A Media Matters review of media response to the Trump family's alleged corruption through crypto ventures found:

• The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post have published a combined 40 front-page stories about the Trump family's crypto ventures from his inauguration through the end of July and have highlighted the profiteering by the family. 
• Mainstream broadcast news programs ABC's World News Tonight, CBS' Evening News, NBC's Nightly News, and PBS' NewsHour aired at least 17 segments since the inauguration dedicated specifically to crypto-related topics calling attention to the Trump conflicts of interest. 
• Fox News rarely commented on the Trump family's alleged corruption and frequently praised or defended the family's business dealings. 
• Fox News has aired only three segments mentioning the Trumps' crypto business, World Liberty Financial, two of which were in interviews with Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. 
• Right-leaning podcasters including Joe Rogan, Michael Knowles, and Alex Jones have defended Donald Trump's involvement in crypto investments. 
• MAGA television network Newsmax has also strongly defended the Trump family for its crypto dealings.
• This review found only a few right-wing podcasters that have voiced any kind of objection to this profiteering, including The Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro and far-right podcasters Stew Peters and Nick Fuentes.

In December 2022, Donald Trump licensed his name and image through a corporate subsidiary to launch a collection of non-fungible tokens or NFTs — 45,000 “Trump Digital Trading Cards” priced “at $99 each.” They sold out in less than 24 hours, “bringing in approximately $4.5 million.”

In January 2025, just a few days before his second inauguration, Trump launched his own meme coin. This time, $TRUMP sold around $350 million during its initial rollout. The Trump family also launched $MELANIA, a matching meme coin for the first lady, around the same time. 

Since then, the Securities and Exchange Commission under Trump has closed or suspended investigations into at least 12 crypto firms — including several that donated millions of dollars to groups backing Donald Trump's 2024 campaign or directly funded his 2025 inauguration.

In March, Trump signed an executive order establishing “a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile” as part of “his promise to position America as the global leader in cryptocurrency.” The Trump Media and Technology Group has now reportedly acquired $2 billion worth of bitcoin, inflating the president's personal stake in the company to over $2.3 billion. 

His sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. are heavily invested in crypto and run a publicly traded bitcoin mining firm called American Bitcoin. Eric Trump joined the strategic board of advisers at bitcoin investment firm Metaplanet in March. The following month, Donald Trump Jr. headlined an event in Bulgaria for crypto company Nexo Capital, which “said it plans to return to the American market, two years after it paid a $45 million fine to settle U.S. regulatory charges.”

The president and his sons are also the majority backers of World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture that reportedly raised $550 million from selling “governance tokens” which “cannot be traded” but “give holders the right to vote on changes to the project's underlying code and to signal their opinion on its direction and plans.” Reuters wrote in late March that “the Trump family now has a claim on 75% of net revenues from token sales and 60% from World Liberty operations once the core business gets going,” leaving the company with just 5% of the total money raised so far after paying the remaining co-founders. World Liberty recently announced a new $1.5 billion fundraising round “to set up a public company that will hold its WLFI tokens.”

In June, Reuters reported that the United Arab Emirates-based Aqua 1 Foundation had purchased $100 million worth of crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial, “becoming the largest publicly known investor in the business.” The news service found that “corporate registries, Aqua 1's digital profile and other public information reveal almost nothing about the source of its capital or the person it named as its founding partner,” noting that “the identities of nearly all of the million-dollar buyers of the World Liberty tokens, which go by $WLFI, are hidden behind anonymous digital wallets.” Reuters estimated then that the company had banked the Trump family around $500 million. 

At the recent Token2049 conference in Dubai, Eric Trump revealed that World Liberty Financial was also involved in a deal by UAE state-backed financial fund MGX to purchase $2 billion of WLF tokens to invest in Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. In 2023, the U.S. settled an investigation into Binance with a $4.3 billion penalty and guilty plea from its founder and former CEO after the company was charged with money laundering and breaking sanctions laws. That same year, the U.S. also began a lawsuit against Binance for breaking various monetary regulations. Two years later, that case was dropped by Trump's SEC “in the exercise of its discretion and as a policy matter” following World Liberty Financial’s $2 billion deal with MGX. 

Chinese-born crypto tycoon Justin Sun, who was previously barred from entering the United States until Trump's SEC froze the fraud investigations against him, reportedly invested $75 million of his own money into World Liberty Financial. Sun has also heavily invested millions in the president's personal “meme coin,” which drastically increased in value in May when the president hosted an exclusive VIP dinner for Sun and other top investors who paid more than $111 million combined. After the president’s dinner with investors was first advertised in April, The Washington Post reported that “the coin’s price has surged more than 30 percent since the announcement … boosting the value of the crypto wallets owned by a digital firm affiliated with Trump’s family business."

Beyond his family ties to crypto businesses and meme coins, the president has relaxed regulations to favor crypto companies and eliminated the federal team investigating crypto crimes.

