If you thought Trump rolling out a crypto memecoin ($TRUMP) and running a pump-and-dump scheme on his numbskull supporters the day before his inauguration was shady, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The $TRUMP coin rug-pull resulted in more than 813,00 crypto wallets losing a combined $2 billion while the Trump Organization raked in $100 million in trading fees in just the first couple weeks.
Since then, Trump has continued to use his scam coin to sell access to himself through private dinners, while his World Liberty Financial crypto-trading platform (co-founded with Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff) appears to exist solely to accept bribes and curry influence with foreign entities in the Middle East. The staggering number of zeroes involved in the Trump family scam almost makes you forget we’re barely three years removed from the Right having a full-blown meltdown over Hunter Biden selling some actual paintings for tens of thousands of dollars.
It’s almost adorable.
Factor in the GOP’s spineless subservience, and MAGA’s complete indifference to their Dear Leader robbing them blind so long as it means no trans swimmers at the Ivy League school none of their kids were getting into anyway, and what you’ve got is Don the Con emboldened to ramp up the corruption from the Oval Office to levels you generally only see in movies starring Joe Pesci and De Niro.
It involves a fairly new online gambling phenomenon called Prediction Markets.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, prediction market platforms are similar to online betting platforms like FanDuel or DraftKings, only instead of betting on sports, users can bet on literally anything.
The most well-known of these is Polymarket. Launched in 2020, it’s where 30 million global users gamble on everything from the Winter Olympics medal-count, to whether or not China will invade Taiwan this year, to how many earthquakes 7.0 or higher will happen by June 30, to pretty much anything else odds-makers’ imaginations can conjure up to lay odds on.
So, if you’re one of those people who constantly walk around with premonitions as to how many cases of measles West Virginia will log by summer, or whether or not Elon Musk’s next test launch will explode, you finally have a place where you can monetize your Psychic Friends Network abilities.
Since prediction market platforms are still in their infancy, Polymarket—and it’s main competitor Kalshi—have had to navigate a minefield of legal hurdles as U.S. regulators attempted to figure out exactly what they’re dealing with. In 2022, Polymarket settled with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for operating unregistered swap markets. And though they’re currently working to remain in CFTC compliance, various international bodies have banned them completely for “illegal gambling services.”
For an example as to why U.S. regulators might take issue with prediction market offerings, look no further than everyone’s favorite niche Super Bowl prop bet: the length of the national anthem.
Yep, that’s a real thing. Every year, gamblers can wager the over-under on how long the national anthem will last (usually set around 119.5 to 120.5 seconds). But unlike the final score—which is completely objective and not open to “interpretation”—the anthem length is problematic: When does the stopwatch officially start? Is it when the intro music begins? Or with the first "Oh” if it’s a cappella? Ditto the ending.
Gambling regulators decided they didn’t want to deal with the headache of cheating allegations because one sports book clocked it at 1:59 and another had it at 2:06. Plus, the prop bet was fertile ground for insider trading if the bettor happened to have advanced knowledge about the performance. Say you’re the singer’s friend and you tag along to the rehearsal. You run the stopwatch on your phone, and since the song is done to a backing track, there’s no chance it speeds up or slows down on game day. Armed with your insider knowledge, you go bet every last penny you can scrounge up that your pal Alicia Keys drags it out for over two and half minutes.
Cha-CHING! Early retirement!
That’s why you can’t place that bet at gambling sites regulated in the U.S. You can take the spread over the over-under at BetMGM, but you’re gonna have to find an offshore gambling platform for your Star Spangled Banner wagers.
Prediction markets have a similar issue for regulators to contend with: What to do with a platform where betting is open to parties who are able to AFFECT THE OUTCOME OF THE BET?
You and I are at the whims of the gods if we’re wagering on how many hurricanes will hit Florida before Labor Day. That’s out of our hands. But imagine if one of the bets was “What date will the U.S. strike Iran by?” Definitely out of your and my hands—but not necessarily out of everyone’s hands.
Imagine what an unscrupulous character—perhaps some family with a history of scamming the market—could do if they were the ones making the final decision about striking Iran?
If you’re a person with a long history of illegal self-dealing, you’d better pray to God you’ve got some top-notch legal advisors in the industry to guide you down this potentially thorny path and keep you out of trouble—a neutral third party who can make expert and ethical recommendations.
