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If you’re looking for one image to summarize the grifter’s paradise that was Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency dinner Thursday night, behold:
The event was a private dinner with the president at Trump National Golf Club, where “investors spent an estimated $148 million on the $TRUMP meme coin to secure their seats ... with the top-25 holders spending more than $111 million,” Reuters reported, citing crypto intelligence firm Inca Digital. Reuters also cited an analysis that found the Trumps have made $320.19 million in fees from their meme coins.
And the person in the photo is Justin Sun, a MAGA-aligned crypto bro who said he was “awarded” what he identified as a “Trump Gold Tourbillon” (a Trump-branded watch that retails for $100,000). The White House didn’t immediately respond to MSNBC’s question as to whether the president actually gifted this watch to Sun.
Sun, whose dubious ventures have previously enlisted celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan and Jake Paul, claimed he’s the top holder (that is, the largest investor) of Trump’s meme coin, which has drawn many foreign investors — itself a whole ethical and legal quagmire.
His investments in Trump have been considerable — but, for him, arguably worthwhile. Sun has been in the news in the last few months because, after he plowed $75 million into Trump family crypto, per NBC News, the SEC put a 60-day pause on the charges of market manipulation and offering unregistered securities it had been pursuing against him since 2023. (Sun did not reply to NBC News’ request for comment, but denied any wrongdoing to The Wall Street Journal in April.)
NBC News published a dispatch on the president’s event, for a more thorough picture of the various attendees and the MAGA movement’s blatant disregard for ethics.
But to really catch the flavor of what’s happening, it’s these images of brazen wealth and intolerably open corruption that one would expect from a president dead-set on dragging the United States back to the Gilded Age, an era marked by immense wealth inequality and widespread corruption.
As Chris Hayes noted on “All In” on Thursday, the contrasting images of Trump that day — whipping votes for a House budget with deep cuts to social programs, such as food aid and health care, in the morning, and in the evening reportedly helicoptering into a ritzy and self-enriching dinner for a few minutes — is too glaring to ignore.
Watch Hayes’ commentary on what he called the “Met Gala of pay-for-play” here: