Rachel Abrams: From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams and this is the Daily. To an extent never before seen in American history, President Trump has turned the presidency into a cash cow for his family's businesses. A recent financial disclosure shows that the president has made $2.2 billion since he retook office. But the Trumps are not done. And today, my colleague Eric Lipton explains the family's next potential windfall and how the president's position is once again helping it happen. It's Thursday, July 9th. Eric Lipton, welcome back to the show.

Eric Lipton: Thanks for having me.

Rachel Abrams: So, Eric, ever since President Trump returned to office, you have been trying to figure out just how much he and his family have made off of the presidency. And we recently got kind of an answer to that question when he released this enormous 900-page financial disclosure which outlined what he made last year. And I wonder as somebody who's been paying such close attention to this particular area, what was your initial reaction seeing that topline number, $2.2 billion?

Eric Lipton: I was completely startled by this number. I've been tracking the Trump family for a decade now and we all knew that with Trump back in the White House that his family was getting into all kinds of lucrative business ventures, but I never imagined that he would see, you know, more than $2 billion in revenue in the first year that he's back as president. And I was so completely floored by it. I thought I have to talk to some historians.

Rachel Abrams: Just to put it into context.

Eric Lipton: Yeah. I get on the phone. I start calling up some of the most prominent authors of American presidential history. One after another, every single one of them that I spoke with, the word out of their mouth was unprecedented. Unprecedented. There's never been a president in the history of United States that has made this much money while in the White House. And none of them could come up with any parallels except looking at other places around the world, authoritarian styled places where there's a mixing of your job as a government official and the wealth of that country.

Rachel Abrams: Basically, you have to go outside of the United States to find anything like what we are seeing here in this country.

Eric Lipton: Yes. I mean there are parts of the world where it's normal for the royal family to both be running the government and be enriched by the government. I think of particularly of some of the Middle East nations like the royal families in Saudi Arabia or in the United Arab Emirates where there is no line. They are the government and they are the financial beneficiaries of the government. The same thing in Turkey where Erdogan has appointed members of his family to be the finance minister and they also own business operations or in Russia where Putin and the various oligarchs are all benefiting from their access to the power. This is a tradition that isn't seen in the United States but Trump has put us into a whole new category where wealth is coming into the White House in part because of the policy decisions that he's making.

Rachel Abrams: So, Eric, when it comes to what we learned from Trump's fortune in particular, can you just tell us a little bit about where we're learning that money is coming from?

Eric Lipton: Yeah. The single biggest chunk of it comes from cryptocurrency, $1.4 billion.

Rachel Abrams: This is a sector that the Trump family had never been in prior to 2025 that it was only really during Trump's re-election campaign that he came to be kind of a crypto enthusiast. He had been a skeptic of crypto prior to that. And then suddenly he's back in office and they are going gang busters to try to make money off of crypto.

Eric Lipton: Right. This is the actually I think the last time you were on the show was to explain how all of that worked. Basically the family goes to launch several types of cryptocurrency. A lot of people bought that cryptocurrency. The value of those coins plummeted. But the Trump family and this is what you have documented in your reporting made money anyway in large part on fees from trading these coins. And all of that was happening while the administration was weighing how to regulate the cryptocurrency industry.

Rachel Abrams: That's right. And so they were simultaneously making enormous loads of money while the president was appointing a head of the Securities and Exchange Commission that was setting regulations that allowed their businesses to do, you know, some risky practices that would not have been possible during the prior presidency.

Eric Lipton: Okay. So clearly huge windfall for the Trumps crypto and you have been reporting on how crypto might actually just be the beginning for the Trumps just in terms of business ventures that they are finding to be quite lucrative with the president in office. What else have you found just in terms of money-making ventures that they might be having their eyes on right now?

Rachel Abrams: What we've found is that the Trump's sons are being very creative in searching for ways to make money and all different kinds of sectors that they're moving into that align with the president's agenda. And one in particular that has really been fascinating to deconstruct is their enthusiasm for getting into critical minerals.

Eric Lipton: Right. The rare earth minerals that we have been talking about a lot on the show.

Rachel Abrams: Yes. metals, basically raw materials needed for all kinds of manufacturing in the United States. If we don't have access to metals, we can't build just about anything. We're talking about weapons. We're talking about oil drilling equipment. We're talking about AI, computer chips, even all kinds of products. And we're in a bit of a bind right now because China has dominated this sector for several decades. And they've been restricting the United States access to these critical minerals. And the United States has figured out that it better get better access to these metals or else we're going to have a serious problem with economic growth. And both the Trump family and the family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, they see a money-making opportunity.

Eric Lipton: I want to talk a little bit about how exactly the families are positioning themselves to profit from this. Can we start with the Trumps? How is this working exactly?

Eric Lipton: Well, in order to understand that, you really need to go backwards several decades.

Historical Broadcast: Copper is found in the Katanga soil in the form of sulfide or oxide.

Eric Lipton: During the Cold War, the United States was deeply invested in trying to make sure that we had access to these critical minerals, particularly in places like Central Africa. For a long time though, the native tribes had mined and smelted copper

Rachel Abrams: where there was huge federal dollars and even the CIA was active in making sure that we were outmaneuvering the Soviet Union to get access to certain mining operations.

Historical Broadcast: The underground Prince Leopold mine at Kapushi produces more than a million tons of sulfide or per year which contain 100,000 tons of copper and 80,000 tons of zinc.

Eric Lipton: But after the Cold War ended, the United States sort of took this position that this is dirty work. There's a lot of corruption in mining. We're just going to offshore this. We'll just leave other countries to do this work that Kumbaya, we're all friends, will trade and we can rely on our partners to get these metals and give them to us so that we can build the things we need to build here. But that got quite complicated when China realized all the leverage it had over the United States and it started to restrict access to some of these critical metals. And so starting with President Biden, they began to redirect American policy to make sure that American mining companies had access to these critical minerals not only United States but at mining sites around the world. But then

Donald Trump: in a few moments I will sign a historic executive order instituting reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world. Reciprocal that means they

Eric Lipton: the Trump administration comes in and Trump makes the situation a lot worse because he starts a trade war that leads China to say you know what fine we're going to cut off your access to these critical minerals even more aggressively than we were doing before. Uh what the Chinese have done is they've ordered the entire world that they have to submit for approval and permission by the Chinese government to export any kinds of materials that include rare earths that have been touched, processed, mined uh by China. And so suddenly the United States is in a jam and the answer is to pour money into critical minerals. And so the federal government is saying here's more than hundred billion dollar worth of financing, who wants to go start mining. And the Trump sons are sitting there looking for business opportunities. And along with a bunch of other business partners, they decide this is a great sector to get into.

Rachel Abrams: I want to make sure I understand this, Eric. I understand that there's a problem. The United States government needs to solve that problem by either investing in companies that will mine or partnering with companies that will mine. But when you say that they're pouring hundred billion dollars into doing that, what do we mean exactly?

Eric Lipton: Well, as a mining company, you need several things. You need access to a space where there are these metals. You need capital to build the mine and to extract the metals from the ground. And then you also need a demand for the metals once you dig them out of the ground. The federal government is trying to help with all those things right now. It's helping them negotiate access to the mines. It's helping them finance them and it's also negotiating what they call offtake agreements where it says if you you know extract this many tons of a certain metal will buy some of that metal from you. So the federal government is answering all of these demands from the mining sector. So of course there's all these entrepreneurs are saying there's money to be made here and also it's sort of a patriotic cause and so that's what the Trump sons are getting into along with a lot of other business people. So

Rachel Abrams: it's basically a gold rush for lack of a better term.

Eric Lipton: It is. It's a modern-day gold rush.

Rachel Abrams: Can you give us an example of what this looks like just so we can understand kind of how this plays out in practice?

Eric Lipton: I mean, sure. One of the best examples is in Kazakhstan. It's a former Soviet Republic. It's in between China and Russia. It's a nation that has an incredible storehouse of metals in the ground. And there's a site there that has an enormous supply of tungsten, which is a metal that is just so vital to the Pentagon in particular. It is used to build the tips of missiles because it is so heat resistant. If you don't have tungsten, then the missiles that the United States is now trying to build to replace all the missiles it used in Iran, you can't build them. So, it's more valuable than gold in a certain way to the Pentagon. And Kazakhstan suddenly finds itself, you know, as a really popular player. China wants to be able to tap into that tungsten supply. The United States wants to get in there. And so there's a bit of a beauty contest going on as different countries try to position themselves to get access. And so

Rachel Abrams: you say beauty contest, what do you mean exactly? Are they pitching Kazakhstan about who should be allowed to mine or

Eric Lipton: I mean it's essentially Kazakhstan is this this date that you want to get. There's these two suitors that want to be able to match up with Kazakhstan to get its metals.

Rachel Abrams: So, how does this competition or this courting as you put it of Kazakhstan actually play out?

