$2.2 Billion and Counting: Trump's Second Term Marred by Unprecedented Profiteering

Last May, President Trump held an 'intimate' dinner at his members-only golf club in Virginia for top investors in $TRUMP, a meme coin he launched days before his second term.

About 100 protesters gathered outside to confront the guests arriving in dress shoes and tuxedos. They pointed to the dinner as the encapsulation of Trump's troublesome grift: trading personal access to the president for cash and funneling money to a Trump-owned property.

A year later, when Trump hosted winners of his crypto contest at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, no large group of protesters greeted the attendees. The private resort is more challenging to protest than Trump's previous location, but the rush of ethics concerns had also made the contest fade into the background.

The White House sees allegations of corruption as 'the same, tired narrative that Democrats have pushed against President Trump for a decade.' However, watchdog groups think they're witnessing something new: a shift in scale from Trump's previous four years. In his second term, the president has made roughly $2.2 billion last year, mostly from cryptocurrency deals.