'Profiting Off Of The Presidency': Cory Booker Goes Nuclear On Trump Over His Cryptocurrency

5 months ago

During a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing in July, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) spoke about President Trump's cryptocurrency, Trump Coin or $TRUMP.

Transcript

00:00Thank you. Senator Booker. I'm grateful. I think if anything we're hearing in this committee

00:05is the urgency for a market structure bill that provides the appropriate regulation. I want to

00:10jump in right away, though. Mr. Massad, you said something that to me maybe was an understatement.

00:18I never imagined in my life I would see the President of the United States

00:21create a digital asset that is open to being purchased, a meme coin that could be purchased

00:30by anybody, anywhere, from our adversaries, our rivals, from people trying to curry favor with

00:37the United States, from people who are looking for military deals, and to literally sell seats

00:43to a dinner at the White House, at the Americans, one of those more sacred civic spaces. To me,

00:49this amounts to a level of galling corruption never, ever before imagined that could happen

00:58in our country, and we're normalizing it. It is corrupt. It is dangerous. It is an attack on our

01:08democracy. It's a violation of the Emoluments Clause, and it is undermining this industry as a whole.

01:15Would you agree with me that my language is probably, perhaps, more appropriate?

01:22I would totally agree with you, and I've said similar things. The meme coins are a perfect

01:28bribery tool, because they're out there, someone can buy them, and therefore, you know, provide

01:36essentially money to the President, yet still claim, well, I'm just speculating on a meme coin.

01:41Do you agree that the way our Constitution was designed, the legislative branch is supposed to

01:48provide checks and balances and oversight, and the fact that the United States of America's,

01:54United States Senate, excuse me, has not had one oversight hearing of this corruption is a

02:00a surrendering of our obligations and duties under the Constitution.

02:06It's shocking to me. I mean, he's making billions of dollars, not just from the meme coin, but from his

02:11own stable coin. Even the meme coins have been called by the creator of Ethereum. The creator of

02:17Ethereum has called them a bribery tool.

02:19I think it's appalling that Congress has laid down. I think it is extraordinarily dangerous.

02:27And I am beyond frustrated that we are normalizing this level of corruption in America and have the

02:34most corrupt president imaginable who is making hundreds and hundreds of millions, if not billions of

02:40dollars, profiting off the presidency at the very national security risk that it proposes to our country

02:46when he can make decisions that affect truly the safety and security of our country, as many of these

02:55countries are trying to curry favor and have deals. That doesn't even begin to mention the Trump hotels and

03:01all the other things that he is doing that truly undermine any idea of what it means to operate in the

03:10presidency with integrity.

03:11I want to jump really quick, Mr. Benham, because I'm very deeply engaged and involved in trying to make

03:19sure that we land something that could deal with a lot of the challenges. The one thing that hasn't been

03:23discussed, as you and I talked about this ad nauseum, is the CFTC's capacity to regulate this area. Right now, we have

03:35seen budget requests for a 2.9% decrease in funds from its 2024 request and a 5.1% decrease in

03:43personnel, which is on top of cuts made earlier this year by Doge that threatens the CFTC's ability to

03:51oversee the $120 trillion equity in debt markets it's already responsible for, without even adding the

03:59growing crypto market into the equation as is envisioned. The House's Clarity Act would expand the CFTC's

04:07jurisdiction without a single additional dollar. It will create chaos for retail consumers in our

04:13markets, I believe both crypto and in traditional finance. Can you, am I right to be outraged that this

04:20is how we're starting without understanding the resources that would be necessary to do what a lot of

04:25us are envisioning? Senator, short answer is yes. I mean, the number one priority if we're going to

04:30authorize new authority for an agency, the CFTC here, is funding and resources so that it can execute

04:37those responsibilities. Well, I will tell you this right now. I want to lean in in a bipartisan way

04:43and craft market regulation, but this is what I see right now. I see senators and congresspeople trading

04:49stocks and bonds, people who are involved in the crypto world. I see, again, I have legislation

04:58with a number of other senators that really say very clearly that we should be doing everything we can

05:05as a matter of integrity to stop corruption, that we should introduce and pass the End Crypto

05:12Corruption Act, which would make sure the president, vice president, senior executive branch members

05:18of Congress and immediate families, that stops them from financially benefiting from issuing, endorsing,

05:24or sponsoring crypto assets such as meme coins. So we have this air of corruption that undermines

05:30the integrity of Congress and the presidency at a level of corruption we have never seen before.

05:35And the very regulatory bodies that should be overseeing these massive markets is being starved of

05:44resources to even do the jobs they're doing right now. Any serious effort to engage in the kind of

05:51a market structure bill we are having without putting the resources that we've discussed in the past,

05:56in the bill that we had in the last Congress, a bipartisan bill, we had a way of addressing this.

06:01And so there are a lot of structural problems I have right now. And the level and possibility of

06:07corruption, of scams, of people that could get hurt if we don't do this right,

06:13is stunning to me, not to mention the very foundations of our democratic system so that

06:18we don't become some banana, corrupt banana republic, where presidents and senators and

06:24congresspeople can build the American people by bending the rules, corrupting the rules for

06:29their own benefit. We have got to do things different.

'Profiting Off Of The Presidency': Cory Booker Goes Nuclear On Trump Over His Cryptocurrency

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