MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Two ethics issues for President Trump have come to a head this week. The first, the U.S. government formally accepted that Boeing 747 from Qatar to add to the Air Force One fleet. And the second, the president headlined a dinner for top investors in the Trump meme coin. Now, the White House has repeatedly said, there's nothing to see here.
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KAROLINE LEAVITT: The president is abiding by all conflict-of-interest laws that are applicable to the president. And I think everybody - the American public believe it's absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency.
KELLY: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt answering questions there on Thursday, questions about the $TRUMP coin dinner. And while this president is no stranger to ethics questions - he faced them in the first term, too - some of the ways that Trump is challenging convention this time around are novel. Here to talk through presidential ethics and President Trump are NPR's Stephen Fowler and Domenico Montanaro. Welcome to you both.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Hey, there.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey, good to be with you.
KELLY: Domenico, you kick off. We heard Karoline Leavitt there saying it is absurd to insinuate that President Trump may be profiting from his time in the White House. Fact-check that.
MONTANARO: Hardly, you know, something that is wrong to insinuate because, you know, look at what he's done. I mean, as you mentioned, I mean, some of the ways in which he's trying to, you know, kind of cross these lines or come close to these lines is really novel. We're talking about this Qatari plane that he got, that he's accepted - $400 million is what it's worth. And it's not even a plane that's going to be something that lives on to be Air Force One for future presidents. It's something that he's going to then take and put in his presidential library, so lots of questions around gifts for that.
And then, of course, this crypto dinner - cryptocurrency was something that Trump had been very much critical of before this past campaign, where a lot of people in the crypto world were big Trump supporters. And his sons have figured out ways to be able to try to turn a profit. And this meme coin is something where we've seen millions of dollars now be able to kind of move toward entities that Trump is affiliated with.
KELLY: It's fascinating. I mean, before the second round in the White House, we were all familiar, of course, with Trump hotels and Trump golf courses and Trump steaks. And it's this whole brand - Trump brand - that is now packaged up, commodified, part of the Trump MAGA movement.
FOWLER: I mean, yeah, when you think about it, Mary Louise, like, Trump's entire life is being the salesman for Trump the brand. I mean, you mentioned just a small handful of the things that his name has been put on over the years. On the campaign trail in the last year, there were Trump sneakers. You know, there's Trump trading cards. There's Trump NFTs for other digital spaces. And so it is impossible to separate Trump the brand from Trump the president.
And so some of the critics - Democrats, some Republicans, ethics experts - say that is a problem, and there are red lines that are being crossed with some of the things that have happened. But at the same time, the White House and the president says there's nothing that he's doing wrong. There's nothing that he's doing that violates any conflict-of-interest laws.
KELLY: Just to drill down on these two issues in the news this week, Domenico, we've been talking about the plane, that Qatari airplane. It is worth several hundred million dollars. Trump says it is a gift to the defense department, that it would be kept at his presidential library after he leaves office. Just spell out what the ethical concerns are here.
MONTANARO: Well, you're looking at the emoluments clause of the Constitution which bans presidents from taking gifts from other countries or from anyone, really, so that you don't have bribes. We're talking about access, potentially, to the White House. What does somebody want if they're giving you something for free that's worth $400 million, right? I mean, there's the old adage, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is, right?
And we know that Trump has sought this kind of thing because he hasn't liked Air Force One. He - it's older. He's commissioned Boeing jets to be updated and renovated, but they're taking too long. So he sought out being able to find other planes. He toured this plane back in February in Florida. And the fact is, what does Qatar want out of giving the United States a $400 million plane? And by the way, a plane, again, that is going right to his presidential library, not something that's going to be sticking around as a gift to the Defense Department for the long term.
KELLY: And then before we move on from cryptocurrency, Stephen, we had you on the program yesterday. That was before this dinner took place. You were telling me we didn't know who a lot of the people who were going to show up at this dinner at Trump's golf course would be because they could sign up just using nicknames, anonymous. Do we know any more about who came, what happened?
FOWLER: Well, we know that there were protesters outside of Trump's golf club, outside of D.C., where this was held. There were lots of reporters that were there watching people coming in. There were people showing foreign passports as identification to get in. And there was this leaderboard of the people who were the top owners of Trump's cryptocurrency, that we mentioned before. And they were signing their names alongside, and so I'm sure that picture is going to be scrutinized. But there were a lot of people that were not U.S. citizens that gave, you know, in some cases, millions and millions of dollars' worth of Trump's cryptocurrency to have that opportunity to be there in the same room with him. And that, again, raises concerns about the emoluments clause and foreign involvement in U.S. politics.
MONTANARO: And they didn't release a list of names, but we know one person who attended was a Chinese billionaire named Justin Sun. He has lots of interests in the United States, in companies that he has. The Securities and Exchange Commission has investigated him, and that's being put on hold. And you have to ask, is this something that's related to the fact that he was the top crypto holder for his meme coin, or is it something else? We don't know. There's not a lot of transparency when it comes to this, but there are certainly a lot of very wealthy people who are looking to be able to find ways to have access to the most powerful man in the world.
KELLY: Let me start to bring us toward a close by asking about one more development this week - the so-called big, beautiful bill that the president wanted passed by the House. The House did, in fact, pass it this week. We wait to see what happens to it in the Senate. But Domenico, the fact that the president can get this done despite opposition from some members of his own party, does that signal he is able to move forward with his major priorities despite any ethic questions out there and the shadows they may be casting on a presidency?
MONTANARO: You know, Republicans, in their minds, are sort of keeping these things separate. Even if some of them have concerns about the Qatari plane in particular, their concerns are not ethical ones. They're security ones, where we heard one Republican say that it was almost like a Greek Trojan horse because they're wondering about listening devices and things like that. It's not so much about whether or not the president is profiting off of these things.
KELLY: That's NPR's Domenico Montanaro and NPR's Stephen Fowler. Thanks, you two.
MONTANARO: Thank you.
FOWLER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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