Crypto Critics' Corner

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Episode 171 – Is $TRUMP corrupt?

Is $TRUMP corrupt? – Crypto Critics' Corner

Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey discuss whether or not $TRUMP, the Donald Trump memecoin, constitutes corruption.Additional episodes mentioned:Episode 157 – Donald Trump, Justin Sun, and the grifts we missedEpisode 152 – Justin Sun is probably insolventEpisode 167 – What happened to the SEC? (feat. Corey Frayer)Episode 165 – Elon Musk’s Valentine’s Day MassacreAdditional resources: New York Times coverage"Potentially corrupt"Coverage of HTX being the entity that signed for Justin Sun

Cas Piancey and Bennett Tomlin discuss whether or not $TRUMP counts as corruption.

This podcast was recorded on May 12th, 2025.

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English Transcript:

00:00:05:02 - 00:00:06:11
Cas Piancey
Welcome back everyone. I am

00:00:06:11 - 00:00:11:11
Cas Piancey
Cas Piancey. I'm joined, as usual by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett Tomlin. How are you today?

00:00:11:11 - 00:00:13:20
Bennett Tomlin
Oh, I'm doing okay. How are you Cas?

00:00:14:03 - 00:00:52:18
Cas Piancey
Whatever. We are talking about a kind of a strange. I think most people already know the answer. Our answer to this question. But, there's kind of this. There was this weird moment today where it became a question of, Is Donald Trump and Donald Trump's and are Donald Trump's administration his administrators, his cabinet? Are they corrupt? And I think for anyone who's been following along for the past several months of the podcast, I think, you know, our answer to that is absolutely 100%.

00:00:52:20 - 00:01:20:05
Cas Piancey
But this isn't about what we think. This is about the fact that after publishing a pretty damning article, about all of the crazy bribes, like, I guess I'll say bribe like moments that are occurring under the Trump administration, namely with Trump coin. The New York Times put out this article pretty damning. And then immediately after they put it out, one of the authors of the article, Eric Lipton,

00:01:20:05 - 00:01:28:20
Cas Piancey
put out a, a post on blue Sky that said, you know, this isn't corruption.

00:01:28:22 - 00:01:33:02
Cas Piancey
In in more words than that. But basically, this isn't corruption.

00:01:33:14 - 00:01:42:19
Bennett Tomlin
It's potential corruption. It's theoretical corruption. It's Schrodinger's corruption.

00:01:42:18 - 00:01:55:03
Cas Piancey
The corruption must be observed before you can officially declared that it is corruption. But yeah. So let's we've talked about Trump coin before. I think when we last talked about it, I'm not sure if the dinner was a part of

00:01:55:03 - 00:01:56:11
Bennett Tomlin
It was not.

00:01:56:10 - 00:02:10:13
Cas Piancey
Probably not. I think either way, we were pretty worried about it. And what it meant. But can you talk about what what they did since the last time we talked about Trump coin and what it is?

00:02:10:15 - 00:02:38:04
Bennett Tomlin
Sure. Donald Trump issued a valueless meme coin. And now that meme coin, the largest holders of it. At a certain point in time, are going to get an exclusive invite to dinner with President Donald J. Trump. Among the people likely to attend this dinner are is Justin Sun, as well as a few others. Well, it's probably Justin Sun.

00:02:38:05 - 00:02:58:03
Bennett Tomlin
And I say this because Justin Sun's wallet is not the one that acquired these tokens. And Justin Sun's wallet is not the one that signed to say it wants to go to this event. That was his wallet. And as we all know, Justin Sun does not own yet. Anyways, that's a side issue that's not really related to this because he does, he does

00:02:58:03 - 00:03:27:08
Bennett Tomlin
He does own. He does fucking own it. But all these people can now buy their way into this meeting with Trump. And there was a discussion online about whether or not this is corruption. I obviously feel that it is corrupt for the president of the United States to issue a valueless crypto currency token, allow people to purchase it, and then let those selected people come to him to pitch him and various official actions he should take.

00:03:27:10 - 00:03:55:22
Bennett Tomlin
I think that's obvious. The reason this is controversial is because, like Cas mentioned, Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter for The New York Times who contributed to, again, like Cas said, a pretty damning piece. If you just take the facts contained in the text of the article, chose to promote the article on blue Sky by describing this as kind of a case of potential corruption.

