The Creature from the Trump Lagoon
The most outrageous thing you might have missed this week
In between the ongoing saga of the Epstein files and our impending war with Iran, you might be forgiven for missing the most jaw-dropping story of the week: Don Jr. and Eric Trump’s Mar-a-Lago cryptofest, featuring some of the most prominent names in finance. On Wednesday, the Trump family’s crypto vehicle, World Liberty Financial, staged its latest spectacle: the World Liberty Forum, which looked less like a policy conference and more like Davos with titans of industry bending the knee to incompetent nepobabies.
The Trumps gathered a glittering guest list of Wall Street royalty and crypto cowboys beneath the frescoed ceilings of their father’s private club, including Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman, Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson, and New York Stock Exchange President Lynn Martin, alongside crypto heavyweights such as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao. The message was unmistakable: in Trump-world, the future of finance is best discussed within arm’s reach of the president’s family, where blockchain meets ballroom and access is the ultimate currency.
Changpeng Zhao’s attendance is especially notable. The founder of Binance pleaded guilty in 2023 to federal anti-money-laundering violations as part of a multibillion-dollar settlement with the U.S. government. Last year, Trump granted him a full pardon. The eyebrow-raising part is what happened in between: Binance had provided support to World Liberty Financial, including facilitating transactions tied to its stablecoin and helping to amplify the project’s credibility in global crypto markets. Soon after that assistance, Zhao’s legal jeopardy evaporated. When asked about the pardon, Trump claimed he didn’t know Zhao — despite the clear business overlap involving his sons’ enterprise.
But Zhao’s resurrection — and the decision by Wall Street’s masters of the universe to bend the knee to the president’s idiot sons — is not what is most outrageous about this whole saga.