OUR DAILY THREAD: Albania Does Democracy
They're mad as hell. Why aren't we?
What would Albanians do?
That’s a question every American should be asking themselves after a pair of investigations revealed corruption that’s so comically blatant, it must be by design.
On Monday, Reuters took a deep dive into the Trump Family’s audacious use of these four business ventures…
World Liberty Financial: A company controlled by Donald Trump’s revocable trust is entitled to 75% of net revenue from token sales by World Liberty Financial.
$TRUMP meme coin: Donald Trump licensed his name and image to a company called Celebration Cards LLC, which raised enormous sums selling the digital token.
American Bitcoin: The Nasdaq-listed company, recently renamed AI Financial Corp., raised money from investors to buy World Liberty Financial tokens.
ALT5 Sigma: At the time of the deal that created this Nasdaq-listed joint venture, partner Hut 8 Inc. bought World Liberty tokens. Eric Trump also got a stake in American Bitcoin, at no cost.
…to extract wealth using with a ‘can’t lose’ formula that Reuters calls a “crypto playbook.” And by “playbook,” it sounds like they mean “con game”:
While they vary in size and structure, each of these ventures has followed the same playbook. The Trumps risked little up front. Trump family members – notably, the president’s oldest sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. – hyped the venture. The Trumps raked in money as investors piled in. And those buyers lost big when, for various reasons, the prices of their Trump-related crypto assets later tanked.
A Reuters examination shows that the Trump family has used this template to generate at least $2.3 billion in profit from investors since Trump retook the presidency. On the other side of that cash bonanza for America’s first family: the more than a million investors whose net losses totaled $2.3 billion at the end of April, according to a Reuters analysis. Those investors include retail buyers of crypto and crypto-linked equities, as well as those who invested indirectly through funds like ETFs with exposure to Trump crypto. The loss total includes paper losses on unsold investments.
It’s the symmetry of the Trump family’s gains and the losses that stands out. It reads like a punchline: $2.3B in gains for the Trumps and $2.3B losses for investors. It sure looks like a straight-up transfer of funds by way of the four scams in their crypto playbook. It’s highly likely some of the “more than a million” people who pumped money into the Trumps’ pockets were using the four scams to launder bribes. We certainly haven’t heard the Emiratis complain about the $500 million they lavished on World Liberty Financial. They’re using World Liberty Financial is a laundromat.
Sadly, the same cannot be said for the hundreds of thousands who will never get any access or influence from their “investments.” Their unbridled love and devotion made them the easiest marks in recorded history. Reuters talked to 27 of them:
All but three of the 27 individual investors interviewed for this article said they knew of Donald Trump’s history of bankruptcies, unpaid contractors and failed ventures. Still, most said they believed that his position at the apex of American political power and what they perceived as his business acumen ensured lucrative returns on their investments. Many acknowledged doing little or no due diligence. Some said they still hold on to the hope that Trump will make things right. Others expressed regret, anger and embarrassment.
The saddest stories come from true believers like Matt the machinist from Indiana. He lost $32,700 from his investment in ALT5 Sigma shares. Of course, he exonerates the Trump family and instead “believes Democrats and anti-Trump investors are taking short positions” to torpedo the family’s crypto projects. And there’s a 45 year-old Texas businessman who lost just $800, but is “investing” again because he “just feel[s] like Trump knows business.”
Financial losses can be really hard to swallow on a stomach full of lies. Trump served up a steady diet of slapdash products and sinister scams since he came down the escalator, and he knows true believers will pour money into whatever the Trumps are pushing. Noted empath and former Trump Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross reminded Reuters they have no one to blame but themselves:
“[I]f people are going to buy something that’s speculative, they ought to be aware there’s a risk,” said Ross, currently vice chairman of crypto company ReserveOne Inc. He added: “If they chose to continue on as a holder, hoping it would go up more, well, that’s their business.”
Here’s another punchline:
Ross said he has not invested in any Trump crypto ventures.
Instead, Ross, who Forbes once noted “has a knack for slipping out of scandals,” is cashing on on the special purpose acquisition company, or a SPAC, he set up in Cayman Islands right before he left the Commerce Department in 2021.
The “experts” Reuters also contacted had a slightly different take:
Eight government ethics experts interviewed by Reuters said that the Trump family’s enriching itself from an industry that the president’s administration regulates – and that the president himself has championed – represents a conflict of interest unlike anything seen in modern American history. They noted, though, that while this departure from established norms is unethical and unprecedented, it is legal, provided the family does not exchange access to the president or regulatory favors for financial gain.
”Regulatory favors? For financial gain?”
As if cue, Kaiser Health News dropped this doozy in the punchbowl:
Trump Bought Tobacco Stocks and Raked In Industry Donations as FDA Eased Standards
Right now you are probably thinking “of course he did.”
And that’s the crazy thing … these corruption stories are piling up on an almost daily basis. It’s so ubiquitous and relentless, it feels like this is the new normal and there’s nothing we can do about it. And we aren’t hearing much from the federal agencies now that Kristi Noem is gone. But Interior? Energy? Agriculture? Of course there are favors flying out those doors. Now imagine the deluge that awaits us if the Democrats gain control of the House? When they get subpoena power? And the whistleblowers start coming out?
