Conservatives tear into 'Trump crime family' over destructive new grift

President Donald Trump’s latest effort to seemingly profit off of his office is, according to some online conservative commenters, not merely unethical — it could seriously harm the US economy.

“The most corrupt family in American history,” former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) wrote on X on Sunday. He cited a recent Wall Street Journal report on how a Trump appointee smoothed the path for his family-owned cryptocurrency firm to become an official bank. “And they can be so openly, so obscenely, corrupt because we don’t have a Congress, and because way too many Americans just don’t care. What a damn shame.”

Another conservative, The Bulwark founder Sarah Longwell, posted on X that this demonstrates how they are “the Trump crime family.”

The pair of conservatives were referring to a recent report by The Wall Street Journal's Vicky Ge Huang on how the Trump-controlled government body the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval to turn World Liberty Financial into a bank.

“Upon final approval, World Liberty Trust will operate as a federally chartered national trust bank,” Huang wrote. “The charter will allow World Liberty to issue, redeem and safeguard USD1, the dollar-backed stablecoin that World Liberty launched last year. The stablecoin, whose reserves are currently custodied with BitGo, has a market value of about $4 billion.”

Because Trump has already profited immensely from cryptocurrency since starting his second term, the timing of the announcement exacerbates the prevailing impression that he operates with no regard for his myriad conflicts of interest.

“The approval comes as President Trump’s $1.4 billion earnings from his memecoin and crypto ventures have become the biggest roadblock for passing a landmark bill that would create a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets,” Huang explained. “The Clarity Act has stalled, driven in part by disagreements over ethics language that would prohibit government officials from profiting off digital assets. The bill is scheduled for a procedural vote on Sept. 15.”

The journalist added, “President Trump and his two sons helped launch World Liberty in late 2024 as a decentralized finance, or DeFi, project that would offer borrowing, lending and trading services. Those features still haven’t become available, but World Liberty now offers borrowing and lending through a partnership with Dolomite.”

Huang continued, “The crypto empire has created a huge chunk of his family’s recent windfalls. In 2025, he earned more than $500 million in proceeds from selling World Liberty’s token, WLFI, and an additional $263 million connected to the sale of equity in World Liberty to a group of investors led by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, a United Arab Emirates royal.”

Conservatives are not alone in denouncing Trump’s new band. Left-wing commentator Hasan Piker posted on X that “even [Turkish dictator Recep] Erdoğan and [Russian dictator Vladimir] Putin have to hide their corruption,” while Trump and his family “are doing it out in the open and there are still cattle that think he’s the second coming

More succinctly, Mother Jones journalist David Corn wrote that “suckers await.”