Eric Lipton: So, there's a key meeting in September in New York City at the St. Regis Hotel. It's the week of the United Nations General Assembly and the president of Kazakhstan is in New York. Lutnik is there and there's this elaborate room, the fountain blue room with these, you know, chandeliers and gold leaf all over the place. And it's in that room where the president of Kazakhstan is meeting with the CEOs of some major American corporations. Chevron's there, City Bank is there. And then it's meeting time for Lutnik. And he sits down and he wants to convince the president of Kazakhstan that this nation should give the United States access to this tungsten mine. And part of his pitch is that there's this one company, an American-based Monty company, very low profile. Almost no one's ever heard of it. He wants that one company to get access to the tungsten mine. And not only that, but he's essentially asserting that the United States government is tentatively prepared to put $1.6 billion behind that company to help it build the mine in Kazakhstan.

Rachel Abrams: So while this pitch is underway, a phone call comes and it's President Trump and he's trying to help close the deal. This is so important to the Trump administration that not only is the commerce secretary there making the argument, but the president of the United States is on the phone helping close the deal. It couldn't be a higher level pitch to the president of Kazakhstan who it's not every day that he gets a call from the president of the United States.

Rachel Abrams: So, how does the meeting end?

Eric Lipton: They end with a tentative agreement that this small American mining company is going to be able to get access to this site in Kazakhstan to build one of the world's largest tungsten mines. But then something very interesting happens shortly after that meeting wraps up. Within a matter of weeks, both Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the president's two oldest sons, are investors in a group of partners that are actually buying into the same company that has just tentatively won the right to build this tungsten mine in Kazakhstan.

Rachel Abrams: So what you're saying, if I understand you correctly, is that basically at the end of this meeting at the St. Regis, there's no official deal, but somehow within weeks, an investor group that includes both of those Trump's sons ends up with a stake in this little known mining company. So, if I have that correct, Eric, help me understand how the Trumps would have even gotten in on this because the deal at this point is not public yet. Correct.

Eric Lipton: Yeah, that's right. It's not public until the middle of October 2025. So there's really almost no public way to get into this deal unless you have connections or knowledge of the players that were involved in it. And we've repeatedly asked the partners involved, how did you first become aware of this opportunity? Who told you? And they won't give us a straight answer. They they say, well, we have non-disclosure agreements that we can't say how we first learned that this deal was even available. We still don't have a solid answer as to how the Trump sons and their partners got linked up with this deal.

Rachel Abrams: I mean, one of the things that Trump's sons have repeatedly emphasized to us is that they're passive investors in this project. But by the end of last year, they and their partners have lined up access to one of the most valuable tungsten metal sites in the world. Something that multiple countries wanted access to and that the president and commerce secretary helped them secure. It's an incredibly valuable site. There's something like $80 billion worth of tungsten sitting in the ground and they now are in a position to exploit that.

Rachel Abrams: Okay. So, at this point in the story, Eric, the Trump family is invested in a company that's got this, as you said, highly coveted deal to mine for tungsten, this all-important mineral for national security and the economy. I have kind of a basic question though, which is how risky is this whole endeavor to the investors, including the Trump sons?

Eric Lipton: There's a good chance that the investors are going to make a fair amount of money on this deal, assuming that the federal government comes in and actually provides the financing. And that's because if the mine is a success, then they'll make money off of the tungsten that they produce. They can sell it. But even if they don't mine a single ton of tungsten, the mining company that the Trump sons and their partners invested in, that's a public company. And so they could potentially still make a boatload of money by just selling stock to people who think that there's money to be made here. And so there's a lot of value and a lot of money that they can make even before the mine opens.

Rachel Abrams: Wait, so okay, so even if they do not dig a single ton of tungsten out of the ground, what you are saying is that there could be a situation where the investors, including the Trump Sons, could still make a ton of money out of this.

Eric Lipton: That's right. Right. I mean, that's what investment analysts who track the mining sector tell me is that most of the profits in the mining sector are made when you discover the metals and you get a permit to mine them. It's not the long, you know, hard dirty work of actually digging out of the ground. That's a low margin. The big profits are when you make the discovery and that's the stage that the Trump sons and their partners are invested in right now. And suddenly you could see that the stock takes off and becomes much more valuable and then you can sell those shares and walk away and you haven't even dug a single ton of tungsten.

Rachel Abrams: Do we know exactly how much money the investors and in particular the Trump sons could potentially make?

