Eric Schmitt
Appearances
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
In response to all this, Hegseth said,
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Women obviously play a very important role in the military, but he doesn't really address some of the most extreme things that he's written and said in the past.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
We have to have a standards-based military. Again, going back to his theme about focusing on the warrior ethos and not some of the DEI characteristics of the current administration.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
That's what he's implying. He's basically saying that in order to accommodate, whether it's gender politics or other politics within the military, you've lowered the standards, the effectiveness standards of your basic soldiers here. And that's just not the case. The most elite units have got A specific test that both men and women who serve in those units have to pass.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And then some of the allegations started seeping out about his misconduct. The Times unearthed a letter from his mother in 2018 saying he treats women terribly. His mom later said that she wrote that letter in anger, but still... Then we learned about an alleged sexual assault in 2017. Right. So these things are starting to pile up.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
It's not like there's a test for women and a test for men in these elite units. And to say, you know, that the standards have been, you know, warped under the current administration to serve their progressive politics, that's not right. And this is what some of these Democratic senators are saying, saying, wait a minute now, you know, they're calling him on it.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
So that was the Democrats. But what was perhaps the most interesting and one of the most awaited parts of this hearing was the support that Hexeth seemed to get from Republican Senator Joni Ernst.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
She is a combat veteran and also a sexual assault survivor, somebody who is seen as a pivotal figure in these hearings.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Where they do seem to kind of come together now is this question of standards.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Men and women must meet the same high standards. They must be physically able to achieve those standards in order to serve in these units. That, of course, is one of the main things that he's trying to get across. And now she seems to be saying the same thing.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
That's right. Other Republicans on the committee want to zero in on the whole question of standards and how the military should be based on merit and skill rather than DEI qualities.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And not the wokeness that they claim is making America weak and making America's military weak.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Senators such as Senator Tuberville of Alabama talking about how the military is way too focused on identity issues.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
This is why P. Hegseth has to be installed right away so that he can get to the job of focusing the nation's military on warfighting. That's really what's important here.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And then we talked to former colleagues of his who talk about allegations of public drunkenness. I mean, any one of these things, you know, would have been enough to sink... a nominee in another time, but not Pete Hegseth. Right. So going into the hearing, I think there were really three major questions about how it would unfold. The first would be, what do the Democrats do?
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
That is the focus that they have, which goes on for several senators.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
So another main area of questioning for the Democrats is just Mr. Hegseth's qualifications for the job. And this is where Democrats really leaned in, as if they were treating Hegseth to a job interview.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Senators like Tim Kaine and Mark Kelly zero in on Hegseth's conduct. They asked him about extramarital affairs that he has acknowledged he's had.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
They asked him about allegations of sexual assault.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
He asked him about reports of his excessive drinking.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
All of which is to say, you know, with this kind of background, you know, how in the world can we, you know, endorse you as the head of the Defense Department?
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And in fact, Gary Peters, one of the senators from Michigan, basically... equated the Senate, at least the committee here, as a board of directors. And they're kind of grilling Hexeth on his limited job experiences.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And Peters in particular says, you got to be kidding me.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
You wouldn't be hired as a CEO of one of the biggest companies in the country. And that's basically what the Pentagon is. You're basically being hired as the CEO of the Defense Department.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
In response to all this, the Republicans kind of turned the idea of job qualifications inside out.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
You had Senator Wicker, the chairman, basically making a joke out of it, saying, you know, how many people do we supervise?
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Then you have Senator Mullen of Oklahoma, who's basically saying, wait a minute, who among us hasn't had a drink too many at work or had an affair?
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Do they recognize this is a foregone conclusion and basically meet Pete Hegseth on his own terms, or do they go to war with him? The second, for Republicans... Do they acknowledge any misgivings at all about Pete Hegseth's conduct, his fitness for the job, his experience, anything at all that would appear to give a crack in their support for him? Or do they just fall in line?
