Last week, President Donald Trump’s financial disclosures showed he earned more than $2 billion in 2025 — including an astonishing more than $1 billion from his family’s entry into the largely unregulated world of cryptocurrency.
The day after that information became public, Trump began flying on a new $400 million Air Force One that was gifted to his administration by Qatar.
Then on Sunday, we learned that FIFA had overturned a one-game World Cup suspension for US soccer star Folarin Balogun after Trump got involved. It was a highly unusual intervention from a head of state that is now causing an international incident amid European allegations of favoritism and possible corruption. (The US plays Belgium on Monday night.)
Trump’s self-enrichment and transactionality have long been evident — even in-your-face and unapologetic — in his second term. But each day seems to bring fresh, sometimes shocking reinforcement.
And it’s a potential sleeping giant of a political issue for Trump and the Republican Party, with polls showing Americans are inclined to believe the worst about how Trump operates.
The news about Trump’s billions in new wealth on his personal financial disclosure form is significant because it puts a hard dollar figure on how much Trump has enriched himself since he’s been back in office. (Previously, journalists, including at the New Yorker, aimed to estimate how much he had made, but now we have a self-reported figure to reference.)
It’s also just a huge figure. As the New York Times noted last week, the figure — which is at least $2.2 billion but could be more — is significantly more than the minimum of $622 million he earned in 2024, before returning to the White House.
Trump has dismissed concerns that he’s profiting from his job, insisting he isn’t directly involved in managing his personal fortune and attributing his rising wealth to the stock market. But Trump has promoted the crypto industry while in office, and his two Florida resorts have also delivered record-breaking surges in revenue, according to his latest disclosure.
That shows just how much Trump has monetized his political power. He also did it largely through an industry with very little in the way of safeguards against corruption.
And it comes as Trump has sought to put his name, image and signature on a whole host of things that are usually reserved for revered former presidents.
The FIFA situation is somewhat different, in that it’s less about Trump’s self-enrichment than about potential undue political influence.
It’s not clear at this point precisely how much Trump pressured FIFA or how direct the request was; we’re still learning the details. Trump said he asked for the review but “didn’t tell [FIFA President Gianni Infantino] what to do.” Infantino insisted the decision was made by an independent body, even as he confirmed that he and Trump had spoken.
But it’s abundantly clear that Trump has thrown his weight around with FIFA before and that Infantino has felt the need to cater to him (to say the least).
It was just eight months ago, after all, that FIFA actually created a new “FIFA Peace Prize” and gave it to Trump after Trump failed to win his coveted Nobel Peace Prize. But that’s hardly all. Infantino has gone to great lengths to curry favor with Trump, and the Times even reported last month that FIFA has leased an office that “has sat all but empty” in Trump Tower for the past year.
Given that history, even if Trump didn’t directly ask FIFA to make Balogun eligible, his mere involvement was going to cast a shadow over the decision. And Trump got involved anyway.
The other caveat with the FIFA decision is that it’s one that many American fans will feel was ultimately just, even if some don’t like the thought of Trump putting his thumb on the scale.
Many felt the foul that led to Balogun’s red card at last week’s game against Bosnia and Herzegovina didn’t warrant such a harsh penalty. FIFA also might have violated the rules around using replay by showing the referee who reviewed the foul a slow-motion replay with which to make his decision. (Slow-motion tends to make fouls look worse.)
But even if the ultimate outcome was the right one, that doesn’t mean the process was above-board — or that this will be the end of it. Europe is crying foul, with its soccer governing body UEFA calling the reversal “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable” and saying it “crossed a red line.”
Now, if the United States does beat Belgium and advance, the controversy could mar what would otherwise be one of the most triumphal moments in US men’s soccer history.
At the very least, the situation furthers an image of a president who is unafraid of the appearance of impropriety. He seems to have adopted a “might makes right” approach and an attitude that he’s entitled to whatever he can grab hold of, try to influence or affix his name to.
But do Americans view Trump’s actions as evidence of corruption? Polling suggests they increasingly do — or, at least, that the problem of corruption has gotten worse on his watch.
While there’s relatively little data on this subject, a Pew Research Center poll in October showed 61% of Americans believed Trump had at least probably “improperly used his office to enrich himself and his friends and family.”
Even 31% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believed that was at least probably true.
Likewise, a September Washington Post-Ipsos poll showed 56% overall and 65% of independents said they believed Trump was “using the presidency to enrich himself.”
More recent polling doesn’t get at the issue as directly. But it does point to problems for Trump.
Americans said 49%-21% that corruption had increased rather than decreased since Trump took office last year, in an April Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Polling from Reuters and Ipsos has shown the percentage of Americans who disapprove of Trump on the issue of corruption has increased from the mid-40s after Trump took office to 60% last month.
Neither question asked about Trump being corrupt, specifically, but it’s safe to assume many people had that in mind.
And finally, a Strength in Numbers-Verasight poll last month showed Americans said 53%-39% that the grounds existed to impeach Trump. One of the most oft-cited reasons? Corruption and self-enrichment, which was cited by 30% of those who said the grounds existed.
The danger for Trump in all of this isn’t so much that Americans suddenly see Trump as corruptible. The Pew data, for instance, showed a majority of Americans expected Trump to improperly enrich himself even as far back as 2016, before he was first elected.
The danger is in Americans viewing this as an overriding theme of his presidency. That becomes even more problematic politically if they see him enriching himself and engaging in corrupt bargains even as the economy is suboptimal and he’s neglecting their very serious cost-of-living concerns.
Trump ran for office as someone who had exploited the system when he was in the private sector and was now going to bring that know-how into government to help out everyday Americans. But he’s at risk of looking like he’s largely looking out for himself.
Americans might cheer Balogun being back on the field on Monday night, and perhaps even credit Trump for making it happen. But he’s furthering a fraught narrative.