The New Yorker

08/11/2025

Many payments now flowing to Trump, his wife, and his children and their spouses would be unimaginable without his Presidencies: a two-billion-dollar investment from a fund controlled by the Saudi crown prince; a luxury jet from the Emir of Qatar; profits from at least five different ventures peddling crypto; fees from an exclusive club stocked with Cabinet officials and named Executive Branch. Fred Wertheimer, the dean of ethics-reform advocates, told me that, “when it comes to using his public office to amass personal profits, Trump is a unicorn—no one else even comes close.” Yet the public has largely shrugged. In a recent article for the Times, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent, wrote that the Trumps “have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House.” But Baker noted that the brazenness of the Trump family’s “moneymaking schemes” appears to have made such transactions seem almost normal.

How much money does it all amount to? What’s the number? In March, Forbes, known for ranking the wealth of billionaires, estimated that Trump’s net worth had more than doubled in the previous year, surpassing five billion dollars. In July, the Times put Trump’s wealth at upward of ten billion. Yet both estimates included billions of dollars in paper profits that would almost certainly disintegrate if the Trumps pulled out of certain investments. (What’s Truth Social worth without him?) These estimates also included assets untainted by any obvious exploitation of the Presidency, such as properties that Trump owned before entering office, or fees paid by resort customers who simply want to play golf or book a hotel room.

Although the notion that Trump is making colossal sums off the Presidency has become commonplace, nobody could tell me how much he’s made. Norm Eisen, a government-ethics lawyer and a vocal Trump critic, said, “We don’t know the full amounts.” Robert Weissman, a co-president of the left-leaning advocacy group Public Citizen, said, “We will never really know.” Wertheimer noted that for decades Trump had boasted constantly, and in detail, about how rich he was. “He doesn’t talk about it anymore,” Wertheimer said. “He may be the greatest con artist in American history.”

A more considered accounting seemed in order. I decided to attempt to tally up just how much Trump and his immediate family have pocketed off his time in the White House.