‘We’re the envy of the world’: Trump defends US leadership in AI, crypto; dismisses family conflict-of-interest concerns

WASHINGTON: Defending his administration’s strategic focus on emerging technologies, US President Donald Trump on Thursday (local time) asserted that the United States is outpacing China in artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency, while simultaneously dismissing conflict-of-interest concerns regarding his family’s highly lucrative digital asset ventures.

Speaking in an extensive interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen, Trump argued that global dominance in cryptocurrency is a matter of national security, warning that any American hesitation would hand the advantage to Beijing.

“The way I view crypto’s a little different; we have to be at the top, otherwise China’s going to take it over. If we’re not going to do it, China’s going to get it. It’s a big deal, and anything we do, I want to be number one in, and we’re number one in crypto, and we’re also number one in AI,” Trump stated, adding that the US is “leading substantially in AI over China and everybody else.”

NEW: TRUMP ON HIS MASSIVE $1.4BILLION INCOME FROM CRYPTO

“There’s nothing illegal, there’s nothing wrong with it”

He adds: “I’ve made a tremendous amount of money, and I let people invest it. I don’t even speak to them” https://t.co/xxdmUOTBIS pic.twitter.com/Z2NNiXm2fl

— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) July 3, 2026

The US President also claimed that during his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in mid-May, the Chinese leader explicitly praised the turnaround of the American economic engine. “When I was with President Xi three weeks ago, he greeted me, and his first words, I mean, literally, were, ‘Wow, you’ve really done a great job. You’ve really, because this country was dead; we had a dead country. Now we have the hottest country in the world,” Trump told CNBC.

The remarks coincide with a massive 900-page financial disclosure released on June 30 by the US Office of Government Ethics, which revealed that Trump generated roughly USD 1.2 billion in earnings through cryptocurrency ventures in 2025. The filing, mandatory under a 1978 transparency law, disclosed that Trump secured close to USD 550 million through the premier token sale of World Liberty Financial (WLF) — a platform launched in September 2024 with full family backing.

Furthermore, the documents show that Trump and his three sons, operating through an intermediary firm named DT Marks Defi, acquired an additional 22.5 billion WLFI tokens, currently valued at approximately USD 1.3 billion.

When asked whether he was aware of his family’s exact financial dealings in the crypto sector prior to the public disclosures, Trump replied, “No”. “I could know about it. I didn’t — I mean, there’s nothing illegal, there’s nothing wrong with it. I could know,” Trump defended, pointing out the unique challenges his children face in navigating private business during his presidency.

“I tell my kids, stay away from as much as you can stay away from, but they also have a life, you know. We were doing business long before I ever thought of it, you knew me a long time before I thought of even running for president,” he stated.

Leveraging his corporate background, Trump concluded that his mercantile experience remains the driving force behind current American economic exceptionalism.

“I’ve made a lot of money over the years, and I think one of the reasons that I got elected was that we have a business person. If you look at what’s happening, we’re beating everybody, we’re beating China, we’re beating every single country. We’re the envy of the world,” Trump said. (ANI)