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Another Republican senator, a new senator, Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL, also weighed in on this.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
basically making the case that Hexeth has the experience that matters most. And he goes on to grill him about, you know, what kind of ammunition goes in certain kind of rifles and what tactics would you use in certain situations.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Yeah, he talks about, you know, what kind of batteries and night vision goggles. And it's just, it's kind of like, this is what real warriors care about, you know, not this other stuff. Let's get on with what's really important here, the Republicans seem to be saying.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Exactly. And along the way, you know, Democrats just seem completely unconvinced by any of this approach. Democrats are on the line. This guy is just a yes man for the president. He will do anything. He is so loyal to the president, he could even violate human rights or other laws or other norms and conventions to satisfy him.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Right, and there's this interesting exchange that Hexeth has with Senator Angus King of Maine.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
where he talks about the rules of war and the law of armed conflict and what U.S. soldiers shouldn't be having to do.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
It gets to, you know, Hex says... As a guy who used to be on the ground in these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this suspicion of higher officials, including perhaps some lawyers, who put restrictions on the soldiers who are going after bad guys in Hezik's view. Right.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
It may not mean to follow, not follow, but at least to challenge, to challenge the higher authority. And again, that puts Hexeth back in where he's been and where he's most comfortable. He's the grunt. He's an officer who is on the ground in the fight. He's certainly indicating challenging a chain of command or higher authorities that don't have these priorities in mind that he does.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
This is just another moment where Hegseth is kind of showing he's going to be a very unconventional defense secretary. Going back, he's going to be a disruptor, just like his boss.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And then the third question is, how would Pete Hegseth carry himself? Again, remember, this is the firebrand Fox News commentator. He's used to being on television and really being hard-edged in the MAGA world. Or do we see a different version of him where he's kind of buttoned up, the Princeton grad, and ready to play nice with Democrats and maybe soften some of their opposition?
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
I think you're right, Michael, that this election was about change and was about disruption. I think the Democrats have had to pick and choose which of these key cabinet offices they're going to challenge. On some, such as its Secretary of State, they're going to go along with this most likely. But they've drawn the line at the Pentagon, at least for now.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
But they just think he is the wrong guy at the wrong time at this place. In this case, they seem fine with the risk that they're going against the trend of disruption. The Pentagon is too important, too important an institution to put in the hands of such an inexperienced and unfit candidate, in their view.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Thank you.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
You know, which Pete Hegseth shows up in what form, and how does he present himself in this hearing?
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
So the hearing starts at 930 on Tuesday morning, and this is the Senate Armed Services Committee. And their job is basically to recommend or not for all their Senate colleagues, you know, how should they vote on this guy? Again, remember, Republicans are in control as of the last election, but there's a very narrow margin and it's still a question of whether the Republicans will hold together.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
So Hexeth takes his seat in front of the dais, and he looks kind of like you would see him on television, sporting a navy blue suit with a red tie, an American flag pocket square. And his wife and several other women, including Megyn Kelly, are sitting right behind him in support.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Roger Wicker of Mississippi is the chairman who starts with an opening statement.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Wicker signals pretty much from his opening statement the Republicans are going to be a heat shield for Pete Hegseth in his hearings.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
You know, the Biden administration has weakened the American military. The American service members are worn out. Recruiting is in the tank. It's just, you know, we need a jolt here.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And so this very quickly from the chairman of the committee makes it sound, you know, there's not going to be any doubts raised from his side of the aisle here at least.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
That's right. I mean, there are no reservations at all. It's full speed ahead.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And then we get our first statement from the senior Democrat on the committee. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who's been on the committee for years, is a West Point graduate Army veteran himself, and he actually starts out with some niceties.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
But then... Reid, who's a relatively soft-spoken guy, not bombastic of all.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
