VIDEO: “I Could Know About It. I Didn’t.”: The CNBC Interview Where Trump Confessed to Everything and the Media Called It Access

CNBC got the first interview after the biggest presidential self-enrichment disclosure in American history — and treated a $2 billion confession like a fireside chat.

Dean Blundell

There’s a moment in every failing empire when the graft stops hiding. Where the guys running the till don’t even bother closing the drawer anymore because they’ve figured out nobody’s coming. That moment aired on CNBC this week, in the Oval Office, with Joe Kernen nodding along like a bobblehead glued to the dash of a getaway car.

Two days before the interview, the Office of Government Ethics dropped Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure: 927 pages, $2.24 billion in revenue in his first year back in office. More than half of it from crypto — roughly $526 million from World Liberty Financial token sales, the “decentralized finance” outfit he launched with Eric, Don Jr. and the Witkoff family weeks before the election, plus another $635 million in royalties tied to his meme coin through CIC Digital LLC.

BREAKING: Trump Just Filed A 927-Page Confession — He Made $1.4 Billion Running A Crypto Money Laundromat Out Of The Oval Office While You Held The Bag

Dean Blundell

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Jul 1

July 1, 2026

Hold that last name. We’ll come back to it.

So CNBC — a network whose entire brand is “we understand money” — gets the first sit-down after the most staggering presidential self-enrichment disclosure in American history. And they send Joe Kernen, a man whose interviewing posture toward Trump has always been somewhere between “golf buddy” and “golden retriever.” To Kernen’s minimal credit, he actually asked the question. To everyone’s horror, Trump actually answered it. And the answer was a confession dressed up as a shrug.

“I Could Know. I Didn’t.”

Kernen asks: the crypto money in the disclosure was “an outsized number” — did you know about the crypto ventures?

Trump: “I could know about it. I didn’t. There’s nothing illegal, there’s nothing wrong with it. I could know.”

That’s not a denial. That’s a man explaining that ignorance is a choice he’s making for legal aesthetics, and that even the ignorance is optional. He’s right about one thing, by the way — Title 18, Section 208, the federal conflict-of-interest statute, exempts the president and vice president. Congress wrote the carve-out assuming no president would ever be shameless enough to need it. Congratulations, Congress. You found him.

But here’s the fact-check that torches the whole “I don’t know, I don’t get involved” routine: Trump’s own disclosure lists him as the manager, president, secretary AND treasurer of CIC Digital LLC — the entity collecting the $635 million in meme coin royalties. He’s not a distant beneficiary of a blind trust. He’s on the paperwork. Four titles deep.

“I Don’t Even Know Who They Are”

Trump’s other defense — that his money is handed off to big firms and mystery people who invest it without his knowledge — collides with the disclosure at roughly the speed of a Truth Social post.

The filings show approximately 21,000 trades in 2025, an average of about 85 per market day. Ten days accounted for a quarter of all trades, mostly during volatility triggered by his own policy announcements. In more than 200 instances, his accounts bought a stock the same day another of his accounts was selling it.

And then there’s April. On April 8, 2025 — after four days of a market bloodbath caused by his “Liberation Day” tariffs, with the S&P down more than 12% — Trump’s accounts made 327 stock purchases in a single day, loading up on Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Nvidia. The next morning, he posted “GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” on Truth Social. Hours later, he announced a partial tariff retreat and the S&P 500 rocketed 9.5% in one of its best days ever recorded.

Buy the dip you dug. Post the hype. Reverse the policy. Collect. If a hedge fund manager did this, we’d call it what it looks like. When a president does it, CNBC calls it “wide-ranging.”

“If They Buy a Truck, They Have Inside Information”

This was supposed to be a defense of his kids. Listen to what it actually is: an admission that the presidency touches everything, that his family’s business runs through everything, and that therefore everything they do is entangled with insider knowledge. He said the quiet part, then complained the quiet part was unfair to say. Read this and let me know if there are any “trucks” in Don Jr and Eric’s $9 billion defence contracting portfolio that didn’t exist 2 years ago:

🚨 BOMBSHELL: The NYT Just Caught Trump And Lutnick Running An $8.9 BILLION “Critical Minerals” Grift Through Their Own Sons. FOURTEEN Companies. Zero Shame. Republicans Voted To Hide It.

Dean Blundell

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Jun 29

June 29, 2026

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The $400,000 Fig Leaf

“I’m the only president that’s ever given up my salary.” First — false. Herbert Hoover and JFK also declined theirs. Second — the math. The presidential salary is $400,000. Against $2.24 billion in one year’s revenue, the forgone salary is roughly 0.018% of the take. It’s a tip. It’s the sticker on the collection jar that says “every bit helps” while the truck backs up to the vault.

The Rest of the Gish Gallop, Fact-Checked

“The most successful four years, including the covid.” More than 400,000 Americans died of COVID during his first term. He left office as the first president since Hoover with fewer Americans employed than when he arrived. “Including the covid” is doing more heavy lifting than any three words in modern politics.

“I saved 30 million lives” (India-Pakistan). There was a real, brief India-Pakistan clash in May 2025 that ended in a ceasefire. Pakistan credited Trump and even floated him for a Nobel; India flatly disputes that Washington brokered anything. “30 million lives” is not a number from any analyst on Earth. It’s a number from the same place “the biggest inauguration crowd ever” came from.

Iran: “totally defeated militarily… they have some missiles left.” Both of those can’t be true, and he said them back to back without blinking. That’s not analysis. That’s vibes with a security clearance.

“It took us 30 years to get out of the Great Depression… FDR didn’t get us out of it.” The Depression ran roughly 1929 to 1939-41 — about a decade, not thirty years. Unemployment fell from around 25% to the mid-teens under FDR’s New Deal before wartime mobilization — under FDR — finished the job. Trump got the duration wrong by 20 years and the president wrong by one Roosevelt.

“How a Jewish person can vote for a Democrat is beyond me. I’ve been the best president in the history of Israel.” He is not the president of Israel, and telling American Jews their votes belong to a foreign country’s interests is the dual-loyalty trope with a podium. It’s an anti-semitic slur wearing a new suit.

The housing bill hostage. A bipartisan affordability bill — the kind of thing both parties wanted as proof Washington can still function — sits unsigned because Trump wants the SAVE Act first: proof-of-citizenship voter registration, plus a wish list including a mail-in voting ban. Your rent relief is being held for ransom, and the ransom is your ballot.

The Part That Should Scare You Most

Even the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board — the in-flight magazine of American capital, not exactly Antifa’s newsletter — called the disclosure “an unseemly display of using the Presidency for family profit” and warned that foreign actors may conclude “they can buy American goodwill or favors if they cut the Trumps in on the action.”

When the WSJ editorial page is to the left of your business network’s interview, the interview wasn’t journalism. It was a service.

A convicted felon — 34 counts — found liable for sexual abuse in a case where the presiding judge stated the conduct was, in common understanding, rape, sat in the Oval Office and told a financial news network that he made two billion dollars, that he could know how, that he chose not to, and that there’s nothing anyone can do about it because Congress exempted him from the rules.

And the anchor thanked him for his time.

That’s not a news cycle. That’s a eulogy for one.

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https://deanblundell.substack.com/p/video-i-could-know-about-it-i-didnt?