If National Review Will Cover This, It’s Bad

The National Review, a traditional conservative magazine, is publishing a series by Andy McCarthy detailing alleged corruption by Donald Trump and his family. This is significant because the publication previously published an 'Against Trump' issue in 2016 but largely accommodated Trump afterward, making this direct criticism a notable change.

The host references the 2016 'Against Trump' cover (0:31) and the magazine's subsequent 'Trump maybe' stance (2:19), contrasting it with McCarthy's current blunt reporting (3:00).

Andy McCarthy's series outlines a scheme where Trump and his friend Steve Wickoff founded a crypto business. This business, run by their children, allegedly served as a vehicle to leverage political power for financial gain. Wickoff, as a Middle East envoy, reportedly cut deals benefiting their families.

McCarthy's article begins with Trump and Steve Wickoff founding a crypto business six weeks before Trump's inauguration, using it as a vehicle for leveraging political power for financial gain (4:35). The children ostensibly run the business to create separation (4:57).

The series alleges that four days before Trump's inauguration, the UAE poured at least $2.5 billion into the Trump crypto enterprise. In exchange, the UAE received a pardon for Chinese billionaire felon Changpeng Zhao (CZ), access to cutting-edge U.S. chip technology, and an ownership slice of TikTok.

The UAE began pouring at least $2.5 billion into the Trump crypto enterprise four days before inauguration (6:04). CZ received his pardon, and the UAE gained access to chips (6:16).

Andy McCarthy directly contrasts the alleged scale of Trump's corruption with that of the Biden family. He asserts that to reach the sum of Trump's alleged gains from the UAE alone, one would need to add two digits to the 'tens of millions' alleged against the Bidens, implying a vastly greater scale of corruption.

McCarthy's 'to be sure' graph states, 'You'd have to add two digits to the sum of Biden abuses of power... to get near what Trump has raked in just from the UAE' (9:27).

Initially, Trump's crypto business focused on 'shitcoins' or 'memecoins,' which are easily manipulated. However, to attract billions in foreign investment from entities like the UAE, the business needed to move into more legitimate 'stablecoins.' The pardon of CZ was crucial not just for money, but because his Binance platform provided a team of engineers to build the technology for the USD1 stablecoin currency.

Trump's original crypto idea was 'shitcoins' (11:08), but to attract billions from foreign interests, they needed to move to 'stablecoins' (12:27). CZ's pardon was critical because his Binance platform 'deployed a team of over a dozen engineers to build the technology behind the USD1 stable coin currency' (12:53).