Revealed: Trump Raked In $1.4 Billion From Crypto, and Even Fox Can't Defend It

Trump's crypto bonanza; Fox News' on-air honesty; and another Democratic Socialist trumps a 15-term member of Congress

Good morning. I’m John Byrne.

Donald Trump raked in nearly $1.4 billion from crypto in his first year back in the White House, while writing the rules that govern the industry. Even Fox News couldn’t keep a straight face about it. An immigration crackdown in South Texas just arrested a Catholic nun on her way to Mass, and even Republicans are mad. And a 29-year-old democratic socialist just unseated a 15-term congresswoman in Colorado, proving New York wasn’t a fluke.

Before we get into it, we need to talk about why you’re getting this from us and not from a cable network owned by a billionaire. Murdoch runs Fox. Bezos owns the Post. The Ellison family just got the green light to put Bari Weiss in charge of both CBS News and CNN. Raw America answers to readers, not to a media mogul with a seat at Mar-a-Lago. We can only keep doing that if readers who are still on the free list decide today is the day they upgrade. Not next week. Today. Every paying subscription is what lets us cover stories like the ones below without asking anyone’s permission first. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

Trump Made $1.4 Billion in Crypto While Writing the Rules for Crypto

Trump’s mandatory financial disclosure dropped this week, and the numbers are staggering. The 927-page filing, released by the Office of Government Ethics, shows the president pulled in nearly $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency in 2025 alone — his first year back in office.

Break it down and it gets worse. Roughly $635 million came from meme coin royalties tied to his $TRUMP coin. More than $500 million came from token sales tied to World Liberty Financial, the crypto company his family co-founded. Another $65 million or so came from equity sales connected to the same venture.

All in, the president reportedly hauled in at least $2.2 billion in 2025: more than triple the $622 million his enterprises pulled in for all of 2024.

Here’s the part nobody in the administration wants you to sit with. Trump is both the biggest operator in the crypto industry and its top policymaker. He shaped federal crypto policy while his family cashed the checks.

One of his biggest paydays came when an investment firm tied to the government of the United Arab Emirates bought a 49 percent stake in World Liberty, days before his inauguration. Soon after, the Emiratis struck a deal with his administration, over the objections of some national security officials, for the export of the exact computer chips that power artificial intelligence.

Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley told NBC News there is no precedent for Trump’s financial entanglements. Asked about the obvious conflict, a White House spokeswoman said Trump “only acts in the best interests of the American public.” Trump himself has noted, more than once, that he considers himself exempt from federal conflict-of-interest laws.

James Madison warned in Federalist 51 that no man should be a judge in his own cause. A president who writes the rules for an industry and then collects a billion dollars from it is the exact thing Madison was trying to prevent. He isn’t judging his own cause anymore. He’s cashing it.

Even Fox News Couldn’t Defend Trump’s Crypto Windfall

You know a story is bad for Trump when Fox News can’t spin it.

On Tuesday, right after reporters grilled Trump about the disclosure outside Air Force One, Fox host Dana Perino tried to make sense of the numbers on air. She couldn’t.

“It was eye-opening for a lot of people that you can make that kind of money,” she said. Then the quiet part: “Maybe it is in crypto, maybe it’s not, but it does feel a little bit like, wait, what is going on?”

She wasn’t done. “They’re not on the most solid ground here,” she admitted, allowing that Trump “did a decent job of trying to get the ball down the field a little bit and to deflect, but there’s no doubt about that.”

Perino reached for the old Hunter Biden playbook, joking his mistake was only asking for $10 million from Ukraine. But the comparison collapses under its own weight. Hunter Biden was a private citizen. Donald Trump is the sitting president, setting policy for the very industry making him rich.

Even her co-host Bill Hemmer saw the storm coming. If Republicans lose Congress, he warned, “that’s when the investigations come. That’s when the questions come. And then you get that steady drumbeat.”

When the president’s own state media is muttering “wait, what is going on,” you’re not watching spin. You’re watching a defense fall apart in real time. And Hemmer is right: the only thing between this and a real investigation is which party controls Congress in January.

Raw America doesn’t wait for a subpoena to tell you what’s in a 927-page filing. We don’t have a billionaire owner to protect or an ad department to keep happy. We have readers. If you want reporting that follows the money no matter whose it is, become a paying subscriber today.

ICE Arrested a Nun on Her Way to Mass — and South Texas Turned on Trump

Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja, a Catholic nun from Nigeria, was walking to Sunday Mass in McAllen, Texas, when federal immigration officers stopped her, took her rosary, and put her in handcuffs.

She was released hours later, but only after Democratic and Republican lawmakers scrambled to intervene. The Diocese of Brownsville says she’s a nurse who entered the country legally and has worked more than a decade in local Texas hospitals. ICE didn’t respond to questions about why she was detained.

Here’s what makes this different. The backlash came from the Rio Grande Valley — a region that broke for Trump in 2024. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, a Republican who flipped her border district in 2022, joined Democrats calling for the nun’s release.

“A Catholic nun on her way to church is not a threat to our community,” she wrote on Facebook.

Ugboaja’s arrest is only the latest to spark anger across the aisle in South Texas. Three teenage mariachi musicians. Construction workers. Cases involving children and people already granted protection from deportation. Trump won 12 of 14 Texas border counties last election, mostly on discontent over Biden’s handling of immigration. Now the overreach is pushing those same voters away.

Rep. Henry Cuellar put it plainly. If the administration had closed the border, deported criminals, and stopped there, it would’ve been welcome news. But they didn’t stop there. They started grabbing people off the streets, and that part is turning Hispanic voters back toward Democrats.

When a government can’t tell the difference between a violent criminal and a nun holding a rosary, it isn’t enforcing the law. It’s just showing you it can.

A 29-Year-Old Socialist Just Ousted a 15-Term Incumbent in Colorado

If you thought the New York primaries were a one-off, Colorado just replied.

Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist, defeated Rep. Diana DeGette in Tuesday’s Denver-area Democratic primary. DeGette isn’t some backbencher: she’s a 15-term incumbent who leads a powerful health care subcommittee. Kiros, an immigrant and first-time candidate, was born the year after DeGette first took office. In a district this blue, the primary win all but guarantees her a seat in Congress.

Kiros ran as an outsider taking on an affordability crisis she argued the Democratic establishment had failed to fix. Her grassroots campaign overcame DeGette’s fundraising advantage, including a late flood of outside spending, some tied to pro-Israel PACs. Early Wednesday she led by nearly 10 points with more than 90 percent counted. Bernie Sanders had endorsed her.

The pattern is unmistakable. Zohran Mamdani froze the rent in New York. Now Denver has sent its own signal. DeGette ran hard on her liberal credentials, even airing an ad featuring AOC praising her support for universal health care. It wasn’t enough. The establishment keeps assuming these races are flukes. Voters keep telling them otherwise.

Support Independent Media

If today’s newsletter told you anything, it is that this administration cannot get out of its own way, and somebody has to keep track of all of it. Today alone we covered Trump’s crypto scam and Fox News’ disastrous response, and a nun arrested by Trump’s ICE Gestapo. Raw America does this work without a billionaire owner calling the shots. If you have been reading on a free subscription, today is the day to upgrade to a paying membership. Every subscription goes directly toward keeping this kind of reporting alive. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

I’m John Byrne. Thanks for staying in the fight.