60 Minutes’ Ross Douthat Grills Trump on His Net Worth Growing by $3 Billion During His Second Term: ‘Why Not Just Divest?’ 2026

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60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat devoted substantial time during his interview with President Donald Trump to take a deep dive into the president’s net worth increasing by billions of dollars during his second term and the accusations that this represents serious conflicts of interest.

CBS News released a short clip of this section of the interview earlier Sunday and the president’s defenses about why his net worth had gone up so much were sharply criticized by Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander, who calculates wealthy individuals’ net worth for the business magazine’s regular rankings, as “nonsense” and a dishonest attempt to mislead about “Trump’s political profiteering.”

On Sunday’s episode, Douthat used a Forbes article to broach the topic with Trump, commenting that the magazine had reported that his “net worth went up by $3 billion” since he returned to office.

“Well, so did everyone’s,” Trump retorted.

“My net worth did not go up by three billion dollars, for the record,” Douthat declared.

“Well, you should have had stock,” said Trump.

“I should have had stock,” Douthat replied, somewhat dryly, before asking Trump again, how his net worth went up $3 billion.

Trump’s response was to say he didn’t really follow his money and that it is managed by his son (presumably referring to the eldest Trump scion Donald Trump Jr.):

Well, let me explain. I devote almost no time to my net worth. I don’t care. I make — I have a lot of money, far more than I ever thought I’d have. And, I guess it’s gone up. I don’t even know. I have a son who’s a very straight, good guy. He watches over money. I don’t even talk to him about it. He watches. He gives — they gave my money — I have a lot of cash, I’ve had a lot of cash, long before I came in here. I don’t take a salary, you know?

“But you’re doing okay,” said Douthat.

“I’m doing fine,” said Trump. “But I don’t take a salary. Do you know I’m the only — supposedly, I don’t know if that’s right — I am the only — I am the only president that didn’t take — every other president took their salary.”

“It’s very generous of you to the American taxpayer, but here’s what I want to understand,” said Douthat, asking about how Trump Jr. “manages or helps manage a cryptocurrency company called World Liberty Financial” and the president was a “co-owner of that company.”

“That’s correct, yeah,” said Trump.

WLF “is also partially owned by investors connected to the government of the United Arab Emirates,” Douthat pointed out, one of the main conflicts of interest that Alexander had highlighted in his detailed critique. “I think if I told you that story and it was about the Biden family, if I said Joe Biden is the part owner of a company and it has all of these investments from the Middle East, you would say, ‘That sounds corrupt,’ right?”

“But here’s the difference,” Trump replied. “I’m gonna tell you why. Because I know nothing about it.”

“But why do you —” asked Douthat.

“I made a lot of money before —” Trump began.

“But then why do you need the money?” Douthat interjected. “Why not just divest? Walk away?”

“Well, I — I do. Look, most of —” Trump said.

“But no, you didn’t,” Douthat pushed back.

“My money– most of my money is given to the biggest firms on Wall Street to invest,” said Trump.

“Also true of me,” said Douthat, “through index funds — so we have that in common.”

“And they’re index funds,” said Trump. “So it came out that I traded, like, 40,000 stocks. So among the stocks would be, like, they’d have a tiny, little amount. It’s billions of dollars —”

Douthat asked Trump again about “people in foreign countries” investing in his companies as the two continued to interrupt and talk over each other.

“It seems like you could just walk away from that and then, you know, and then you would not be accused of corruption, right?” asked Douthat.

“Well, I have, but you have sons where they go around and they build buildings,” replied Trump. “That’s what they do. That’s what I did long before I became president. I did it better than anybody. Now I’m putting my expertise to use at the White House, fixing the White House and doing things that should’ve been built — long ago. But — I was very good at real estate. I made a lotta money. But — but I have a company. My sons run the company. It’s hard to say to them, ‘Don’t do anything anymore for four years because I’m president.’ It’s really —”

“But no — but you could divest from the company yourself and let them do whatever they want,” Douthat tried again. “You’re not, like, sitting in the Oval Office thinking, ‘Thank God I have that $50 million in World Liberty Financial.’”

