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melania trump
'He's in on the Racket': Watchdog Slams Trump's Crypto Executive Order
The cryptocurrency token that U.S. President Donald Trump launched right before his inauguration, $TRUMP, is now worth billions.
Jan 24, 2025
Following a torrent of executive orders issued in his first few days back in the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump added another one to the list Thursday, this time aimed at promoting U.S. leadership in cryptocurrency—an industry he now holds a considerable stake in.
Co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, Robert Weissman, decried the move, writing in a statement Thursday that "Trump is pushing crypto because he's in on the racket."
This executive order "will help super-inflate what's already a dangerous speculative bubble in an artificial, unregulated asset that will, eventually, burst. The inevitable crash will badly injure millions of everyday Americans," Weissman wrote.
The executive order calls for the establishment of a working group on digital assets to explore the possibility of creating a "national digit asset stockpile"—something that crypto industry has pushed Trump's administration to create. That group would also "propose a federal regulatory framework governing the issuance and operation of digital assets." The order, however, didn't go as far as some in the crypto industry had hoped, remarkedThe New York Times.
Just prior to his inauguration, Trump launched a so-called meme coin—"$TRUMP"—which as of Thursday afternoon had a market cap of about $7 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The digital asset bitcoin also surged to new heights Monday, the day of Trump's inauguration, buoyed by expectations that the incoming administration will be friendly to the crypto industry.
Trump's decision to launch his crypto coin has been criticized on ethics grounds.
Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the Revolving Door Project, wrote in an MSNBC op-ed published Friday that having wealth linked to cryptocurrency will "obviously impact" how Trump's administration approaches regulation the market.
What's more, Hauser warned, "crypto markets are frequently believed to be subject to manipulation by 'whales,' i.e., large investors. Having a Trump asset so susceptible to manipulation is highly concerning. Consider whales who might manipulate the Trump coin's worth to buy influence with the president by intervening with purchases at strategic moments."
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$40 Million Amazon Documentary Deal for Melania Trump Slammed as Corporate 'Pandering'
That's a "staggering amount of money for any figure, let alone one who commands relatively little public interest," wrote one journalist.
Jan 08, 2025
In a move panned as kowtowing to the incoming Trump administration, Amazon confirmed Sunday that it will release a documentary about the life of incoming First Lady Melania Trump, which will premier in 2025 on its platform Prime Video and in theaters.
Puck news reported that Prime Video is paying $40 million to license the film, and the deal includes the documentary as well as a multiple episode follow-up docuseries. That's a "staggering amount of money for any figure, let alone one who commands relatively little public interest," wrote Hafiz Rashid at The New Republic.
The deal was denounced by the watchdog group Public Citizen, which called the move another example of "corporations pandering to Trump."
"I see we're back to openly bribing the Trump family," quipped Matt Stoller, the research director at the American Economic Liberties Project.
Writer Heidi Moore said, "imagine how much financial benefit Amazon hopes to get from the Trump administration if they think $40 million is an easy investment in Melania's doc."
Brett Ratner, the director of the film, has directed multiple blockbuster movies including the Rush Hour film series and X-Man: The Last Stand, but hasn't made a major Hollywood production since multiple women accused him of sexual harassment and misconduct in 2017 (Ranter has denied all the allegations).
The news of the deal follows multiple reports that Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos is making overtures to President-elect Donald Trump, likely hoping to change the script after Trump came down hard on Bezos for his ownership of The Washington Post during his first presidency and Amazon argued it was unfairly passed over for a Pentagon contract in 2019.
Bezos dined with Trump in mid-December and committed to donating $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund through Amazon.
The tech titan also intervened to halt a planned endorsement of then-candidate Vice President Kamala Harris in The Washington Post right before the presidential election. Bezos justified his decision, writing in an op-ed: "Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election...What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it's the right one."
A cartoonist at The Washington Postquit last week after the paper's opinion section rejected a cartoon she submitted that depicted billionaires, including Bezos, genuflecting before Donald Trump.
In a Substack post, the cartoonist—Ann Telnaes—wrote that it was the first time a cartoon of hers was rejected because of "the point of view inherent in the cartoon's commentary."
"That's a game changer...and dangerous for a free press," she wrote.
Bezos' business ventures have enormous exposure to the federal government. Amazon, which faces an antitrust lawsuit by Federal Trade Commission, holds contracts with the federal government through its cloud-computing service Amazon Web Services. Bezos' company Blue Origin has a multibillion-dollar NASA contract for a moon mission that is supposed to launch in 2029. The firm is also able to compete for a next round of national security launch contracts, the Post reported in October 2024.