Eric Lipton: We actually don't because we don't know how big their stake is. And my impression is they are a minority stakeholders. They own a very small share of the overall deal. But I mean what the overall mining company has said is that they think that there's as much as $80 billion worth of tungsten in the ground there to dig out and they're only talking about a project that's going to cost $1.6 billion to actually do. So you know that's a big margin assuming that they can get all that tungsten out. But the fact of the matter is that since our story came out the stock of the company that's associated with this mine has actually gone down and there's a lot of scrutiny right now of this deal. There's also a question mark as to whether or not they're going to get the federal funds. We've heard in fact from some people with inside the federal government, they're quite skeptical of this deal and that their arms are being twisted by Lutnik who wants to get it done. So, how much profit is going to be made here? It's still a bit of an open question and we have actually kind of disturbed this process a little bit by bringing transparency to it.

Rachel Abrams: So, maybe not the sure thing it looked like a few months ago. You mentioned also though, Eric, that it wasn't just the Trump family. You also mentioned that the Lutnik family stood to benefit. How specifically are they involved in all of this?

Eric Lipton: So Howard Lutnik before he was commerce secretary, he ran a company called Caner Fitzgerald. And Caner is an investment bank that helps private companies raise money. And one of the business sectors that it works in is Critical Metals. And so Howard Lutnik's sons have taken over Caner helping run the company. and they have seen just a huge growth in the number of critical minerals deals because Howard Lutnik and Trump are driving all this federal funding into it. It's like a huge hot sector right now because of the policy choices the United States government has made. And so Caner Fitzgerald has now been super busy helping these private companies raise money and it's making millions of dollars in fees off of these capital raises and that includes one of the partners involved in the Kazakhstan deal. So at the same time as the Trump sons through their partnership are invested in the Kazakhstan deal, the Lutnik sons are helping one of the partners in that deal raise over $200 million

Rachel Abrams: and getting millions of dollars as you said in fees for it.

Eric Lipton: That's right. So both the Trump and Lutnik families are profiting from this policy initiative and we have been talking really just about one huge project in Kazakhstan. But what we found by looking at securities filings is that there are 14 companies that are in a position to get federal financial assistance or have permits pending before the Commerce Department that also have financial linkages to either the Trump Sons or the Lutnik Suns. And these 14 companies are lined up to get as much as $8.9 billion from the federal government to help them build mining operations in spots around the world. And so simultaneously you have the dads setting policy that benefits these companies and the sons in business making money off of these same companies. It's just a kind of an arrangement that we've never seen before in this scale in American history.

Rachel Abrams: Wow. Okay. What have the Trumps and the Lutnics said in response to all of your reporting?

Eric Lipton: Mostly we've heard from the Trump family and they feel like their coverage has been unfair and that they are simply passive investors in this deal. We got a statement from Don Jr. spokesman. Don is a lifelong businessman and investor who tends to invest in companies that align with his America first worldview. He does not interface with anyone in the federal government on behalf of any company that he invests in. And Caner's comment to us is that yes, they do help these companies raise private dollars to get into the mining space, but they're not involved at all in the negotiations over getting federal assistance. So they don't touch what Howard Lutnik is doing, but yes, they're helping some of these same companies raise private capital.

Rachel Abrams: Okay, I understand that the optics of this do not look great. And if you're a person who cares about conflict of interest, you will not like what you were hearing in this episode. But you explained, Eric, all the reasons why the United States needs critical minerals, why it needs tungsten. So beyond this looking bad, is there an actual harm here besides that?

Eric Lipton: I mean, this is an important American priority and it is good that the Trump administration now and that the Biden administration before it were focused on finding a way to get access to these metals that are essential to the US economy. But there's a lot of risk involved as well because you've got to pick the right partners that you're putting money into to pursue these metals. And you know, are these companies really capable of producing the vital ingredients for American manufacturing or are these simply entrepreneurs that see an opportunity to make money and that don't actually have the experience or the willingness to pursue it for the years that it's going to take to be successful miners. And I mean with this, these are vital to the future of the United States and our competitiveness, our military defense. and we're betting enormous amounts of tax dollars in backing these companies. Huge risk, I mean, for the taxpayers, for every single person in the United States. So, it's really important that the outcomes here are determined by who's the most capable of actually successfully mining these sites and not simply who's the closest to the president or who stands to profit the most.

Rachel Abrams: Eric, we started this conversation with you explaining that it was hard to find parallels for the president in other leaders and you had to go to as far as Turkey and Russia. I wonder though if there's any way to put the sons into context, right?

