One of the odd aspects of the Secret Service’s encounter with alleged gunman Ryan Routh near a Trump Organization golf course was that Donald Trump was there in the first place. The presidential election is in seven weeks. Why is the Republican nominee hitting the links instead of the trail?
It’s not surprising, mind you. Trump’s calendar has been relatively light since he secured the Republican nomination earlier this year. During the 2016 campaign, he barnstormed the country, holding multiple events in single days, leveraging the enthusiasm of his base of support. This time around, he’s leaving a lot of that to his running mate while he hangs around his clubs and golf courses. Not weird for Trump that he was golfing on Sunday, but weird for a presidential candidate in mid-September of an election year.
Because an armed Routh was allegedly waiting near the course as Trump was playing, though, we learned a bit more about this particular outing than we normally do. We learned, for example, that Trump’s partner was New York real estate investor Steve Witkoff. And thanks to an interview that Trump granted Monday evening, we learned one likely reason Witkoff was with Trump: He is partnering with Trump on a cryptocurrency product.
Here, too, we have to note the layer of strangeness. It is, again, seven weeks until Election Day, seven weeks until voters weigh in on whether Trump should serve another term as president and — to put it in terms with which Trump is certainly familiar — seven weeks until voters decide whether to give Trump power over the Justice Department that might mean the destruction of federal criminal charges he faces. And, yet, Trump spent his time Monday evening speaking with Farokh Sarmad, a crypto influencer who offered Trump, his children and Witkoff a platform to discuss their new enterprise.
Sarmad first spoke to Trump, conducting the sort of sycophantic interview with which Trump is familiar. They didn’t actually talk about crypto much, except when Trump was touting his NFT collection. Trump praised Witkoff as “know[ing] a lot about this stuff,” then handing it off to his partner.
Donald Trump Jr., the Trump Organization’s executive vice president, also made an appearance, lamenting that banking had become “politicized” in the United States (“it’s sad and it’s disgusting,” he said) and arguing that “decentralized” finance through ownership of cryptocurrency was better. “The Democrat Party itself isn’t willing to give up the power and that control that they want over everyone’s balance sheet,” Trump Jr. said. This new product, he suggested, will address that.
The product, dubbed World Liberty Financial, was first promoted by Trump on Truth Social in August. A few weeks later, social media accounts for Trump’s daughter and daughter-in-law were hacked, with the accounts posting links to a crypto product that was not the one unveiled Monday. The cryptocurrency space, of course, is notoriously rife with fraud and cons, as Americans understand. (About three-quarters of Americans told YouGov this year that at least half of cryptocurrency companies are scams.) One common tactic is the “rug pull,” in which investments are solicited in a project with the creators simply taking the money. (Sarmad’s media company, it’s worth noting, is called Rug Radio.)
So here’s the question we ask, again in the context of the imminent election: Is Trump’s play here an effort to secure more support from the cryptocurrency community, a community that overlaps heavily with the young men Trump is trying to woo elsewhere? Or is it simply Trump focusing on business, hyping something that promises to be lucrative, whatever happens with the election?
It seems fair to assume that it’s not primarily the former. In fact, many in the cryptocurrency community have been critical of Trump’s plans and were critical of the interview. What’s more, it’s not clear what electoral benefit such a project would have. Is the idea to push eventual investors to cast ballots? To collect contact information that can be used by the campaign? Or is it just a sort of vague “I’m on your side” message — one that would be certainly redundant?
So we can instead assume it is primarily the latter. As Axios explains, the proposal is to establish a cryptocurrency-based lending platform, one similar to a project that was the target of a hack that resulted in the theft of most investor deposits. But such deposits could be made by anyone, introducing a new mechanism for, say, foreign governments to pass money to Trump and his partners.
You can see the appeal to Trump the businessman, if not Trump the candidate. Over the course of the 2024 cycle, Trump the businessman has often taken the lead, with the Republican nominee hawking Bibles and shoes and digital pictures and his own properties alongside his sit-downs with friendly media outlets. His political base has always been something of a consumer base, eagerly snatching up hats and Trump-branded gear. Out of the White House, Trump has embraced the dual utility of his supporters.
This crypto play, though, is different. It’s an entry into a notoriously sketchy space with little obvious political upside but an immediate economic one. And it comes as his opponent and his running mate are actively engaged in the tedious, exhausting process of actually running for office.
Trump consistently promises his supporters that he is relentlessly fighting for them. Shoehorning this effort into that frame (as Trump Jr. valiantly tried to do) is no small task. It looks a lot more like Trump once again doing a little something for himself.