Trump’s Crypto Grift Is Pissing Off MAGA

Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency scheme is leaving a bad taste in the mouths of some of his biggest supporters.

Speaking on his podcast Monday, far-right influencer and The Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro called on the president to “stop,” openly questioning how Trump’s meme coin grift could be considered good for America, rather than just good for his pockets.

“It just isn’t America first in any conceivable way,” Shapiro said.

Last month, Trump announced a competition to see who could obtain the highest average Trumpcoin balance within a three-week period. That period ended Monday, with the top 220 reportedly winning a private dinner at Trump National Golf Club in Washington with the president.

The top 25 investors in TRUMP tokens are eligible to receive VIP access to the dinner event, opening the opportunity for them to take photos alongside Trump and receive a guided tour of the property the following day. As of last week, 19 of the top 25 holders registered on the meme coin site used foreign exchanges that exclude U.S.-based customers, reported Bloomberg. That means—as Shapiro deduced—that “foreigners are buying a lot of meme coin and then getting meetings with President Trump.

“This raises the question of influence peddling,” Shapiro continued. “If you basically buy a bunch of Trump meme coin and then funnel money to organizations associated with President Trump so you can have dinner with Trump. That doesn’t look great.”

Shapiro also chastised Trump for recently accepting several gifts that could be interpreted as foreign bribes, including a super luxury jumbo jet from Qatar—one of the most lavish gifts ever bestowed to a U.S. president.

“Does any of this help advance the president’s agenda?” Shapiro continued. “You know the agenda that we all voted for, the agenda we want to see implemented. Does this make his presidency stronger or weaker? Now I’m gonna repeat again, I don’t know whether this activity is criminal in any way, but things do not have to be criminal to hurt the agenda.

“Why in the world would President Trump be well served by this sort of vulnerability? Again, more importantly, why would those of us who voted for him, who gave to his campaign, who stumped for him, campaigned for him, be well served by this? The answer is we aren’t, and that’s why it needs to stop,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro isn’t the only MAGA talking head to come down hard on their political leader for accepting the plane. Earlier Monday, Laura Loomer went scorched earth on Trump, damning his acceptance of the jet as a “$400 million ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits.”

Non-MAGA critics of Trump’s cryptocurrency have flagged the investment as a novel way to circumnavigate Federal Election Commission contribution limits, which prevent individuals from donating more than $3,500 per election to their candidate of choice.

Trump has tried to position himself as a pro-crypto president. At a bitcoin conference in Nashville in July, Trump promised to build out a “strategic national bitcoin reserve” if elected, according to CoinDesk.

But others have derided the memecoin as little more than another money-grabbing grift. Trump’s long list of election-year hustles included launching a remarkably ugly sneaker and a limited-edition $60 God Bless the USA Bible co-promoted by “God Bless the USA” singer Lee Greenwood. Trump also took the parent company of his social media platform Truth Social public and stamped his name on a new cryptocurrency platform headed by his two sons, Eric and Don Jr., that even the president’s allies have criticized as a “huge mistake.”

The Episcopal Church is refusing to help the Trump administration resettle white South African “refugees,” ending a decades-long collaboration with the U.S. government on refugee resettlement.

The church’s Episcopal Migration Ministries have historically worked with the government via grants to resettle refugees fleeing persecution.

“In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step. Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government,” said Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, in a statement on Monday.

This comes as 49 Afrikaners arrived in the United States on Monday as “refugees.” President Trump gave them priority status, which means they waited no more than three months for their resettlement. Many refugees from other countries are forced to wait 18 to 24 months, and sometimes even years, for their resettlement assignment. Trump banned virtually all other refugees on his first day in office, including people fleeing active war zones like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and others.

White South Africans have made unsubstantiated claims of reverse racism and genocide, which have been echoed by Trump.

“It’s a genocide that’s taking place. Farmers are being killed. They happen to be white,” he said on Monday.

