Aug 7, 2026
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Add us on GooglePresident Donald Trump has been ridiculed for seemingly profiting off the presidency and pushing tax and economic policies that make the rich even richer, including himself.
Many times, the president has touted companies in public appearances which led to significant market movement after. He’s also praised companies on Truth Social days after individual shares were added to his personal investment portfolio. According to the White House, those investments are managed by independent wealth management advisors.
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Trump has even allowed about a dozen billionaires to join his administration at any given time during his current term, including CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk, who ran DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) in 2025. It made ruthless cuts across many government departments, the effects of which have been deadly to the world’s poorest.
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This has led to claims that Trump is looking after his billionaire friends. Last week, Nevada GOP Governor Joe Lombardo defended the president for doing just that. In his view, taking care of billionaires provides jobs for Americans.
“Quite often when the press and the media run him down, they think about, you know, he’s taking care of his billionaire friends. But those billionaire friends provide jobs,” Lombardo said. “And unless you take care of them, those jobs are absent.”
Trump in Las Vegas touting GOP candidates and economy
During his speech, Lombardo added that the government doesn’t have the ability to hand out infinite amounts of money. “That’s not how economies work,” he said. So the government has to make it easier for CEOs to employ people. This is a core tenet of “trickle down economics,” which has its fair share of critics.
The president’s appearance in Las Vegas was meant to rally voters around his economic policies and declare support for GOP candidates running for re-election in the November midterms.
According to the Nevada Independent, the GOP governor made a calculated decision to join Trump on stage, believing it would benefit him in his re-election bid.
Nevada, which is considered “blue-ish” thanks to two Democratic senators and a Democratic majority in the state legislature, voted in Lombardo as GOP governor in 2022. He now faces a tough challenge from Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford in November.
Nevada has been a really tough state to call, especially in recent general elections. It’s the only state to have voted for George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, according to MSNBC.
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Trump’s economy not working for all Americans
There continues to be a stark difference between what’s happening on Wall Street and what Americans are facing in their everyday lives during Trump’s second term.
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While the S&P 500 is up 13% so far in 2026, inflation remains an issue. The cost of goods rose 3.5% on an annual basis in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The job market also continues to be difficult to navigate, with employers cutting 23,000 jobs in July.
Add in new tariffs and the economic impact of the war with Iran, and many Americans are not buying it, especially in Las Vegas. One local worker, Mario Sandoval, an employee at Binion’s Steakhouse downtown, told NPR,” I’ve experienced 9/11, 2008, the pandemic. And I have to tell you that our income right now is at the level of 9/11. It’s bad.”
For the first time in nearly a decade, more Americans prefer Democrats to Republicans on handling the economy, according to a new Reuters Poll.
For example, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed in 2025, extended major tax cuts while cutting funding for Medicaid that many working-class Americans rely on.
Currently, his administration also owns stock in 30 companies across industries like semiconductors, minerals, and quantum computing.
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Danni Santana is a journalist based out of New York City with a decade of experience reporting and editing business stories about retail, restaurants, sports, and personal finance.
