Trump News: 60 Minutes Wealth and Corruption Clash
President Donald Trump sat for his first extended television interview since the midterm elections on Sunday night, and the toughest questions came not on the wars or the economy but on his own money. In a 60 Minutes conversation with columnist Ross Douthat, recorded at the White House on Friday and broadcast on Sunday evening, Trump was pressed on a Forbes estimate that his net worth has risen by about $3 billion since he returned to office, and on his family's stake in a cryptocurrency company part-owned by investors connected to the government of the United Arab Emirates. His answers, delivered with a shrug and a joke, have set off a fresh round of questions about conflicts of interest at the top of the American government.
The exchange mattered because of when it happened. Trump sat down with Douthat only days after voters handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, an outcome that gives the opposition party subpoena power and the ability to call hearings from January. The interview was the president's first sit-down since that defeat, Douthat asked about the Iran war, the party's midterm losses, weak polling, and inflation, but it was the wealth questions that produced the most striking answers of the night.
Douthat is a conservative columnist who joined 60 Minutes this year, and the interview was expected to be sympathetic. Instead, he pressed Trump repeatedly on how a president who has grown about $3 billion richer in office answers charges that his family is profiting from his presidency. Trump did not concede the premise. He changed the subject, joked about it, and said he barely thinks about his money at all.
The $3 Billion Question
Douthat opened the subject with the Forbes figure. There is a Forbes story, he told the president, saying Trump's net worth went up by $3 billion since he returned to office. Trump replied that the same thing had happened to everyone. Douthat pointed out that his own net worth had not gone up by $3 billion, and Trump answered with a line that spread across social media within minutes of the broadcast: "Well, you should've had stock."
Trump then said he devotes almost no time to his net worth and does not care about it. He said he has a lot of money, far more than he ever thought he would have, and that he guesses it has gone up, though he does not even know by how much. He said he has a son who is a very straight, good man who watches over the money, and that he does not even talk to him about it. He added that he had a lot of cash long before he came into office, and that he does not take a presidential salary.
The point of the Forbes figure is not that a wealthy man got wealthier in a rising market. It is that the increase came while Trump was president, and that much of it is tied to businesses his family runs and to deals with foreign investors whose governments have business before the United States. Douthat was asking whether the presidency itself has become a source of family profit. Trump answered as though the question were only about the stock market.
World Liberty Financial and the UAE Deal
At the center of the corruption questions sits World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company announced by Eric Trump in August 2024. The company launched a governance token called WLFI and a stablecoin called USD1, and in January it introduced a lending platform built on the decentralized finance protocol Dolomite. Trump is a co-owner of the company, and his sons remain involved in running it, even though the company's disclosure documents state that no member of the Trump family serves as an executive, director, or employee.
The part of the story that has drawn the most scrutiny involves the United Arab Emirates. In February, reporting citing The Wall Street Journal said that Aryam Investment, a UAE-backed entity linked to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the UAE's national security adviser, had agreed to acquire a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial for $500 million. The deal was signed on behalf of World Liberty by Eric Trump, and it came just four days before Trump's inauguration in January 2025. It also came before the government eased restrictions on the sale of advanced artificial intelligence chips to the UAE, a decision that mattered a great deal to Abu Dhabi.
The scale of the Trump family's interest in the company is set out in World Liberty's own disclosure documents. An entity called DT Marks DEFI LLC, affiliated with Trump and certain family members, holds about 38 percent of the holding company behind World Liberty Financial, along with 22.5 billion WLFI tokens, and it is entitled to 75 percent of the net proceeds from WLFI token sales. Another entity affiliated with Trump indirectly holds rights to interest generated by the USD1 reserve. Those are not small stakes in a distant venture. They are a large, direct financial interest in a company whose biggest outside investor is backed by a foreign government.
Douthat put the problem to Trump in the plainest terms: if the same facts involved the Biden family, if Joe Biden were part-owner of a company with all of these investments from the Middle East, would Trump not call that corrupt? It was the sharpest question of the night.
"I Knew Nothing About It"
Trump's answer was that he knows nothing about the company. "The difference is this," he said. "Let me tell you why. Because I knew nothing about it." He said he made a lot of money before becoming president, and that most of his wealth is managed by big Wall Street firms through index funds. When Douthat asked why he did not simply walk away from the companies, divest his holdings, and remove the question entirely, Trump said his sons run the business and that it is hard to tell them not to do anything for four years because he is president.