House Republicans are already opposing House Speaker Mike Johnson’s budget proposal stripping health care coverage from millions of Americans—but not for the reason you think.

Texas Representative Chip Roy was outraged Monday by the House Republicans’ new budget proposal, which included $880 million in cuts largely to Medicaid, not because they were too big but because they weren’t big enough.

“I sure hope House & Senate leadership are coming up with a backup plan …. because I’m not here to rack up an additional $20 trillion in debt over 10 years or to subsidize healthy, able-bodied adults, corrupt blue states, and monopoly hospital ceos …” he wrote on X. Roy is policy chair of the House Freedom Caucus, which has been vocal in advocating massive cuts.

Utah Senator Mike Lee replied to Roy in agreement:. “🎯” he wrote.

The budget proposal would strip Medicaid from an estimated 8.6 million people over the next decade, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The cuts would come primarily due to work requirements—a minimum of 80 hours per month for able-bodied adults—as well as a requirement to verify eligibility twice a year, rather than once.

But not every Republican is pushing for more significant cuts to Medicaid. Earlier this month, 12 GOP lawmakers wrote a letter to Johnson writing that they would “not support a final reconciliation bill that includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations,” according to Axios.

Roy had pushed for large cuts to Medicaid while supporting the White House budget proposal released earlier this month, which would cut a whopping $163 billion in federal spending next fiscal year by eliminating programs on climate, education, health, and housing.

“Combined with our joint efforts to rescind additional wasteful spending, and deliver a reconciliation bill that will extend and expand the Trump tax cuts while reforming Medicaid and other programs to reduce deficits, we are poised to deliver prosperity, freedom, and strength to the American people,” Roy said in a statement at the time.

Crucially, it may not actually matter if Republicans approve of Donald Trump’s proposed budget. The administration isn’t ruling out using impoundment to override Congress’s decision, one official in the Office of Management and Budget told Politico. If the administration goes the route of impoundment, the president will be intruding on Congress’s power of the purse, in violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. While Trump and his allies may claim the rule is unconstitutional, it’s not clear that the courts will agree.

The Trump administration’s decision to deport immigrants to the U.S. base on Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, cost taxpayers at least $21 million between January 20 and April 8.

Right now, the base only holds 32 immigrants, making the whole effort look like a massive waste. Close to 500 people in total have been held there since January, with no more than 200 at a time. Many immigrants held there have been returned back to the United States, as was the case with 40 people briefly held at the prison in March.

Flying immigrants to Cuba also carries a steep price: $26,277 is the average cost per flight hour for the military aircraft the Trump administration used. The drain of taxpayer dollars has drawn criticism from Democrats in Congress.

“Every American should be outraged by Donald Trump wasting military resources to pay for his political stunts that do not make us safer,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “U.S. service members did not sign up for this abuse of power.”

The military flew 46 flights this year between Trump’s inauguration and the beginning of April, lasting 802.5 hours and costing $21,087,300, according to Department of Defense data shared with Warren. So far, though, the total effort is far below Trump’s January promise to hold 30,000 immigrants at the Cuba facility.

But even if the Guantánamo Bay base was holding as many immigrants as Trump promised, it would still be a bad idea to use the detention center in this way, or even at all. A relic of the Cold War days when Cuba’s Communist regime was aligned with the Soviet Union, Guantánamo Bay became notorious after the September 11 attacks for holding terrorism suspects under the questionable legal designation of “enemy combatants.”

And Trump wants more immigrants held there: U.S. Transportation Command has ordered that a new additional weekly flight to Guantánamo begin. It’s part of a mission named Operation Southern Guard and involves the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the military. The base should have been closed years ago, but thanks to the inaction of previous Congresses and presidents, it continues serving a dubious purpose.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, an early contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, is doubling down on his war against his state’s homeless population.

Newsom on Monday called on cities across California—which accounts for a third of the country’s entire homeless population—to clear out and ban homeless encampments. There are 187,000 homeless people in California.

