Truth Social’s Trump Media & Technology Group announced Wednesday that it will expand into financial services and potentially purchase bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Per the press release, the company built on President Donald Trump’s brand will launch the fintech brand Truth.Fi. The brand will partner with Charles Schwab and offer financial and investment advice and strategy.
Despite Trump having America’s biggest tech bros front row at his inauguration, the press release also states that Truth.Fi seeks to create a “robust ecosystem” for “American patriots” free from the “threat of cancellation, censorship, debunking, and privacy violations committed by Big Tech and woke corporations.”
Trump has spent quite a bit of time crafting his brand on the idea of anti-woke, anti-cancellation ideology—now, fans of the convicted felon can invest directly through his platforms while wearing his cologne and sneakers, too.
Watchdog groups have long been sounding the alarm about conflicts of interest in Trump’s business and policy decisions in the White House.
Melania Trump
As Daily Kos previously reported, ethics came into question just last week when Trump and his wife Melania launched their own meme coins, $TRUMP and $MELANIA.
With Trump’s control over how the federal government will regulate the cryptocurrency industry, experts have expressed concern.
Jessica Tillipman, an anti-corruption and government ethics professor at George Washington University, explained to Daily Kos last week that there are no laws stopping a president from profiting off of the people he was elected to serve.
Laws were never made to prevent this type of behavior because past presidents typically acted in good faith.
“We’ve always relied on this system of norms,” she explained. “I think people were pretty surprised to see how few restrictions there were on what a president could do because we hadn’t seen this before.”
Speaking to CNN, one expert explained the challenges for federal agencies regulating businesses such as Trump’s as he continues to expand into the financial market.
“These business moves create even more opportunities for conflicts of interest: the various agencies that regulate the financial industry will now be controlled by people appointed by President Trump himself,” Delaney Marsco, director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, said. “Those people will be faced with questions about how to handle matters that will impact the financial interests of their boss.”
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