America at 250: A Nation of Dupes

Sent to newspapers 5/29/2026

America at 250: A Nation of Dupes

It is impossible to ignore the President’s stock trades. It is impossible to ignore a lawsuit filed by the President as a private citizen against the U.S. Treasury, which is an agency he controls as President, which proposes to operate a settlement fund by an acting attorney general who was once the President’s personal lawyer. It is impossible to ignore his family’s business ventures that take in profit from government contracts and overseas investments tied to White House influence.

Even the most fawning of the President’s apologists aren’t tolerating this. In a May 26 editorial The New York Post writes, “No two ways about it: The Trump Justice Department’s settlement of the Trump IRS lawsuit looks terrible.” The Post goes on to list ethical concerns with the blanket protection of the Trump family from audit and the $1.8 billion hit to taxpayers to compensate a class of “lawfare” victims who do not have to provide any evidence for payment.

Fox News’ Megyn Kelly seems to have hit her limit: “I didn’t expect the corruption to be quite as widespread as it has been. The self-dealing, the lining of his and his family’s pockets. It’s shocking,” said Kelly. “You look across the board at the Trump family, I’ve never seen a family get so rich off the presidency.”  

(Sort of a private LOL for me here…Megyn, apparently you did expect a certain amount of corruption?)

Every President since Ronald Reagan has put their assets in a blind trust during their presidency. President Trump put his assets into a trust, but it is not blind. More than 3,700 trades have been made by the trust in the first three months of 2026, according to PBS Newshour. Some of these include nine purchases of Palantir stock since January worth $680,000. Palantir has billions of dollars of defense contracts, many of them sole-source.

In January, the President's account purchased between $500,000 to $1 million worth of Nvidia stock, just after Commerce officials approved the sale of some Nvidia chips to China. In February, he purchased between $1 million and $5 million more just days before Nvidia announced a major deal with Meta.

This week, Dell Technologies was awarded a $9.7 billion defense contract. Last year, the company’s foundation pledged $6 billion toward “Trump accounts,” which are to seed investment accounts for 25 million children. This year, the President’s trust account has made purchases of Dell stock between $1 million and $5 million and praised the stock in public and online. This pattern of behavior in any Pentagon official would result in an investigation and likely removal from office for conflict of interest violations.

The President filed a $10 billion lawsuit this year against the Internal Revenue Service for damages stemming from the leak by a contractor of his tax returns. The contractor previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison. The lawsuit itself was outrageous – a sitting President seeking taxpayer money from a Federal department under his control in a private lawsuit.

And the Department of Justice, which the President also controls, settled it May 18 with a $1.776 billion dollar “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for individuals who felt they were targeted by the Department of Justice (obviously not this one, but the prior one) to seek compensation.

A Federal judge has put a stay on liquidating Federal funds to create the fund or allowing any monies to be paid out until a June 12 hearing.

President Trump’s personal wealth has grown from $2.1 billion to $6.5 billion since taking office. Meanwhile, His family is also doing well for themselves at taxpayer expense.

We know about the crypto. And we know about the money from the Mideast. Here’s a new one for you: the Pentagon threw $620 million at Vulcan, a drone supplier, at the behest of White House Senior Advisor Peter Navarro, last fall. Navarro’s ask pushed the Vulcan request to the top of the pile. Donald Trump, Jr.’s private equity firm, 1789 Capital, owns a major stake in Vulcan.

$620 million is more than a third of the DOJ slush fund. That’s serious money being handed over, no questions asked.

25% of Republicans polled by Fox News last month – before the Dell trades or the $1.8 billion slush fund news came out – don’t believe that President Trump “cares about people like you.” I wonder where they got that idea.

Merritt Hamilton Allen is a PR executive and former Navy officer. She appeared regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican for 36 years, she became an independent upon reading the 2024 Republican platform. She lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run one head of dog, and one of cat. She can be reached at merritt@merrittocracy.news.