The Office Of The Profiteer

How to Succeed in Office Without Really Knowing

Over at Bluesky, Dan Alexander’s bio reads:

Senior editor at Forbes. Contributor at MS NOW. Author of White House, Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency into a Business.

Alexander posted a 42-tweet explanation of how Donald Trump turned the Oval Office into gold. He’s not talking about the gold-painted appliques from Home Depot that Trump super-glued to the walls and mantle. Trump turned public service into self-service. He’s made billions instead of making Americans’ lives better.

What set him off was Ross Douthat of “60 Minutes” asking Trump to explain how he’s made $3 billion since returning to office. Everyone’s net worth went up, Trump suggested. When Douthat responded that his net worth certainly did not go up $3 billion, Trump shot back, “You should have owned stock.”

In oligarch-ese, that’s “Why don’t the Poors own stock?”

In post 31, Alexander counters:

In fact, almost none of Trump’s $3B in gains from the fall of 2024 to the fall of 2025 came from stock.

In the fall of 2024, we estimated that the president’s liquid assets totaled about $415M. After analyzing his financial disclosure, we pegged about 10% of that in stock.

The timeframe suggested by Douthat’s question actually downplays how much Trump has profited from the presidency, Alexander writes: “To get the full picture, we’l start on March 8, 2024, when Forbes estimated Trump’s net worth at $2.3 billion, or FIVE BILLION less than he would be worth about a year and a half later.”

Start here and keep clicking “view more replies” when the thread seems to stop.

Alexander closes:

The “60 Minutes” clip closes with this line from Trump: “I don’t take a salary, you know.”

The presidential salary is $400,000.

If you make $3 billion a year, then you make $400,000 every 70 minutes.

Including when you’re sleeping.