He just launches into this extraordinarily harsh assessment of Pete Hexeth's qualifications.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Again, remember, this guy has a television personality, so he's on now. The light is on for him to speak. And he starts off, you know, quite deliberately trying to disarm the senators.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Saying this is going to be... A hearing where he's looking out for the best of the nation. He's going to work across the aisle as much as he can.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
He turns and he thanks his wife for her support.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
He tries to name his seven kids. Luke, Rex. Sorry, it's a lot of them. He forgets one of the names, which draws kind of a laugh. Right, I mean, who among us? Seven kids. Yeah, who among us? And then something dramatic happens inside the hearing room.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Not only that, you are a... Pecklers start screaming, you know, in protest of Hegseth's nomination. And the Capitol Police rush over and basically hustle this guy out.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And Hexeth tries to get going again. He tries to kind of regain his momentum with this.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And then another heckler jumps up and starts screaming at something else. You may continue, sir. So it's very disruptive initially.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And this is all at a time when, you know, Pete Hexeth is trying to talk about how he's going to transform the woke military that has sunk to new lows into this, you know, new department of warriors.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And so how do you get that powerful military? You do that by focusing on the mission of the military, the building up of military might, and not being distracted by what Republicans say Democrats have spent too much time on of DEI policies and progressive politics and getting away from basic tenets of military effectiveness,
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
You know, he openly acknowledges he's not your usual defense secretary.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And what he says is, you know, I'm bringing a new, fresh approach to this. Thank you for the time.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
That's right. And remember, this is just the introduction to this hearing. Right. And the real fireworks are yet to come because the question and answer is going to go on for hours with... The Democrats and Republicans lining up. The partisan lines have been thrown down on both sides. And that's where the drama is really going to unfold in this hearing.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
So one of the big topics that came up, particularly from Democrats, who launched into Hegstaff's comments and what he's written about women in the military. And in the weeks leading up to this hearing, he's tried to walk some of those comments back. The Democrats haven't had a chance to really talk this thing through.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And this is their first time to really confront him with what he's actually said and written on this.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Jeanne Shaheen, for instance, the Democratic senator from New Hampshire, was one of several female Democrat senators who took Hexathon.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
Well, I think you said it's just amazing how unconventional Pete Hexeth's nomination is. I mean, when his nomination was announced, we all kind of scratched our heads and went, you mean the Fox News anchor, that guy? Right. And, you know, as it turned out, you know, he did have a record. He had run a couple of veterans groups.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And Shaheen, among others, really launches in some really tough questioning positions.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
This was something that other Democratic senators, including Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, also picked on.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And basically saying, wait a minute here, we already have women who are serving in the military and serving in some of these combat positions in the infantry and ground combat roles.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
And then you've got other senators. Senator Elizabeth Warren says, well, wait a minute. You've had these kind of vague pronouncements of how women are so great in the military.
The Daily
Drunkenness, Women and Wokeness: A Dramatic Confirmation Hearing for Pete Hegseth
It seems like you've had this conversion when you're trying to sand the hard edges off your myriad public comments about this.
The Daily
The Crypto President
Yeah, in fact, I mean, one of the things I also did was I went to some cryptocurrency conferences, including one that happened to be in Washington, D.C. And I had the list with me and I'm walking around and there's this guy right in front of me from Tenzor Capital that was on the list. And it's like, wow, that's convenient. And so I asked him, here, I've got you on my list.
The Daily
The Crypto President
I was wondering, why did you decide to buy the Trump token? and what he said was that he was confident that Trump was gonna make a lot of money on this, and if Trump was gonna make a lot of money, that he wanted to make money too.
The Daily
The Crypto President
So that's one group of investors, but there's another that we found, and these are people who are enthusiastic about Trump's plans for crypto, because Trump by this point has announced that he's gonna significantly curtail the regulatory reach of the government as it comes to crypto, and these investors wanted to send a signal to President Trump that we support this effort.
The Daily
The Crypto President
Then we found that there's people who bought the token who previously been investigated themselves. So these are people who'd been charged with breaking federal laws that are buying the Trump token and celebrating the fact that he's going to basically restrict the powers of the federal regulators that had gone after them previously.
The Daily
The Crypto President
I mean, the best example is Justin Sun, who has a company called Tron.