Asked whether foreign investors might believe they were buying influence by putting money into a company his family co-owns, Trump said he did not know. He added that conflicts of interest are a problem for every president, and that they have plagued presidents since the time of George Washington. Past presidents, he said, owned certain things, whatever the cryptocurrency of the day was — first oil, now crypto — and every president has faced this issue. He also said his fame is greater than that of other presidents, whether people like it or not.
Trump did not dispute the 49 percent stake, the $500 million price, or his family's share of the company. He did not say the deal should not have happened, or that he would unwind it. He said he did not know about it, that his sons run it, and that asking a family to pause its business for four years is too much to ask. For a president who campaigned on being too rich to be bought, it was a striking position.
The White House has not produced any record that would support the claim of ignorance. No document has been released showing that Trump walled himself off from the World Liberty deal, and no official has explained what steps, if any, the president took to avoid learning about a half-billion-dollar investment in a family company by a foreign government-linked fund. A spokesperson for World Liberty told ABC News at the time of the deal that neither Trump himself nor his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, had any involvement whatsoever in the transaction.
Why Presidents Usually Step Aside From Their Businesses
The reason Douthat's questions landed so hard is that they touch on a norm every modern president before Trump observed. For decades, presidents have moved their business holdings into blind trusts, sold them outright, or held only broad, diversified investments that no single decision of theirs could move. The point of the practice is not that presidents are forbidden from being wealthy. It is that the public should never have to wonder whether a presidential decision was made for the country or for the family balance sheet. A blind trust removes the question by removing the president's knowledge of what he owns and his ability to profit from a specific decision.
Trump broke with that norm in his first term, when he retained ownership of his business empire and handed day-to-day control to his sons through a trust arrangement that left him fully informed about the business and able to profit from it. Ethics lawyers in both parties said at the time that the arrangement did not solve the conflict problem, because the president still owned the assets and still knew what they were. The second-term version of the problem is larger, because the assets now include a cryptocurrency company whose value depends on foreign capital and on regulatory decisions made by the president's own administration. The argument is not that a president's net worth cannot rise in office. It is that when the rise is driven by deals with foreign government-linked investors in a company the president's family co-owns, the public deserves more than a shrug and a joke about buying stock.
The Reaction So Far
Democrats have been raising the World Liberty deal since it was first reported in February. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut described the arrangement at the time as potentially criminal, and Democratic lawmakers have argued for months that a president whose family takes half a billion dollars from a foreign government-linked fund cannot credibly claim to be above influence. The interview gave them fresh quotes, including the president's admission that he does not know whether foreign investors think they are buying influence.
The company has also faced legal trouble that keeps the UAE connection in the news. Justin Sun, the founder of the cryptocurrency platform Tron, asked a federal court to impose sanctions on World Liberty, arguing that the company delayed disclosing its UAE ownership stake in a way that could undermine the court's jurisdiction over a lawsuit. World Liberty responded by calling Sun's legal action a baseless public relations stunt. The dispute is unresolved, and the White House has said nothing on the substance of the interview, including whether the president will divest or use a blind trust.
What Happens Next
The most immediate consequence of the interview will play out in Congress. When Democrats take control of both chambers in January, they will have subpoena power and the ability to call witnesses, and the World Liberty deal is likely to be one of their earliest subjects. Hearings could compel the administration to produce records, name the officials involved, and explain what the president knew and when. The companies could also be called to testify.
The White House faces a choice between treating the interview as closed and taking a concrete step, such as divestment or a blind trust. Nothing in the president's answers suggested he is inclined toward either. His position, as stated on camera, is that he does not know about the deals, that his sons run the business, and that conflicts of interest have plagued every president since Washington.
For the public, the interview leaves a simple, unresolved question. A president's family has taken hundreds of millions of dollars from investors linked to a foreign government, into a company the president co-owns, and the president says he knew nothing about it. Either that is true, which raises questions about who is minding the store, or it is not, which raises questions about the answer itself. Until the White House produces records, or Congress compels them, there is no way to tell which it is.
Source: CBS News