Trump Family Corp.: how Don Trump - the first-born son of the US president - earns his money

Donald Trump, Jr.'s track record is new: in mid-September, it was announced that he had begun a two-year partnership with Mixed Martial Arts Group Limited (MMA.INC, NYSE American: MMA) - the company has appointed him as a strategic advisor. In this role, he will advise management and the board of directors on brand development, technology and commercialization, as well as work to strengthen MMA.INC's global presence. Conor McGregor previously joined MMA.INC in an investor role. This is the ninth company since Trump-father won the election that urgently needed his son's expertise. Oninvest continues its series of articles about the businesses of the family members of the American president. This time it will be about his firstborn son.

Donald Trump Jr, 47. First-born American president, born in marriage to Ivana. Multimillionaire, father of five children, divorced. According to his personal Wikipedia page, after receiving his bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied economics in depth, he went to Colorado for a year - living in a trailer, working as a bartender, skiing and fishing. But 12 months later, in 2001, he came to New York and immersed himself in the family business. Management of existing real estate, construction of new buildings under the Trump brand - that's what Don (as he likes to be called) was mainly engaged in since the early 2000s, including during his father's first presidential term. Formally, he still does it now. On the Trump Organization website, Trump Jr. is listed as a vice president: he is responsible for "expanding the company's interests in the real estate, retail, commercial, hospitality and golf industries." But judging by the latest news, the main focus of Don's attention is not at all on commercial real estate.

First of all, the names of the eldest sons, Don and Eric Trump, today are heard in the context of the development and prosperity of their businesses related to crypto and other digital currencies, which are literally turning the president's children into billionaires before their eyes. In addition, Don, like his younger brother, is actively involved in projects aimed at greater capitalization of the Trump brand - like the Trump Mobile network or the production of the T1 smartphone.

But Don has things he does apart from his younger brother, but with no less financial return. A real gold mine for the first-born son of the head of the United States during his father's second presidential term was cooperation with Omid Malik. The American financier of Iranian-Pakistani origin is known for large donations in favor of the Republican Party and, in particular, active support for Donald Trump personally. As soon as the politician won the election, Malik made his son Don a partner in his venture capital firm 1789 Capital. The firm's social media X profile states that it "invests in great American companies that are building a country based on entrepreneurship, innovation and growth." From that point on, it was a very different time for Don, who mostly stayed in the shadow of his sister Ivanka and her husband during his father's first four years in office.

Over the next few months, Malik put him on the boards or made him a consultant to several companies owned by 1789 Capital. One of the first was the gun sales firm GrabAGun, now called "Amazon for Guns" in the United States. In July, the company went public in New York, and at a share price of $21.4, Don's stake, which came with a package of 300,000 shares, was valued at about $6.4 million, MarketWatch calculated. The stock trades under the ticker symbol PEW, an imitation of the sound used to represent a gunshot.

"Donald Trump, Jr. has a deep understanding of the gun industry," GrabAGun said in a report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. - Our business could suffer if Donald Trump, Jr. ceases to be involved with GrabAGun."

Don then joined the board of directors of the PublicSquare marketplace. This is another asset of 1789 Capital, which positions itself as an "anti-woke" competitor to Amazon (i.e., in favor of traditional values and against liberal ideas - Oninvest note). Trump Jr. has been advising the company since as early as August 2024, receiving $42,000 a month plus a portion of stock compensation. In December, he reported owning more than 500,000 shares, which Forbes valued at more than $1 million.

Around the same time, in late 2024, another firm needed his unique expertise and industry insight: the president's son became an advisor to Unusual Machines, a drone and drone parts company. For his new role, Don was rewarded with securities: Forbes says he owns a 200,000-share stake that was valued at $1 million in May; MarketWatch puts the figure at 332,000 shares. After his partnership went public, the company's stock price rose nearly 10-fold, just short of $18 - a surge the market now refers to as the Trump Bump, loosely translated as the Trump Effect.

"Donald Trump Jr. joining our board of advisors gives us the unique expertise we need to bring drone component manufacturing back to the U.S.," Unusual Machines CEO Allan Evans stated in November.

However, gradually the value of the shares has decreased noticeably - now it is about $5, and Evans came to explain to journalists about the conflict of interest: Unusual Machines positions itself as a manufacturer of domestic drones, but so far actively buys all the parts in China, and therefore is sensitive to the tariff policy of Trump-President. But Evans says he won't ask his new consultant to put in a good word with the White House.

"I would never ask him to do anything like that or contribute to anything like that," Evans told the Wall Street Journal.

