By Jason Lange and Bo Erickson
WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (Reuters) – A majority of Americans believe President Donald Trump and his family have inappropriately profited from cryptocurrency since his return to power and that his policy decisions are influenced by his private business dealings, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
The four-day poll, completed on Monday, found that half of Trump’s own Republicans believe the president allows considerations for his business interests to influence his decisions, a striking finding for a leader who pledged to clean up corruption in Washington.
Trump was born into a New York real estate family and built his name into a globally recognized brand before running for office. He earned more than $1.4 billion last year from his family’s cryptocurrency ventures, including World Liberty Financial and the Trump meme coin, digital assets he has publicly championed. In March 2025, two months into his second term, the president called attention on social media to his self-branded crypto coin, describing it as the “Greatest of them all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Some 63% of respondents said it was inappropriate for Trump and his family to have profited in that way, while 32% said it was appropriate and the rest did not answer the question. About three in 10 Republican respondents called the deals inappropriate, while seven in ten said they were appropriate.
Democrats regularly highlight alleged corruption in the administration ahead of the November midterm elections that will determine control of Congress for the next two years, while Trump’s administration has vowed to investigate alleged corruption in Democratic-run states.
Trump says that he has had no day-to-day role in his family’s business since returning to office and that his investments are independently managed. He has pursued crypto-friendly policies in his second term, after courting crypto cash on the campaign trail.
The White House dismissed any allegations of impropriety, saying Trump’s investments were managed by independent financial institutions.
“There are no conflicts of interest,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. “The President only acts in the best interests of the American public.”
‘NOTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE’
But experts on presidential ethics called the current confluence of business and politics in the White House unprecedented.
“We have seen nothing like this before, even the first Trump administration did not have as many complex business interests as the second Trump administration,” said Richard Painter, the top ethics lawyer for Republican President George W. Bush.
Some 69% of Americans – including two-thirds of independents and nine in 10 Democrats – said they thought Trump’s private business interests were influencing his presidential decisions.
Americans are divided on whether corruption is worse under the Trump administration than under other recent presidents. Democrats largely think there is more graft, while Republicans are split roughly down the middle, with 56% thinking corruption is at least a little better and the rest thinking it is steady or worse.
“It’s concerning,” said Thomas Schmidt, a semi-retired crossing guard in Cudahy, Wisconsin, who voted for Trump in 2024 but has soured on the president this year. “He should be more concerned with his presidency than with his business practices.”
Schmidt said his biggest worries are about Trump’s inability to control inflation or extract the U.S. from the war with Iran that he helped start. He doesn’t think Trump is different from other presidents in mixing his business deals with politics. “I think every president’s done something like that.”
Trump campaigned ahead of his 2016 presidential victory on a promise to fight corruption in Washington, or “drain the swamp,” as he put it.
The public’s views of Trump’s personal enrichment could weigh on his party in the November midterm elections, which will determine who controls Congress during the last two years of his term. Americans say corruption is prevalent across all levels of government, with four in 10 Democrats saying they are extremely angry about graft, compared with one in four Republicans. When poll respondents were asked which party was more corrupt, 41% pointed to the Democratic Party and 49% to the Republican Party.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 1,166 U.S. adults nationwide between August 14 and August 17. The results had a margin of error of 3 percentage points for all Americans and 5 points for Democrats, Republicans and independents.
(Reporting by Jason Lange and Bo Erickson in Washington; editing by Scott Malone and Deepa Babington)
Comments