Eric Lipton: I mean, when I spoke to the presidential historians, I asked them to give me examples that, you know, any kind of comparison and anything they came up with seemed trivial. I mean, they cited, for example, George W. Bush, who was on the board of an oil company when his dad, George Herbert Walker Bush, was president. Or Billy Carter, the brother of Jimmy Carter, endorsed a beer called Billy Beer when his brother was president of the United States. Or Hunter Biden, who when his dad was vice president, was working as a consultant and board member to a Ukrainian gas company and also as a consultant to some Chinese companies. Brought incredible scrutiny. But we're talking the dollar amounts were trivial compared to what the Trump sons are now seeing here.

Rachel Abrams: You know, Eric, I am reminded of something that President Trump said to our White House team in an Oval Office interview earlier this year.

Times White House Reporter: In your first term, your family agreed not to conduct business abroad. Now it's doing so all over the world. Why the reversal?

Donald Trump: Well, because I got no credit in the first term. I

Rachel Abrams: He basically said that he didn't get any credit in his first term for avoiding conflicts of interest, which by the way, he didn't avoid them, but that's what he said. His point though was basically the gloves are off on the second term. Like I didn't get credit for what I thought I deserve credit for. So I'm not even going to try anymore.

Donald Trump: I didn't do deals. I could have done so many deals. I didn't do because I found out that nobody cared

Rachel Abrams: and nobody even cares. And it's that last part that I am really interested in the who cares part of this. And I wonder Eric how you would answer that.

Eric Lipton: I've heard the same thing from Eric Trump directly is the outrage that the investigations that happened even after they from their perspective, you know, went to some extent to try to limit the conflicts of interest during the first term and this time they're just unrestrained. Any opportunity that they want to pursue to make money, they're pursuing aggressively any place in the world. So why do we care? You know, why are we spending the time digging into this? because it's disturbing to the American tradition where we are not a country where there's a mixing of the financial interest of the government officials and the financial benefit that comes from their actions. Both Democratic and Republican administrations throughout American history, there have been efforts to separate the financial interest of the first family from the actions that the president is taking. And we aren't seeing that here. Eric, I understand the why people should care argument that you're making, but I do wonder if you think people actually do care, just especially as we look toward the midterms. There are just so many issues on voters minds and I just wonder if something like this is really going to register in any significant way.

Eric Lipton: Um, it's a bit of an open question. I think that the the true Trump devoted voter sees this guy as someone who's always made money and they celebrate his money-making. But then there are others who look at how much money the Trump family has brought in, $2.2 billion that Trump has in his financial report from 2025 and they're just they're startled by that. And at the same time particularly that there are almost a million people who came in behind Trump at his urging and bought into one of his cryptocurrency coins and they lost almost $4 billion on that bet following Trump's lead. So that's a lot of pissed-off investors honestly many of whom are Trump followers. I've also heard from some industry executives from the energy sector who are saying, you know, they're they're wondering whether or not they should partner with the Trumps in new business ventures because they don't want to end up being subpoenaed if the Democrats take the House or the Senate and we could have two years worth of oversight hearings trying to dig into all these deals and was there any malfeasants. So to some extent the midterms will be an answer to this question of do people really care?

Rachel Abrams: Eric Lipton, thank you so much.

Eric Lipton: Thank you Rachel for having me.

Rachel Abrams: We'll be right back.

Rachel Abrams: Here's what else you need to know today. On Wednesday night, Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine and a one-time star of the progressive movement, suspended his campaign.

Graham Platner: We believe that for the movement to continue, it can't be me. And for that reason, we are suspending campaign operations.

Rachel Abrams: Platner had faced intense pressure in recent days to step aside after a woman had accused him of rape.

Graham Platner: This is incredibly difficult because I know that some will think it's an admission of guilt, and it most certainly is not.

Rachel Abrams: His departure upends one of the year's most important Senate races, and it creates enormous uncertainty. But his party's outlook in Maine, where Democrats believe that defeating Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, is crucial to their efforts to reclaim a Senate majority. The Maine Democratic Party will hold a convention to choose a new nominee by July 27th. And the United States launched a fresh round of strikes against Iran on Wednesday, just hours after President Trump cast out on the ceasefire between both countries.

Donald Trump: To me, I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum.

Rachel Abrams: Washington and Tyrron had each accused each other of violating the terms of the already fragile agreement reached in part so that transit could resume in the Straight of Hormuz.

Donald Trump: As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them. They're liars.

Rachel Abrams: Shipping traffic in the straight has once more come to a halt, driving oil prices to their highest levels in 2 weeks. Today's episode was produced by Adrien Hurst, Eric Cropky, and Diana Win. It was edited by Annie Moff, Rachel Quester, MJ Davis Lynn, and Michael Benwis, and contains music by Alicia BYU, Dan Powell, Rowan Misto, and Diane Wong. And our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for the daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.