President Donald Trump has shared dozens of social media posts promoting companies that he had newly invested in days prior, creating what experts called an “ethics disaster.”
The president posted more than 6,000 times last year, sharing his thoughts on major corporations and using social media to announce government policies benefiting individual businesses.
At the same time, his money managers made more than 20,000 stock purchases or sales.
A new analysis by CNN found that Trump promoted more than 20 companies on Truth Social within days of those stock purchases, some of which were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It is not clear whether Trump was aware of his purchases when posting about the companies, but he has profitted big from his presidency thus far.
The analysis found the president made at least 44 stock purchases of 21 different companies within a week of praising the firm, its executives, or its products, including investments in Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, and Boeing.
He invested at least $4 million in Tesla last year, including purchases made right before he posted videos of himself and his billionaire megadonor and Tesla chief, Elon Musk, admiring the company’s vehicles on the White House lawn, according to his annual financial disclosures.
The two men then had an explosive and very public break-up, only for Trump to make his biggest individual Tesla stock purchase of the year a day before he de-escalated his feud with Musk.
“Everyone is stating that I will destroy Elon’s companies by taking away some, if not all, of the large-scale subsidies he receives from the U.S. Government,” he wrote. “This is not so! I want Elon, and all businesses within our Country, to THRIVE, in fact, THRIVE like never before!”
The stock purchase that preceded the post was worth between $500,000 and $1 million.
Trump also bought between $200,000 and $500,000 in Nvidia stock right before announcing on Truth Social that the company has committed $500 billion to building AI supercomputers in the U.S. and that all permits would be expedited.
The White House told CNN that Trump’s assets are “held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions,” and that Trump and his family have no control over which stocks are bought and sold.
“President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public,” spokesperson Anna Kelly told the outlet. “There are no conflicts of interest.”
CNN’s analysis also found the president made at least 17 purchases of eight companies’ stock before posting negative messages about the firms or their executives.
The Daily Beast has also emailed the White House for comment, but did not receive a response.
Unlike every other president in the last 50 years who has owned individual stocks or businesses, Trump has also refused to place his assets in a blind trust, which means he has access to stock purchase information even if he cannot direct trades.
The vice president of policy and government affairs at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, told CNN that Trump’s mix of social media use and stock trading was in fact a “case study in presidential conflicts of interest.”
Even if Trump is not actively working to boost his portfolio, the appearance of impropriety erodes trust in public officials, he added.
Dan Greenberg, a senior legal fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, called the situation an “ethics disaster.”
The president has said he would support a bill to ban congressional stock trading, but has lashed out at members of his own party, including Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who proposed restricting trading by the president and vice president.