“Here’s the thing, you’re right, Ross, but how do you divest from cash?” replied Trump. “So I took a lotta heat because I think they traded, like, 50,000 stocks, because that’s what they do. It’s all computer generated. So if they buy a little tiny piece of Nvidia, ‘Oh, Trump is —’ I have no idea what the hell they’re buying.”

“I’ve never even heard of it before,” Trump insisted. “It’s all computer generated. They — it’s done by the biggest companies in the world. I’ve never even spoken to the company. I don’t care. Honestly, I don’t care. What it is is you take billions of dollars, you give it to these guys, good luck. And then they start trading. And they trade where they go up, they go down —”

“But do you think the people — the people who are investing in the company that you co-own with your sons, who are coming from foreign countries who want things from your government, don’t you think they think that they are buying influence?” asked Douthat.

“I don’t know,” replied Trump. “But that’s true — look, every president has a problem. You have people and they work for you, and guys like you cover them, and you do profiles on them, and they become, like, everybody thinks that Trump loves them and everything else, which in some cases is true and some cases is not. This is true for every president, going back to George Washington.”

“True,” Douthat agreed, but “every president has not owned a cryptocurrency company.”

“Well, but they own something, whatever crypto was at the time, okay?” Trump argued. “You know, there’s crypto and before that there was oil and the — okay. And every president has had this problem.”

Trump gave an example of a “trusted aide” who does good work and then says, “Sir, I love you so much, and I’ll be leaving”:

I say, “Well, good luck.” And he goes into a company that’s a defense company, or — I mean, defense more than crypto, frankly. They go into the defense, they go into the this, they go into the financial market, they go to Wall Street. They go, no matter what they do there’s a conflict, because the president is all-encompassing, right?

And this is not me. Every president that there’s ever been, they have people, many people — I watch it all the time, every time you have a president, their top people, sometimes they stay. I mean, I have some that will stay right till the last second. Others — but after they leave they go crazy. They go crazy. It’s true for every president.

“I feel like there have been more people doing things like that while serving in the administration,” Douthat pointed out.

“Well, I’m a bigger name than other presidents, whether we like it or not,” Trump replied.

“Whether we like it or not,” Douthat agreed.

In the extended interview that 60 Minutes posted on YouTube (relevant section starts around the 36:56 mark), Douthat dug into some of Trump’s accusations about conflicts of interest for his Democratic predecessors, Biden and Barack Obama.

“And people will leave office and then they’ll go into the oil business, and then immediately everyone says, ‘Oh, they have a conflict,’” said Trump. “Look at Biden. But look at Obama. Obama got from Netflix — How much did Obama get?”

“I mean, frankly, what Obama —” Douthat began.

“Wait a minute, Obama got $100 million to make a movie —” said Trump.

“What Obama did after his presidency was, again, different,” said Douthat.

“No he didn’t,” Trump argued. “He made the deal during his presidency —”

“Different,” Douthat repeated.

“Obama got $100 million from Netflix —” said Trump.

“During his presidency?” asked Douthat.

“During his presidency,” Trump insisted. “And he made a movie afterward, and the movie made about three cents.”

“I’ll have to ask ChatGPT about that after this conversation,” Douthat quipped.

Obama’s presidency concluded January 20, 2017, when Trump was sworn into office. He and First Lady Michelle Obama entered into a multi-year deal with Netflix to form Higher Ground Productions in May 2018, to “produce a diverse mix of content – including docu-series, documentaries and features,” according to a Netflix press release.

In April 2026, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Higher Ground Productions was winding down its partnership with Netflix after “a productive relationship” that had created “more than 20 films and series,” including an Oscar-winning documentary, “with a couple more on the way.” Higher Ground had also set up multiple projects with HBO during this period, the report noted.

The financial terms of the Netflix deal were not publicly disclosed; a New York Post article that took a critical framing of the story cited “one entertainment industry source” who claimed it “could be valued at more than $50 million.”

Watch the clips above via 60 Minutes and YouTube.

The post 60 Minutes’ Ross Douthat Grills Trump on His Net Worth Growing by $3 Billion During His Second Term: ‘Why Not Just Divest?’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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