To House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—Your responses on July 1, 2026 on the reporting of the $2.2 billion profit personally reaped by President Donald Trump, while allegedly a public servant in 2025, was not specific enough.
Jeffries wrote on his social media account: “Donald Trump made more than $2 billion during his first year as President. Republicans are enriching themselves while making your life more expensive. We must crush the culture of corruption.”
Schumer wrote on his: “$2.2 BILLION for the Trump family. Higher costs for the American people.”
You should have described his huge loot as $1.1 million an hour. That’s right, $1.1 million an hour based on a 40-hour work week over one year. (And remember, Trump spends a lot of his time on his vengeance missions, his golf game, and napping—so a 40-hour work week is a generous estimate.)
You should have then compared that enormous sum per hour with the Trump/GOP supported federal minimum wage, frozen at $7.25 per hour. This would have given you the perfect occasion to highlight the case for a much higher federal minimum wage, helping tens of millions of American workers.
You also omitted his unlawful agreement with the IRS to give him a free ride on tax abuses.
Such profiteering from his public office at $1.1 million an hour is staggering, especially when you detail where it came from. This would have resonated with a huge portion of the voting public, including Republicans. Instead, Democrats lost the opportunity to make that stunningly understandable communication. But it is not too late to revive and make more concrete his boastful misuse of the office of the presidency. You can compare it with past presidents’ sense of self restraint. You can ask for widespread feedback from the American people and make it part of his widely discernible profiteering persona of greed and lawless power.
One further response to this mountain of greed by Donald Trump should be joint shadow hearings between the House and Senate Democrats during this August recess. This would bring this appalling engagement by Trump in his various investment arrangements to a wider audience and highlight recommendations of reforms to prevent such massive and dubious self-enrichment by a President of the United States. There will be many competent legal and other experts to testify at your hearings, which no doubt will reveal more information and reach a large audience during the August recess.
These hearings would provide the Capitol press corps with much needed information to fulfill their professional responsibility to provide the people with their right to know the fuller details of what has yet not been reported.
Another way to put it is, you don’t make $1.1 million an hour by pushing a button. There is a lot of personal hidden back-and-forths by many people and many conflicts of interest to make that rich haul a reality.
Contact your Democratic members of Congress and demand shadow hearings. Ask for their written response. Do your part to help make it happen. The Congressional Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