00:03:56:00 - 00:04:31:19
Bennett Tomlin
Eric's stance is that for a thing to be corruption, you need to like see the explicit quid pro quo. So the transfer of value needs to be done in exchange for an official act from the president of the United States. So, for example, if Justin Sun had purchased a large stake in World Liberty Financial directly to get the official act of his criminal investigation in his SEC case being dropped.

00:04:31:21 - 00:05:02:19
Bennett Tomlin
That would be a bribe and would be corruption. Now, if Justin Sun buys a massive stake in World Liberty Financial more than they were originally intending to sell, and then the administration drops his criminal investigation and drops his SEC case. But we can't prove those two things are interrelated. That is not necessarily corruption. And so the debate that's been going on is how to describe these obviously corrupt actions.

00:05:02:21 - 00:05:19:19
Bennett Tomlin
And part of the reason this is important is because recently, the Supreme Court has made it much more challenging to criminally indict a president for certain acts of corruption, including taking bribes. So that's kind of the backdrop for this discussion.

00:05:19:18 - 00:05:45:15
Cas Piancey
I also want to point out that just. And maybe this is just me misunderstanding the basic concept of quid pro. Quid pro quo. But in my opinion, paying for the paying $2 million to have a private, exclusive dinner with the president to pitch whatever you want to him, it seems like a quid pro quo to me.

00:05:45:18 - 00:05:54:14
Cas Piancey
Like that just feels like that is actually already a quid pro quo. You're paying for exclusive time to pitch the president. Whatever you want.

00:05:55:00 - 00:06:06:08
Bennett Tomlin
Well, but if that if that's an explicit quid pro quo, then all the people buying, like, memberships at his club to spend time with him and stuff like that are also participating in an explicit quid pro quo.

00:06:06:07 - 00:06:08:07
Cas Piancey
Golly, that'd be something.

00:06:08:07 - 00:06:24:12
Cas Piancey
there's a couple interesting things about this that I want to I want to talk about one. I think the, the obvious comparison is, oh, well, you can do campaign dinners, you can do campaign, you can do like, you can do stuff where you give people exclusive or donors get to like go to the, you know, the Lincoln Bedroom or whatever.

00:06:24:12 - 00:06:47:05
Cas Piancey
Like they're these these things have happened in the past before. They're not new. First of all, I think we probably shouldn't let that stuff happen either. You know, whataboutism, I don't think just because we let that happen right now, we should let all corruption happen. We probably shouldn't let that happen. But to doing campaign donations, you still have to report it.

00:06:47:05 - 00:07:12:00
Cas Piancey
You still like there are factors involved that allow people to kind of at least even if there's, you know, super PACs and obviously ways to cloak, donations. This this is entering a different stage of optimization. And one of the interesting questions that I have is from the way everyone's talking about it, right? There's these 25 wallets.

00:07:12:02 - 00:07:28:13
Cas Piancey
No one knows for sure who these wallets belong to. And I'm just curious, like, is the goal ultimately to never tell the public who these 25 people are? I like how how could that possibly how how would that happen?

00:07:28:13 - 00:07:52:00
Bennett Tomlin
Well, I think so. Before we get into that one. Yes, I think that is their goal. I think they want to say as little as possible about as many of these things as possible as they can. Right. Like, that's clearly in their best interest. Well, it's also interesting when you made the comparison to fundraising dinners is we have a variety of different laws on who can give and how much can be given.

00:07:52:02 - 00:08:23:23
Bennett Tomlin
For example, like Qatar can't give $400 million to a Trump superPAC. That's illegal. Qatar could have one of their, like, members of their royal family invest a bunch into this token and show up at this dinner. Justin Sun very limited in what campaign contributions he can make. Who do you think he is, Ryan Salami? And so instead, he would have to, you know, hypothetically, go out and invest in Trump coin and World Liberty Financial.

00:08:24:01 - 00:08:51:18
Bennett Tomlin
There is a whole additional set of persons who cannot access the already corrupt pay for access system that is involved in campaign finance. And so Trump has stood up an additional, more corrupt system to enable. And this is highlighted in the New York Times article. He should say the potential for these foreign influence absence of to take advantage of this in a way they cannot easily take advantage of other campaign things.

