MAGA Inc.

A Guide to Trump's World of Crypto Czars, Tech Titans and Prison Profiteers

Just over 10 years ago, in June 2015, a company called Extra Mile Casting offered actors US$50 each to come to Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York. When the actors arrived, Trump staff handed them gold chocolate bars, t-shirts and hats emblazoned with a slogan: “Make America Great Again.” At the appointed time Donald Trump appeared at the top of a gold escalator and glided down to the lobby to the tune of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” to make a big announcement to the actors, curious passersby and a crowd of television cameras.

It was a classic media launch that Trump has enacted many times before for a wide variety of products. Many have quietly folded after selling virtually nothing like Trump Fragrances, Trump Ice, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trumpet (long distance phone service) and Trump Shuttle (luxury flights) while others have imploded in spectacular fashion - his casino, hotel and resort businesses have filed for bankruptcy no less than six times.

But this time, Trump was selling his run to become president of the United States, and his MAGA pitch was that every American could join him on a gilded stairway to greatness.

A little over a decade later, we are living with the results: thousands killed in Iran and a threat to bomb the country back into the Stone Age, innocent people gunned down on the streets of Minneapolis, an attempt to seize Greenland, and not least, a complete overhaul of the world trading system.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump and his family, as well as the businesses run by his closest cronies are beginning to emerge from this wild ride laden down with bags of loot. Our new report will delve into some of these interlinked companies that are currently profiting from his second presidency.

We begin with the newest source of personal profit for Trump: the world of Crypto Czars, with whose help his sons have cashed in on Silicon Valley’s attempt to mount a stealth takeover of international finance. Today he generates over half of his wealth from a company named World Liberty Financial. At the same time, he has heavily favored previously sanctioned crypto companies like Tether to challenge traditional banking institutions. 

Next we will cover some of Trump's newest friends: the Tech Titans, who are currently in the midst of one of the greatest financial booms in history from the money invested in artificial intelligence (AI). We will dig into some of these companies like OpenAI and Oracle and how Trump has helped give them a leg up.

Notably, he has supported the explosive growth of data centers by new start-ups like Cloudburst and Stargate, which in turn are fueling a boom in natural gas pipelines by companies like Energy Transfer, run by Kelcy Warren, a Trump crony, to provide massive amounts of power.

Then we dig into a Wall Street bank named Cantor Fitzgerald, which is run by the family of Trump’s Commerce Secretary: Howard Lutnick. Cantor Fitzgerald is a major financier of our first two topics: crypto and AI infrastructure like data centers.

Finally, we will examine some of the biggest winners of the second Trump presidency: the Prison Profiteers - notably companies like CSI Aviation, CoreCivic and GEO Group, the companies that transport, imprison and deport migrants to far-flung detention centers and third countries, together with other Tech Titans that support them like Palantir and Amazon Web Services.