It will take a special commission to unpack the impact of all the Executive Orders and how the agencies ran amok based on those orders while Speaker Johnson pretended to have ethics and a moral core.
As for the tobacco story … it’s pretty straight forward:
When he ran for his second term, Trump promoted himself as a pro-tobacco candidate, posting that he had “saved” flavored vaping and that President Joe Biden and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris “want everything banned.”
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Since late 2023, MAGA Inc. has received over $20 million in funding from the industry, federal campaign records show. Trump’s inauguration garnered nearly $4 million more. His ballroom project has disclosed donations of an unknown amount from Altria and Reynolds American.
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In 2025, tobacco interests donated $6 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that supports the president, and Trump’s inauguration. And, on April 30, a week before FDA guidance that provided a critical boost to the industry, Reynolds American dropped an additional $5 million into the super PAC’s coffers.
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President Donald Trump…grew his stock holdings this year to as much as $1.64 million in tobacco giant Philip Morris. He also had holdings in Altria and a third leading tobacco company, though an apparent discrepancy in his disclosures clouds the extent of his investments.
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The stock trades and political contributions occurred as the Trump administration pursued a broadly pro-tobacco agenda: Its FDA piloted a fast-track program to approve nicotine pouches. It unveiled a program to allow vapes on the market more rapidly, despite resistance from career civil servants and leadership, culminating this year in guidance waving through flavored electronic cigarettes. It cut public health employees focusing on anti-tobacco policy. And it broadened enforcement against illicit e-cigarettes, competitors to the big industry players with a financial relationship to Trump.
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Trump’s tobacco policies have garnered favorable grades from investors. At Goldman Sachs, bankers described the May FDA guidance as “very positive” for Philip Morris and “a significant step in the FDA’s positioning toward enforcement and acceptance of nic pouch (as well as e-vapor) innovation generally.”
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And Barclays analysts said the FDA’s guidance was good news for Juul, a leading vape producer. (In November, the company contributed $1 million to MAGA Inc.)
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It amounts to the most pro-tobacco, pro-nicotine presidency in some time — a remarkable policy given the tens of millions of deaths cigarettes caused during the 20th century.
As Kaiser Health News pointed out, he also “often traded in companies manufacturing GLP-1 drugs before his administration steered policy in a favorable direction.”
It’s almost as if he wants us to know what he doing because the ultimate win is to cheat in broad daylight and still get away with it … like shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.
Maybe that was wishcasting?
And what if we think we’re watching a cruel, capricious and shortsighted Presidency, but we’re actually watching a well-run stock manipulation scheme?
Either way, you can rest assured that in the same circumstances, the people of Albania would be out in the streets, calling for Trump’s resignation. That’s because Albanians are serious about rooting out corruption that dates back to its time behind the Iron Curtain. And they are demonstrating it right now in the form mounting protests against Jared and Ivanka’s dream of transforming a dreamy Albanian island into the kind of dreamscape Ivanka’s always dreamt of (per Forbes):
Kushner and Ivanka Trump have said they were inspired to build in Albania after happening upon Sazan Island while aboard a friend’s yacht, with Trump saying on a recent podcast that she and Kushner were “captivated” by the island after first visiting it. She described the project to host David Senra as “the culmination of all of my experience in real estate, all of my travel, a lot of reflection on how I want to live, how I think people increasingly are wanting to live, and trying to really build something that’s a tangible manifestation of that”
A sweetheart deal with Albania’s now embattled president stinks of the kind of corruption that killed another recent Kushner project in the Balkans. And it threatens a beloved natural habitat … and, therefore, it has the potential to jeopardize Albania’s bid for European Union membership. But, as Reuters reported, the real story is the way Albanians have taken to the streets to protest what the see as threat to a brighter future:
“The project in Zvernec is a project ... with no transparency. And this is the apotheosis of what has been happening in Albania for the last 35 years. So today, enough is enough," said protester Leand Lakrori.
“I'm here to protest, to finish this saga of the Albanian government. It's the same two parties always," said Fabio Bracaj. "We want a new era ... we want a better country."
Then again, Americans are so worn out after ten years of non-stop madness and corruption, a “new era” and a “better country” might be more than we’re hoping for.
It might be enough to just get him to go away long enough to forget him for a day, a week or, if we’re lucky, a whole month.
What Albania teaches us about Kushner’s real estate tactics – video explainer
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2026/jun/10/jared-kushner-albania-sazan-island-real-estate-deal
Albania’s Protests Against Jared And Ivanka’s Resort Plans Are Getting Bigger
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2026/06/11/albanias-protests-against-jared-and-ivankas-resort-plans-are-getting-bigger/
Thousands fill Tirana streets as Albania’s Kushner resort protests enter second week
https://www.turkiyetoday.com/region/thousands-fill-tirana-streets-as-albanias-kushner-resort-protests-enter-second-week-3221763
Albania’s Flamingo Revolution Spreads From Kushner Resort to Political Elite
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-11/albania-s-flamingo-revolution-spreads-from-kushner-resort-to-political-elite
I saw Kushner’s Albania resort up close — it is an environmental disaster
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/6/11/i-saw-kushners-albania-resort-up-close-it-is-an-environmental