What Doordash, Dell and Palantir all have in common
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How many stock trades has President Trump made compared to Congress?
This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong.
And I'm Adrian Ma. President Trump loves talking about the stock market. And when he gets going, let's just say he sounds more CNBC than C-SPAN.
We have a hot country. It's going to go up. I think the market's going to go through the roof. I don't know how many of you people watch the stock market, but if the stock market's good, that's good for everybody. That's good for you. Good for everybody.
In fact, the president spent some of his speech at the United Nations this week on his favorite topic.
U.S. stock markets have set 80 all-time records, and that's just in the last 12 months.
And the president isn't just a stock market spectator. A Bloomberg analysis counted up how many trades he or his money managers have made since taking office for his second term. Their tally? An eye-popping 28,700 trades. That's more than all members of Congress combined.
More than 28,000 trades. I mean, that's a little wild.
Yeah, it works out to around 80 trades for each day that the market is open. So it's a lot of activity. And Trump has shown that he's happy to use his platform to promote individual companies, companies whose stock he trades in.
Now, the White House says he's not actively directing these trades, although Trump has admitted to profiting from them. Either way, his boosterism represents a potential conflict of interest.
So today on the show, we look at three times Trump acted as cheerleader for companies he traded, companies that also have relationships with the federal government.
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This is Ira Glass. On This American Life, we tell stories about when things change. Like for this guy, David, whose entire life took a sharp, unexpected, and very unpleasant turn. And it did take me a while to realize it's basically because the monkey pressed the button. That's right. Because the monkey pressed the button. Surprising stories every week, wherever you get your podcasts.
The majority of executive branch employees in the U.S. are barred from participating in government matters where they have a financial interest.
Now, historically, there are a couple notable exemptions to these laws, the president and the vice president. One rationale for this carve out is that the legislative branch didn't want to impinge on the power of the executive branch.
When it comes to stock trading, the White House has repeatedly denied President Trump has any conflicts of interest. In a statement, White House spokesman Davis Ingle told us that President Trump's stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third-party financial institutions that use automated computer models. And he added, quote, neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold.
Even so, as the president, Trump holds incredible sway over which companies are in the government's good graces. So he wanted to look back at three examples of Trump boosting a company whose stock he has traded in.
The first example is Dell, who, by the way, is a financial supporter of NPR. Trump's financial disclosures show the president bought up to $5 million in Dell stock during the first quarter of this year. And around the same time, the president praised not just founder Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, but the company's products, too.
Go out and buy a Dell computer, because they don't care about that. They care about this. They make a great product. They're not looking for any publicity. I give them publicity.
Trump was thanking the Dells for a $6.25 billion commitment towards a government program that sets up investment accounts for children.
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