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richard blumenthal
'Fuck This Coin': Trump Crypto Gala Admission Price Plummets as Meme Coin Value Down Over 90%
The president and his family made billions off Trump meme coins while investors got fleeced.
Apr 24, 2026
The price to attend Saturday's second "VIP reception" for investors in President Donald Trump's meme coin has plunged nearly as much as the cryptocurrency itself, leaving investors bamboozled and bankrupt.
Meme coins are highly volatile cryptocurrencies inspired by internet memes, jokes, or cultural trends. While many thousands of meme coins are introduced daily, the overwhelming majority of them fail after a short period as influencer-driven hype and investor "FOMO"—fear of missing out—subside.
The president's $TRUMP meme coin debuted just before his January 2025 return to the White House. Its price soared by more than 50% after its website announced last April that the coin’s top 220 investors would be invited to a private gala dinner with the president. The watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) revealed that invitees included dozens of investors in crypto assets named after white supremacist and outright Nazi themes.
However, even then, $TRUMP was already down significantly from its high of over $75 just after its launch. On Friday, it was trading at less than $3, and the top-tier entry price to Saturday's gala at the president's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida is indicative of that precipitous plunge.
Tomorrow, President Trump will host an event for 297 $TRUMP memecoin holders at Mar-a-Lago. It’s the second time in less than a year that the president has offered special access to people who can afford to buy enough of his memecoin—and it’s somehow even worse than the first.🧵
— CREW (@citizensforethics.org) April 24, 2026 at 7:36 AM
According to the Financial Times, the 29 premier access attendees of Saturday's event held a median investment of $539,000. That's nearly 84% less than the $3.28 million median investment they had prior to last year's gala. Furthermore, the newspaper reported that many premier access winners have apparently liquidated their $TRUMP holdings since securing their VIP spots.
“Nobody likes it,” Morten Christensen, a crypto investor who went to last year's gala and plans on attending the Mar-a-Lago dinner, told Politico Thursday. “People are losing on the coin, and they are vocal. They are the people on Twitter like, ‘Fuck this coin’ or, ‘It’s a scam.’ And they’re right, basically.”
That's not stopping the gala organizers from touting what they're calling “THE MOST EXCLUSIVE CRYPTO & BUSINESS CONFERENCE IN THE WORLD!”
As Politico reported Thursday:
It is open to the top 297 $TRUMP investors, who will get the chance to hear from an eclectic lineup of speakers that includes several crypto executives, boxing legend Mike Tyson, motivational coach Tony Robbins, and Trump, who will speak during the event’s luncheon, according to promotional materials. He is expected to be in Washington later in the day for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
While $TRUMP investors may be losing big, Trump and his family have made billions of dollars in crypto profits, while the Trump family and the coin's creators raked in $320 million in trading fees, even as the coin's value tanked.
A small group of elite investors has likewise been spared severe losses, including insiders who bought up $MELANIA, First Lady Melania Trump's meme coin, prior to its launch, a practice known as "sniping" that netted them around $100 million, according to the Financial Times.
$MELANIA launched on the eve of Trump's second inauguration and soared to an all-time high of $13.73 on Inauguration Day. It's now trading at $0.12, a 99% dive. Investors subsequently sued $MELANIA's creators, alleging that it's part of a fraudulent "pump-and-dump" scheme in which they manipulated the launch of $MELANIA and other coins in order to enrich themselves while later investors got wiped out.
That's not the only lawsuit targeting the president's family over alleged crypto fraud. Billionaire investor Justin Sun is suing World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm co-founded by Trump and his sons, accusing the company of illegally blocking Sun from selling up to $1 billion worth of digital tokens. Sun said last year that he's the world's largest single holder of the president's meme coin.
Last year, US Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), as well as Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), launched investigations into $TRUMP events.
“He’s normalized his corruption,” Blumenthal said of Trump during a Thursday interview, adding that the Mar-a-Lago gala is “simply another way to generate more money for himself, profiting directly from his office."
Trump—who once said he's "not a fan" of cryptocurrencies, "whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air"—has pushed crypto since returning to office, most notably in a January 2025 executive order calling for the establishment of a working group on digital assets to explore the possibility of creating a “national digit asset stockpile," a top crypto industry wish list item.
“It is literally cashing in on the presidency—creating a financial instrument so people can transfer money to the president’s family in connection with his office,” Campaign Legal Center executive director Adav Noti said last year.