A recent study by David Kirkpatrick in The New Yorker examined the many, many ways the Trump family is monetizing the presidency to accumulate billions of dollars in personal assets. By far the family's largest influx of value has been through the Trump Media and Technology Group, which last month purchased $2 billion in bitcoin and related securities and “reserved $300 million to buy [additional] Bitcoin options.” Kirkpatrick found that Donald Trump has made more than $1.9 billion from his family's crypto and token ventures.  

On August 13, Kirkpatrick appeared on CNN's Inside Politics to speak about the New Yorker article and pick apart the Trump family’s crypto connections.

A Media Matters review found The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post have published a combined 40 front-page stories about the Trump family's crypto ventures from his inauguration through the end of July — primarily covering the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, the World Liberty Financial business, and Donald Trump's involvement in deregulating crypto. 

The Wall Street Journal referred to Donald Trump's highly lucrative meme coin as “one of the starkest examples of the president benefiting from an industry his administration regulates.” A piece from The New York Times highlighted the stark difference between the criticism of Hillary Clinton's investments and the silence from Washington about Trump's profiteering, calling the current administration “a candidate for the most brazen use of government office in American history.” In an article about the president's crypto investor dinner, The Washington Post reported:

The Post also highlighted a quote from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who posted, “The Trump coin scam is the most brazenly corrupt thing a President has ever done. Not close.”

Major broadcast networks' evening news programs — ABC's World News Tonight, CBS' Evening News, NBC's Nightly News, and PBS' NewsHour — have also detailed Trump’s profiteering scandals, with at least 17 segments since the inauguration dedicated specifically to crypto-related topics, according to a review by Media Matters.

In March, NewsHour covered Trump's extensive connections to crypto and discussed how his presidency could directly impact his personal value through deregulation and creation of a federal crypto reserve. Then in a May segment, NewsHour White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López explained how Trump's crypto investments are a “massive conflict of interest” for his presidency as any industry regulation or policy under his administration “could have a huge effect on President Trump and his family's bottom line.” Earlier that month, ABC's World News Tonight aired a segment on “ethical concerns” around Trump's meme coin dinner that noted “critics [are] condemning it as a brazen example of pay-for-play.” 

By comparison to mainstream media coverage, Fox News and Fox Business have largely ignored President Trump's ties to crypto. A review by Media Matters showed Fox News has referenced “World Liberty Financial” only 3 times since the inauguration, 2 of which came from interviews with the Trump sons, and the network has seemingly ignored the Binance scandal completely. On The Five, a reference co-host Jessica Tarlov made to Trump’s crypto investor dinner — saying it demonstrated “a staggering level of corruption” — was quickly laughed off and dismissed by her colleagues. 

“This is not even part of the segment,” complained co-host Greg Gutfeld.

On August 13 — the same day Kirkpatrick appeared on CNN to detail his report about the Trump family's profits from the presidency — Fox & Friends hosted the two eldest Trump sons to promote World Liberty Financial tokens going public. Co-host Brian Kilmeade referenced criticism of the family's ties to crypto and even shared Kirkpatrick’s New Yorker study, while Donald Trump Jr. claimed the president is “not involved in those things” despite his role as co-founder of World Liberty Financial. The Trumps also defended their investments into crypto by claiming it was their only option after being “debanked” following the failed January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. 

In response, Kilmeade praised the Trumps for their “resilience.” 

Later that day, Eric Trump appeared on Fox Business' The Claman Countdown to promote World Liberty Financial. When host Liz Claman asked how the Trump family can ensure token sales would not be a conflict of interest for the president, Eric Trump sidestepped the question and simply said he's “glad” his father is “leading the way” on crypto. Claman called the WLF token venture “an absolutely fascinating development.” 

An April 9 segment on Special Report with Bret Baier noted the family’s “financial stake in a major platform” and included footage of Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) speaking about “the clear conflicts of interest between the president, personal crypto ventures, and his support of industry-friendly legislation.” However, some of the other segments Fox News aired about Donald Trump's crypto ties were simply platforms for the network’s hosts to attack critics. In January, host Jesse Watters complained that the media were ignoring Trump's $500 billion AI deal and instead “trying to create a scandal” out of the $TRUMP coin sales. 

In a segment that same day on America Reports, Fox correspondent Lauren Simonetti acknowledged criticism of Trump's crypto ventures, claiming of $TRUMP coin: “This is a meme — this is inherently risky. His affiliate organizations own 80% of it and they state this has nothing to do with any political office.” But Simonetti ended the segment by declaring, “The moral of this story is this president, the first crypto president, is firmly at the center of the crypto revolution, and now the regulators are trying to keep up.”

“Well, I mean it’s come down by half,” added anchor John Roberts. “But if you bought it at the start, you would still be in the money.”

On Fox Business' Varney & Co. in June, reporter Madison Alworth said the White House press secretary claimed “the administration has completed all required ethics briefings and remains, quote, ‘committed to transparency and accessibility for the American people.’” Alworth later joked that the $57 million in earnings President Trump had recently gotten from World Liberty Financial was a “nice pay day.” 

