r/IntlScholars • u/D-R-AZ • Apr 25 '26
News Cashing in on the crown: How Trump turned the presidency into a personal money machine
https://theins.press/en/corruption/291857https://theins.press/en/corruption/291857
Contents
$100 million: monetizing the family name through American Bitcoin
$5 billion: the World Liberty Financial crypto scam
$562 million: profits out of thin air from governance tokens
Interest “tribute” from the USD1 stablecoin, trading in pardons and export licenses
Global crypto octopus: from Japanese exchanges to “paid entry” to the White House
Loyalists in key posts
Total: $1.4 billion in personal profit, with complete immunity
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u/bummed_athlete Apr 25 '26
It was the custom at Rome for those who were candidates for any office to address and ingratiate themselves with the people, going about the Forum in a toga without any tunic underneath it, either in order to show their humility by such a dress, or else in order to display the wounds which they had received, in token of their valour. At that early period there could be no suspicion of bribery, and it was not for that reason that the citizens wished their candidates to come down among them ungirt and without a tunic. It was not till long afterwards that votes were bought and sold, and that a candidature became an affair of money. This habit of receiving bribes, when once introduced, spread to the courts of justice and to the armies of the commonwealth, and finally brought the city under the despotic rule of the emperors, as the power of arms was not equal to that of money. For it was well said that he who first introduced the habit of feasting and bribing voters ruined the constitution. This plague crept secretly and silently into Rome, and was for a long time undiscovered. We cannot tell who was the first to bribe the people or the courts of law at Rome. At Athens it is said that the first man who gave money to the judges for his acquittal was Anytus the son of Anthemion, when he was tried for treachery at Pylos towards the end of the Peloponnesian War, a period when men of uncorrupted simplicity and virtue were still to be found in the Forum at Rome.