Experts have warned prospective investors about the dangers associated with $TRUMP.
“Two exclusive promotional events offering access to the president created temporary price increases but did not reverse the long-term downward trend,” Marquette University finance professor emeritus David Krause wrote last month.
“With approximately 80% of the token supply controlled by Trump-affiliated entities and over $324 million in trading fees accruing to insiders, the token raises significant questions about the alignment of promotional activities with retail investor protection,” Krause added. “As political meme coins continue to emerge, the $TRUMP token may serve as a cautionary case for the risks of speculative assets tied to political figures.”
Looking forward to Saturday's Mar-a-Lago gathering—which Trump may not even attend, according to small print on the event's website—CREW said Wednesday that "like the first event, Trump will almost certainly host holders of alt-right and racist coins, foreign attendees—including those with potential ties to foreign governments—and people seeking favors."
"This weekend will provide a prime example of the level of corruption and profiteering that no other president would have even dreamt of engaging in, but Trump is comfortable doing so openly," the group added.
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'What Are They Hiding?' Trump's Secret Contract for White House Ballroom Revealed
"At every turn, President Trump has sought to conceal the facts about his monstrous multimillion-dollar ballroom,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
Apr 22, 2026
While the financing of President Donald Trump's planned $400 million White House ballroom has been shrouded in mystery for months, government watchdog Public Citizen has obtained important new information about the project's funding.
Public Citizen on Tuesday unveiled a copy of the funding agreement the Trump administration has used for the ballroom project after months of legal wrangling that forced the group to file a lawsuit to compel enforcement of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request it made last year.
As summarized by The Washington Post, the ballroom contract's provisions "allow wealthy donors with business before the federal government to contribute anonymously to a sitting president’s pet project, while exempting the White House from key conflict of interest safeguards and limiting scrutiny by Congress and the public."
While dozens of big-name corporate donors—including Amazon, Apple, Lockheed Martin, Google, Altria, and Union Pacific Railroad—have been public about their donations to the project, the fact that some donors can choose to remain anonymous is raising serious concerns among ethics experts.
Charles Tiefer, a retired law professor at the University of Baltimore with a long history of scrutinizing government contracts, told the Post that the contract's anonymity provisions could give the Trump administration an escape hatch from future congressional scrutiny.
"If Congress knocks on the door," Tiefer said, "the White House is going to slam it shut and say, ‘You’re not allowed to know these donors.'"
This means that there is no way to know whether these donors have business before the government, and no way to know if they expect to get something in return for their donations.
Kathleen Clark, a government ethics lawyer and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told the Post that the contract's very narrow scope of reviewing for conflicts of interest among donors renders it "nothing more than a sham."
Jon Golinger, democracy advocate for Public Citizen, said the key takeaway from the newly unearthed documents is that "anonymous donations are the heart of this agreement."
"The questions this raises are, of the hundreds of millions being funneled in secret, who are these anonymous donors, and what are they hiding?" Golinger added. "The American people deserve answers, and we’ll keep fighting until they get them."
Wendy Liu, Public Citizen attorney and lead counsel on the lawsuit to obtain the contract, said the administration's initial refusal to comply with a FOIA request was "flatly unlawful," and "the American people are entitled to transparency over this multimillion-dollar project, and this win gets us a bit closer to knowing the truth."
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) blasted the Trump administration's efforts to hide the contract in a statement given to the Post.
“At every turn, President Trump has sought to conceal the facts about his monstrous multimillion-dollar ballroom,” Blumenthal said. “His administration has kept the contract under wraps, the identities of big dollar donors secret, and the American people in the dark about what big corporations have to gain by funding this boondoggle.”
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After Secret Briefing, Dem Senators Warn Trump 'On a Path' to Ground Invasion of Iran
"The American people deserve to know much more than this administration has told them about the cost of the war, the danger to our sons and daughters in uniform, and the potential for further escalation."
Mar 10, 2026
Democratic US senators left a classified Tuesday briefing with senior defense and intelligence officials with serious concerns that President Donald Trump will order a ground invasion of Iran in what would be a perilous escalation of his illegal and unprovoked war of choice.
White House officials—including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—and Pentagon brass have held a series of closed-door meetings with congressional lawmakers since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran late last month.
