Conservative firebrand Ben Shapiro is torching Donald Trump over a shady crypto deal and plans to accept a $400 million private jet from Qatar — and he’s not pulling punches.
On his show Monday, the Daily Wire host slammed Trump for what he called “skeevy stuff,” accusing the president of selling access and cozying up to foreign powers with ties to terrorist groups.
“Taking sacks of goodies from people who support Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Jazeera, all the rest — that’s not America First!” Shapiro said. “Please define America First in a way that says you should take sacks of cash from the Qatari royals who are behind al-Jazeera. It just isn’t America first in any conceivable way.”
Shapiro torched Trump’s crypto project — a meme coin bearing his name — calling it a dangerous distraction that’s already damaging his credibility and agenda.
“You all remember President Trump launching dollar sign Trump crypto three days before taking office as president?” he said. “Trump himself announced the Trump crypto on X. On Truth Social, he described it as a meme coin, meaning it had no inherent value. It was just there for the kind of bleeps and giggles.”
The coin’s value skyrocketed to nearly $13 billion before crashing. According to Shapiro, the scheme made people tied to the Trump Organization about $350 million, while 764,000 small investors ended up losing money. “Eighty percent of the outstanding supply of that meme coin is still held by insiders,” he added.
The scandal didn’t stop there. In April, the Trump crypto project announced that its top holders would get exclusive access to Trump himself.
“The top 220 holders of the meme coin would be invited to an intimate private dinner with President Trump at his golf club. The top 25 were invited to a VIP White House tour,” Shapiro said. “Nineteen of the top 25 holders… bought the coins using foreign exchanges that claim to exclude U.S. customers.”
That means foreigners could be buying their way into Trump’s inner circle — potentially getting access to a future U.S. president. “This raises the question of influence peddling,” Shapiro warned.
Democrats have already jumped on the controversy, calling for an ethics probe. They wrote in a letter, “This latest action raises grave ethics and legal concerns… selling presidential access to individuals or entities to include foreign nationals… while personally enriching the president and his family.”
Shapiro didn’t stop at crypto. He hit hard on Trump’s reported plans to accept a $400 million plane from Qatar for use after his presidency — a country he says bankrolls terrorism and anti-American media.
“If we switched the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we’d all be freaking out on the Right,” he said. “Let’s say Qatar was giving Joe a $400 million jet… or if Hunter launched a crypto firm with the son of Antony Blinken… we’d all have been pretty upset.”
In Shapiro’s view, Trump’s behavior betrays the very people who put him in office.
“President Trump promised to drain the swamp. This is not, in fact, draining the swamp,” he said. “Why would those of us who voted for him, who gave to his campaign, who stumped for him, be well-served by this? The answer is we aren’t, and that’s why it needs to stop.”
Shapiro isn’t alone on the right in drawing parallels to Hunter Biden. In a blistering editorial on the Qatari jet, The Free Press wrote, “The Hunter Biden affair really was a scandal. But these days, it seems like small potatoes.”