The Daily
The Crypto President
Yeah, Justin Sun became a phenomenon when he's the guy that bought at an art auction a banana that had been taped to the wall for millions of dollars and then proceeded to eat the banana as a stunt.
The Daily
The Crypto President
Yes. He likes being in the limelight. In 2023, he was accused of violating United States securities law, and he was in the midst of a very intense battle to avoid being sanctioned by the United States government. Then Trump is reelected to a second term, and that's when Justin Sun decides to commit tens of millions of dollars to World Liberty Financial. He's purchased $75 million of the token. Hmm.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And ultimately, after Trump is elected and appoints new leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the United States government and Justin Sun's lawyers agree to put the case on hold. It hasn't yet been dropped, but essentially the investigation has been frozen.
The Daily
The Crypto President
I mean, if you look at the sequence of events, that's how it unfolds. Justin Sun is accused of wrongdoing. Justin Sun puts up tens of millions of dollars into a Trump family business venture, and then the investigation stops. Now, World Liberty Financial says that there have been no quid pro quos, no deals made here that if you buy in, we'll get you actions from the federal government.
The Daily
The Crypto President
One of the first things that World Liberty Financial does is with this $550 million that have come into their coffers through people buying their token is they take some of that money and they start buying other cryptocurrencies, tens of millions of dollars. They buy some Bitcoin. They buy another cryptocurrency called Ether.
The Daily
The Crypto President
They're creating their own mini reserve of like foreign currency reserves.
The Daily
The Crypto President
That's right. But here's the problem. Shortly after they begin to build this inventory of all these other cryptocurrencies, President Trump announces that he wants to create a federal crypto reserve and that one of the cryptocurrencies that it's going to include is Ether. And the family company has already bought tens of millions of dollars of Ether.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And the moment that President Trump announces that Ether is going to be in that reserve, suddenly the price of Ether surges. And effectively, he's writing himself a check because he has a personal financial interest in it.
The Daily
The Crypto President
That's right. And the Trump family has said that it did not sell any of its Ether, but it has moved some of it to a different platform where we can't see whether or not it's buying and selling. So we don't really know for sure. And this is just the beginning of the conflicts of interest that have emerged as a result of the continuing operations of World Liberty Financial.
The Daily
The Crypto President
Now that President Trump is in office. There's something else that's called a stable coin that they are just now issuing that's created a whole new field of conflicts.
The Daily
The Crypto President
Yes, I'm sorry. A stablecoin is a type of a crypto token that does not fluctuate in value.
The Daily
The Crypto President
So what they want people to do is to come to them with any kind of a crypto and you deposit it at World Liberty Financial, bring your Bitcoin, and you can transfer that Bitcoin into a certain number of stablecoins that will have a dollar value every day, no matter what is happening in the cryptocurrency markets.
The Daily
The Crypto President
The first term, it's almost quaint in comparison. The scale of the conflicts and the amount of money in play is so much greater, and the complexity of the conflicts are greater. It's no longer an appearance of a conflict of interest. It is clearly a conflict of interest.
The Daily
The Crypto President
Yeah, it's an alternative form of cash, which is sort of like you might wonder, well, why are they doing this if we already have cash?
The Daily
The Crypto President
But this is a way that the cryptocurrency industry says we're going to create a less volatile token that you can use to transact with. Because if all these kinds of cryptos are constantly changing in price, you can't really use it to buy and sell things. So this is the crypto industry's answer as to how they can create a relatively stable currency.
The Daily
The Crypto President
It's called the stablecoin, and World Liberty Financial is now in the stablecoin industry.
The Daily
The Crypto President
It turns out that stablecoins are one of the most profitable chunks of the whole world of cryptocurrency because they could take that digital money that you brought them and they can earn a really big return on it. And they could potentially make hundreds of millions of dollars a year by effectively earning money off of your money.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And so now World Liberty Financial, as of this week, is issuing stable coins and selling them. And it's actually already asserts that it has a billion dollars worth of stable coin deposits. And so it's suddenly overnight become one of the largest stable coin issuers in the world.