His administration has penned legislation that allows towns, cities, and counties to adopt their own spin on his order. He has also made $3.3 billion in funds available for expanded housing and treatment.

Newsom has cracked down on homelessness since he took office in 2019, but his strategy has yielded little aside from taking homeless people and moving them to different areas in the state, which is not a permanent solution. An audit from 2024 found that the state spent $24 billion over five years with not much to show for it.

This is another notable rightward shift for a man who is seen as a legitimate front-runner for the presidency in 2028.

“Gavin Newsom isn’t fighting homelessness, he’s fighting homeless people,” Current Affairs wrote on X. “Banning encampments won’t fix the housing crisis, but it will make life more miserable for those with nowhere to go.”

This move also comes as Los Angeles prepares to host the Summer Olympics in 2028.

Rolling blackouts at Newark International Airport have continued to erode confidence in America’s airports, and while the Trump administration is promising that New Jersey’s flight problems will soon be a thing of the past, the problems are just beginning for the rest of the nation.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had only more warnings for the future of America’s commercial aviation industry.

“The lights are blinking, the sirens are turning.… What you see in Newark is gonna happen in other places across the country,” Duffy said, pointing to telecom and software issues at air traffic towers across the country. “It has to be fixed.”

He noted that, at least at Newark, “we believe we can have it up and running in short order.”

“We’re going to be able to fix that glitch, and we feel a little more comfortable about our primary line that gets the data in on radar,” Duffy said.

Duffy also mentioned that America’s airports are operating on equipment so outdated that the parts are no longer manufactured for replacements, telling host Kristen Welker that the government has to search online for alternatives.

“I’m concerned about the whole airspace. The equipment that we use, much of it we can’t buy parts for new, we have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down. You’re dealing with really old equipment,” he said.

Duffy further acknowledged that while U.S. airspace is safe, a major outage could pose a “risk to life.”

Newark has experienced several significant disruptions since late April, causing hundreds of cancellations and delays, which officials have blamed on aging infrastructure and a shortage of air traffic controllers.

The shortage of air traffic controllers is nothing new, however: It’s been a problem decades in the making. A large bulk of controllers retired over the last 10 years—a coincidence made possible due to the fact that the majority of the staff onboarded simultaneously as replacements for the 11,350 controllers fired by President Ronald Reagan in 1982.

In 2015, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association told Congress that the situation had reached a “crisis” level and that, at the time, the Federal Aviation Administration had missed hiring targets five years in a row. For years, the federal government has failed to properly incentivize younger generations to view the famously high-stress, high-education, and relatively antisocial job as desirable—and similar to other industries, that lapse between the aging workforce and the stalling youth is contributing to a brain drain. (To address this, Duffy also said he’d told the union that air traffic controllers will be allowed to work past the age of 56.)

On top of that, the massive worker shortages have forced controllers to do double duty, for instance at Reagan International Airport, where controllers were reportedly tasked with handling both the flight paths of commercial airplanes and helicopters—work typically done by two separate controllers.

“The Congress and the country haven’t paid attention to it, and they expect it to work,” Duffy told MSNBC.

In February, the administration erased 400 FAA roles, including positions that supported air safety. Duffy confirmed the cuts that time, though he attempted to minimize them by highlighting the overall staffing of the agency, which he claimed employs some 45,000 workers.

At the time, Duffy said he would “supercharge” air traffic controller hiring, hoping to shave four months off the typically arduous onboarding process. But that likely wouldn’t make a dent in America’s air traffic staff anytime soon: It currently takes about four years to become a certified air traffic controller.

Questions have emerged as to whether Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency directed the FAA cuts. But when asked directly about the issue, Duffy skirted the question.

“We were having a conversation about ‘Who do we preserve’,” Duffy said Sunday. “We went back and forth, and Elon agreed; the president agreed, ‘Of course you want to keep air traffic controllers.’ We’re trying to hire more of them. But I think the key is: Can your government be more efficient?”