While Democratic lawmakers have said that the classified status of these briefings prevents them from disclosing key information about the administration's war plans, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) emerged from Tuesday's meeting with a warning to reporters that “we seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of the potential objectives" outlined during the briefing.
Blumenthal after getting briefed on Iran: "We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of the potential objectives here. There's also the specter of active Russian aid to Iran putting in danger American lives ... China also may be assisting Iran"
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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 10, 2026 at 9:42 AM
“I am left with more questions than answers, especially about the cost of the war,” Blumenthal said. “My questions have been unanswered, and I will demand answers because the American people deserve to know."
"The American people deserve to know much more than this administration has told them about the cost of the war, the danger to our sons and daughters in uniform, and the potential for further escalation," he added.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said after attending the briefing, "Here we are well into the second week, and it is still the case that the Trump administration cannot explain the reasons that we entered this war, the goals we're trying to accomplish, and the methods for doing that."
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) said that what she heard during the briefing "is not just concerning, it is disturbing."
"I'm not sure what the endgame is or what their plans are," Rosen said of the administration, adding that Trump has "not shown us any plans for what he wants to do for the day after, let's put it that way. That's as much as I can say."
Democratic lawmakers voiced similar concerns over a possible ground war following a March 3 classified briefing.
Trump and senior administration officials have not ruled out a ground invasion of Iran.
“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground,” Trump told the New York Post last week. “Like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a Sunday interview on Fox News that Trump has not ruled out either a ground invasion or a draft, although many experts say the latter option is highly unlikely.
Here's the Karoline Leavitt interview people are talking about. Maria Bartiromo asks if Trump might send ground troops into Iran, because "mothers are worried" about a draft. Leavitt replies that ground troops aren't in the current plan, but Trump won't rule them out. No mention of the draft.
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— Joshua J. Friedman (@joshuajfriedman.com) March 8, 2026 at 4:09 PM
Trump has also given mixed signals about the planned duration of the war, declaring Monday that the campaign is "very complete, pretty much" before stating that US forces “will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.”
The president and his senior Cabinet officials have also waffled when attempting to explain the war's objectives, alternately suggesting that the goal of the campaign is and is not regime change, and shifting the narrative from eliminating Iran's nonexistent nuclear weapons program to destroying its ballistic missile arsenal.
Tuesday's briefing came on a day that Hegseth said would be the "most intense day of strikes inside Iran" during the 10-day war.
This, after a wave of US and Israeli airstrikes across Iran left at least scores dead on Monday, including 40 people massacred while sheltering in apartment blocks in eastern Tehran.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed by US and Israeli bombing in Iran and Israeli strikes on Lebanon, where more than 700,000 people have been forcibly displaced amid relentless airstrikes.
In what's being called "one of the deadliest school massacres in modern history," around 175 people, mostly schoolchildren, were killed on February 28 by what US intelligence said is a likely Tomahawk missile strike in Minab. Fragments from the missile marked with Pentagon contract information, the names of US weapons companies, and a "Made in USA" stamp provided the latest evidence that the attack was carried out by the US—although Trump has blamed the strike on Iran.
The Pentagon said that seven US troops have been killed and 140 others wounded by Iranian counterstrikes, which have also targeted Gulf monarchies allied with the United States, killing at least 15 people.
Noting that Trump—"who campaigned as the 'peace president'—led the United States into war with Iran with no clear objectives and no authorization from Congress," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI), and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) sent a letter to Trump on Tuesday demanding that administration leaders "appear before Congress and under oath in public hearings to provide answers" about the war.
The senators wrote that Trump's "ever-shifting goals and explanations suggest there is no clear plan."
"Further, this raises the risk of mission creep which, based on history, would likely lead to more US casualties and escalating costs for taxpayers," the lawmakers added. "The American people—including our men and women in uniform—deserve clear answers about the war and accountability from your administration."
The Senate and House of Representatives—both controlled by Republicans—have voted down proposed resolutions meant to prevent Trump from waging war without congressional authorization, as required by the War Powers Act.
A Quinnipiac University poll published Monday revealed that 74% of respondents—including 95% of Democrats, 75% of Independents, and 52% of Republicans—oppose a US ground invasion of Iran. A slim majority of respondents are against the overall war in Iran, which 55% of those surveyed said did not pose any "imminent threat" to the United States prior to the US-Israeli attack.
The survey also found that 62% of respondents "think the Trump administration has not provided a clear explanation of the reasons behind the United States' military action against Iran."
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