President Trump's “crypto czar” David Sacks has appeared on Fox to promote the administration's regulatory changes and even gave an interview to network host Lara Trump who is married to Eric Trump. (The pair have also greatly profited from the family's business.)

In a May 27 interview on Jesse Watters Primetime, Sacks said the crypto “community” was “completely under siege” during the Biden administration. 

“They were being prosecuted, they were being persecuted. They were being subjected to lawfare,” he said. 

Watters then asked whether Donald Trump was engaging in corruption with crypto. 

“Not at all,” Sacks responded, arguing that the charges are “just partisan rhetoric for the Democrats.”

Right-leaning podcasters and MAGA influencers have referenced Donald Trump's connections to crypto sparingly, and in a mostly positive light. 

Podcaster Joe Rogan said he supports $TRUMP token sales, favorably comparing investments in the meme coin to gambling and rigged confidence games. 

“Why not?” Rogan shrugged. “If you can find ways to three-card monte people on the streets of New York, like, OK.”

The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles suggested in January that President Trump's windfall of crypto money just proves he is a good businessman. 

“I don't think this is just about enriching himself personally,” Knowles told his audience. “The launching of the $TRUMP meme coin is a signal to me: Trump is going to fulfill his promises to the bitcoin community.”

“Maybe he’s going to get the federal government to invest a little bit in crypto,” the host continued. “Maybe he’s going to turn the government to be supportive of crypto and bitcoin. And he’s going to make some money in the meantime — he’s showing that this is a real avenue for storing wealth.”

Manosphere podcast Fresh & Fit made similar claims about Trump's success in crypto in June, with guest Charlie (aka “Crypto ACE”) saying, “Obviously he’s making money on it. What's the problem with somebody making money on something that benefits everybody else too?” Co-host Amrou Fudl, known online as Myron Gaines, defended Trump as “the only president that's come in and actually lost money on his net worth.”

The next month, Infowars’ Alex Jones lashed out at those criticizing the president. “People say, oh, Trump's a crypto scammer. No, he's not —  crypto is taking over.” Jones went on to praise Trump for making the U.S. “by policy, the center of crypto world,” while still “going against the globalists big-time.”

Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk claimed, “Hearing some ‘conservative’ Republicans in state office — even those chasing Trump’s endorsement — are now joining Dems to target Crypto. We should be standing with POTUS to defend innovation and financial freedom, not trying to destroy it like the Dems do.” 

He also celebrated Vice President JD Vance’s keynote speech to the Bitcoin 2025 conference and stated, “Under the Trump administration, America is poised to be the center of the crypto revolution.” (Trump headlined the same conference in 2024.)

MAGA television network Newsmax has also praised the Trump family’s success in crypto. In June, network host Greg Kelly said that “nothing that Donald Trump is doing is unconstitutional, illegal, or even remotely unethical” and claimed “everything” the family is doing related to crypto “is above board” because they are doing it “in front of everybody’s faces.” 

A May 20 article on the Newsmax website titled “Trump Meme Coin Is ‘Tracker’ of President's Success” claimed sales of $TRUMP signify the “Golden Age of Crypto-America.” 

In a “Crypto Corner” segment from July, Newsmax's American Agenda reported on a Bloomberg article that “the president has added at least $620 million to his personal fortune in just a few months … thanks to a string of cryptocurrency ventures now outperforming even his real estate holdings.”

“President Trump — he’s not just talking a big game when it comes to embracing crypto assets,” co-host Katrina Szish claimed. “He is living it.”

The Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro has claimed President Trump's connections to foreign governments, including through his family’s crypto investments, are “not a good look.”

Shapiro has called out right-wing media figures for ignoring allegations of corruption, saying, “I think if we switch the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we'd all be freaking out on the right.” He has also called on the Trumps to “stop openly engaging or engaging at all in many of the sort of activities in which they are currently engaged,” including crypto.

Figures on the far right have also criticized the Trump family’s crypto connections. 

Podcast host Stew Peters has compared President Trump's token ventures to a “rug pull” and said in one podcast episode that he is trying to stop people “from getting fucked over by crypto rug-pulling Jew scams like” Trump's.

Neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes has also attacked the Trump family for their “rug-pull” and “crypto scam” meme coins.

Despite Fox News anchor Bret Baier's claim that the Trumps should “100%” receive the same scrutiny as the Bidens, Fox and right-wing media outlets have largely ignored allegations of corruption related to the Trump family crypto schemes. Now, Eric Trump is set to headline the Bitcoin Asia 2025 conference at the end of August, where he is expected to “discuss bitcoin's ‘long-term potential’ and its impact on global finance,” while his father has pledged to establish the U.S. as the “crypto capital of the planet.”

As the Trump family’s investments in the industry continue to grow — and their profits grow with it — right-wing media will have to find new ways to shield the Trump White House from accountability for its self-serving profiteering. 

Find the methodologies for the studies of newspaper front pages, broadcast news shows, and Fox News coverage included in this piece here.