The Daily
The Crypto President
Yes, in fact, this is in fact one of the most startling conflicts of interest that we have seen so far. Congress is considering legislation that would regulate stablecoins, and Trump is trying to press Congress to enact the legislation that would be beneficial to World Liberty Financial.
The Daily
The Crypto President
It will be a federal recognition and endorsement of the stablecoin industry. And suddenly what you're going to see is that stable coins are going to become part of the whole financial marketplace. And they're going to start to become even rivals to banks. It's going to significantly increase the scale of this industry. And the Trump family is positioned to profit enormously from that.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And the president is prepared to sign that legislation that will then bring himself and his family enormous profits.
The Daily
The Crypto President
The White House says to us that President Trump has no conflicts of interest because he turned over his financial assets to his sons and that his sons are running the business. That's not entirely true. What President Trump did in 2017 when he was first elected was that he transferred all of his assets to to the control of his sons, but President Trump himself is still the financial beneficiary.
The Daily
The Crypto President
Yeah, I mean, the Trump family in the second term is effectively unleashed. They're no longer hesitant about pursuing profits without restraint. You know, and by far the biggest and most problematic conflict that my colleagues, David, Yaffe, Bellany, Ben Protest, and I have found as we've looked at this, it relates to the president's interest in cryptocurrency.
The Daily
The Crypto President
So he still has a direct financial interest in all this, including in World Liberty Financial and the meme coin. But President Trump says there is no conflict of interest because he no longer runs the companies.
The Daily
The Crypto President
Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. You know, most people aren't invested in crypto. But really, there's a lot of reasons here that this is a cause of concern. I mean, first of all, we're just used to having a nation where the commander in chief is pursuing the interests of the public and does not have personal financial interests that are potentially affecting the choices that he's making.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And it may be, you know, influencing federal policy in ways that are more self-interested than in the public's interest. Beyond that, while crypto is still a pretty isolated part of the U.S. and global economy, the goal of World Liberty is to merge the crypto sector and the traditional banking sector.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have both expressed concern about the volatility of cryptocurrency and how if there were to suddenly be a huge downturn in crypto, if these two sectors are intertwined, economy. That's a concern that we'll see how that plays out in the next several years.
The Daily
The Crypto President
It's a pretty radical turnaround. I mean, this is the same guy who in 2019 was tweeting that he's not a fan of cryptocurrency because it's involved in drug trade and other illegal activity. Right. And then by 2024, he's at a... cryptocurrency conference and calling how he's going to make the United States the crypto capital of the world and is embracing crypto.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And a few things happened in between that changed his tune. And that includes millions of dollars in campaign contributions coming in from the cryptocurrency industry, which was quite frustrated with the Biden administration and its very intense regulatory posture relative to crypto.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And also just a sense that this crypto community, both of crypto enthusiasts who are buyers of crypto and the corporate world that is backing it, that that was a constituency that he could pick up because it represents a slice of America, both donors and voters, that felt disaffected and might as well go grab them and bring them onto your side. And he did that quite effectively. Mm-hmm.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And another thing that was happening in the background was Don Jr., his oldest son, and Eric, who are the key players in the family business operations, went to the dad Trump and said, you know what, this is a business that we actually want to embrace for political reasons and also for potentially profit making reasons. So they came up with two ideas.
The Daily
The Crypto President
One was to launch something called the meme coin, which is like a it's a collectible. And the second was to launch a whole new business that they call World Liberty Financial, which is effectively a cryptocurrency bank. And those were the two business venture ideas they came up with, and they began to pursue even before the election.
The Daily
The Crypto President
A meme coin is effectively, it's sort of like a beanie baby or a baseball card. It's something that is limited in numbers and that people want as a collectible. And they can become quite valuable really quickly. They can go up in value because there's a certain amount of them, they're a commodity, and if people want them and they're willing to pay a lot, then they'll suddenly surge in value.
