The Times says "inaccurate Claims." They mean "Lies."

FACT CHECK

Trump Justifies Money Made as President With Inaccurate Claims.

President Trump has wrongly attributed the $2 billion windfall he gained during his second term to a hot stock market and claimed that he was the only president to donate his salary.

President Trump’s most lucrative ventures seemed to intersect directly with his administration’s policies like cryptocurrency and dealings with foreign governments.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times.

The $2.2 billion windfall President Trump reaped since his second term has raised questions over potential conflicts of interest and whether he has profited from public office, but Mr. Trump has dismissed any notion of impropriety.

Some of Mr. Trump’s most lucrative ventures seemed to intersect directly with his administration’s policies like cryptocurrency and dealings with foreign governments.

But, Mr. Trump has argued, his personal financial gains reflected a stock market benefiting everyone; his investments and business dealings were in a blind trust, not unlike other presidents; and unlike his predecessors, he donated his presidential salary.

The $2.2 billion windfall President Trump reaped since his second term has raised questions over potential conflicts of interest and whether he has profited from public office, but Mr. Trump has dismissed any notion of impropriety.

Some of Mr. Trump’s most lucrative ventures seemed to intersect directly with his administration’s policies like cryptocurrency and dealings with foreign governments.

But, Mr. Trump has argued, his personal financial gains reflected a stock market benefiting everyone; his investments and business dealings were in a blind trust, not unlike other presidents; and unlike his predecessors, he donated his presidential salary.

WHAT WAS SAID

This is misleading. Of the $2.2 billion in revenue Mr. Trump reported in his 2025 financial disclosure forms, the bulk does not come from growth in the stock market. Additionally, none of the major indexes grew by 85 percent, nor has the average 401(k) account.

Cryptocurrency ventures accounted for more than $1.4 billion. Two of Mr. Trump’s real estate holdings in Florida alone — the Mar-a-Lago club and the Trump National Doral golf club — brought in almost $200 million. Branding deals brought at least $55 million and settlements from news media companies $87 million. Together, those examples total more than three-quarters of the $2.2 billion.

Revenue in Mr. Trump’s first year back in office rose by more than 250 percent compared with the $622 million he reported in 2024.

Since Mr. Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2025, to early July 2026, the S&P 500 has risen by roughly 24 percent, the Dow Jones by roughly 19 percent and the Nasdaq Composite Index by roughly 33 percent. According to Fidelity Investments, average 401(k) balances increased by 11 percent from the last quarter of 2024 to the last quarter of 2025.

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said Mr. Trump had “implemented policies that have made all Americans wealthier and more prosperous.”

WHAT WAS SAID

This is misleading. Mr. Trump’s investments, assets and business interests are held in a revocable trust, according to an ethics agreement issued last year by his company, the Trump Organization. This arrangement is not the same thing as a blind trust.

“All of the president’s assets,” Ms. Kelly said, are “held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions. There are no conflicts of interest.”

Other than Mr. Trump, every president since the 1970s who has owned individual stocks and bonds has used a blind trust. (Some, like Presidents Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., did not own individual stocks and kept their money instead in cash, Treasury notes or mutual funds.)

Blind trusts established by federal officials must abide by certain legal requirements. Most officials elect what is known as a “qualified blind trust,” but others set up a “qualified diversified trust,” which includes even stricter guardrails. Under both types, the trustee must be an institution, completely independent and approved by the Office of Government Ethics. The official has no knowledge of acquired assets, receives quarterly reports about the total value of the assets and cannot communicate with the trustee outside of written notes preapproved by the office.

For example, Boston Harbor Trust Company served as the trustee for President Bill Clinton’s blind trust, which was approved by the Office of Government Ethics in 1993. His tax returns disclosed the gains from the blind trust, but not the individual assets themselves. President George W. Bush has said he did not speak to his blind trust’s trustee, Northern Trust Company, at all during his time in office, nor was he aware of just how much money he lost during the 2008 recession.

Mr. Trump’s trust is not a blind trust and does not abide by the rules governing one, said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the director of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog. He added that legally, “there is no such thing as a semiblind trust” either.

At a 2017 news conference, a longtime lawyer for the Trump Organization agreed that Mr. Trump’s trust was not a blind trust and argued that it would be impractical for someone with his business holdings, noting that he “cannot unknow that he owns Trump Tower.”

It is true that there are some guardrails in how the president’s brokerage accounts, also held by the trust, are managed. But the structure still differs from a qualified blind trust in several ways.

For one, the Office of Government Ethics was not involved in the trust’s creation, its director said in 2017.

The New York Times reported in June that Mr. Trump’s accounts are managed by outside brokerage firms and neither Mr. Trump nor his family can place trades. One of Mr. Trump’s sons has said that the firms have “sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions.” The Times found no indication of insider trading. But Mr. Trump is allowed to know about his assets and meets with financial advisers annually.

And appointing his family member as the trustee, as Mr. Trump has done, “would immediately create a sort of a noncompliance issue. It wouldn’t be a qualified blind trust anymore,” Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette said, calling Mr. Trump’s claim “classic rhetorical smoke and mirrors.”

