NORAH O’DONNELL: OK. Allowing U.S. terrorist groups to, you know, essentially move millions of dollars around. He pled guilty to anti-money laundering laws. That was in 2023. Then in 2025 his crypto exchange, Binance, helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin. And then you pardoned C.Z. How do you address the appearance of pay for play?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, here’s the thing, I know nothing about it because I’m too busy doing the other –
NORAH O’DONNELL: But he got a pardon-
TRUMP: I can only tell you that-
O’DONNELL: He got a pardon-
TRUMP: Norah, I can only tell you this. My sons are into it. I’m glad they are, because it’s probably a great industry, crypto. I think it’s good. You know, they’re running a business, they’re not in government. And they’re good — my one son is a No. 1 bestseller now.
My wife just had a No. 1 bestseller. I’m proud of them for doing that. I’m focused on this. I know nothing about the guy, other than I hear he was a victim of weaponization by government. When you say the government, you’re talking about the Biden government.
It’s a corrupt government. Biden was the most corrupt president and he was the worst president we’ve ever had. I only care about one thing. Will crypto be — will we be number one in crypto? Crypto has turned out, and in that sense I’ve been right.
Crypto’s turned out to be a massive industry, if you wanna call it that. And I’m very proud to say that we are far and away ahead of China and everybody else. Now, China is getting into it very big, right now. If you wanna go after people, you’re gonna kill that industry.
And it’ll be very bad. Tremendous number of jobs. I campaigned positively on crypto, very openly. I campaigned. Biden campaigned against it. When Biden found out that I was getting, like, 100% of the crypto vote, which was a lot, he switched totally and he went in favor of crypto.
They were totally in favor. They had many people under indictment. They let ’em all go. They let ’em all go. You know that. Many people were under indictment. Biden was a corrupt president. Biden went all in on crypto at the very end because he thought he could get some votes.
It didn’t work. They voted for me. I wanna make crypto great for America. That’s the only thing. I don’t wanna have somebody else have crypto and have China be number one in the world in crypto. Because in crypto it’s a kind of an industry where basically you’re going to have number one and you’re not gonna have a number two. And right now we’re number one by a long shot. I wanna keep it that way. The same way we’re number one with AI, we’re number one with crypto. And I wanna keep it that way.
O’DONNELL: So not concerned about the appearance of corruption with this?
TRUMP: I can’t say, because — I can’t say — I’m not concerned. I don’t — I’d rather not have you ask the question. But I let you ask it. You just came to me and you said, “Can I ask another question?” And I said, yeah. This is the question.
O’DONNELL: And you answered-
TRUMP: I don’t mind. Did I let you do it? I coulda walked away. I didn’t have to answer this question. I’m proud to answer the question. You know why? We’ve taken crypto-
O’DONNELL: But just generally speak-
TRUMP: Excuse me. We’re No. 1 in crypto in the whole world. Other people wanna be. They’re fighting like hell to be. But we’re No. 1 in crypto because I’m the president. Biden wanted to also, at the very end, you know, he totally switched his thing.
