Polls show voter weariness with economic conditions under Trump
President Donald Trump earned more than $2.2 billion in the first year of his second administration through crypto bets, stock trades, and real-estate deals, a federal disclosure form showed this week. The sum included at least $86 million from legal settlements with companies that have regulatory matters before the government, and a $263 million windfall connected to the sale of equity in World Liberty Financial, the president’s cryptocurrency business.
The disclosure has become a focal point for Democratic candidates and strategists who see an opportunity to turn Trump’s wealth into a campaign issue. The party is testing whether voters who once saw Trump’s fortune as proof he could make America wealthy will instead view his rising personal income as evidence of self-dealing while their own finances remain under pressure.
Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat facing a competitive re-election race, told a Savannah rally last week that “while you pay more for everything, the Trumps are raking in billions from all over the world.” In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro used the word “corruption” a dozen times as he accepted his party’s nomination for re-election in May, accusing the government of “stealing from the American people right before our eyes.”
White House spokesman Kush Desai dismissed the criticism, saying, “Democrats will do anything to distract from their clear record of incompetence and proven agenda of failure, from Joe Biden’s inflation crisis to his dumpster fire of a southern border to a lunatic obsession with transgenderism.”
Republican strategist Alex Conant said Democrats have an opening. “If they just run on sheer outrage at Trump’s wealth, they’ll find a lot of unmoved voters. But if Democrats could somehow tie Trump’s personal gains with voters’ perceived losses, that could be salient,” he said.
MSI previously reported that legal experts anticipate heavy scrutiny of Trump’s business dealings if Democrats win the House in November, with likely probes into his administration’s financial arrangements and the proposed $1.8 billion fund for allies. Read that article.
Former Rep. Steven Israel of New York, who led the House Democrats’ re-election committee for four years, argued that voters once accepted Trump’s wealth-building “if he was going to increase their wages and make them better off.” Now, he said, the opportunity exists for Democrats to argue that the president is “focused on his own enrichment instead of their pocketbooks.”
Trump has not shied from displays of wealth. The president, his aides, and family members this week boarded a new Air Force One — a 747 jet gifted by the Qatari government and retrofitted at a cost of $400 million to taxpayers — for an official trip to North Dakota. “You can low-key it,” Trump told reporters before the inaugural flight. “Or you can show it off.”
The president dismissed allegations of unfair advantage, arguing that his income simply reflected broader economic gains. “You know why I’m profiting? Because the stock market’s going up,” he said. “Everybody’s profiting.”
Some voters have soured on that argument. Elijah Soukup, 21, of Moline, Illinois, voted for Trump in 2024 but told the Wall Street Journal he now regrets his decision, viewing the president’s amassed wealth as the kind of corruption Trump once campaigned against. Soukup said his personal investments took a hit this past year while Trump’s skyrocketed.
But conservative talk-show host Erick Erickson, based in Georgia, expressed skepticism that the issue would move voters, attributing Trump’s durability to “so many people just giving Trump a unique pass on this stuff.” Melody Richardson, a 73-year-old in Dillsboro, Indiana, said she was unbothered by Trump’s income, noting she has had to cut back because of rising fuel prices but believes the president earned his money. “I do not resent President Trump for one dime or penny,” she said. “He has earned it.”
Ben Shapiro, a conservative podcast host who campaigned for Trump, acknowledged an apparent double standard: “If the name were Biden instead of Trump,” he said of the first family’s crypto empire, “people would be screaming bloody murder.”
In Congress, several Democratic lawmakers formed an “End Corruption Caucus” to consider legislation aimed at reining in self-dealing in government, the Wall Street Journal reported. Douglas Boneparth, a financial adviser at Bone Fide Wealth, suggested that officeholders ought to be banned from trading individual stocks, calling the problem bipartisan. He wrote on social media: “How to profit in the stock market — 1. Be the president of the United States.”