A CNN investigation published today found that President Donald Trump promoted more than 20 companies on his Truth Social account days after buying stock in those firms, raising fresh questions about potential conflicts of interest during his presidency.
CNN used artificial intelligence to compare Trump’s Truth Social posts with stock trades from his annual financial disclosure, finding that Trump made at least 44 stock purchases of 21 different companies within a week before he posted complimentary messages about the firms. Reporters manually reviewed hundreds of flagged posts to confirm each match.
The pattern includes several high-profile examples. On April 15, 2025, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would expedite permits for Nvidia to build AI supercomputers in the United States. Days earlier, he had purchased between $200,000 and $500,000 of Nvidia stock. In March 2025, Trump made purchases totaling at least $17,000 in Tesla stock before posting videos of himself and CEO Elon Musk admiring Tesla vehicles at the White House and promoting the company’s plans to increase U.S. production. On July 31, 2025, he bought between $15,000 and $50,000 in American Eagle Outfitters stock, then four days later posted compliments about the retailer’s advertisement featuring actress Sydney Sweeney, writing that the jeans were “flying off the shelves.”
Trump’s assets are held in discretionary accounts managed by outside financial institutions, meaning his brokers have full authority over trading decisions. Unlike every recent president before him, Trump has not placed his assets in a blind trust—an arrangement that would prevent him from knowing which specific stocks he holds. The White House said Trump “only acts in the best interests of the American public” and that he receives no advance notice of trading activity.
Yet the setup differs fundamentally from past practice. As Columbia Law School professor Richard Briffault noted, Trump “must know—or he could know—what his holdings are, and he could know how his actions and statements affect them.” The fact that Trump can view his holdings while simultaneously making government decisions that could affect those companies’ stock prices has drawn alarm from ethics experts. Dan Greenberg, a senior legal fellow at the Cato Institute who served as a Labor Department policy adviser during Trump’s first term, called the arrangement “an ethics disaster.”
CNN’s analysis also found that Trump made at least 17 purchases of eight companies’ stock and then posted negative messages about the firms or their executives shortly afterward. For instance, he purchased at least $1.3 million in Microsoft stock days before posting criticism of the company for hiring a former Biden administration official. He also bought Comcast stock before posting messages attacking the company as “Concast” and criticizing its news channels, NBC and MSNBC.
The White House has stressed that Trump does not direct his own trades and that neither he nor his family play any role in selecting investments. “They receive no advance notice of trading activity and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio management of any kind,” a Trump Organization spokesperson said. The administration pointed out that there is no evidence Trump posted about companies specifically to boost his portfolio—the vast majority of his trades were not followed by relevant Truth Social posts.
Still, government watchdogs argue the combination of Trump’s high-volume trading and frequent social media posts about major corporations creates an appearance of impropriety. Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, interim vice president of policy and government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, called Trump’s pattern “a case study in presidential conflicts of interest.” He emphasized that even if Trump is not actively directing trades, “the appearance of impropriety” erodes public trust in elected officials.
Trump has endorsed banning stock trading by members of Congress but opposed efforts to extend such restrictions to the president. When GOP Senator Josh Hawley joined Democrats last year to support a bill banning both congressional and presidential stock trading, Trump lashed out on Truth Social, writing that “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.”
Sources
- CNN — Investigation finding Trump promoted 20+ companies on Truth Social days after buying their stocks; specific examples of Nvidia, Tesla, American Eagle trades and posts; details on CNN’s AI-assisted methodology
- CNBC — Trump’s Palantir stock purchases (between $247,008 and $630,000 in Q1 2026) and April 10, 2026 Truth Social post praising the company’s war-fighting capabilities
- CBS News — Trump’s 3,642 transactions across 1,026 firms in first quarter 2026; trading volume of 2,346 purchases and 1,296 sales; ethics expert commentary from Columbia Law School professor Richard Briffault
- PBS NewsHour — Trump’s nine purchases of Palantir stock worth up to $680,000; April 7 Truth Social post about Palantir’s war-fighting capabilities
- BBC — Report on insider trading suspicions; pattern of spikes in trades ahead of public announcements
