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Late next month, President Donald Trump is hosting the “most exclusive dinner in the world” at Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia — and you’re invited!
Well, only if you can pony up millions to buy his scammy meme coin.
It’s just another breathtaking bit of corruption from Trump that, by now, is depressingly routine.
First, let’s get one of the big fictions about this thing out of the way. Trump and his cronies are pretending this isn’t Trump throwing a dinner where you can pay-to-play with the president, but rather that he’s just attending an event put on by two companies, CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC. In reality, however, both of those companies are affiliates of the Trump Organization.
Remember how back in Trump’s first term, we genuinely believed the emoluments clause mattered?
Trump turned his Washington DC hotel into a quick and easy way for foreign leaders to curry favor, netting him close to $4 million (which seems like small peanuts now). Back then, legal experts genuinely believed his self-dealing, things like charging the Secret Service wildly overinflated rates to stay at his own hotels, could result in his impeachment.
We were sweet summer children.
These days, foreign governments and domestic grifters can get access — and sweet sweet deals of various stripes — if they will purchase oodles of the $TRUMP meme coin, a thing even more worthless than a room at a Trump-branded property.
But before we get to the dinner itself, let’s talk about what this dumb meme coin is so you can understand exactly how bad this is.
These coins are ostensibly a type of crypto investment, but even in the wild world of crypto, they’re an unregulated mess. Meme coins are, well, digital coins based on memes. They’re basically created as a joke. Last year, NPR reported that literally anyone can launch one thanks to a platform called pump.fun, and more than 5 million meme coins have been created.
Remember the Hawk Tuah Girl, Hailey Welch, who went viral for her comments on oral sex? In 2024, she launched HAWK, a meme coin for her fans (who exactly they are remains a mystery for the ages). When it launched, it blew up, hitting $490 million swiftly, but before you could say “Hawk Tuah” it collapsed to $60 million.
Welch and her cronies faced allegations of a pump-and-dump, where someone hypes an investment to drive the price up, only to sell it off as quickly as possible. So, the meme coin creators can walk away with staggering amounts while everyone else is left holding the bag.
You might wonder how this is legal and why the Securities and Exchange Commission wouldn’t step in and regulate what is basically a scam.
Well, once Trump got into office the second time, the SEC conveniently issued a statement saying that meme coins do not count as a sale of securities, and therefore people purchasing them are not protected by any federal securities laws. Trump’s “crypto czar,” Elon Musk crony David Sacks, says meme coins are collectibles, not securities.
The upshot of all this is that if you choose to buy a meme coin, you’re basically on your own, and if the thing collapses, you have no recourse through the SEC. So if meme coin creators pump and dump the coin, engage in insider trading, or omit key information in their disclosures, that’s totally legal and very cool.
Enter Trump. Er, $TRUMP, which Trump launched just a few days before he was sworn in for his second term.
$TRUMP go 📉
The coin has been incredibly volatile, hitting $73.42 shortly after launch as Trump fans rushed to buy it. By April 2025, it was down to about $7.72, then began a slight climb the following month, as people snapped it up in advance of the May 2025 pay-to-play dinner with Trump. People bought millions of dollars worth of the coin and the top 220 holders got to go to a black-tie dinner with Trump at Trump National, with the top 25 getting a little VIP audience with the president as well.
These days, $TRUMP trades around $1.79, so anyone who bought it when it was first issued, and even those who bought it before the May 2025 dinner, are out a lot of money.
We don’t have a full list of who attended the May 2025 dinner, because of course not, but Bloomberg reported that 19 out of 25 attendees were based outside the United States, including Chinese crypto magnate Justin Sun. Sun spent $18 million on $TRUMP, but that was quite a bargain given that shortly after that, the SEC dropped its case against him, letting him settle for a relatively paltry $10 million.
By now, Trump has made serious bank on this meme coin scheme, earning $635 million thus far. So it’s no real surprise that he’d decide to host another one of these pay-for-play dinners. Why wouldn’t he? It’s easy money into his pockets, and all he has to do is spend a night glad-handing the same sorts of rich people he always surrounds himself with anyway.
Much like the previous dinner, there is a competition to get face time with the president. Only the top 185 holders of $TRUMP get to dine with the orange toddler. Such an honor! And honestly, nothing says “naked corruption” like selecting attendees based on how much of the worthless $TRUMP coin they are willing to buy.
The “contest,” such as it is, to get in the door runs from September 30 to November 12, and out of those 185, the top 29 get “a private meet & greet with a legend to be announced,” which we are assured does not include Trump: “No attendees will be granted a private meet & greet with the President.” The only problem is that directly contradicts the website for this scummy scam, which says that the top 20 investors would be “INVITED to a VIP reception with your favorite President.” Who knows!
But wait, there’s more absurdity.
Everyone gets the world’s worst swag bag, complete with a Trump Commemorative Poster, Commemorative Trading Card, and a Fight Fight Fight Trump watch. The weirdest thing in the swag bag, however, has to be the Trump fragrance.
What does the Trump fragrance smell like? Here’s the official blurb from the official site, gettrumpfragrances.com, which, honestly, is just so low-rent, besides being so corrupt.
“For Patriots Who Never Back Down, Like President Trump. This Scent Is Your Rallying Cry In A Bottle. Featuring Trump’s Iconic Image And Raised Fist, This Limited-Edition Cologne Embodies Strength, Power, And Victory.”
It’s not clear if this fragrance giveaway will be sex-segregated, but given Trump’s unending obsession with hating trans women and attachment to the wrongheaded idea of “biological sex,” it seems like he’d find it important to make sure the ladies in attendance get the lady fragrance.
What’s that one like? Well, it’s “inspired by President Trump’s historic win” and “captures confidence, beauty, and unstoppable determination.”
Dunno, man. These sound like they would smell terrible, honestly.
Oh yeah, and all of them come in a bottle that features a gold statue of Donald Trump, because of course they do. And the tippy-top four bribers, whoever they might be, will get an 18-karat Trump watch.
But even as Trump is coaxing people into buying the coin, Trump’s inner circle is getting out.
The post-pump dump
The Washington Sun found that the single biggest owner of $TRUMP appears to be getting ready to dump $70 million of this trash.
As Zach Everson, who tracks Trump’s crypto grift for Public Citizen, explained, we now have a situation where “regular buyers are urged to hold for a shot at dinner with the president, while tokens reserved for the coin’s creators head for the exits.”
Indeed, through the end of June 2026, Trump meme coin investors have lost $3.81 billion.
It’s the certainty of staggering losses that makes clear this is nothing but a festival of corruption, an opportunity to bribe the president of the United States. No one who spends millions to attend these tacky dinners expects a return on their investment. They’re just giving the president money in hopes it will buy them favors.
Standing by while an incompetent, wholly corrupt leader hijacks the presidency for his own gain is a choice, but that’s exactly what Congress is doing.
They could pass a law to stop this at any time. They could pummel the administration and Trump cronies with investigations. But under GOP control, Congress has been utterly allergic to any form of executive branch oversight. So Trump will continue to have tacky dinners, continue to fleece investors, and trade favors for cash — at least until January, when accountability will hopefully be coming.
That’s it for now
We’ll be back with a new episode of the PN Pod this afternoon and a special Saturday edition tomorrow.
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Thanks for reading.
There are always the Russians. They'll buy them.
Great commentary!