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CNN Panel Laugh in Flailing MAGA Pundit’s Face

Ben Ferguson was attempting to suggest that there is nothing wrong with a president making billions in office.

Members of a CNN panel laughed in the face of MAGA political commentator Ben Ferguson after he desperately tried to defend Donald Trump’s mammoth cash grab while in office.

During a typically argumentative debate on NewsNight with Abby Phillip, the panel discussed revelations that Trump’s income soared by $2.2 billion in 2025, including more than $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency ventures.

The New York Times also revealed that the 80-year-old president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, became linked to a major tungsten mining project in Kazakhstan as the Trump administration was preparing to award it $1.6 billion in federal financing.

Ferguson, host of The Ben Ferguson Show, defended the Trumps’ business dealings, saying he “loves it when people succeed” in America.

Phillip then asked Ferguson whether he would have defended “the so-called Biden crime family” if Hunter Biden had used his connections to former president Joe Biden to enrich himself.

“If he had just said, ‘I’m using my dad’s name to make money,’ you would have said, ‘That’s totally above board?’”

“If he was doing actual business. Burisma was massive corruption. He didn’t know anything about the industry,” Ferguson said, referring to the Ukrainian energy company which Republicans have long claimed was involved in corrupt foreign business dealings with the Bidens.

“Don Jr. and guns is a great example. I hung out with Don Jr. at the SHOT Show 20 years ago in Vegas. He’s been involved in guns for 20-plus years,” Ferguson added.

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Phillip then pressed Ferguson, asking, “What do the Trump sons know about mining rare earth minerals? What do the Trump sons know about robotics? What do they know about drones?”

“A lot, clearly. They made a lot of money off it because they actually invest in it,” Ferguson replied.

His response drew laughter from Phillip and other members of the CNN panel, including CNN commentator Bakari Sellers, former Biden White House staffer Yemisi Egbewole, and former George W. Bush White House official Ashley Davis.

Sellers then interjected to explain why Trump enriching himself while in the White House is unethical.

“I take hot yoga. I feel like you’re doing a little yoga too, for that pretzel that you got yourself into,” Sellers joked.

“The fact that when you make 3,500 trades in one year, and you go up and invest in a company, and then you sit in the Oval Office and tell people, ‘Wow, this company is great. This company is going to do XYZ,’ or you ease regulations on that company, and you trade and purchase stock in that company-that fundamentally is unethical,” Sellers said. “You can call it what you want.”

The White House has insisted that the money is out of Trump’s hands, with the investments run by outside traders with no input from the family. A spokesperson told CNN in January that the holdings sit in “computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes.”

The Daily Beast contacted the White House for further comment. “As President Trump said, he has a lot of assets because he was a massively successful businessman prior to becoming President, which was why he was elected to office in the first place,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “All of the President’s assets are in held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions. There are no conflicts of interest.”

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