Donald Trump, now 80 years old and seeking riches his whole life, has realized his dream by debasing the once-solemn duties of the U.S. presidency.

After decades of bankruptcies and losses and inflating his own wealth as he mismanaged his companies, Trump has finally found profit, with his financial disclosure statements showing he pulled in at least $2.2 billion last year, the first (nearly) full year of his second term. That’s far more than the prior year and without even counting all the money raked in by his family.

There is very little mystery about the genesis of these riches. Technically speaking, they come from all sorts of relatively convoluted ventures involving crypto and investments and real estate, but everyone knows that they are all the product of his transparently cashing in on his high office, a massive windfall not only for him but his family and friends, all of whom have only grown more comfortable with open, rank corruption as time has gone on.

A huge portion of the earnings from the value of the Trumps’ World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency venture and its $TRUMP memecoin, neither of which really seem to do much beyond acting as convenient conduits for interested parties to line the president’s pockets. Interested parties like the United Arab Emirates, which through an associated investment firm bought about half of the company (which, again, does not really appear to provide any product or service of value).

Crypto has been a hotly debated topic in the financial regulatory sphere, which just makes it all the more curious that the president sits atop those regulatory agencies (which the U.S. Supreme Court just made less independent from political interference) as the industry forms the backbone of Trump’s presidential bonanza.

It’s a little amusing and a little disconcerting to think now of how worried Trump and high-level Republican officials once pretended to be about the possibility that Hunter Biden may at some time or another invoked his father’s name to get a plum position here or favorable terms there.

Now, the Trump family have gone from phony TV “billionaires” to bona fide billionaires on the strength of old-school patronage, grift and extortion, barely even trying to hide it. As Trump himself put it when asked about his sons’ extensive and lucrative foreign business deals — largely entered into while their father was president of the United States and dealing directly with those governments abroad — “I found out that nobody cared, and I’m allowed to.”

This is not true. A lot of people do care, from us to members of Congress to many regular Americans. And there are real questions about whether Trump is “allowed to,” starting with the Constitution’s own Emoluments Clauses, which pretty clearly prohibits presidents from accepting things of value from foreign governments for very good and obvious reasons.

Presidents and their families raking in private sector cash and investments is always cause for concern, but there has never been even close to this kind of enrichment at the hands of entities with interests directly before the federal government.

At the very least, all of this should prompt real inquiry from Congress and other relevant authorities. If only the subservient MAGA majority had a backbone; perhaps a post-midterm Congress will.

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