sales of just one Trump-branded cryptocurrency.
Mr. Trump, his family and his allies have greenlit a yawning list of business ventures that would have once been considered ethically unthinkable. The most lucrative of these has been the Trump cryptocurrency empire — with Mr. Trump and his business partners launching the $TRUMP coin just before his second inauguration. After taking office, the president hosted a private dinner for the top buyers of his crypto coin.
Many who have signed deals with Trump family members and companies have business before the government. Figures like Elon Musk and other billionaires aligned with the president have benefited from regulatory decisions that Mr. Trump oversees. Members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, aides and their families have also benefited from his directing capital investment to specific industries.
Mr. Trump has also accepted a luxury jetliner from Qatar, worth an estimated $200 million. Mr. Trump has said that he will use the jet as Air Force One while president, after it is retrofitted at an expected cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, and that it will be transferred to his eventual presidential library after he leaves office in 2029. Ethical experts warn that there could be nothing to stop him from using it as his personal plane and say that the jet violates the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause against accepting gifts from foreign governments.
Mr. Trump has filed multiple lawsuits against the government demanding billions in compensation, claiming that he will donate the proceeds. Because Mr. Trump appointed the leaders of those agencies, it may be up to his own loyalists to determine how to respond.
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
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