How much money President Trump and his family have made

This is Planet Money from NPR. We are one year into President Donald Trump's second term, and some things are really different this time around. Going over some math to be, all up to date. That's New Yorker reporter David Kirkpatrick. Now if if well, as we go through this, I turn pages. Is that a problem? No. No. I think we actually like that sound. Oh, is that right? Okay. Alright. Okay. Fine. David has been doing the near impossible task of following every new business and business deal and financial transaction that Trump and his family have made this past year and in the first term. And he's noticed this shift. You know, in the first term, they said voluntarily, we're not gonna do any hotel or other business deals overseas because that would be bad optically. That's gone. That's out the window. This term, they've done deals all over the place overseas. In the first term, we actually said we're not gonna do any any foreign deals. That's Donald Trump junior talking. And the reality is it didn't stop the media from constantly saying you're profiteering anyway. We're like, we stopped entirely. So this time around we said, hey, we're gonna play by the rules, but we're not going to go so far as to stymie our business forever, lock ourselves in a proverbial padded room because it almost doesn't matter. They're gonna hit you no matter what. So so effectively, they've just said, since we're gonna get criticized, we might as well take the money and run. And that's when they started making money kind of hand over fist. And it's not just foreign hotel deals or other investments from abroad. It's crypto, merch, President Trump's social media platform that he makes official White House announcements on. In fact, it's hard to find a case where they've turned down an opportunity to make money off the presidency. Okay. Before Trump's first term, David says Trump was in a tight spot financially. He was losing income from licensing and endorsements. And at the beginning of his second term, he was in an even tighter spot, David says. At the time, he owed hundreds of millions in fraud and defamation lawsuits. But after just six months into his second term, Trump's financial situation started looking real good, like, real good. Just, zoop, shot up in six months. Let's just get the number out there. What is, like, the total amount? Yeah. I'd say approaching 4,000,000,000. Almost $4,000,000,000. That is the number according to David. That is how much Trump and his family have made by this point in his second term. Almost $4,000,000,000 and almost all of it made this past year. And disclaimer, this isn't just money that Trump himself has made, but his sons too. And then there's some in there that his wife Melania and son-in-law have also made. There's no real way to detangle Trump from his family because even though Trump has transferred …