“You can actually be more efficient and still accomplish the mission of safety,” Duffy told MSNBC.

On Thursday, Duffy released an eight-page framework to replace America’s antiquated aviation infrastructure, revealing at a press conference that the Trump administration would be investing in a “brand new, state-of-the-art air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world.” Unfortunately, the pitch did not mention how the agency would fund the massive technological overhaul.

Does Donald Trump know the details of his own executive order to reduce the price of pharmaceuticals?

During an address from the White House Monday morning, the president stumbled over the terms of his latest executive order, which set a 30-day deadline for drugmakers to negotiate lower prices in the U.S.

“Drug prices will come down by, much more really if you think—59, if you think of sometimes a drug that is 10 times more expensive, it’s much more than the 59 percent. You know, it depends on the way you want to analyze it, but in one way you could analyze it that way,” Trump said. “But between 59 and 80, and I guess even 90 percent.”

Trump insisted that the prices would be slashed by a far more significant rate than the cut he pushed in his first term. “Well, we’re getting them down 60, 70, 80, 90 percent—but actually more than that if you think about it in a way, mathematically,” he added.

Trump got one thing right: It’s entirely unclear how much prices will be reduced. If pharmaceutical companies fail to strike a deal to lower prices, then the U.S. will tie its drug prices to those paid by other countries. But as of now, nothing has changed.

This is far from the first time the president has struggled trying to explain a policy idea. Last week, the president rambled incoherently when asked to explain why he wanted to reopen Alcatraz.

Donald Trump is trying to claim Qatar’s luxury plane “gift” to him isn’t a big deal because Ronald Reagan did the same thing. 

“I think this was just a gesture of good faith, and, uh, I don’t get it,” Trump told reporters Monday at the White House regarding backlash over what suspiciously looks like a bribe. 

“Someday, it’ll be like Ronald Reagan, they decommission them, you know, they get to a certain age, they decommission ’em. It’ll go to my library. They’re talking about going to my library in years out,” Trump added, saying that he wouldn’t be using the jet after he leaves office. 

There is an Air Force One jet at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. But it was used by seven presidents from 1973 to 2001 before being donated to the library in 2004. Reagan left office in 1989 after two terms as president, and passed away two months before the plane arrived at his library. 

When does Trump plan to receive the jet, and when does he plan to have it “decommissioned” and sent to his future presidential library, wherever that may be? The plane gift is not only receiving criticism from Democrats and Trump’s usual critics but even his far-right allies, as a foreign government making such a large donation smacks of corruption. It also isn’t a good look for the primary mode of transportation 
of the president of the United States to come from a foreign country, given potential surveillance concerns.  

No matter how much Trump tries to deflect, receiving a luxury plane from Qatar looks very much like a bribe, especially since the Trump family business struck a deal late last month to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar. But Trump hasn’t shied away from unethical behavior in his second term, especially when there’s money involved.

Pope Leo XIV is calling for an end to the “war of words,” and for the world to stand with journalists seeking truth.

The newly minted pope directly addressed journalists in Italian at a press conference at the Vatican on Monday, making an appeal for kindness, truth, and journalistic freedom.

“The way we communicate is of fundamental importance: We must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war,” he said. “Let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism, and even hatred; let us free it from aggression. We do not need loud, forceful communication, but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice.”

Pope Leo also raised support for journalists jailed or reporting from war zones.

“The Church recognizes these witnesses—I am thinking of those who report on war even at the cost of their lives—the courage of those who defend dignity, justice, and the right of people to be informed, because only informed individuals can make free choices,” he said.

According to Reporters Without Borders, at least 550 journalists are being detained across the world. Around 160 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israel in Gaza.

The speech may catch Trump and JD Vance’s attention, especially given news last week that the pope doesn’t seem to be a huge fan of the two.

