“MAGA Inc.”: CorpWatch on Trump’s World of Tech Titans, Crypto Czars & Prison Profiteers

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We end today’s show looking at ”MAGA Inc.,” the name of a new report by CorpWatch, looking at what it calls “Trump’s World of Crypto Czars, Tech Titans & Prison Profiteers.” The report examines how many of President Trump’s allies are profiting from his second presidency.
We go now to London, where we’re joined by Pratap Chatterjee, executive director of CorpWatch.
Pratap, thanks so much for being with us. Tell us what you found. Describe ”MAGA Inc.”
PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Thank you, Amy.
What we’ve discovered, taking a deep dive into the businesses that profited from Trump, you can group many of them into these categories: the crypto czars and the tech titans and the prison profiteers.
The crypto czars are companies like World Liberty Financial, which is actually a Trump family venture between his sons and the sons of Steve Witkoff. And what they’re doing is they’re cashing in on the cryptocurrency boom, together with companies like Tether. And what they do is they sell stablecoins and decentralize finance. So, these are schemes by which you can move money anonymously around the world, something that drug dealers, gun manufacturers or gun dealers and criminals love. This is the sort of business that is now benefiting the Trump family. So, this is the first aspect. He, himself, and his family have basically taken a cut of those proceeds and literally doubled his fortune, from probably $3 billion to about $6 billion, purely by taking a cut out of these proceeds.
The second group of people we’re looking at are the tech titans. So, these are the OpenAI — companies like OpenAI and companies like Oracle, that are running vast databases. And they have been — their data has been used by companies like Palantir. And so, Trump, the day after he was elected, brought Larry Ellison and Sam Altman of OpenAI to the White House, and he said that he will be helping them get energy for these data centers. And one of the key things that you need for a data center is an uninterrupted supply of power. So, this means that he has — is giving contracts to people like Kelcy Warren, who runs Energy Transfer pipelines, and they are supplying gas to data centers in Texas, in places like Abilene, in central Texas, in Amarillo, in San Antonio. And this is extremely profitable, but it also has a huge impact on local groundwater supplies. We’re talking a quarter-trillion worth of gallons of water being used by these — by data centers across the country, and it’s going to double. So this is a huge, huge problem. But not only that, the data that they’re using and vacuuming up is going to companies like Palantir, another big Trump supporter. And Palantir is using this data to help ICE round up people throughout the country and to provide to the Pentagon to use for things like Project Maven to target people in wars in countries like Iran. In fact, the Minab strike, the girls’ school that was hit early on in Operation Epic Fury, was a result of Palantir’s data gathering, data analysis. So, this is — this is a huge problem, because these companies, these profiteers, are supporting Trump, and now they’re reaping the benefits.
But perhaps the biggest, the biggest amount of money has come from the — sorry, has come from — gone to the prison profiteers, so companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic in New York — GEO Group, which runs the Delaney detention center in New Jersey; CoreCivic, which runs huge detention centers in places like Leavenworth, Kansas, and in California, California City in California. So, they, particularly a company called CSI Aviation, that has — it’s an air broker company. They, essentially, operate airlines to deport people from the United States to countries like Brazil and Honduras. They shackle prisoners, and they deport them. And they literally are the biggest beneficiary of new federal contracts. So, these are some of the people — the CEO of CSI is a man by the name of Allen Weh, another big fundraiser for Trump.
So, these are the people that we think are profiting the most out of MAGA, the business of deportation, the business of gathering data and analyzing, and also the crypto scams by which people’s money is being transferred anonymously and profit is being made by the Trump family themselves.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Pratap, I wanted to ask you — some folks are missing from this analysis. First of all, in the tech titans, would you also include companies like Amazon and Musk’s empire of Tesla and SpaceX, as well? And also, all of these different divisions, as you describe it, of Trump’s — of MAGA Incorporated, depend on finance capital. Don’t they also depend or are underwritten largely by private equity firms like Blackstone and Apollo, KKR, Carlyle Group?
AMY GOODMAN: And, Pratap, you have 30 seconds.
PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Yes. Well, the biggest profiteer out of this, the banking companies, are really Cantor Fitzgerald, run by the sons of Howard Lutnick, the U.S. secretary of commerce. And they have made literally a killing in providing money for the data centers and also for crypto companies like Tether and World Liberty Financial. These are the people that have made the most money out of it. Of course, companies like Amazon also provide the data, the cloud support for Innovation OS and Elite —
AMY GOODMAN: Pratap, we’re going to have to end it there, but we’re going to —
PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: — continue in a post-show and post it online at democracynow.org. Pratap Chatterjee, executive director of CorpWatch. We’ll link to your new report, ”MAGA Inc: A Guide to Trump’s World of Crypto Czars, Tech Titans & Prison Profiteers.”
I’ll be tonight at the IFC for the final screening of the film about Democracy Now!, Steal This Story, Please! Go to democracynow.org.

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