00:00The thing that really stood out to me the most when I was reporting this story is just
00:04how successful President Donald Trump has been at translating the Trump brand across
00:10a huge amount of categories.
00:11There are no formal legal laws that say a president can't run a business.
00:17The exact scope of President Trump's net worth is difficult to quantify.
00:20Most estimates put it at somewhere between $4.9 billion to $5 billion.
00:24Trump's financial portfolio is different than previous presidents in the modern era, in
00:28large part because it's just so big.
00:31So to report this piece, my colleague Leo and I probably read hundreds and hundreds
00:35of disclosures and SEC documents.
00:37We all know that the Trump brand started in real estate, but later over the course of
00:41his career, Donald Trump realized because his brand was so strong, he could license
00:45just the name without having to develop and invest in properties himself.
00:49And then later, he expanded the same idea across a bunch of different categories.
00:53Donald Trump over the course of his career has had vodkas, steaks, wines, even had a
00:58travel website at one point, all of these that carried the name.
01:01He once called Bitcoin a scam.
01:03Since then, he's launched two of his own businesses, one which is the Trump coin and the other
01:08which is World Liberty Financial, which is sort of a crypto trading platform and also
01:13coin in its own right.
01:14Fortunes estimates put the current value at about $2 billion, but he's managed to make
01:19money not just from the price of the coin, but also from trading fees when other people
01:23trade the coin.
01:24We estimate that he's made about $350 million just in trading fees.
01:30There seems to have been no erosion or dilution amongst the brand's biggest fans.
01:35And I think that's a really impressive and surprising thing for any consumer brand to
01:41be able to do.
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