CEOs Kiss the Ring at Trump Family Crypto Forum at Mar-a-Lago
President Trump’s sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., on Wednesday kicked off their family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, with an inaugural forum at their father’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Eric Trump boasted on X that the forum is “uniting visionaries from Crypto, Wall Street, tech and beyond to shape the future of finance—free from outdated banks, centralized control, and cancel culture.” In short, it was an opportunity for the Trump family to make more money off of the presidency in defiance of any ethical concerns. Eric’s brother, Donald Trump Jr., retweeted his post.
Speakers at the forum included financial executives Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, NASDAQ CEO Adenda Friedman, Canadian investor Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank fame, Nicki Minaj, FIFA President Gianni Infantino, and numerous others. The brothers spoke to CNBC from the forum on Wednesday, thumbing their noses at critics who say the Trump family is profiting off people seeking to cozy up to the White House and creating multiple conflicts of interest.
“The great irony here is they didn’t give us much of a choice,” Eric said.
“They created this monster,” Donald Jr. interjected. Eric claimed that the Trumps were “canceled” by major financial institutions for political reasons, forcing them to turn to cryptocurrency and decentralized finance.
President Trump sued JPMorgan Chase and its CEO Jamie Dimon last month, accusing the bank of dropping him, his family, and his various businesses after the Capitol insurrection of January 6, which they deny. Last year, Trump sued Capital One with the same accusations.
Last May, The New York Times discovered that the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates paid $2 billion to purchase a stablecoin called USD1 from World Liberty Financial, a blatant attempt by a foreign government to line the pockets of the president and his family. The deal was brokered by Zach Witkoff, who happens to be the son of Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East.
Two weeks later, Trump allowed the UAE to import a large amount of AI chips from the United States, with many of them going to a company owned by the man who controls the UAE’s fund, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan. CNBC asked the Trump brothers about this in the interview, and the pair denied doing anything wrong, with Donald Jr. dismissively saying, “We’ve been dealing with the conflict of interest stuff for years.”
In reality, Wednesday’s forum was a new chance for similar lucrative deals for the Trumps from people with connections and interests that may not be known to the public. The World Liberty Financial X page even announced new partnerships and deals on Wednesday, some involving other Trump businesses. All of this indicates that the Trump presidency is a big financial windfall for the Trump family, ethics and conflicts of interest be damned.