‘The most corrupt thing a president has ever done’

The big news

President Donald Trump met with Syria’s new leader, interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa, today in Riyadh. This was no ordinary meeting of heads of state.

Sharaa took control of his country after deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia last year. Sharaa had his political roots not in a formal political party, but Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist rebel group with past ties to al-Qaeda. He has been trying to legitimize his rule on the global stage, taking a moderated tone and building ties with fellow Arab leaders in the region — including the Persian Gulf leaders with whom Trump has been meeting this week.

The gulf states want Trump to make to overtures with the new Syrian leadership to bring the country closer to their coalition against their principal regional rival, Iran. Assad’s regime was Tehran’s biggest state ally in the Arab world. Iran’s network of allies in Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza have all suffered devastating losses recently, weakening Tehran’s influence.

Trump appears receptive to following the gulf states’ lead, saying yesterday that he would move to lift sanctions on Syria and potentially normalize relations. The United States suspended relations with Syria in 2012 during the country’s civil war. Trump is also trying to negotiate a deal with Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

“There is a new government that will hopefully succeed,” Trump said yesterday about Syria. “I say good luck, Syria. Show us something special.”

‘The most corrupt thing a president has ever done’

Sen. Chris Murphy is blunt about how he views Trump’s use of his cryptocurrency meme coin: “This is corruption on steroids,” the Connecticut Democrat told us.

Stay with us, because this is complex: Trump launched his meme coin — $Trump — just days before his inauguration and has not been shy about promoting it. The coin thrust the president into an unregulated and volatile world where public figures can launch a cryptocurrency, use their notoriety to draw attention to the coin and benefit when the price surges.

The coin has no intrinsic value and is instead seen as a sign of support for Trump — the people behind it openly say it is “not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type,” and Trump said when the coin launched that it was meant to “celebrate everything we stand for.” But The Washington Post has found that small-time buyers have seen their investments in the coin collapse, while Trump allies and his businesses have benefited from the project in a host of ways.

The coin is now being used to buy direct access to Trump. The group behind the coin — a Trump Organization affiliate and a company run by a Trump friend — has been encouraging purchases of the coin with the promise of an “intimate private dinner” with the president for the top 220 Trump-coin holders. Democrats and government ethics experts have expressed concerns that the meme-coin dinner could be used in a foreign influence scheme. After its promoters offered access to Trump, the coin’s price surged from around $9 to more than $14. Drew Harwell and Jeremy B. Merrill found that nearly two dozen crypto wallets acquired more than 100,000 meme coins, worth roughly $100 million.

“My hair has been on fire about the meme coin from day one,” said Murphy. “That is a level of corruption that is just absolutely stunning. It was already the most corrupt thing a president has ever done in the history of the United States.”

Murphy is also concerned that the coin represents an easy insider-trading opportunity for people close to Trump. The coin price jumps every time the president touts it, meaning, as Murphy said, “all you need is five minutes’ notice that Trump is going to pump up the meme coin on social media and … you can make a mint of money.”

Trump has dismissed questions about whether he is profiting from the coin, telling NBC News this month that he hasn’t “even looked.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told us in a statement that the president is “compliant with all conflict-of-interest rules, and only acts in the best interests of the American public.”

This is certainly not the first time Democrats have accused Trump of corruption. During his first term in office, the president owned a hotel near the White House, and groups looking to lobby or curry favor with Trump would often hold events and block out rooms there. Democrats accused the president of profiting from his position, and various ethics groups sued Trump, citing a clause in the Constitution that bars the president from profiting from foreign governments. Murphy says the potential for corruption with the meme coin is even greater.

“The size of this scandal compared to the Trump hotel is like the Titanic to a dinghy,” he told us.

Republicans have been hard-pressed to comment on Trump’s use of a meme coin. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming), a crypto proponent, canceled an interview we had set with her on this topic. But she told NBC that Trump’s dinner with his meme coin holders gives her “pause.”

Murphy said he has heard “crickets” from Republicans on this issue, even as he and other Democrats negotiate a cryptocurrency regulation bill with their counterparts.

The Lummis-backed crypto regulation is now stalled, with Democrats like Murphy demanding that the legislation bar any president from issuing a crypto coin or using crypto to profit from the position.