This statement is yet another example of Pope Leo setting the tone, leaning into the Catholic social justice that his predecessor, Pope Francis, was known for. Leo has also called for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid to the territory.

Donald Trump is resurrecting one of his controversial first-term policies to supposedly hack prescription drug prices—but the whole effort is such a nothingburger that he very nearly forgot to sign the executive order enacting it.

“Starting today the United States will no longer subsidize the health care of other countries, that’s what we were doing,” Trump said at a White House press conference Monday, referring to the European Union. He then claimed that low drug prices outside the U.S. were because the federal government had been financially offsetting would-be high prices in other countries.

But that’s detached from reality—the U.S. pays more for drugs because it’s an outlier among high-income, first world countries, which predominantly support universal public health coverage.

Trump’s first-term rule—“Most Favored Nation”—was focused on lowering the cost of Medicare payments on certain drugs, but it barely made it out of the White House. The policy was blocked by federal courts shortly after it was announced in late 2020, and was then rescinded by President Joe Biden in 2021.

This time around, Trump’s order sets a 30-day deadline for drugmakers to negotiate lower prices. If there is no deal, then the U.S. will tie its drug prices to those paid by other countries. But as of now, nothing has changed.

Trump reiterated that the U.S. would no longer “subsidize” drug prices in other countries, telling reporters that the “game is up,” while alluding to potentially increasing auto tariffs if they don’t comply.

“If they want to get cute, they don’t have to sell cars into the United States anymore. They won’t get cute,” Trump said. “I’ll defend the drug companies from that standpoint.”

He was also characteristically vague on how much prices would change.

“Drug prices will come down by much more really if you think,” Trump said. “But between 59 and 80 and I guess even 90 percent.”

“We’re getting them down 60, 70, 80, 90 percent. But actually more than that if you think about it in a way, mathematically.”

Other things that researchers point to as potentially resolving high drug prices in the U.S. include restricting pharmaceutical monopolies within the country, reworking insurance benefits to restrict out-of-pocket costs, and recentralizing price negotiations through the leverage of a single-payer system (like those of Australia, Germany, the U.K., or any number of other wealthy nations), according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund, a private American foundation focused on health care reform.

But none of that was on Trump’s radar. Instead, the president took time out of his morning to deride Obamacare, which (as of 2024) provided public health insurance to some 45 million Americans. Trump, however, claimed that it “doesn’t work.”

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran for president on a “Medicare for all” platform in 2016, released a statement agreeing with Trump. But he flipped the president’s script slightly, arguing that the problem with drug pricing is not that foreign nations pay too little, but rather that American citizens pay far too much. Sanders also warned Trump’s efforts are doomed to fail.

“Further, as Trump well knows, his executive order will be thrown out by the courts,” Sanders wrote in a press release. “If Trump is serious about making real change rather than just issuing a press release, he will support legislation I will soon be introducing to make sure we pay no more for prescription drugs than people in other major countries.”

“If Republicans and Democrats come together on this legislation, we can get it passed in a few weeks,” Sanders said.

In a post on Truth Social Sunday, Trump pledged that the initiative would save the government trillions of dollars and falsely claimed that Democrats had stood in the way of this kind of pharmaceutical reform, ignoring the fact that health care and pharmacy drug reform has been a pillar of the progressive platform in recent years (see: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Medicare for All” 2021 revival, which would have created a single-payer system in this country).

“Campaign Contributions can do wonders, but not with me, and not with the Republican Party. We are going to do the right thing, something that the Democrats have fought for many years,” Trump wrote.

But in 2006, Republicans were the ones who adamantly stood in the way of federal drug-price negotiations, ripping the teeth out of a bill that would have mandated drug companies to negotiate lower drug prices with Medicare officials.

“Instead of actually tackling the issues that concern average American families, the Republicans have passed legislation to help their wealthy friends and the huge corporations that support their campaigns,” said former North Carolina Representative G.K. Butterfield at the time before the measure passed.

This story has been updated.