Know Your Enemy - The Pump and Dump Presidency (w/ Jacob Silverman)

Matt and Sam are joined by journalist Jacob Silverman to discuss the eye-watering corruption of the Trump regime.

Duration: 1h 18m
Broadcast on: 08 Sep 2026
Audio Format: other

Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in American history, and it isn't close. Between his family's crypto business — designed to enable foreign oligarchs, criminals, and state actors to bribe the administration while enriching Trump and his family — his insider trading and manipulation of the stock market, a tariff regime designed to bind business interests to Trump's personal whims, and the advent of a virtual market for criminal fraudsters to purchase pardons from the president himself, Trump and his family have accrued billions of dollars while hollowing out the rule of law and corroding what's left of our democracy. It is brazen, appalling, and poisonous.

To guide us through this many-circled hell, we're joined by Jacob Silverman, author of Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, who's been covering the crypto beat and the Trump-family corruption for years. Jacob helps us wrap our heads around the immensity of this problem — and what, if anything, can be done about it.

Further Reading:

Jacob Silverman, "Teapot Dome. Watergate. They’re Nothing Compared With This." NYTimes, Oct 17, 2025.

— "Zyn and hustling in Las Vegas: Three days at the world's biggest Bitcoin party," Business Insider, Jun 6, 2025.

— "Binance’s MAGA-Branding Strategy," The Nation, Feb 27, 2026.

— "He Will Steal As Much As You Let Him," Jacob Silverman Substack, Jul 11, 2025.

Thomas Edsall, "‘A Blatant and Gargantuan Conflict of Interest,'" NYTimes, Aug 18, 2026.

U.S. House of Representatives, Judiciary, Democrats. "Trump, Crypto, and a New Age of Corruption," Nov 24, 2025.

Michael Waldman, "Epic Corruption in Plain Sight," Brennan Center, May 19, 2026.

John Ganz, "Trump's Third-Worldism," Unpopular Front, Aug 24, 2026.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Welcome listeners to episode 143 of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sibman, your podcast co-host. And I'm here as always with my great friend, Sam other Bell. Hello, Samuel. Hi, Matt. It's a glorious late summer day here in New York. And we thought, why don't we bring everybody down? Yeah, the vibes are good, at least personally. How can we bring everyone down by devoting an entire episode to Donald Trump's corruption? How he is spectacularly enriching himself and his family and some of the various hangers on through simple corruption. And no one seems to give a shit about it. And we do, Sam and I, we talk to each other with the phone and we say, this is crazy. So we decided to do something about it in a limited way we can by devoting an episode to it. Yeah, and we had the perfect guest. Yeah, our friend, Jacob Silverman, who, well, one reason we had him on, he's the author of Gilded Rage, Elon Musk in the radicalization of Silicon Valley. That will be out in paperback actually later this month, September 22nd. And he's also a reporter at the ICIJ, otherwise known as the international consortium of investigative journalists. And they're a nonprofit newsroom. And he's also just been reporting for a long time on cryptocurrency, the kind of intersection of government policy, cryptocurrency, the figures involved. He was great. Yeah, he really was good. He also wrote a book about crypto. And I found this conversation extremely helpful, not only because just like putting all this stuff in one place. That was the main goal. Yeah, it had the effect of just like, I don't know. I mean, I didn't think I could be even more appalled than I was when we started the conversation, but I am. And also, I think, I don't know, it helped me think about not just like this corruption's worse than any kind of corruption we ever had before, but what this corruption is kind of doing to our national character. Not just our economy, not just our politics, but like the American personality. And Jake was great. He followed us in those directions as well as, you know, guiding us through all the terrible corrupt dealings of these absolute monstrous plutocrats who are ruining our country. Yes, it's true that Sam and I, Sam, we're not experts on cryptocurrency, or, you know, those kinds of matters. But listeners, if you're not either, we do, at the start of this conversation, ask Jacob to just explain like, you know, why is cryptocurrency the kind of, you know, corruption vehicle of choice for Trump and company? And so even if you don't know a lot about this stuff going into it, Jacob was a very helpful guide. So don't be concerned.

Transcription truncated.

Matt and Sam are joined by journalist Jacob Silverman to discuss the eye-watering corruption of the Trump regime.