a functional press would, every single day, repeatedly, across numerous paragraphs in every story about him, make it clear that this is indisputably the most corrupt President in U.S. history
— Karl Bode (@karlbode.com) October 21, 2025 at 5:08 PM
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Jared Yates Sexton: "The other side of this coin, the first thing is: Nobody would think to pass a law or a restriction that would keep someone from doing this 'cause most people can't imagine someone doing it. Meanwhile, the Trump crypto banking thing: I want to make something clear because I'm always talking about this. Donald Trump didn't think about making his crypto into a banking project. Which God help us, God help us if that actually happens because it's just another — You know what it reminds me of, Nick? It reminds me of the old cartoons where someone would steal someone's wallet, but they weren't done, and they picked the person up and shook them until the lint came out of their pockets. You know? Until the Grinch went back to steal the hooks off the wall. That's what this is. I always talk about these think tanks and institutes that are being flooded with money by billionaires and now trillionaires. This is the shit that they sit around thinking up. This is where they make their money. It's not figuring out how to make the world better. It's not figuring out what laws and legislation can be passed in order to improve people's lives. They're being paid to come up with some of the most evil shit imaginable. And you're thinking about the Grinch stealing the hooks, you're thinking about the cartoon character shaking the lint of the pockets. That's what they're there for now. They're there to not only figure out how to get that lint out of your pocket. They're there to figure out how to create a legal apparatus that not only shakes the lint out, but creates an entire law enforcement structure that stands there and watches and sometimes helps. So it's stuff that people are imagining and creating in order to get at the last scraps that the poor class and the middle class have."
(We're Talking About Revolutionary Shit, Here, Muckrake Podcast, June 19, 2026, 31:05–32:49)
Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets, speaking to Paul Krugman, Jul 11, 2026:
"...there is no legitimate use case for crypto. They’ve had 18 years to come up with one. They keep throwing things up like “an inflation hedge” or “source of stability.” Every one of them has turned out to be baseless. The only real use for crypto is tax evasion, money laundering, and crime. It’s the preferred mechanism of choice for global terrorists, sex traffickers, and rogue nations like North Korea and Iran.
You have to ask yourself why crypto has basically hijacked the political agenda of Washington. It’s because they followed the Sam Bankman-Fried model of buying bipartisan support by spending hundreds of millions of dollars in campaigns. ... It’s the biggest bait-and-switch in history. In the hundreds of millions of dollars they spend on campaigns, they don’t mention crypto. That’s because they know crypto is toxic. Poll after poll shows crypto is toxic with the American people. Politico and the Wall Street Journal independently looked at the massive amounts of ads bought by the crypto industry supporting candidates in the United States, and not one mentioned crypto. Then they get their friends elected who come to Washington and say, “Crypto voters sent us here,” except not one voter voted based on crypto. They were mostly negative attack ads on extraneous issues.
So crypto has now basically hijacked the agenda. The amount of attention politicians give it is crazy. The Senator from Maryland was recently quoted as saying, “I’m spending virtually all my time on crypto.” If his constituents knew that, they wouldn’t be happy. So here we have a financial product of no social use and massive negative uses that is being integrated with our core banking and financial system. ...the President is getting filthy rich on crypto.
The problem is that the downside of crypto is not going to fall only on the people getting rich on it. Once they connect it up to the banking and financial system, which they’re doing across the board, we are going to see problems. In many ways, I think what’s happening now is worse than what happened before the ‘08 crash...we have this entirely new multi-trillion dollar financial product that has no value, is incredibly volatile, and is rife with conflicts of interest. It is going to be a core part of our banking system within the next twelve to thirty-six months."