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'Know Who Didn't Get a F***ing Break? The Children': Outrage Over Melania Trump's Recorded Comments on Imprisoned Kids
The first lady accused parents and children of lying about the violence they faced in their home countries and claimed children were "taken care of nicely" in ICE detention centers.
Oct 02, 2020
Anger and condemnation ensued overnight and into Friday after the release of secretly-taped audio recordings revealed First Lady Melania Trump dismissing public outrage over the family separation crisis initiated by her husband's administration at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018.
"'Oh, what about the children, that they were separated?' Give me a fucking break."
--First Lady Melania Trump
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend of the first lady hired as her senior advisor when President Donald Trump took office in 2017, released the audio a month after publishing a memoir of her White House career, "Melania and Me."
In the recording from July 2018, Trump is heard first complaining about the expectation that she oversee the Christmas decorations at the White House and then speaking disparagingly of critics who said she did not do enough to speak out against the separation of thousands of families at the border--a policy which resulted in thousands of children being locked up in detention centers away from their parents or guardians.
\u201cHere's all of the Melania Trump audio played on @andersoncooper tonight. The audio was taped by her former friend and advisor @SWWCreative. \n\nIn the tapes, Mrs. Trump talks about: \n\n- Family separations \n- Christmas \n- "Liberal media" \n- The "I really don't care" jacket\u201d— Yashar Ali \ud83d\udc18 \u06cc\u0627\u0634\u0627\u0631 (@Yashar Ali \ud83d\udc18 \u06cc\u0627\u0634\u0627\u0631) 1601603880
"I do it and I say that I'm working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas and they said, 'Oh, what about the children, that they were separated?' Give me a fucking break," Trump is heard saying in the recording. "Where they were saying anything when Obama did that?"
The first lady suggested the Obama administration separated families in the same manner as President Donald Trump and his top immigration officials, repeating a claim by the administration.
In fact, the Obama administration did not impose a blanket family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border; officials declined to use family separation as a deterrent to undocumented immigrants and instead separated children from the adults they arrived in the U.S. with only when there were doubts about the familial relationship or concerns about the children's safety.
The first lady expressed her frustrations a month after President Trump was forced, following intense international outcry, to sign an executive order officially ending his family separation policy. By that time, under the administration's "zero tolerance" policy announced in April 2018, more than 2,200 families had been forcibly separated.
By the end of July, when Trump was recorded by Wolkoff, hundreds of parents had yet to be reunited with their children.
In another recording, Trump claimed the children were "taken care of nicely" at detention centers operated by ICE--contrary to numerous credible reports of severe neglect, abuse, and unsafe conditions in the facilities, which in some cases resulted in the deaths of children.
"You know, yeah, they are not with parents, it's sad. But when they come here alone or with coyotes or illegally, you know, you need to do something," adding a claim that parents and children frequently lie about the dangers they face in their home countries in order to be granted asylum.
"They say like, 'Oh we will be killed by gang member...It's so dangerous," Trump told Wolkoff. "And they are not, you know, it's not true...Some of them are using that lines."
According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), "In recent years, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala (known as the Northern Triangle) have experienced a dramatic escalation in organized crime by gangs, called maras," leading thousands of families to flee their home countries and seek asylum elsewhere.
"Current homicide rates are among the highest ever recorded in Central America. Several cities, including San Salvador, Tegucigalpa, and San Pedro Sula, are among the 10 most dangerous in the world," the UNHCR reports. "The most visible evidence of violence is the high rate of brutal homicides, but other human rights abuses are on the rise, including the recruitment of children into gangs, extortion, and sexual violence."
At the height of the family separation crisis, Trump was photographed during her visit to the southern border wearing a jacket with the phrase, "I really don't care, do U?" across the back--provoking disbelief and outrage among immigrant rights advocates.
The July 2018 recording simply confirmed the first lady's attitude about the plight of thousands of families at the time, critics on social media wrote.
\u201cShocked Melania was caught on tape saying she doesn't care about immigrant children in cages, a thing we already knew because she literally wore a jacket saying it\u201d— Mike Drucker (@Mike Drucker) 1601602063
\u201cCan we stop the Melania is an innocent bystander storyline now? #MelaniaTapes\u201d— Gene Jones (@Gene Jones) 1601601437
\u201cAsked about children in cages, the first lady said "give me a f***ing break." \n\nYou know who didn't get a f***ing break? The children.\u201d— Dr. Merav Ben-David (@Dr. Merav Ben-David) 1601604316
"The woman who violated U.S. immigration law to work in the United States on a tourist visa, believes all those moms and children fleeing violence in Central America are making up their asylum claims," tweeted journalist Julia Ioffe.
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