Well, well, well. It seems the White House has finally shed its last thread of working-class pretence. A new report has landed on my desk, reeking of champagne and digital hubris, claiming that the wealth of America's presidents has spiralled from Harry Truman's modest pension to Donald Trump's billion-dollar crypto windfall. And here I was, thinking the only thing inflating in Washington was the size of their egos.
Let us begin with Truman, the haberdasher from Missouri who left office and took up residence in his mother-in-law's house. Poor Harry. He had to write his memoirs just to pay the bills. How quaint. How utterly endearing. Compare that to the current crop of CEOs in suits who treat the presidency as a leveraged buyout. Truman's pension was a pittance, a mere $12,000 a year adjusted. Now we have presidents who leave office and immediately sign book deals worth millions, give speeches to Goldman Sachs for a cool half-million a pop, and apparently, dip their toes into the murky waters of cryptocurrency.
And then there's the orange elephant in the room. Donald Trump, the man who turned the White House into a branding opportunity, has allegedly made a killing on a crypto venture. Because of course he has. The same man who trademarked 'You're Fired' has now presumably trademarked 'To the Moon!' The report claims his net worth has ballooned by a billion dollars thanks to some digital token called 'TruthCoin' or something equally dystopian. I can only assume it's backed by the tears of his former lawyers and the promises of a wall that Mexico never paid for.
Let us not forget the others. The Bushes, with their oil money and baseball teams. The Clintons, who managed to parlay a $2,000 investment in Whitewater into a multimillion-dollar speaking empire. The Obamas, whose Netflix deal and memoir advances have made them the Bard and Betty Crocker of the progressive set. Every single one of them has left office wealthier than they arrived. It's the one bipartisan achievement we can all agree on. The only thing trickling down these days is the cash.
But what does this say about the American Dream? Is it now a prerequisite that to enter the Oval Office, you must exit with a portfolio that would make a Rockefeller blush? Or has the presidency itself become a kind of golden parachute, a springboard to untold riches for those who play the game right? I suspect it's both. The office is now a piggy bank, a treasure chest, a slot machine that pays out in speaking fees, consulting gigs, and now, digital tulips.
The real question is: who is left to represent the common man? When the President of these United States is a billionaire or becomes one faster than you can say 'stock options', who speaks for the factory worker in Ohio, the waitress in Nevada, the teacher in Iowa? They get a tweet, a thumbs up, and a promise that the next tax cut will finally make their lives better. Meanwhile, the president's family is setting up a crypto exchange in the Cayman Islands.
So here's to Harry Truman, the last honest pauper in the White House. May his ghost haunt every five-star hotel suite that a former president books on the taxpayer dime. And to Donald Trump, the digital king of the new Gilded Age: may your blockchain collapse under the weight of its own absurdity. As for the rest of us, we'll be here, sipping our gin, watching the circus, and wondering when the clowns became the ringmasters.
Biff Thistlethwaite, signing off from the bar of the National Press Club, where the only thing more bitter than the tonic is the truth.