The Daily
The Crypto President
But the people who issue these meme coins, they say that, well, they're not an investment vehicle, they're a collectible, so you're welcome to buy them if you'd like. And so it's 9.44 p.m. on January 17th. And hundreds of people are gathering for a crypto ball in advance of Trump's inauguration.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And on that evening, Trump posts on True Social that my new official meme coin is here and it's time to celebrate and everyone should go buy it. And it has a picture of him on this card that you get if you buy the meme coin with his fist in the air. And it says, fight, fight, fight.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And so when the president elect the United States announces on True Social that you should go buy my collectible, in fact, hundreds of thousands of people around the world did. And it suddenly overnight became one of the most popular and most valuable meme coins in the world.
The Daily
The Crypto President
The Trump family controls 80% of the meme coins that eventually will be issued by this platform. But they haven't sold any of them yet. So that's just paper money. We know that for sure. Yes, it's theoretical money. We can see in the marketplace that they haven't sold it.
The Daily
The Crypto President
But they also make money every time there's a purchase and a sale and there's a transaction, there's a small cut that's taken by the issuer of the meme coin. And so we were able to determine with the help of some crypto analytical companies that there was more than $100 million just as of March in transaction fees that were generated as a result of these transactions.
The Daily
The Crypto President
So it was already generating tens of millions or $100 million for President Trump, members of his family, and their business partners that launched this meme coin. But there were some real losers because what happened with the Trump meme coin is that the price spiked almost instantaneously from 17 cents to $75. And everyone looked at that and think, wow, I better get in on this.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And buy it because it's going to go even higher. And just as it hit $75, the crash began. And it went down just as quickly as it went up. And there were hundreds of thousands of people who bet their own money on this Trump meme coin who then quickly became losers and were left with large losses on this speculative bet that they had made following the advice of President-elect Trump.
The Daily
The Crypto President
It's not illegal if you follow the fine print, which says, buyer beware, this is a collectible. This is not an investment.
The Daily
The Crypto President
But that said, traditionally, if there had been a launch like this, an overnight, one of the most valuable meme coins in the world, what I've been told is that this likely would have resulted in a review by staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission to see whether or not there was any potential violations of federal law. Mm-hmm. And that did not occur.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And in fact, what happened was soon after Trump became president and he appointed an acting head at the SEC, there was a new policy that was issued that formally announced for the first time that meme coins will not be the subject of investigations or regulatory actions to punish issuers of meme coins.
The Daily
The Crypto President
That's right. And now, more recently, as the meme coin was bottoming out in value, President Trump and his financial backers announced that they're going to have a contest that says for the top 220 holders of this cryptocurrency, that they're going to get an invite to have a private special dinner at the Trump Golf Club in suburban Washington with the President of the United States.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And they create a leaderboard with like an online game where you can bid yourself up on the rankings to see where you are. The more you buy, the higher your rankings. And they say that you have to have a certain ranking for between now and the middle of May in order to be eligible for this dinner.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And so, I mean, again, it's like they're directly selling access to the President of the United States if you buy his meme coin that's gonna bring him and his family profits. And not only that, but they say for the top people, at the top of the 220, we will give you a tour of the White House.
The Daily
The Crypto President
That's right. I mean, you know, this is not a campaign contribution. This is a payment that benefits financially the president and his family. And that's what makes it so unprecedented is, yeah, we live in a democracy where campaign contributions are legal. And if you make a lot of them, you get more access.
The Daily
The Crypto President
But we don't live in a country where traditionally if you pay the elected president of the United States money personally, then you can have dinner with him and you've enriched his family personally. And so that's the distinction here is that the president and his family are personally profiting from this.
The Daily
The Crypto President
But as we continued to look at this and learned more about the meme coin, what we realized is that this was just a small piece of the cryptocurrency efforts that the Trump family was undertaking. And in fact, the scale of the self-enrichment was even greater with their second venture that they call World Liberty Financial.
The Daily
The Crypto President
World Liberty is effectively a cryptocurrency bank. This is the Trump family saying, we're going to become the JPMorgan Chase of the cryptocurrency world, and we're going to make a lot of money doing it. So at first, this new business venture is kicked off shortly before the election. It's not taken very seriously. It's being promoted by three of Trump's sons. Eric Trump, Don Jr.
