Author Stephen King isn't buying President Donald Trump's humble gesture of donating his salary. On Tuesday, King shrugged off the news, pointing out that Trump's crypto empire makes the $400,000 salary look like pocket change.
King reacted to Trump's May 2025 interview with NBC News, where Trump claimed he might be the only president—except possibly George Washington—to donate his entire salary back to the government. Under federal law, the president gets $400,000 a year, plus $50,000 for expenses.
But King was unimpressed. "Big whoop," he wrote on X. "Other presidents have done it, and he's made a couple of billion on crypto."
He's not wrong. Trump's cryptocurrency ventures raked in over $1 billion in 2025, his first year in office. That includes more than $520 million from selling tokens issued by World Liberty Financial and over $635 million in royalties from the Official Trump memecoin (CRYPTO: TRUMP). Forbes now pegs Trump's net worth at over $6 billion, a big jump from $2.3 billion in 2024.
Those numbers have sparked conflict-of-interest concerns. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has called for ethical safeguards in crypto legislation to block Trump from profiting. Trump, for his part, has defended his crypto earnings, saying there's nothing "illegal" or wrong about them.
So while Trump may be donating his salary, King's point is clear: when you're sitting on billions, a few hundred thousand dollars is a rounding error.
