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Shkruar nga Pamfleti
As with most angry personalities, it's likely the small failures that annoy Trump the most...
From some perspectives, it may seem like President Trump is having a rough month. He has scrapped the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool, which he blamed on vandalism that no one has been able to stop. The Supreme Court has rejected both his bid to appeal a $5m (£3.8m) civil judgment against him for defamation and sexual assault against E Jean Carroll, and his executive order to end birthright citizenship. And the war with Iran continues to rage. And yet, after Trump’s mandatory financial disclosure report was released on Tuesday, headlines have drawn attention to the fact that the president earned more than $2.2bn in income in 2025 – more than three times what he earned in the year before his inauguration. Contrary to appearances, everything may be going exactly according to plan.
It is always a question of how much of Trump's wealth in his second term is the spoils of strategy, not the result of his own wild luck, but on an industrial scale. Looking at the figures in his financial statements, it is recalled that before he became president, Trump ran a series of failed businesses - six of which declared bankruptcy - and gave every indication that he was a bad businessman. It is often pointed out that if Trump had simply invested the large inheritance left to him by his father, Fred Trump, in a standard tracker fund, he would have made more money than he did through his lackluster business career, and there is nothing to suggest that this is likely to change.
Of course, that was before his second presidency. Now he and his children have a vast fortune, much of which appears to have come from sources with vested interests in becoming president. As the New York Times points out, a large portion of Trump’s $2.2 billion windfall last year came from an investment firm with ties to the United Arab Emirates, which bought a nearly 50% stake in his cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, and which is part of an industry over which Trump has influence in policymaking and regulation.
Similarly, the report records smaller but still significant streams of revenue generated by Trump's side work in defamation and other lawsuits, including settlements with ABC ($16 million), Meta ($24.5 million), and Paramount ($16 million) — legal proceedings that, it seems fair to assume, these media and technology companies might have had more appetite to fight if the plaintiff were not the president of the United States with great influence over their industries.
All of this leaves Trump in the strange position, on the one hand, where he gets what he has always desperately wanted in life — real, unimaginable wealth — at the cost of what he has always desperately wanted in life, universal admiration and applause. This compromise is so morally sound it could have come from a fable, but that is where the US president currently finds himself. Rich but ridiculed; successful, if you look at his income, but an absolutely strange leader with an approval rating of 39% and an image so tarnished that even Giorgia Meloni, the unpopular right-wing leader of Italy and former Trump savior, felt emboldened to take a chance.
As with most angry personalities, it is likely the small failures that annoy Trump the most. As his famed deal-making skills continue to yield poor results in the Middle East, the president seems to have backtracked by trying to explain the algae currently blooming in the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool. It is a small and insignificant failure in these matters, but with such a bad image, so invisible even to those with no interest in Iran — here is a man who can’t even keep the country’s pool clean — he has had to invent endless crazy stories to justify it.
So too, Trump’s predictably terrible oversight of something called the Great American State Fair. You’ve probably never even heard of it, despite the fact that it’s currently taking place on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and is being billed by the White House as a 16-day extravaganza to mark the country’s 250th anniversary with “a world-class exhibition.” Or, as it turns out, with an empty food court, empty exhibits, and television’s Dr. Oz addressing a half-empty field in a setting that seems more dubious than that Willy Wonka experience in Glasgow.
Of course, it’s Trump’s reverse Midas touch, which destroys everything he touches outside his family’s cryptocurrency holdings and which, as support for him dwindles even in his former strongholds, must be tearing his ego, torn as it is between the primary motivations of money and praise, clean in two. If he were a character from literature – an Elizabethan tragedy, say, or an episode of Captain Underpants – it would be interesting and darkly funny to watch this unfold./ TheGuardian
Keto s'na duhen fare se c'ben trapi ne shtepi te vet. Ne na duhet ta ndalojme te mos na fuse turinjte ne trojet e detrat tona. Te fusim brenda keta zarbot trapet tane e t'i shtrydhim sa tu dale shkuma qe te mos afrohet me kush.