00:08:51:20 - 00:09:08:10
Bennett Tomlin
Now, that's still a little bit jingoistic. What the, corruption coming from the United States is okay, but the corruption coming from Qatar is not okay. But I think it is important to highlight just to contrasted with the other, more banal types of corruption we encounter on a day to day basis.

00:09:08:09 - 00:09:13:23
Cas Piancey
it's it's hard to judge the levels of corrupt ness.

00:09:14:00 - 00:09:33:10
Cas Piancey
In places that are more authoritarian, I guess I would say generally they, they would suggest they're not corrupt at all. But I mean, how would you know? You have no window in, But I guess in in that sense, that feels like the route that we're going on right now, which is there is no window anymore into this.

00:09:33:12 - 00:10:06:01
Cas Piancey
And maybe that speaks to what corruption is, right? Like. And part of why so many people had a problem with the way that Eric Lipton discussed this. I think he was trying to discuss it in the most legal sense that he could and try to say like, oh, well, legally speaking, something, something, something. But I think that that that's, it's a, it's like almost apologizing

00:10:06:01 - 00:10:20:09
Cas Piancey
for allowing what can only be like there are a few other reasons to close off these windows into campaigns and politician ins reporting their financials and whatever small windows we have into that.

00:10:20:09 - 00:10:45:07
Cas Piancey
Still, to close those off, I there there's very few reasons outside of corruption in that that could be the case. And I understand being like, oh, well, legally we can't explicitly say that. But loudly making the argument that that is not what you're saying, it just feels very fucking weak, especially when you're the New York Times and it's almost it's almost like it's your duty as the as the most.

00:10:45:07 - 00:11:05:08
Cas Piancey
No, no. Like paper of note in America, the most important paper in the world arguably to be like, okay, well, this is what this is. Maybe you just say corruption. Not in the legal sense. You know, maybe you explicitly say that. Maybe you say that wired just published something right after the New York Times and they said it was quid pro quo.

00:11:05:08 - 00:11:21:19
Cas Piancey
They explicitly said that. So I don't know how wired can say it, but The New York Times can't. It doesn't make sense to me. On that note, I also want to tell people subscribe to wired. It's awesome. I've I've been subscribed to them for a while now, and it's it's really great. They do great reporting. You should

00:11:22:05 - 00:11:49:21
Bennett Tomlin
Well, and I think. I think the other thing we should emphasize is there what you're kind of getting at here is there is an important difference between, like, the legal statutes Trump could potentially be charged under and like what corruption is, you know, like using the office of the presidency to make a bunch of deals that enrich you, even if it's unclear how many of your official actions you would have done with or without, that enriching is still corrupting.

00:11:50:03 - 00:12:08:14
Bennett Tomlin
You're corrupting the office. And like we've talked about, kind of with regulation before, you are twisting the the like one way ratchet in the same way, deregulation does. I think Corey Freier was when you talked about this, when he was that like, wince. Once you deregulate, it is very hard to bring the regulations back. You've turned that back in a way.

00:12:08:14 - 00:12:55:05
Bennett Tomlin
People struggle to turn it the other way. I think a very similar thing happens with public trust in institutions and public trust in politicians. When you have enough people who are openly corrupt in this kind of way, it is very hard to convince people that. But like the honesty is the path out of that. And you also made a comparison to like, is this the like I think one of the most, accurate comparisons that kind of gets close to this moment we're at is like the moment where, the USSR collapsed and Russia started transitioning from this, like, pseudo market, economy controlled economy to like, this full kind of mob state, oligarchical

00:12:55:05 - 00:13:25:20
Bennett Tomlin
kleptocratic, really. It's a mob state, like there's organized crime entities that run huge portions of effectively, the Russian state apparatus. And that seems to be kind of what the Trump administration and the Trump cronies envision is the future of the United States, various parts of the state, power and capacity being either sold to them, delegated to them, or otherwise effectively transferred from the democratic control of the state and the people who control it to a smaller number of oligarchs who will define the path for it.

00:13:26:01 - 00:13:26:22
Bennett Tomlin
And like I think,

00:13:26:21 - 00:13:47:19
Bennett Tomlin
Alex Karp and Palantir is, I think, one of the companies that, like, really seems most committed to this or, Anduril is the other one with their, like, drones and things, or Elon might suggest suggesting like he wants to create a, space defense laser system to shoot down nukes or whatever, but that he's not actually going to sell that to the United States.

