MAGA Base Stays Quiet After Trump Reports Billions in Personal Gains

 

MAGA Base Stays Quiet After Trump Reports Billions in Personal Gains

 

A new mandatory disclosure revealed that the president has earned $2.2 billion during the first year back in the White House.

 

By Emily Davies

July 2, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/02/us/politics/trump-earnings-maga-reaction.html

 

President Trump’s $2.2 billion in personal earnings during his presidency has been met largely with silence from his MAGA base, which has been increasingly willing to revolt against policies they view as an abandonment of his promises to put everyday Americans first.

 

Far-right members of Congress, prominent media pundits and grass-roots activists have criticized Mr. Trump’s war with Iran and openly broken ranks to demand the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. They have accused him of prioritizing his own interests over the needs of the voters who elected him to office.

 

But few far-right voices aligned with Mr. Trump have criticized him over the scale of his personal haul, reported this week, or the conflict inherent in his status as a major cryptocurrency industry operator and its top policymaker.

 

Some described his earnings as a validation of the business acumen they have long admired in him.

 

“Nobody who voted for Donald Trump — a guy with skyscrapers with his name on it, with a plane that has his name on it — is suspect of him making money,” Joe Borelli, the former New York City Council Republican leader and managing director of Chartwell Strategy Group, a lobbying firm, told CNN. “He made his whole career talking about how much money he makes.”

 

Mr. Trump earned about $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses, new mandatory financial disclosures show. A significant portion of that came in 2025, when an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates bought nearly half of the Trump family’s main crypto company, World Liberty Financial. He also collected hundreds of millions of dollars from sales of his $TRUMP memecoin and World Liberty’s sale of its own digital tokens.

 

Mr. Trump both benefits from the crypto industry and dictates policy that shapes it. He has insisted he does not direct the people who run his private enterprises.

 

Kelley Koch, chair of an Iowa group called MAGA Nation, said Mr. Trump’s earnings were proof of his ability to navigate the complicated new frontier of digital finance.

 

“We live in a free country — capitalism,” Ms. Koch said. “He’s extremely smart. He’s a businessman. My kids follow Bitcoin, Polymarket, Kalshi, all of this new tech stuff. If you don’t, you’re going to be left behind.”

 

Democrats, however, seized on the financial disclosures to start a campaign accusing Mr. Trump of corruption, looking to draw contrast between his wealth and the economic reality experienced by most Americans.

 

“Donald Trump stands with the billionaire class,” Representative Haley Stevens of Michigan, who is in a competitive Democratic Senate primary, said on X. “He has no idea what it’s like to live on a Social Security check, and he’s shown he doesn’t care.”

 

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, widely thought to be a 2028 presidential contender, wrote on social media that “Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in America history.”

 

While most Republican officials remained silent on the topic on Thursday, Republicans who have become alienated from Mr. Trump said the revelations from his financial gains validated their belief that he had abandoned his populist platform.

 

Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has formally broken with the Republican Party, said Mr. Trump’s personal enrichment was further proof that MAGA voters needed to abandon the G.O.P.

 

“The GOP is a disaster,” she wrote on X. “The Republican Party hijacked MAGA, pretended to be America First and MAHA, and then sold us all out. Then Trump rubber stamped the entire con job while taking checks from literally everyone.”

 

Ms. Koch said the president’s personal enrichment had not been a topic of conversation among her friends in Iowa, who love Mr. Trump but are also willing to disagree with him. Most recently, they have been frustrated by his decision to sign an executive order that protects production of glyphosate, a pesticide that they believe is causing soaring cancer rates in the state.

 

But Mr. Trump’s billions of dollars in profit did not inspire any outrage — especially not during this time of the year, she said.

 

“Let’s just be honest, people are checked out right now,” Ms. Koch said. “It’s the Fourth, schools are out, and it’s hot here in Iowa.”

 

Emily Davies is a political correspondent for The New York Times.