Thankfully for Donald J. Trump, both Polymarket and Kalshi had an advisor on their board who was more than happy to walk the ethically-challenged Donald through all the ins and out of the prediction market’s regulatory considerations. And as luck—or fate— would have it, both board members were the same person:
Donald Trump, Jr.
In January 2025, Kalshi named Don Jr. as strategic advisor the week before his dad’s second inauguration, a move little Donny took to Twitter/X to announce in somewhat of a baffling choice of words:
In August 2025, Don Jr. did what most credible strategic advisors in the professional world do in such a position: he invested into their chief rival, Polymarket (through his venture capital firm 1789 Capital), joining their advisory board as well.
As one does.
With Donald Trump, Jr. now sitting on the board of the two biggest prediction markets in America, it didn’t matter one iota to President* Trump that the NFL was simultaneously expressing concerns to Congress about prediction markets in general.
Screw the NFL and their prudish “ethical gambling regulation concerns” when there’s fist-fulls of money to be made, amiright?!
And the NFL isn’t the only one with serious concerns. While commodities are regulated at the federal level, gambling is regulated by the states. And states are trying to crack down on prediction markets since putting money on whether or not the government will reveal that aliens exist before 2027 sure as hell sounds a lot more like “gambling” than “playing the stock market.”
So tasked with determining whether prediction markets should fall under the purview of the federal government as a commodities issue, or the states as a gambling issue, President Trump has sought the wise council of his eldest son and business partner, Don Jr., who happens to sit on the board of both of the largest prediction markets the regulators are looking at.
If you’re thinking to yourself right now: Holy schnikes, Batman! This sounds like the worst conflict-of-interest advisory panel in the history of everything!” sit tight because it get SO much worse.
At this point, it’s important to remember that all of Donald Trump’s sons are also partners in the family’s World Liberty Financial crypto platform. Don Jr. also serves on the board of Truth Social’s parent company—Trump Media & Technology Group—where he acts as the sole trustee of his convicted felon dad's revocable trust while pops is cosplaying as Fuhrer in Chief.
Three guesses what Don Jr. advised daddy to do, and the first two don’t count.
Yep! Placing money on if Bad Bunny’s video becomes the most viewed Super Bowl halftime show in its first month isn’t gambling—it’s COMMODITIES “HEDGING.”
It gets even better.
With President Trump taking Don Jr.’s “advice” on leaving prediction markets to the federal government, they put their two coked-up heads together and came up with the GREATEST SCAM IN TRUMP FAMILY HISTORY:
Yes, you read that right.
The President of the United States is launching his own gambling platform—called Truth Predict—where the citizens of the country he’s in charge of can place bets on what he’s going to do next.
Now, you might be inclined to ask, “Why would Trump create his own gambling platform when they can just gamble on Polymarket or Kalshi? If the market is setting odds on presidential actions, the could just place money on every available wager and then do whatever wins him the bet.”
You would be correct, but you’re missing a big piece of the pie: THE REST OF THE GAMBLING MARKET.
Remember that Polymarket has 30 million global users? That’s a lot of people placing bets!
And do you also remember that the Trumps took in $100 million from their memecoin scam? That hundo-mil wasn’t from selling their holdings at a profit, it was from the trading fees of everyone else buying and selling theirs. When you own the platform, you get a little cut of every transaction. It doesn’t matter if the person’s buying or selling, up or down, or if the bet wins or loses. As long as there’s action, there’s a fee to be made.
This is why pundits and analysts keep saying Trump 2.0 makes Nixon look like a Boy Scout. This is Russian oligarch-level corruption.
Scratch that.
This is cartoonish, James Bond villain-level corruption—the kind of get-rich-scheme you’d expect to derive from a secret underground lair inside a volcano, not the Oval Office of the United States of America.
Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm. Donald J. Trump opened an online geopolitics casino.
That tracks with the timeline we’re on.
At least there’s a silver lining for the rest of the world: since Trump’s new gambling platform is for the entire global market (unless you’re the Netherlands), Iranians will soon be able to place bets on which dates Trump is going to destroy their house!
Win or lose, Trump gets a vig.
(and to think Conservatives were in a tizzy over Hunter’s finger paintings!)
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