The Daily
The Crypto President
and Barron, who's now becoming a part of the family business ventures. And then they've got other outside partners that for the most part we'd never heard of. I mean, a guy named Zach Folkman, Chase Hero, who were these serial entrepreneurs that have had a series of business failures. They sold a colon cleanser. One of them was selling, you know, kind of how to pick up hot girls advice.
The Daily
The Crypto President
No, it really was called that. It was a website called DateHotterGirls.com. Wow. And then Zach Witkoff, who's the son of Trump's new Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, who's a real estate lawyer and a friend of Trump's for years. And so it's the Trump sons and these other players that we've not heard of before.
The Daily
The Crypto President
They lay out some of these ambitions in something they call the gold paper, which on the title page has this large portrait of Donald Trump with gold paint splashed across it. Trump's face is on every single page of this document that details their ambitions. And, you know, they start off by just introducing this token that certain types of investors can buy in October of 2024.
The Daily
The Crypto President
That's right. It's very different from the meme coin. This is a token that gives buyers a say in the governance of this new financial institution. And it can't be bought and sold very rapidly. It has all kinds of rules around it. But the Trump family from the start was going to own billions of these tokens more than anyone else.
The Daily
The Crypto President
It's actually quite a flop, and they way underperformed their target of having $300 million in sales. They only attract a fraction of that total. But Trump then wins the election, and from the night of the election, the money starts to pour in, where suddenly... There are people that want to try to influence Trump.
The Daily
The Crypto President
There are people who see him as a winner and someone that's likely going to have a successful cryptocurrency venture. And it goes from having a hard time raising money to raising $550 million in token sales. Wow. So that's a startling number. And as reporters at The New York Times, it opens up a bunch of questions for us. Who are these people? Why are they buying the token?
The Daily
The Crypto President
And what types of conflicts of interest is this going to create when President Trump is back in office and appointing the regulators who are going to oversee his own business?
The Daily
The Crypto President
So one thing about cryptocurrency is that these transactions occur on something called the blockchain, which is essentially a public ledger of all transactions. And so anytime someone was buying the World Liberty token, their wallet, which is a long number, was publicly available to see. So we could see 85,000 different wallets, ultimately, that bought $550 million worth of this token. Hmm.
The Daily
The Crypto President
But all you see is a really long number and you don't know who's behind that wallet. And so as a team of reporters at the Times, we were like, we need to figure out who some of these buyers are. So the first thing we did was we went to a company called Nansen, which is a cryptocurrency analytics company. And we said to the folks at Nansen, can you do an analysis of all of these 85,000 wallets?
The Daily
The Crypto President
And can you tell us who some of them are? And they came back to us with a spreadsheet of a bunch of possible buyers of World Liberty financial tokens. And they were from all over the world. They were from Gibraltar, from Israel, from Asia, Europe and the United States. But they were more foreign than domestic.
The Daily
The Crypto President
And a lot of them operating out of countries that you pick if you want to not have a lot of financial transparency, in fact. And so we decided we had to actually reach every single one of those companies and individuals to confirm that they actually were a buyer because maybe there was a mistake in the data analysis. It was a very laborious process because a lot of them did not want to be found.
The Daily
‘I Felt Ashamed.’ Why One Lawyer Resigned When His Firm Caved to Trump
As you stand here right now, we have gone from a Trump slump to a Trump train wreck. Our 401ks, our 201ks, our costs at Walmart and Home Depot and Target are going up. And where is Donald Trump? He's golfing. So to Donald Trump, I say, get your ass off the golf course and face the people.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
And I think Trump enjoys that and wants to let his secretary survive in this crisis.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
Well, Pete Hegseth basically says, no, it was not classified. But we have talked to several senior military officials and pilots who have flown these missions who say it certainly had to have been classified when it was shared. Whether it was declassified perhaps after the fact is possible, but we don't know that.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
Absolutely. And this veterans community is, in many regards, outraged by this. Not just by what we've talked about before, about disclosure of secret information, the risk it puts, but it also goes to the very concept of competence. is this administration competent? Is this defense secretary competent?
