Trump Will Host a Gathering of VIPs at His Private Golf Resort

President Donald Trump will host a dinner for winners of a contest — the crypto traders who raced to become the top 220 holders of the president's $TRUMP meme coin.

President Donald Trump will host a gathering of VIPs at his private golf resort outside Washington, D.C., on Thursday. These are not diplomats or heads of state. They are rich people, foreign and domestic, who have put money into the Trump family’s pockets.

The dinner is for winners of a contest — the crypto traders who raced to become the top 220 holders of the president’s $TRUMP meme coin. According to one analysis, they collectively accumulated about $150 million of the crypto asset, which has no intrinsic value and is equivalent to a digital baseball card.

The contest has made Trump’s family crypto business money on each transaction. And it has swelled the president’s personal net worth, by driving up the price of the coin, which the family business holds massive reserves of.

The meme coin contest is just the latest example of Trump wielding the public office of the presidency for his private enrichment. In fact, sources with direct knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone that one of the lessons Trump took away from his previous stint in the White House is that he was wrong to leave a ton of money on the table as president.

The president himself has privately said this on multiple occasions in recent months and years, according to two people who’ve been in the room with him. In moments of casual banter, Trump has mentioned that it was “stupid” of other Republicans and advisers to convince him — at least on occasion — to side with government ethicists who cautioned him from obliterating the line between public good and private gain.

Trump says such things often enough that he can’t help himself from repeating some of it in public, including recently about the proposed gift of a $400 million 747 jumbo jet “sky palace” from the government of a Gulf emirate. “I think it’s a great gesture from Qatar; I appreciate it very much. I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” the president told the press at the White House in mid-May. “I mean, I could be a stupid person saying, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’” (As Rolling Stone previously reported, Trump often does not distinguish between what’s his and what belongs to the people or its government, including when it comes to this plane — which he privately refers to as “one of my” new airplanes.)

Trump does not hold space in his mind for any distinction between his private interest and the public interest. “A deal is a deal,” the president has said in the past several months, according to one of the two sources, dismissing Democratic complaints about the meme coin, or about how his business and real-estate empire is working to strike major foreign deals.

To anyone holding fast to the bedrock norms of public service, Trump’s self-dealing is appalling. “The situation should be revolting to anybody who cares about the American interest,” says Norm Eisen, a good-government champion who now directs the Democracy Defenders Fund. “It’s damaging to the country. When people give you a $400 million plane, or a $2 billion investment, or buy his meme coins in large amounts to have dinner with him and visit the White House — they expect something in return.”

Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, agrees. Trump’s deals make the campaign finance scandals of the last century — recall the Clinton-era scandal in which top donors were treated to overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House — look quaint.

“It’s not even in the same ballpark as what we’re seeing with Donald Trump,” Bookbinder says. From crypto deals to a Qatari sky palace, he notes, “you’re talking about Trump’s personal bottom line — about money going into his pocket, or about luxuries that make his daily life better.” And the special interests providing these riches, Bookbinder warns, will enjoy “access to him, and the ability potentially to influence him.”

Anna Kelly, a Trump White House spokesperson, tells Rolling Stone, “There are no conflicts of interest. President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. It is shameful that Rolling Stone is ignoring the GOOD deals President Trump has secured for the American people, not for himself, to push a false narrative. President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”

The Trump Organization and the Trump family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, did not respond to requests for comment.

In venting to close allies about accusations of open corruption and, effectively, bribes from foreign entities and regimes, the president has said that any nation or city overseas should be proud to have a Trump Tower or other new Trump family property built