00:13:47:19 - 00:13:52:12
Bennett Tomlin
He's going to sell the United States access to his space space super weapon.

00:13:52:11 - 00:14:01:22
Bennett Tomlin
It is the transitioning of the holding of these levers of power from the more democratic institutions straight into the hands of these corrupt, incorruptible individuals.

00:14:01:21 - 00:14:29:12
Cas Piancey
the the problem I have with the way that they presented this article, which, again, you should read the New York Times article as well. It's a good article. But the way that Eric Lipton presented this article was from a, a defensive shielding yourself from some sort of legal repercussion that you're imagining is going to happen, even though at no point in the article did they state anything about like they never said quid.

00:14:29:13 - 00:14:51:09
Cas Piancey
I don't think they like, they never said quid pro quo. They don't say, they don't say the words that are like they or they say could be thought of as right. They like they clearly already shielded themselves from the possible legal repercussions. To start arguing with your audience is like, what? How? How scared of Donald Trump are you?

00:14:51:09 - 00:15:07:18
Cas Piancey
And why are you so scared of him? You're the New York fucking times. Like, if anyone shouldn't be scared of this guy, it's you. You have great lawyers. You have a shit ton of money. Carlos Slim is a major investor. What are you afraid of? What in the world are you afraid of? And why are you so afraid?

00:15:07:18 - 00:15:16:22
Cas Piancey
Because that makes. That means that this is why it's like a silencing effect, right? This is something where it's like, okay, well, if the New York Times is fucking afraid, I guess all of us should be afraid. Then.

00:15:17:00 - 00:15:39:07
Bennett Tomlin
I mean, arguably, all of us should be afraid, right? We are in a fascist takeover of the United States. The state is unlawfully kidnaping and detaining people and moving them from the state. And they have expressed their desire to, like, eliminate the writ of habeas corpus very broadly. Everyone, especially anyone like vocally or publicly against the administration, should have a certain degree of fear.

00:15:39:13 - 00:16:03:09
Bennett Tomlin
I think that's rational. I also think just getting it the New York Times, it is. This is one of the more clear examples of the New York Times house style, which is where the headline will be Trump tries crazy trick and buried in like paragraph 20. It'll be like, here's the crazy illegal part. And then in paragraph 22, you'll get critics call this the most batshit insane thing I've ever seen.

00:16:03:11 - 00:16:19:15
Bennett Tomlin
And so you have to like, whenever you're reading the New York Times, if that's a thing you do, for some reason, you have to actually read it because the headline, the headline is barely anything to do with the text and the important part of the text. And Wall Street Journal does this too. It's like at least 15 paragraphs down.

00:16:19:17 - 00:16:41:09
Bennett Tomlin
They didn't get it up in the draft. They didn't get it up in the lead. It's way buried in there because like you said, it's like they're they're so worried about the legal liability around like defamation and libel. And the administration has again said they want to challenge Sullivan. So it's like not crazy to believe that there's going to be changes in defamation, in libel.

00:16:41:11 - 00:16:54:20
Bennett Tomlin
But the New York Times, I've heard a statistic that I'm not going to try and source right now that The New York Times employs almost 10% of journalists in the United States. Like, if you're not willing to speak truth to power, then who else can?

00:16:54:19 - 00:16:59:18
Cas Piancey
know that other, like, CBS has already caved to the Trump administration. They've

00:17:00:10 - 00:17:04:06
Bennett Tomlin
Paramount in 60 minutes. Yeah.

00:17:04:05 - 00:17:11:19
Cas Piancey
And I'm sure there's been other media conglomerates that have also already caved and given him money. I can't remember which ones.

00:17:11:19 - 00:17:15:20
Bennett Tomlin
in 60 minutes. Had a bunch of people resign because they were ready to cave.

00:17:15:19 - 00:17:16:22
Cas Piancey
Right, right.

00:17:16:22 - 00:17:47:06
Cas Piancey
Yeah. I mean, this is the those are institutions that shouldn't be doing it either. But like the New York Times, again, it stands for something larger than just like, oh, well, it's a newspaper. Like it is the most important newspaper again, arguably in the world. And I think it absolutely has a liberal tinge to it. But I if liberal tinge is like, well, let's just not call Trump corrupt.