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
And one of the military operations that, of course, the Trump administration is focused on the most is the fiasco of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and how that went so badly. And so here comes Pete Hegseth, here comes President Trump saying, we're going to change all that. And we're going to get back to the basics of what this military does so well, lethal combat operations. And I think
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
Once you start undermining this, I think it's very clear to the active duty military what's going on here. This would never be tolerated in a normal situation. And for the veterans community, for the reasons you've just articulated, I think, too, it's raised some real questions about their support for this president at this moment.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
It was sent just two hours or so before the first strikes were to take place against the Houthis on March 15th. And you don't want this information getting out ahead of any attack because it puts, in this case, U.S. pilots at risk. And so almost by definition, officials are telling us this had to be classified at the time.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
Okay, so let me give you one example. Two hours before this attack takes place, Pete Hanks alerts this group that this is gonna happen. The first group of F-18 Super Hornets off the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman, which is in the Red Sea, these are about to take off. He's basically saying to anybody who might get ahold of this information, you have two hours
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
to adjust your defenses on the ground if you're the Houthis. And so this gives them advance warning to prepare to go after these planes in a much more aggressive way than they might be able to.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
Well, they're telling us they're angry, they're disappointed, because in a lot of ways, Pete Hexeth has come in and said, I'm one of you guys. I'm not one of the brass. I'm not one of these retired generals or retired lawmakers. I'm a rank-and-file guy. He wants to be one of the troops.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
You know, I think he wanted to be able to show off a little bit of what the military was doing by demonstrating the detailed strikes that were coming. But I think people are just shocked that he would be talking about this on a commercial messaging app. And if they had been caught doing this, they would have been brought up on charges and maybe court-martialed.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
That's right. They're saying it's reckless, it's cavalier, and it's careless. All things that can get people killed in combat.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
It's probably a little bit of both. He likes Pete Hexeth. Just earlier last week, he had an Oval Office ceremony to announce a new fighter jet named the P-47, 47 being President Trump. But Pete Hexeth was right at his side, cheering him on. And so I think... What Hegseth brings is a tremendous amplifier of President Trump's priorities.
The Daily
Trump 2.0: Group Chats and a New Spat
And that's when you talk to Hegseth and any time he makes public remarks, he comes back to the things that President Trump is doing. He's rooting out diversity issues in the military. He's sending troops to the southwest border where they are now. He is going to beef up the military and restore its lethality. Those are the themes that keeps coming back.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
Again, we don't think that any child has the right to dictate what the school does.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
We've never said that there's an independent right to be noted for schools to anticipate what parents might object to, but when parents know something, there could be a sincere religious burden.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
The strict scrutiny analysis would favor the board in that situation because it would be impossible for the board to satisfy every student's needs about what's on the board.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
Parents everywhere care about how their young children are taught sexuality and gender identity.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
Forcing petitioners to submit their children to such instruction violates their religious beliefs and directly interferes with their ability to direct the religious upbringing of their children.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
One family moved in with grandparents to afford private school. Another is homeschooling at the loss of $25,000 a year in special services the school provided their daughter with Down syndrome. Most have no alternatives.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
Parents, not school boards, should have the final say on such religious matters. I welcome the court's questions.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
No, we know that the teachers are required to use the books when the books were first introduced.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
One of the schools, the Sherwood School in June for Pride Month, said that they were going to read one book each day to celebrate Pride Month.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
Again, courts would be engaged in religious discrimination.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
I'm not sure that's correct, Your Honor. I think for a child of that age, it's hard to express what their actual concerns are.
The Daily
Children’s Books Go Before the Supreme Court
And the lawyer for the parents says... These books were approved for pre-K, which in Montgomery County can start as early as three if they're going to turn four that fall. They're quite young.