Trump's Government-in-Waiting Is Putting the Finishing Touches on Plans to Crackdown on Civil Rights, Trans Americans, and Diversity Programs

T here were less than four days to go until Donald Trump was sworn into office for a second time. In those final days of the presidential transition, Trump and his team were busy finalizing their blitz of executive actions, which included a widespread crackdown on civil rights, trans Americans, and diversity programs. Trump's government-in-waiting was putting the finishing touches on plans for a startlingly nativist propaganda campaign, which would soon feature an “ASMR” video of officials preparing to fly migrants to camps at Guantánamo Bay.

In the twilight of the presidential transition, a blitzkrieg of activity unfolded as Donald Trump and his team finalized plans for a second term that promised a staggering nativist agenda, blatant corruption, and the potential for unrest.

As the president-elect's government-in-waiting put the finishing touches on programs to fly migrants to Guantánamo Bay and tout the administration's successes in an ASMR-style video series, Trump preemptively allocated an astounding amount of power to the world's richest man, Elon Musk, giving him nearly free rein to desecrate the federal workforce.

And the president-elect was giddy about one of his more depraved opening acts still to come: the mass pardons and commutations for his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Amid all of this, the incoming president had something else on his mind: his meme coin. The Friday night before his inauguration, Trump announced he was launching his own cryptocurrency called "Trump Meme" — a purely speculative asset, comparable to a digital baseball card, with no inherent value or use.

The price of $TRUMP quickly blew up, surging from around $6 to $74, generating billions of dollars on paper for the Trump family.

The launch was so successful that First Lady Melania Trump quickly raced her own meme coin out the door, too, less than 24 hours before Trump's inauguration — a move that caused $TRUMP to begin crashing. By late February, the coin was trading at around $13. The earliest investors likely made huge profits; hundreds of thousands of suckers appear to have lost big. The Trump family will make a killing no matter what: By early February, his family and their partners had made nearly $100 million on trading fees.

In the final days of the transition and even during his early presidency, Trump privately encouraged close allies — in big business and on Capitol Hill — to buy his meme coin, according to a source familiar with the matter and one Republican lawmaker. He'd even do this over dinner.

"You should really get in on it," Trump would bluntly recommend.

"Of course he did," the GOP lawmaker recounts. "He told the whole country to do it [via an X post], so why wouldn't he tell the people he knows? There's nothing wrong with that." The lawmaker refused to say whether they invested — though if they bought any Trump coin more than an hour or two after it launched, they would have lost big.

The meme coin was a blatant cash grab, to the point that one of Trump's former White House communications directors denounced it as "Idi Amin-level corruption." It wasn't even the Trump family's first foray into crypto — during the 2024 campaign, his family announced the creation of their own cryptocurrency platform, World Liberty Financial.

As he promised on the campaign trail, Trump has worked aggressively to push the crypto industry's interests in Washington and ensure the incredibly risky assets operate with little regulation, signing an executive order to promote crypto, announcing a "crypto strategic reserve," and naming an industry ally to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. At the end of February, Trump's SEC moved to throw out its prosecution of Justin Sun — who had been charged with marketing unregistered crypto securities and manipulating the market for a crypto token — after Sun's investments in World Liberty Financial reportedly netted the Trump family $56 million in fees.

The crypto caper is a perfect encapsulation of the bold-faced graft at the heart of the new Trump presidency: Uber-wealthy elites are poised to cash in, while ordinary people get hosed. And public policy will be designed to encourage this exact outcome.

"Compared to other major corruption scandals since the 1870s, this administration is shaping up to be the most corrupt of them all, because never before has a president been willing and able to blatantly use the office to make massive personal profit," says Kedric Payne, the Campaign Legal Center's general counsel and senior director for ethics. "Compared to his first term, he's more strategic and more prepared to engage in corruption — and he's taken big steps to wipe out any possible enforcement against his actions. An example of this is his financial interest in crypto, while at the same time shaping the policy to allow that very industry to flourish."

Payne adds: "The blatant nature of this is genuinely new, which I think a lot of people have trouble wrapping their heads around. Normal corruption involves lobbyists providing gifts and perks and campaign contributions to lawmakers in hopes they will receive beneficial legislation. These are acts that directly benefit Trump's bottom line."

The Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment.

WHILE STILL IN its infancy, Trump's second administration has been a shocking expression of corruption, lawlessness, and cruelty, with an even higher level of chaos than Americans had grown