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What makes Facebook such a generous source of inspiration is the steady stream of MAGA-inspired twaddle posted by fools unskilled in the simple art of “looking things up.” I normally ignore their posts because these people enjoy living in a fact-free world and there is no rescuing them from their information abyss. Plus they like “owning the libs,” so when you respond to anything they write or say they experience a kind of sophomoric giggle, even if their claims are out-and-out lies.
But it turns out I enjoy looking things up, and this most recent re-post by a MAGA friend got me curious. It’s a list of former presidents and their net worth, the implication being that if a former president has a lot of money today it proves corruption in the past and, by inference I guess, exonerates our current president from his genuine corruption.
While in office, all recent presidents, except Trump, put their money into a blind trust to shield them from even the appearance of corruption. Someone else manages their money, and in a good market presidents should do as well as anyone. That’s called investment, not corruption.
But whoever created this list appears to think the way to measure corruption is to compare a president’s net worth before entering office and his net worth today. Well, that’s silly. Bill Clinton left office twenty-five years ago and has made a lot of money since. So what? The important thing is, what did the Clintons make while in office, and how did they make it, when they had power, influence and favors to sell. (They went backwards, by the way.)
It may be useful to remember that it was Gerald Ford who first began to monetize the post-presidency. Before Ford, presidents might be paid to write a memoir, but never to make a speech, which they viewed as a civic obligation. It was and still is, if you ask me. Ford charged fees of from $15 to 40 thousand, the first president to do so. When criticized, he said that as a private citizen he was entitled to earn an income as he saw fit, and although it was unseemly at the time, it was he, the nice guy, middle class Republican who started this game we now regard as a normal part of post-presidential life.
Our sophomore’s list doesn’t mention Ford. But he does mention Ford’s successor, Jimmy Carter, who before taking office sold his modest peanut business to avoid any accusations of legume larceny. Highlighting the most glaringly ludicrous factoid on his list, our commentator alleges that Carter was corrupt because he was worth $150 thousand 1976 and $8.5 million when he died in 2024. Our commentator needs to take a finance class. If the Carters had merely invested their $150 thousand in an S&P 500 index fund, they would have grown their net worth to $15 million, twice what Carter died with.
It turns out the Carters were a million dollars in debt when they left the Whitehouse. Jimmy Carter eventually wrote more than thirty books, out of necessity, he said, because they left the Whitehouse broke. Presidents do have a pension, $246 thousand annually, and Carter sometimes charged a speaking fee. So they might have accumulated a lot more money, but didn’t. So where did it go? The answer is, he and Rosalyn gave it away. He said he had no intention of dying rich, and by presidential standards, he did not. He founded the Carter Center, funded programs in health care, promoted democracy around the world through election monitoring, and contributed both time and money to Habitat for Humanity. If Jimmy Carter was a grifter, he was a lousy one.
After Carter, every president has pretty much cashed in. Reagan had already had a successful career as an actor, having made enough to buy some pretty good real estate on the central California coast. Post-presidency, he famously earned $2 million for making two speeches in Japan, a shocking sum at the time. He reiterated Ford’s assertion that as a private citizen, he was as entitled as anyone to earn a living.
George H.W. Bush was wealthy when he took office. As an honorable, patrician Republican, he took the blind trust approach. Money wasn’t his obsession, and when he died he was worth about $50 million. Comfortable, but small potatoes compared to his successors.
Especially Bill Clinton who, like Carter, left office in debt, as much as $10 million by some estimates. Beginning in 1995, the Clinton’s began making a bit of “outside” cash in the form of royalties from Hillary’s book, “It Takes a Village.” But another word for writing a book is “work,” and royalties are actually legal income, which the Clintons reported on their tax return. Despite the extra income, the Clintons spent a lot of money on attorneys’ fees to fight the Whitewater and Lewinski investigations. Thus they left office in deep debt, by one account as much as $10 million. But out of office, Bill and Hilary cashed in, beginning with a $60 million book deal followed up by eye-popping appearance and speaking fees. Their estimated net worth today: $245 million. Some people may find this distasteful, bordering on the obscene. And yet, it’s legal. And it’s public. And it’s not corruption.
Same for George W. Bush. Before his presidency he was worth $15 million, largely on the sale of the Texas Rangers baseball club. So W was well off to begin with, and did nothing sinister while in office to give one pause. Since 2009, he’s delivered hundreds of speeches at anywhere from $100 to 175 thousand each. Compared to Clinton, Bush is a relative bargain, reflecting either a generous spirit or his market value. Either way, Bush was not and is not corrupt. The Bushes come from money, and now they have even more of it. Good for them, I suppose.
Of the pre-Trump presidents, only the Obamas increased their wealth significantly while in office, from $1.3 million to 12 million. That’s certainly a red flag, but on examination it appears entirely based on book sales, books written before he was elected, one in 1995, the other in 2002. Yes, one could argue that his books sold well only because he became president, but if selling decades-old books one at a time is corruption, it was really well-planned corruption.
Since leaving office, the Obama’s are doing well. Really well. But they didn’t enrich themselves while in office. Today Barak is said to charge $400 thousand for an appearance. Apparently charisma will take you a long way, but really, is he worth it? I mean, if I had the Obamas for dinner I might splurge on a prime steak and bottle of wine, but beyond that no. They have grown their net worth to around $100 million, but again, since leaving office. So what’s your beef?
And then there is Trump, actually two Trumps, 2017 to 2021, and now 2025. In his first term, he went backwards, losing almost a quarter of his considerable net worth, from $3 billion to 2.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index (yes, there is such a thing. Trump has since fallen off of the list.). It’s hard to shed tears for someone with that many zeros in his bank account. I recommend a 2021 article in Bloomberg News, Trump’s Ailing Empire, that chronicles his losses, which they attribute to a dramatic decline in luxury real estate values during Covid, as well as a general tarnishing of the Trump brand.
Among presidents Trump is the only one, ever, in our long history, who sees the office as a means of making money, and in 2025 he has found or invented myriad ways of doing it. Since taking office for the second time, he has increased his wealth 87%, from $3.9 to 7.3 billion, according to Forbes Magazine. How did he do it?
He made $2 billion alone on a basket of cryptocurrency businesses, a scheme that enables anyone fishing for favors to buy a phantom product and anonymously pad the Trump bank account. There is no disclosure, no transparency, and no telling what injustices transpired as he ignores the people’s business in favor of this own.
Trump also made money on his Truth Social media business, which Forbes calls “one of the most absurd businesses in America.” Truth Social generated just $3.6 million (with an “m”) in revenues, lost $400 million (again, with an “m”), yet is valued at $2 billion (with a “b”). Since Truth Social is a public company, anyone seeking favors, or anyone he wishes to extort, can buy shares, and apparently enough people do that the stock trades at truly idiotic heights.
It’s not hard to find more off-the-books revenue that accrue to the Trump family business. His resort and golf businesses are doing well as people who want to “do business” with Trump scramble to find ways to do so. In Vietnam the government fast tracked a $1.5 billion golf resort after a visit by Eric Trump. The Prime Minister said the visit motivated them to “expedite the project." It’s one of the many deals the Trump family is cashing in on.
The MAGA man who composed his fact-light list will probably never read this post, but even if he did would continue denying that our cruel, conman President is the real grifter. He will never understand how the current President of the United States doesn’t avoid conflicts of interest, he embraces them. For Trump they’re opportunities, which he exploits in full view and without shame. And somewhere along our commentator’s journey he lost touch with that very American morality which holds elected officials to account. He lets Trump off the hook, one gathers, because he and the President hate the same people.
SOURCES
What’s Donald Trump Really Worth?, Forbes, September 18, 2025
How Crypto and Truth Social Helped Trump Double His Fortune In Just One Year
Forbes, July 15, 2025
Donald Trump's shares in Trump Media could keep him rich to the tune of $8 billion, Fortune, November 6, 2024
Trump's Ailing Empire, Bloomberg, 2021
Barak Obama’s Net Worth in 2025: How He Made His Money GO Banking Rates, October 21, 2025.
What is Barak Obama’s Net Worth?, The Week, August 4, 2025
Celebrity Net Worth. Use the search feature to find presidents by name.
U.S. Presidents' Net Worth, Before and After Taking Office, published on AOL, data from Celebrity Net Worth, February 13, 2023.
I had the lowest net worth of any American president when I took office, (Bill Clinton), Politico
"We Give Money; We Don't Take It," (Jimmy Carter), The Independent, July 4, 2025.
