Oh no, I'm agreeing with Ben Shapiro. Well, a broken clock, etc. Shapiro spent quite a bit of airtime blasting Donald J. Trump for not putting "America first." Jinkies, Ben, if only someone had warned the voting public about the grifter.
"Like, please define America first in a way that says you should take sacks of cash from the Qatari royals who are behind al-Jazeera," Shapiro said, Media Matters reports. "It just isn't America first in any conceivable way. So, back to the original question — is this good for President Trump? Is it good for his agenda? Is it good for draining the swamp and getting things done? The answer is no. It isn't. It isn't."
"If you want President Trump to succeed, this kind of skeezy stuff needs to stop," he continued. "And here's the thing, it's already having an impact. It's already having an impact."
"Y'all remember President Trump launching dollar sign Trump crypto three days before taking office as president," Shapiro said. "Trump himself announced the Trump crypto on X. On Truth Social, he described it as a meme coin, meaning it had no inherent value. It was just there for the kind of bleeps and giggles. The price spiked to a trading value of nearly $13 billion, making it the 19th most valuable cryptocurrency on planet Earth. And then it proceeded to plummet, like, really, really dive."
"The project allegedly netted people associated with it, meaning the Trump organizations associated with the Trump crypto, some $350 million," he continued. "80% of the outstanding supply of that meme coin is still held by insiders, presumably members of the Trump Organization. Overall, according to data shared with CNBC, there were 2 million wallets that bought that Trump meme coin. 764,000 of them lost money. 58 wallets made more than $10 million bucks."
"And then in April, that Trump meme coin announced that the top 220 holders of the meme coin would be invited to an intimate private dinner with President Trump at his golf club," he said. "The top 25 were invited to a VIP White House tour. According to Bloomberg News, 19 of the top 25 holders of that Trump meme coin that have registered on the website's leaderboard have bought the coins using foreign exchanges that claim to exclude US customers, which means that foreigners are buying a lot of meme coin and then getting meetings with President Trump, like VIP White House tours and all the rest."
"This raises the question of influence peddling," Shapiro continued. "If you basically buy a bunch of Trump meme coins and then funnel money to organizations associated with President Trump, so you can have dinner with Trump. That doesn't look great."
Ya' think?
"That might be overstated, but let's be clear, some people do seem to be investing in the Trump meme coin for the access," he continued. "I mean, there was literally a CEO of a company called Freight Technologies that just bought $20 million worth of Trump meme coin, which I gotta say is not like the most solid investment."
"Does any of this help advance the president's agenda?" he asked. "You know the agenda that we all voted for, the agenda we want to see implemented. Does this make his presidency stronger or weaker?"
"Taking real estate deals from Qatar is not the way," Ben said. "The largest obstacle to any administration is scandal. From Watergate to Whitewater, scandal-plagued administrations have a really tough time gathering the political capital necessary to actually effectuate their agenda. And that's why it's unbelievably important that the Trump administration avoid scandal."
"Yes, I think inherently it is bad. I do not think this is good," he added. "I think if we switch the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we'd all be freaking out on the right. Let's say if Qatar was giving Joe a $400 million jet for his use at his presidential library after his presidency, or if Hunter launched a crypto firm with the son of Antony Blinken and then launched a series of crypto products in which mysterious strangers, including foreigners, were investing, all while that crypto firm was being regulated by Joe's administration, we'd all have been pretty upset on the right. We might have said that it was worthy of some coverage."
"I promise you, if these issues begin to dog his administration, Republicans will lose Congress. It's that simple," he said. "Republicans are this close to losing Congress anyway."
"President Trump promised to drain the swamp," he continued. "This is not, in fact, draining the swamp."
"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?" he added. "The answer is we aren't, and that's why it needs to stop."
Trump is into his third month in office, and the scandals are dizzying. We're witnessing a mountain of unethical and illegal behavior by Donald. Earlier this month, the Trump Organization struck a deal to build a $5.5 billion Trump International Golf Club in Qatar, and now he's accepting a bribe from them. It's a 5-alarm fire. Trump ran to stay out of prison, and now he's continuing his crime spree. What did conservatives expect?
