Former CNN correspondent Jim Acosta called out President Trump for his headline-grabbing crypto earnings in 2025, remarking that the commander-in-chief has “completely sold out his own base.”
Acosta appeared as a guest on the latest episode of MS NOW anchor Nicolle Wallace’s “Best People” podcast this week. During their conversation, Acosta ripped Trump over his financial earnings, which were revealed in the president’s mandatory financial disclosure last week. Among the details divulged within the disclosure was the revelation that Trump’s crypto companies generated around $1.2 billion in revenue in his first year back in office.
“It’s a gangster’s paradise these days. I think that’s what’s happening right now, and the fish rots from the head and this is all rotting from the top,” Acosta said. “Trump is setting a culture in this country where big business sees a tremendous opportunity. I’ve been describing it, comparing it to a supermarket game show, where the shopper’s just sweeping as many goodies into the shopping cart as they can in under a minute.”
“I worry that there’s gonna be a price to all of this,” he admitted. “This is going to end badly, when Donald Trump rakes in over $2 billion in crypto and sketchy stock trades and all of this stuff that dwarfs anything he was making at Mar-a-Lago and his golf courses.”
Acosta also told Wallace that he hopes — and believes — the American people will continue to pay increased attention to Trump’s actions in the coming months.
“You just hope and pray that the good people of America look at this stuff and say, ‘Whoa, now I get it. I don’t like this. This is wrong,’” he said. “I think some of that is starting to sink in. I think the Epstein Files … that penetrated. People understood that that was a broken promise. The Iran War, people understood that that was a broken promise. It’s no wonder why his poll numbers are in the toilet because he has completely sold out his own base.”
“The crypto thing, I think, is another example of that. When I was at barbecues and parties and stuff around the Fourth [of July], people were talking about that,” Acosta noted. “They were like, ‘Wow, how in the heck did he make all of that money?’ Of course, it’s because — I’ll just go out on a limb and say this — he’s kind of a crook. So maybe that’s why.”
The former CNN journalist went on to call out Trump over his relentless criticisms of the Biden family when he was running for re-election in 2024.
“All the rallies where they said, ‘Where’s Hunter [Biden]?,’ and accused him and Joe Biden of being the Biden Crime Family? What a crock of s—t compared to what we’re looking at now,” Acosta remarked. “First of all, that was false. But second of all, what a crock of s—t compared to all of the ways that they’re taking this country to the cleaner’s right now.”