In the months that followed, Trump Jr. joined the ranks of managers and advisers to several other companies - online prescription drug retailer BlinkRx, investment firm Dominary Holdings (another plus $3 million in his pocket, according to Forbes' calculations), and the world's largest online forecasting platform, Polymarket.

This breadth of Donald Trump Jr.'s business expertise seems suspicious to some business ethics watchdog organizations in Washington. Here's how Jordan Liebowitz, vice president of the watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, comments on the situation: "It's very important to note that he has no prior history of working in these areas. His experience has always been with his father's companies, mostly in real estate. It raises the question of whether he is being added to boards of directors to help these companies advance through ties to the Trump administration."

Not all of Don Trump's entrepreneurial initiatives are far removed from his experience in luxury real estate management. One of his latest projects, which caused unprecedented, even by the standards of this family, criticism in the American capital, on the contrary, is very much in the spirit of the Trump Organization. In April, the firstborn son of the American president, together with the same Omid Malik and a number of other investors, opened a private private club Executive Branch in Washington. The price for membership is $500,000, plus annual dues, sources told CNBC. This is many times more expensive than competitors: usually the price for a membership card in such clubs ranges from $4,000 to $10,000, at the Aman Club in New York - one of the most expensive so far - the "entrance ticket" costs $200,000.

The club's launch party was attended by U.S. Secretary of State Mark Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, and numerous business representatives.

Washington insiders say the Trump Jr. Club could play a similar role in the capital's political life as the Trump International Hotel did during Trump's first term. Back then, it became a favorite place for informal gatherings of administration officials, Republican congressmen, and foreign diplomats, lobbyists and businessmen. There are already many questions for the Executive Branch.

"I don't think there has ever been anything comparable to this use of the presidency to advance private business interests," said Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School law professor who specializes in government ethics.

Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who has spent years advocating for tougher ethics rules in the capital, told CBS News she sees the club as a blatant attempt to capitalize on the interests of groups seeking access to the Trump administration.

But Don has an answer for his critics, "I'm a private citizen who has been in business all my life. It's ridiculous that the leftist media thinks I should lock myself in a padded room and stop what I've been doing for over 25 years, making a living and providing for my five children."

However, some American media and Capitol Hill old-timers recognize: what Trump Jr. is doing is more than trading access to the current White House administration. Bloomberg Agency writes: few people in America understand the Trump presidency better than his firstborn son. Don has a vision of where a politician and his team can take the nation and the world - and it's that commodity that his son offers to his many business partners. Today, as both big and small businesses try to figure out how to build relationships with Donald Trump's entourage, one word from Donald Trump Jr. could be the deciding factor, Bloomberg summarizes.

President Trump's former press secretary during his first term, Sean Spicer, goes so far as to call Don "the most visible non-elected member of the MAGA voter base, the top confidant and influential player in this entire ecosystem - after Trump himself."

CBS News notes: the ability of Trump Jr. to navigate both politics and business makes him a unique figure - he wields extraordinary influence in the administration while working freely in the private sector.

Ironically, Don Trump is not only considered "his" by millionaires from Silicon Valley and Manhattan - he is also trusted by the more nuclear-armed Trump-President electorate.

"Donald Trump Jr. is not just the son of a billionaire, he's one of us," Andrew Colvet, a spokesman for Turning Point USA, a leading youth organization affiliated with the MAGA movement, told reporters. That organization was co-founded by Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed in mid-September in Utah.

At the same time, Don himself, in his own words, is much more choosy in his choice of business partners than it might seem at first glance. He chooses only those projects that pass his internal test of commitment to MAGA's ideas.

"I've turned down a lot of big deals if I felt there was a divergence in values. There are people who have only recently started calling themselves MAGA supporters, but I'm not sure they really believe that," Bloomberg quoted him as saying.

Don supports MAGA's ideology not only in deed, concluding more and more ideologically-aligned business partnerships, but also in word: the president's son writes books. In 2019, he released the first, titled Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us. As you can tell from the title, the book is mostly about criticizing American liberals. Trump Jr. berates political correctness and the victim complex of the American left, accusing them of using victimization to advance their interests. On release day, the book became a bestseller on Amazon and was number one in The New York Times.

A year later, Don released his second book, Liberal Privilege: How Joe Biden and the Democrats' Defense of the Indefensible.

As with the debut book, a substantial portion of "Liberal Privilege" sales came from the Republican National Committee - it paid more than $300,000 from the party coffers for editions personally signed by Trump Jr. to later give the books to "elephant" sponsors.

In 2023, Don launched his own podcast named after his first best-selling book,On the Rumble. The podcast is released on the Rumble platform and can also be heard on Spotify and Apple Podcasts . The contract, according to the online publication Axios, earned the president's son a "seven-figure sum."

To be continued

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor