A few months ago, Forbes magazine published a striking report on the extraordinary riches Donald Trump has accumulated while profiting off his presidency, having added roughly $3 billion to his net worth since returning to the White House. In the previous 12 months, the report added, was “the most lucrative year” of the Republican’s life.

The president has generally said very little about the development, which made it all the more notable when Ross Douthat, a conservative former columnist at The New York Times, pressed Trump on this during an interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday night.

When Douthat noted the reporting and reminded the president about his net worth climbing by $3 billion, Trump replied, “Well, so did everyone.”When the interviewer noted that net worth did not go up $3 billion, the Republican said, “Well, you should’ve had stock.”It was a bizarre response, suggesting those Americans who have struggled financially during his tenure have no one to blame but themselves. If only you had invested as well as your president, you too could be climbing the ranks on the Forbes 400.

The line from “Let them eat cake” to “Well, you should’ve had stock” couldn’t be straighter. (Dan Alexander, who wrote the article that Douthat referenced, published a lengthy Bluesky thread, explaining in detail why the president’s response deserves to be seen as “nonsense.”) To his credit, Douthat kept pulling on that thread, reminding Trump about his and his family’s holdings in the cryptocurrency firm World Liberty Financial, which has attracted foreign investors: “I think if I told you that story and it was about the Biden family, if I said, ‘Joe Biden is the part owner of a company and it has all of these investments from the Middle East,’ you would say, ‘That sounds corrupt.’”

Trump, who didn’t appear to have talking points at the ready, said, “I devote almost no time to my net worth. I don’t care. I make — I have a lotta money, and far more than I ever thought I’d have. And I guess it’s gone up. I don’t even know.”But this wasn’t much of an answer. The underlying controversy is about the president profiting off his office to a staggering degree. Whether he’s spending a lot of time thinking about it or not is beside the point.

Trump ultimately added, “Look, every president has a problem.”Except, they don’t. Other presidents, especially those who have served since Watergate, have exercised far greater discretion. Jimmy Carter, for example, was a farmer, but after reaching the White House, the Georgia Democrat put his peanut farm in a blind trust, before ultimately selling it.

To hear Trump tell it, the corruption allegations he’s faced — which, as Douthat reminded him more than once, he could erase through divestment — should be seen as normal and routine. Reality tells a very different story: No other president in American history has ever seen such financial gains while in office.

As a recent analysis from the Times explained, “Mr. Trump’s profits are a haul once unimaginable for any leader of a liberal democracy, particularly a sitting American president. No modern Western leader has ever publicly disclosed such big windfalls while in office. The Trump family’s earnings, experts said, have moved him into an echelon of enrichment more associated with strongmen in Russia and Turkey.”That Trump struggled to answer questions about this in a coherent and accurate way was unsurprising, although his difficulties were a reminder about just how serious the underlying problem has become.