The Trump Organization's story is that independent brokers ran everything automatically -- Trump had no idea, Trump touched nothing, Trump was basically asleep at the wheel of his own fortune. Fine. Except the disclosure documents labeled multiple trades
"UNSOLICITED." You know what unsolicited means in brokerage law, Dorian? It means the trade was not recommended by a broker -- it was initiated by the customer.
The customer. The man whose name is on the account. The man whose
signature is on the disclosure forms.
If Trump wanted to legally remove himself from investment decisions, he could have created a qualified blind trust. He didn't. He transferred his assets into a trust managed by his son, Donald Trump Jr. There are no legal or practical barriers preventing Trump from being involved in the management of his assets.
That's not a blind trust, Dorian. That's a
family trust. That's handing your wallet to your kid and saying "I have no idea what's in there." And you believe that. You actually believe that.
Right here. Pull up a chair.
On March 11, Trump toured a Thermo Fisher facility, stood next to the CEO, called it a "fantastic" company, and explicitly told other pharmaceutical firms to go do business with them -- without mentioning that the exact same day, he had purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 of Thermo Fisher stock. And that wasn't even his first bite -- he'd already bought between $51,000 and $115,000 worth the month before, and another chunk on March 2. By the time he was publicly cheerleading for Thermo Fisher, he'd accumulated as much as $215,000 in their stock.
The smoking guns in Trump’s new financial disclosure
Same day, Dorian. He's at the podium praising the company. He owns the stock. Same. Day.
Then he flies to Kentucky and praises Apple and Tim Cook in a speech. That same day -- March 11 -- he purchased between $250,000 and $500,000 of Apple stock. Also marked "UNSOLICITED." [link above]
On March 25, he buys between $50,000 and $100,000 in Micron stock. The next day, he goes on Fox News and says: "I just left the head of Micron. It's one of the hottest companies." Between March 2 and March 25, he'd accumulated between $217,000 and $530,000 in Micron -- four of those transactions unsolicited. [same link]
And on Eli Lilly: The timing of Trump's purchases of up to $680,000 in Lilly stock coincides with several favorable government decisions benefiting the drugmaker's GLP-1 business -- including a Medicare pilot program whose application deadline was January 8, two days after his first Lilly stock purchase on January 6. Lilly has since been named as a participating manufacturer in that program.
Trump Bought Stock in Drugmaker as His Government Boosted Its Obesity Drugs - KFF Health News
You're going to look at that sequence -- buy stock, praise company publicly, policy benefits company, repeat, repeat,
repeat -- and tell me there's nothing to see here? That's not skepticism. That's willful blindness with a MAGA hat on.
And a legal ethicist put it plainly, Dorian, so you don't have to take my word for it: "A president who buys or sells the stock of a company whose value is affected by his administration's actions undermines the public's trust in two ways. First, the public should believe government actions are motivated by common good, not personal enrichment. And second, the public should believe that those within government aren't benefiting from inside information.
Here's the thing about whataboutism, Dorian--it's what you say when you can't defend what's actually in front of you. Concerns about congressional stock trading are legitimate. Bipartisan. Real. And those criticisms can all stand
simultaneously with the recognition that a sitting president publicly praising companies while holding undisclosed positions in their stock--through trades his own paperwork labels as customer-initiated--is in a different
universe of conflict of interest than anything a member of Congress does.
A senator's floor speech doesn't move markets like a presidential tour, a Fox News call-in, or a policy decision from his own executive agencies.
Oh--and the penalty for all of this? For missing the 45-day legal disclosure deadline on trade after trade? A $200 fine.
Two hundred dollars.
That's your president, Dorian. Buying stock, praising the company publicly, benefiting from his own policies, missing the legal disclosure deadlines--and writing a check for less than a parking ticket.
But sure. The real problem is the jealous Democrats.
