Far-right economics expert and ally of President Donald Trump Stephen Moore, was momentarily stumped when he went up against CNN host Jim Sciutto on Monday.
As Sciutto reporter, a bombshell report published Monday revealed that investors of Trump’s cryptocurrency lost $3.8 billion while Trump raked in profits. It’s a 98 percent drop in the value.
Moore acknowledged that losing that much value is certainly not a good thing, but that he knows “people” who have “gotten really, really rich off of crypto.” Trump, in particular, made approximately $1.1 billion off of crypto ventures, according to his financial disclosure.
But Sciutto asked about the ethics and allegations of corruption as well. “But what’s different about it?” Sciutto asked. “He’s not just any other person. He’s the president of the United States with an enormous political following. People bought it because of him, right? And if you or I started a meme coin, we wouldn’t get that many people to invest and be able to walk away with $500 million in fees. Is that not taking advantage of the office?”
Moore dismissed it, saying that people “wanted to believe in these coins” and that Trump was acting “in good faith.” Trump, he claimed, truly believed it would be a “good investment.” For him, it was.
That’s when Sciutto asked about all of the other ventures that Trump has profited from in the past year.
“Here’s the thing, though. If this [were] isolated, you could say it was one bad investment. But you have the president and his sons investing in companies that have government business before them. You have a lot of questions about President Trump making trades prior to or connected to decisions he made that benefit those companies,” the host said. “It’s not just one bad crypto bet for for the majority of people, it’s a question of profiting from the office.”
Moore demanded an example, but Sciutto called his bluff. He cited the billion-dollar mining deal in Kazakhstan. The project was being pushed by Trump’s administration while his sons were pressing the same project, with the family poised to profit.
It created a glaring conflict of interest as public power was being used to help along a deal that ultimately enriched the president’s businesses. The timeline also looks bad, as Trump’s sons got involved as it was starting to advance, making it appear that access and influence were being used to help the family profit. Ethics rules and anti-corruption laws are supposed to bar this kind of self-dealing, a TIME analysis explained.
But Moore claimed that Trump had nothing to do with his sons’ businesses because he’s too busy being president and their companies are a “big industry.”
“It’s a multibillion-dollar industry. I would separate out what the Trump industries are doing versus what President Trump is doing in the Oval Office,” Moore said.
Moore asserted Trump isn’t benefiting at all from his presidency.
“He’s not he’s not using his position to get rich off of these investments these investments, in my opinion,” Moore said.
“In your opinion,” Sciutto repeated.
The nearly 1,000-page financial disclosure shows that he has increased his wealth by at least $2 billion since taking office.