“Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver on Sunday exposed what’s so “worrying” about President Donald Trump and ethics concerns surrounding his family’s cryptocurrency businesses.
“If these conflicts of interest were as easy to understand as Jimmy Carter and his peanut farm, I think there would be a lot more alarm about just how flagrantly corrupt and compromised Trump looks here,” said Oliver, likening Trump’s crypto dealings to Carter turning his business over to its trustees in 1977.
“That is why we badly need proper guardrails going forward.”
Oliver stressed that Trump has shown a “pretty significant change of heart” toward crypto since 2021, doing a massive 180 from his talk of Bitcoin being a “scam” against the U.S. dollar and a “disaster waiting to happen.”
“Trump realized just how much money he personally could end up making from dealing with a speculative asset, because it’s turned out to be a lot,” said Oliver, noting that Trump’s personal income reportedly surged to $2.2 billion in 2025, mostly due to his family’s crypto businesses.
After exploring the “absurd” amount of the Trump family’s crypto-related ventures, Oliver said it’s difficult for him to believe the president is unaware of deals that could put millions in his sons’ pockets.
“The point here is it sure seems like Trump’s exploiting crypto sketchiness for maximum profit, and importantly, at the same time, he’s now making it much easier for others to do the same,” he said.
Oliver looked back at a 2024 Bitcoin conference when Trump received massive cheers for vowing to fire Gary Gensler — the Securities and Exchange Commission chair under Joe Biden who likened crypto to the “Wild West” — on day one. (Gensler stepped down from his post at the end of Biden’s term.)
The SEC has since “eased up” on more than 60% of the crypto cases that were ongoing when Trump returned to office, The New York Times found in December.
Now, the administration is pushing to pass the Clarity Act, which Oliver noted would shift crypto out of the SEC’s purview and to the “short-staffed” Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which lacks a mandate protecting investors, essentially aiding Trump as he continues to profit off crypto.
“If you see the Trump family engaging in the future in a major crypto deal, probably with an embarrassingly unimaginative name, some shady shit is likely going down,” he underscored.
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