00:00 Speaker A
New ethics disclosures show President Trump made 94 different trades of Magnificent Seven stocks in the first quarter, the total between $50 million and 70 million. Trump’s account managed by his company, the Trump Organization, which says those trades are overseen by third-party financial institutions without any input from Trump or his family. Let’s get to Ben Wirschkul now, our Washington correspondent who has been digging into this. Um, so Ben, this got a lot of attention. Um, why has it gotten so much attention? How unusual is I I guess is where we we should begin. How unusual is this kind of activity, especially on the part of a a president?
00:53 Ben
For sure. It’s very unusual on the part of the president. It’s also very unusual for Trump himself. This is a sort of over 10x times amount of trading than we’ve seen in previous ethic ethics disclosure. This is this is this these Mag 7 stocks are the high value trades or the high value ones, but it’s comes in thousands of of trades that occurred in the first quarter on the order of about 40 trades a day if if you average it out. The these Mag 7 stocks were the most high value ones. Um and as you mentioned, he made 94 trades there.
01:34 Ben
but um, purchasing significant quantities of Apple and Alphabet, selling quantities of Tesla, but also trading across the entire Mag 7, dozens of transactions across all these different uh across all these different stocks. That has gotten attention just for the details of this, but for how big of a change this is. As you mentioned, the Trump organization talks about how that this is managed not just by not it’s not involvement by Trump himself, but also not his family or the Trump organization. They say it’s a third-party organization, but it’s clearly the volume of the trades here and the linkage here between certain trades we’re seeing and Trump’s activities that often happen on the very same day clearly raise a lot of questions that are going to be worked out for time for time to come about the link between these trades and his official activities.
02:22 Speaker A
Yeah, I mean, and one that you didn’t mention because it’s not in the mag 7 is Intel, right? And there too, there is obviously a very clear connection to the government because it’s an investor in in Intel as well.
02:37 Ben
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So he was the the the disclosures do show the president was buying Intel um over the course of this first quarter um as as he was he was touting it publicly in terms of the government’s purchase there, but it just shows the kind of overlap there. Other other major non-mag 7 stocks are also present their palenteer is a big one that we saw the president doing a lot of buying and selling over this first quarter. Early in April, just at the beginning of the second quarter, he literally proved did a true social tweet outing Palenteer and giving Palenteer’s um stock ticker um as part of his true social tweet. So there’s just a huge amount of overlap here, whether it’s sort of the financial observers watching this and making the trades on his behalf or direct government involvement. There is some evidence here that some of these trades came from outside the brokerage firm. It’s it’s it’s a lot a lot to go through here across a range of industries that then any president is involved in.
03:42 Speaker A
Yeah, and just to be clear too, the most presidents put their assets in a blind trust. So just to begin with, this is unusual, at least in the modern era, right? I think since the 1970s, right? That’s been the practice here.
04:02 Ben
Absolutely. Jimmy Carter famously put his peanut farm into a blind trust. Um so that that this is this is a major change. Trump has already broken a huge number of these norms over the years, um, partly by keeping control of the Trump organization. It’s sort of the the way they think about it is it’s run by his sons, but he is still the reason this account is in his name is because he is still the kind of head of the Trump organization. So he’s sort of um, part of this company, but also the president at the same time, too. Um, in terms of what this kind of means going forward, I think there’s a lot of
04:42 Ben
we’re seeing some action here in terms of good big government groups, good government groups trying to push back on this, but most of all, it’s just sort of as we’re going through this, it’s a big question of kind of is this going to be Trump’s new MO going forward? These are thousands of trade in the first quarter, we’ll we’ll have a bunch more quarters to come.
05:01 Speaker A
Um, and the other thing I wanted to ask you about is, you know, in in Washington, this isn’t a new issue, right? Like Nancy Pelosi, for example, has gotten attention from retail traders for years because of the trading activity on either by her or on behalf of her, um, as well as her husband. And there have been some attempts in the past to put restrictions on trading on members of Congress. Is how where does that effort stand?
05:40 Ben
So that effort is ongoing. It’s kind of been foundering or floundering for a lot of years now, and I think before these disclosures, the chances of any action this year were seen as quite low. This disclosure from the president clearly doesn’t help with that kind of spotlighting these trades and in this this just quantity of trades. The president has talked about lawmaker stock trading. He he talked about a partial ban as recently as his state of the Union address, um, but he’s been very careful not to ever endorse anything that could apply to the president or to him personally. So there is sort of a push for this. Um, some some level of a ban on limiting lawmakers from trading stocks, but it was low probability before. I I’m in touch with a lot of good government groups here. They put out their statements on this ban, but they’re actually more focused in terms of things that can happen on prediction markets and on sort of a lot of that a lot of that activity we’re seen, where I think there are more avenues for Washington to act here outside of a actual bill in Congress, which um, Congress is having trouble sort of keeping the lights on much less passing new legislation at this point.
06:55 Speaker A
in terms of putting restrictions on members of Congress playing in prediction markets. It’s just briefly better, right?
07:01 Ben
and government as a whole. Um the Senate has already passed a rule that bans senators and their staff from from being involved in prediction markets. The Trump, the White House has warned their staff to be careful on that, but there is these kind of high profile cases. One one in particular is a special special operator who allegedly traded on Nicholas Maduro being captured. And that is leading to I think a sense that prosecution or regulation, which doesn’t require Congress could have action. That’s where you’re seeing these these groups focus on as as a possibility in the months ahead. partly because these these are so glaring and they’re so new.
07:44 Speaker A
Yeah, we’ll keep watching it. Ben, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
