During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump disavowed familiarity with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation plan for autocratic takeover of the US. That disavowal proved as truthful as Trump's promise not to disturb the East Wing of the White House.

Curtis Yarvin, whose philosophy punctuates the main tenets of Project 2025, supported Trump’s campaign because he thought Trump would overthrow democratic institutions and replace the presidency with a “Monarchist CEO,” who would run the country like a for-profit corporation.

Profiting from office like no other president in US history, Trump is well on his way. On Oct. 28, Forbes reported that only ten months into his second term, Trump has nearly tripled his net worth, from $2.5 billion in 2020 to $7.1 billion today, largely from crypto schemes and pay-to-play federal transactions.

Accumulating corruption

Last week, Trump announced a list of 37 wealthy donors funding his 90,000 square foot $300 million gilded ballroom. Donors include several billionaire individuals, along with data-analytics company Palantir, defense contractor Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, YouTube, Apple, Comcast, Amazon, T-Mobile, Chevron, Google, Hard Rock International, and Meta, most of whom have already seen or expect to see a surge in federal contracts.

In The Corruption Chronicles, Issue One compiled a partial list of other ways Trump has monetized the presidency by transforming it into a vehicle for his own private gain. From selling access to his administration to using foreign visits to attract financial support for his own businesses, Trump has officially turned his presidency into a for-profit venture.

Examples of illegal, shady, or ethically suspect activities to date include:

• Every nation Trump visited on the first official foreign trip of his second term had ongoing private business deals with the Trump Organization
• Trump has made billions of dollars through crypto ventures since last November, including his (and Melania’s) launch of memecoins — cryptocurrency products widely understood as having no utility
• 92 percent of the top 25 investors in Trump’s cryptocurrency memecoin scheme appear to be foreign nationals
• The United Arab Emirates’ investment fund, MGX, recently made a $2 billion investment into the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, using a stablecoin called USD1, created by a firm with close financial ties to the Trump family
• Trump accepted a $400 million luxury jet from the royal family of Qatar which could cost American taxpayers up to $1 billion to retrofit into Air Force One
• After private prison company GEO Group gave $1.75 million to pro-Trump super PACs and Trump’s inaugural committee, Trump awarded them a 15-year government contract to reopen an immigrant detention facility
• Private investors spent $148 million to attend an exclusive dinner with Trump at his golf club in the northern Virginia suburbs of D.C. in May
• The Pentagon, according to the Financial Times, recently awarded a significant contract to Unusual Machines — a drone company in which Donald Trump Jr. owns millions of dollars of stock
• Trump is selling a new $5 million “Trump gold card” investment visa to give wealthy foreigners permanent US residency status and the ability to make political contributions
• Trump raised Mar-a-Lago membership fees to $1 million, up from $200,000 in 2017
• Donald Trump Jr. co-founded a Trump-aligned private club in Washington, D.C., charging a $500,000 membership fee to rub shoulders with administration officials, “with no danger of running into reporters”
• Trump is now demanding a quarter-billion dollar private payment, threatening to sue the federal government he “runs” if he doesn’t get it.

Billionaires can’t directly fund government agencies

After openly soliciting and accepting sums of money the corporate media is reluctant to call bribes, Trump most recently announced a $130 million “gift” to help pay military service members during the government shut down. Timothy Mellon, of the Carnegie-Mellon robber-baron dynasty, wrote the check. Mellon, who donated even more than Elon Musk to get Trump re-elected, is a recluse who opposes immigration and programs for the poor, while he supports deep tax cuts for the rich.

A long-standing federal law prohibits Mellon’s type of “gift” for several reasons. The primary issue is Article I of the Constitution, which directs Congress, not the executive, to control federal spending. Because of Art. I, a president’s ability to spend money or incur debt requires explicit congressional approval. The Antideficiency Act protects the balance of power at the same time it guards against foreign and domestic private influence over federal affairs.

Trump ignored this Constitutional constraint and seems to regard federal assets, including the armed forces, as his personal property. By letting a wealthy heir cut a check for the military, Trump circumvented the Constitutional framework under which both he and Congress are supposed to operate, and permanently sealed his contempt for Congress.

Project 2025 and the roots of Trump’s takeover

The New Yorker reported that Yarvin, the Project 2025 philosopher, proposed “that the U.S. government be replaced with a monarchy led by a ‘CEO-king’ that would have “absolute power, dismantle democratic institutions, and liquidate the existing government bureaucracy.”

But earlier this month, Yarvin lamented on his Substack that Trump hadn’t gone far enough, fast enough.

Perhaps Trump’s unprecedented 13 billionaires serving as his “cabinet” can read Yarvin’s lament and get to the part where he intuits that Democrats’ 2026 midterm blowout will bring a tsunami of legal reckoning. Yarvin is so fearful of what he calls “liberal vengeance” to come that he has publicly revealed plans to leave the country.

There’s also speculation that Trump and his enablers will do the same rather than face legal fire if Republicans can’t rig the 2026 midterms.

What really may be driving Trump’s private ventures abroad is his predator’s sense that his second coup attempt, like his first, will fail.