‘Profiting off the presidency’: Trump’s stock trades raise alarm
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/18/800040863/news/trump-stock-trades-portfolio-insider-trading-allegations/
‘Profiting off the presidency’: Trump’s stock trades raise alarm
President Donald Trump is in hot water after he made—and doubled down on—the tone-deaf assertion that he doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situations when he makes decisions for the country.
But while he clearly doesn’t care about your financial situation, he sure does think about his own—and his recently disclosed stock trades prove it.
Financial disclosures released this past Thursday show Trump’s investment portfolio included over 3,600 stock trades made in the first three months of 2026. Wall Street experts say that the trade volume is so large that it looks more like a hedge fund’s balance sheet than that of a singular trader—especially the president of the United States.
It also raises serious questions about insider trading. Trump’s stock portfolio is not in a blind trust, and many of the stocks he bought and sold were from companies whose leadership he has worked closely with in his capacity as president, including Intel, Nvidia, and Oracle.
“I’m baffled,” Eric Diton, president and managing director at The Wealth Alliance, told Bloomberg News. “In the 40-plus years of my time on Wall Street, this is an unusual amount of trading by any standards.”
With the massive number of Trump’s stock trades, it’s no wonder he is against banning presidents from trading individual stocks.
In fact, last year, when Congress was pushing legislation that would ban Trump from trading stocks, he lashed out.
“I don’t think real Republicans want to see their President, who has had unprecedented success, TARGETED, because of the ‘whims’ of a second-tier Senator named Josh Hawley!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post of legislation that would ban him and members of Congress from trading stocks.
The gentleman doth protest too much.
Democrats, meanwhile, are already using the newly disclosed trades as ammunition in their midterm messaging since it backs up their claim that Trump is more interested in lining his pockets than making things more affordable for working Americans.
“Trump is literally profiting off the presidency,” Sen. Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, wrote in a post on X, alongside data of Trump’s massive number of stock trades. “How much has your family made since he took office? We must ban stock trading across all 3 branches of government. That’s what my stock trading bill will do. The President should not be exempt from this standard.”
Ultimately, the stock trades are just the latest proof that Trump is a corrupt self-dealer who uses the office of the presidency to enrich himself and his business empire.
Aside from trading individual stocks that he possibly had insider information on, Trump has also:
- Used the presidency to rake in billions for his newfound cryptocurrency empire.
- Made millions in name licensing.
- Extracted settlements out of wealthy Americans and corporations that feared his wrath would hurt their business interests.
- Gotten Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to pay tens of millions for the rights to a shitty documentary about first lady Melania Trump, which bombed at the box office.
- Received a $400 million brib—I mean, jet from Qatar.
- Allowed his large adult sons to get money from military purchases.
Trump is nakedly corrupt to a degree that is hard to fathom.
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