There is incredible irony here, too: Some in the crypto industry have been open to regulation, saying it would give validity to the currency. The industry celebrated during the 2024 campaign when Trump rallied around cryptocurrency. But it is Trump’s business interest in cryptocurrency now that is stalling the very regulation that could legitimize the industry.

From your local economy

We featured Elizabeth Mahon, the owner of Three Littles, a sustainable baby goods store in D.C., in this newsletter a few weeks ago when the back-and-forth trade war with China put tariffs on Chinese goods at 145 percent, directly impacting the future of her business.

Now that a temporary trade deal has been struck, bringing the tariffs down to 30 percent, we reached back out to Mahon and found an “encouraged” but still “on edge” business owner. Mahon has been bombarded with questions about the tariffs, she told us. She does an ask-me-anything every Monday on her social media channels. Where she normally gets 15 questions about a range of topics, she said this Monday she received nearly 200 questions, most of which were on tariffs and prices. The answers, she said, remain complicated.

“I am grateful there have been some changes,” Mahon said, but 30 percent is still a high tariff to pay, and she has not heard from her suppliers that the price hikes they had planned in response to the sky-high tariffs were coming down. “It is so hard to plan. It is so risky. It feels necessary, and I am grateful there is a pause. … But, it is very up in the air still.”

“That,” she concluded, “is still really harmful for small businesses like mine.”

What we’re watching

The campaigns

Latino voters shifting to the right was one of the biggest storylines of the last election, and Republicans say the trend is continuing. Several of the House districts that saw the biggest swing to the right in the past three presidential elections have either majority or plurality Latino voters. Texas’s 34th District, located on the U.S. border with Mexico, is 91 percent Latino and had a 22-point increase in support for Trump from 2016 to 2024. Florida’s 28th District on the state’s southern tip is 72 percent Latino and also saw a 22-point increase for Trump.

Even New York’s 14th District, home to liberal standard bearer Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, saw a 17-point increase in Trump’s support from 2016. (However, that district is hardly a battleground — even with that increase, Trump secured only 33 percent of the vote in November.) The district is 52 percent Hispanic.

“As Democrats double down on their out of touch, radical agenda rooted in identity politics instead of common sense values, expect more Latinos to reject the left and vote Republican,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Christian Martinez said in a statement.

Get ready with The Post

In your local paper

Detroit Free Press: Michigan’s former Democratic House speaker Joe Tate entered the crowded primary for U.S. Senate. Tate is running to replace Sen. Gary Peters, who declined to run for reelection.

From you

Most of you were horrified by Trump’s plan to accept a $400 million plane as a gift from the Qataris, while some understood why the president would accept but bristled at him keeping the gift after his term.

“The gift is too much,” wrote Bruce Mason, a reader in Baltimore. “Even were it to remain U.S. government property, it has the clear potential to influence U.S. policy toward Qatar and toward other states with whom Qatar has issues. Therefore, the gift should be politely declined.”

Joanna Lodin said it would be “stupid” to accept the gift, noting that the Constitution forbids the president from accepting gifts from foreign powers. Elizabeth Dimon simply wrote, “A bribe is a bribe is a bribe.”

Some of you understood why Trump would want to accept.

“To my way of thinking, this is a no-brainer,” wrote Steve Ellsworth. “Accepting the gift on behalf of the United States government seems perfectly reasonable. However, the idea that the plane should go to the Trump library or somehow be controlled by Trump is absurd.”

And Tracy Will, a reader in Wisconsin, offered a personal joke. “I bought a sailboat once and the expenses became a nightmare,” she wrote. “The only consolation I had was that I did not get a plane!”

Send us a reply

The Supreme Court on Thursday will hear three consolidated cases challenging Trump’s bid to block the constitutional right to citizenship for nearly all children born in the United States. (The children of diplomats or occupying military forces are exempted, as they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.) The right is guaranteed in the 14th Amendment, but Trump asserts that the children of undocumented immigrants are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and therefore not eligible for citizenship at birth. Were you born in the U.S. to immigrant parents? How does the case impact how you see becoming American?

Thanks for reading. You can follow Dan and Matthew on X: @merica and @matthewichoi.