Donald Trump Jr. found himself on the defensive Tuesday morning when CNBC’s Squawk Box hosts grilled him over the controversial $TRUMP meme coin — a cryptocurrency tied to his father that’s raised serious ethical concerns.
Host Joe Kernen didn’t mince words. “Is that OK — for your dad to have a meme coin?” he asked directly, referencing reports that the coin has raked in over $320 million for Donald Trump and related businesses.
Don Jr. tried to brush it off, claiming it wasn’t just a money grab. “There was a time … I could call any single banker in New York City, they’d pick up the phone,” he said. “Then we got into politics, and all of a sudden, they wouldn’t take your call. You couldn’t get financing. We were de-banked.”
He then gave a convoluted reason for getting into crypto: “We were actually just the top of this sort of pyramid scheme that we didn’t realize we were a part of. That the financial system was totally un-democratized.”
According to Trump Jr., crypto wasn’t about hype — it was about survival. “We got into crypto not because it was like, ‘Hey, this is the next cool thing.’ We got into it out of necessity.”
But the show’s other host, Andrew Ross Sorkin, pressed harder on the ethics of the coin. “This meme coin that your father has creates the opportunity for foreign adversaries, people in the U.S., anybody if they want, to effectively funnel money to the president,” he said.
Kernen jumped back in: “It’s as bad as Hunter’s art,” referencing Hunter Biden’s pricey, secretive art sales. “It just seems like it greases the skids for influence.”
Trump Jr. distanced himself. “I wasn’t involved in the meme coin,” he claimed. “I’m more focused on obviously the stable coin, the Bitcoin mining.”
Kernen wasn’t having it. “You’re not taking responsibility for the meme coin,” he said.
Don Jr. tried again. “I’m just saying for the reality of the meme coin is it’s sort of a proof of concept that the crypto world understands… that the markets may not necessarily be fair. The traditional banking system may not be fair to them.”
He ended with a vague defense of crypto as a whole: “It’s a proof-of-concept of what I think we can move the needle in crypto. And I think that’s going to be the future of finance.”
Watch the interview below, via CNBC.