WHAT WAS SAID

False. At least two other presidents have donated their entire salaries, while others have donated portions.

During his four years in office, President Herbert Hoover donated his annual paycheck of $75,000 to charities and to supplement the salaries of federal workers he believed were underpaid, he said in 1937. For example, Hoover donated about $10,000 annually to the San Francisco Welfare Board, which “got in the habit of thinking that was my regular contribution” and continued to ask for the donation even after Hoover left office, he said.

During his two years in office, President John F. Kennedy also donated his salary of $100,000. A 1987 biography lists 10 charities that received donations, including the Boy Scouts of America, the Girl Scouts of America, Services for Crippled Children, hospitals in California and Massachusetts, the United Negro College Fund and the Cuban Families Committee.

Mr. Trump has donated more money than his immediate predecessors, but less as a proportion of his net worth.

Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Trump has refused to publicly release his tax returns, so the exact amount of his annual net income now is not known. But tax data released by Congress during his first term shows that Mr. Trump donated about $2.9 million from 2017 to 2020, or about 26 percent of his net gross adjusted income of $11 million or 0.1 percent of his net worth at the end of his term.

In comparison, tax returns released by Mr. Biden showed charitable donations of about $89,000 from 2020 to 2023, about 4 percent of his income and about 1.1 percent of his term-end net worth. Mr. Obama donated about $1 million from 2009 to 2017, about 9 percent of his income and about 8 percent of his term-end net worth. Mr. Bush donated about $761,000 from 2000 to 2007, about 14 percent of his income and 4 percent to 11 percent of his term-end net worth. (New York Times)

One more thing.

_

Lindsey Graham has died.

The man Trump proclaimed. "like a member of my family," has died. The flags are at half-mast through Saturday.

A top Trump lieutenant in the Senate, Graham ran for the Presidency himself in 2015, uttering disapproval of Trump all during his own campaign.

The historian Heather Cox Richardson in her newsletter of July 12, 2012 summarized some of Graham's earliest and harshest words about Trump-

[Graham] objected to the takeover of the Republican Party by the MAGA Republicans.

In December 2015 he called then-candidate Donald J. Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” and said: “He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for.... I don’t think he has a clue about anything. He’s just trying to get his numbers up and get the biggest reaction he can.” “You know how you make America great again?” he said, “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”

In 2016, Graham added this condemnation of Trump. 👇

In 2016, with Trump as his party's nominee for the highest office, Graham made clear how repulsive he found Trump, said he voted for Independent Evan McMullin because “Voting for Hillary Clinton was always a non-starter and I couldn’t go where Donald Trump wanted to take the USA & [the Republican Party].”

Next came whiplash.

His switch to support for Trump caused whiplash to many, not just in the Democratic Party, but in the GOP as well, especially as Trump denigrated John McCain, the Senator that seemed to be Graham's closest friend.

Initially, in 2015, when Trump, who many consider/ed a draft dodger, mocked McCain who spent more than 5 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam (“He’s not a war hero." “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”),Graham called Trump a “jackass” and defended McCain’s military service and character.

After McCain’s death in 2018, however, Graham’s response to the continuing and contemptuous insults Trump leveled at McCain became much more restrained.

In March 2019, when Trump continued to belittle McCain’s legacy and revived grievances about McCain’s votes and actions, other Republicans defended McCain, but Graham declined to criticize Trump. Instead, he said that people raising the issue were often trying to attack Trump through him, and stated:

“The bottom line here is I’m going to help President Trump."

Graham became a Senator Trump could count on as supporter and spokesperson.

The only policy on which Graham publicly diverged from Trump, was by his continued and strong support for Ukraine against Russia. This never changed even up to the day before his death. This photo below of him with Zelenskyy was taken on Friday, July 10 after his Kyiv meeting with Zelensky on one of his many trips to the war-torn country. Graham died on July 11.

As NBC News reported, following Graham's unexpected death from a burst aorta,

"Sen Lindsey Graham was one of the loudest Republican voices on defense and foreign policy, had been one of Kyiv’s most steadfast advocates in Washington. For Ukraine, the loss of an ally with Trump’s ear is a tough blow."

The New York Times reported Zelenskyy returned the favor to Graham as well-

“Thank you, Lindsey, for recognizing our warriors,” Mr. Zelensky wrote, adding that the senator had briefed him on the legislation. Hours after Mr. Graham’s death, Mr. Zelensky added in another post, “America and the world have lost a determined leader."

Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?

To come closer to an answer to this confounding and even bewildering question, click on the gift link below 👇.

Read a thoughtful and thorough analysis by Anne Applebaum on how men like Graham become the Complicit, when other men don't.

Applebaum's analysis lays out why some, like Graham, go to the dark side, while others, like Romney, do not.

I started to post the full article here but I couldn't, because of its length. My apologies. 2nd best? Click to read.

I am sure you will find the article, which appeared in The Atlantic in 2020, worthwhile and memorable, providing food for thought for a long, long time.👇

HISTORY WILL JUDGE THE COMPLICIT by Anne Applebaum, June 2020