A President Donald Trump insider revealed the staggering fortune the president hopes to amass before his term ends, according to a biographer.
Speaking on Thursday's episode of "Inside Trump's Head," taped before a live audience in Los Angeles, Michael Wolff said a White House source "very close" to Trump told him the president wants $20 billion by the end of his term. The source added that Trump hopes to have deals in place so that he and his family can make $100 billion after he returns to Mar-a-Lago.
"I was speaking to someone in the White House, and we were sort of talking about the money, the grift," Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles. "And I said, what do you think his number is?"
Wolff, who guessed Trump is "at about $4 billion now" in his second term, said he was trying to protect the source's identity. He added that people in Trump's orbit tend to talk about him with surprising candor.
"They're clear-eyed," Wolff said. "Trump is Trump."
The longtime Trump chronicler said money, more than anything, drives the president, and that the source's explanation made the most sense to him. Relaying the source's view, he said being president "was nice, but being an oligarch is forever."
"I think Trump in his heart, in his head, wants to be an oligarch," Wolff said.
Wolff argued that ambition explains Trump's long-running affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Coles called it shocking to see an American president "side with the aggressor, side with Russia."
"This is at the root of Trump's interest in and admiration for Putin, that Putin is the one world leader who has access to the most money with the least amount of regulation," Wolff said.
He also recounted watching Trump's 2018 Helsinki news conference with Putin alongside Steve Bannon, who remarked that Trump "looks like a beaten dog." Bannon then ran through the theories about what Putin might have on Trump, dismissing financial and sexual leverage before joking that Putin might have Trump's transcript from the Wharton School.
Wolff said he believes the answer is bigger than that, and that the war in Ukraine now stands between Trump and a lucrative partnership with Moscow. Imagining the president's thinking, he said, "Ukraine has really frustrated my ability to do a deal to be partners with Putin."
"So I am now going to do everything possible," Wolff continued. "I only got two years left, everything possible to close down the Ukraine situation and make deals with Putin."