What did Donald Trump do today?

He literally sold access to himself to the highest bidders.

Trump is hosting a dinner tonight for winners of a contest to see who could buy the most of his crypto token. The guest list is secret, but a total of 220 winners will have access to him for the evening, and 25 of the very highest bidders will have him for tomorrow evening, too.

Access to Trump tonight reportedly cost each attendee about $1.5 million, although firm information is hard to come by, by design. It is clear that many if not most of the buyers are foreigners, taking advantage of a rare opportunity to lobby the President of the United States directly, in complete secrecy, and without having to follow otherwise strict U.S. disclosure laws—because the person charged with enforcing them is the beneficiary. 

The $TRUMP token—which is not even a "real" cryptocurrency by the standards of more traditional offerings like Bitcoin—was launched just days before Trump took office. Because it has an unusual structure that even crypto diehards have called a rip-off, Trump personally collects a commission on every sale of the coin between buyers. The coin has zero inherent value—except for its ability to serve as a channel for bribes to Trump, as at least one alleged white collar criminal succeeded in doing recently when he made a $75 million "investment" in Trump coins and immediately saw the SEC drop an investigation into him. 

But because of that commission on every transaction, Trump has an incentive to pump up the trading volume. Hence the contest, which not only created a short-lived increase in the cost of the tokens, but encouraged early buyers who had lost their shirt on the valueless token's immediate crash to sell and cut their losses—and generate new fees for Trump.

Hundreds of thousands of accounts holding $TRUMP have lost money. Only a few dozen have turned a profit, and some of those appear to have been suspiciously timed insider trades.

The White House is refusing to release the names of people who have bought access to Trump tonight, and is generally refusing comment on the matter. Press Secretary Karolina Leavitt would only say that Trump was doing it "on his personal time."

Trump is famous for working short, unstructured hours as President—a few hours a day, and usually no more than four days a week in Washington itself—and that's when he can even stay awake for his presidential duties at all. But regardless, he has no "personal time" when he can take bribes legally: he is the president every hour of every day in his term, as long as it lasts.

Why does this matter?

• The American people have a right to know who has bought access to the president.
  

• Corruption and bribe-taking done in broad daylight are worse than when it's done in secret, not better.