00:17:47:06 - 00:17:59:01
Cas Piancey
And then I don't even know, like that's I don't know what liberal tinge even means anymore. That doesn't like I if you can't stand for that, what can you fucking stand for? So Yeah, it's it's it's it's wild.

00:17:59:01 - 00:18:26:21
Bennett Tomlin
when I think the most important thing for us to take away from this moment is that for all of us, I think it is critically important that as many people who can describe the things they see as they see them, there still needs to be a belief in some amount of reality, or the value of truth or things like that, for there to be any kind of path out of this.

00:18:26:23 - 00:18:37:06
Bennett Tomlin
And like, those things do matter. Like corrupt corruption and not being corrupt matters. Doing good things instead of bad things fucking matters. You know?

00:18:37:08 - 00:18:49:20
Cas Piancey
I mean, if it is never disclosed who goes to this dinner? I mean, to me, that is like one of the most insane, illegal, corrupt corruption.

00:18:49:22 - 00:19:03:17
Cas Piancey
Like, run. Like we're. I don't know who. I was talking to a friend yesterday. I feel like we're getting past Nixon at this point. Like we are moving well past Nixon into territory that is like, I know we have an episode.

00:19:03:17 - 00:19:15:00
Bennett Tomlin
yeah, like the Valentine's Day massacre was arguably worse than the Saturday day or the Saturday day. The Valentine's Day massacre was worse than the Saturday Night massacre.

00:19:14:23 - 00:19:40:18
Cas Piancey
yeah, yeah. And that's not all right. Like a $400 million gift that you're going to take with you after you leave office is insane. It's insane. No. No president has ever done anything like this before. And yet again, the idea that you're like, I'm going to have a secret meeting with 25 people have no idea if they're like, they could be they could be Chinese, they could be Russian, they could be, Saudi.

00:19:41:20 - 00:19:44:04
Bennett Tomlin
They are just in sun.

00:19:44:03 - 00:19:49:05
Cas Piancey
They they are Justin Sun, probably. Yeah, I

00:19:49:21 - 00:20:01:02
Bennett Tomlin
I mean, imagine if Warren G. Harding just said the Teapot Dome is mine. Now, we're not even talking about corrupt contracts. He was just like, no, this is mine. I'm taking it. It's. It's me.

00:20:01:01 - 00:20:06:04
Cas Piancey
And loudly, like just said, it ever was like, I'm doing the thing that is definitely not okay.

00:20:06:11 - 00:20:14:10
Bennett Tomlin
And then. And then there were people who came out and said it's potentially corrupt for Warren G. Harding to declare the Teapot Dome his new personal ranch.

00:20:14:21 - 00:20:37:17
Cas Piancey
And for what it's worth, I had no where. Now we're entering ridiculous territory where we're talking about Warren G. Harding and no, everyone's last fucking interest. But it it just it just tells you that that he's using that. Then it's using that example because Harding was considered or is still considered the least popular, like one of the worst presidents in history, if not the worst of all time.

00:20:37:19 - 00:21:07:13
Cas Piancey
For America and again, Trump has flown past this, with the scale of corruption and the levels of ineptitude we don't we're not we're not even getting into the tariffs again, which are clearly just extortion like that is clearly just extorting other I mean, that like, that's how, Qatar is going to get rid of their tariffs by giving Donald Trump a $400 million airplane.

00:21:07:13 - 00:21:08:19
Cas Piancey
I like that is how this shit

00:21:08:23 - 00:21:12:03
Bennett Tomlin
That's what I call closing a trade deficit.

00:21:12:02 - 00:21:32:05
Cas Piancey
of the deal, baby. What trade? Donald, there is no trade deficit for Donald Trump, motherfuckers. So I don't know, man. I guess I wanted to talk about it because I think we need we. There's a few things that need to be clear. We all need to be able to say what is going on with this administration and not be afraid to say it.

00:21:32:06 - 00:21:45:23
Cas Piancey
I know, I know, there there are reasons to fear this administration. But you cannot be like and they can take my speech and I guess I'll just move on. And especially from the, the journalists

00:21:45:23 - 00:21:49:19
Bennett Tomlin
There's a lot of things you have to do while you're afraid. That's just life.

00:21:49:18 - 00:21:51:02
Cas Piancey
Like by cast coin.

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