Trump promoted companies on Truth Social days after buying their stocks

Trump promoted companies on Truth Social – President Donald Trump hopped on Truth Social last year to share some “very big and exciting news.” Nvidia, the computer chip manufacturing behemoth, had just announced plans to build AI supercomputers in the United States. “All necessary permits will be expedited and quickly delivered” to Nvidia and similar companies, Trump vowed in the April 15, 2025 post to his more than nine million followers. What the president didn’t disclose at the time was that days earlier, he had purchased between $200,000 and $500,000 of the company’s stock.

A CNN investigation found that Trump has promoted more than 20 companies on his Truth Social account days after buying stock in those firms – at times announcing government actions that could benefit the companies he just invested in. The White House has strongly denied that Trump has ever used his office for financial gain and said his actions are aimed at benefiting the American public. All of the president’s stock trades are conducted by outside financial managers, his administration said, and Trump and his family have zero control over which trades are made.

Trump’s assets are “held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly. “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public – which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media. There are no conflicts of interest.” But unlike many past presidents, Trump has not placed his assets in a blind trust — meaning he can know which stocks his money managers are buying or selling.

It’s not clear whether Trump was aware of any of his purchases when he was posting about the companies. While Trump has endorsed banning congressional stock trading, he’s bashed efforts to hold presidents to the same standard. “This is an ethics disaster,” said Dan Greenberg, a senior legal fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who served as a Labor Department policy adviser during Trump’s first term.

Trump is both a frequent poster and stock trader, sending more than 6,000 Truth Social posts last year and often sharing his opinions about major corporations, while his managers made more than 20,000 stock purchases or sales in that same time frame. There’s no evidence that Trump has posted about specific companies to boost his portfolio. The vast majority of Trump’s trades were not followed by relevant Truth Social posts.

Still, there are dozens of cases where Trump promoted companies that most of his followers had no idea he had recently invested in. CNN used artificial intelligence to compare a database of Trump’s Truth Social posts with a full list of stock trades released in his annual financial disclosure, looking for cases when the posts mentioned firms in which he’d recently bought or sold stock. Reporters then manually reviewed hundreds of flagged posts and confirmed whether each was relevant.

The analysis found that Trump made at least 44 stock purchases of 21 different companies within a week before he posted a complimentary Truth Social message about the firms, their executives or their products. Many of the posts include Trump’s own commentary, while others quoted company CEOs or linked to favorable news articles. Trump also made other stock purchases shortly before sending more general messages highlighting policy changes that could benefit those companies, but without specifically naming them.

In contrast, Trump made at least 17 purchases of eight companies’ stock and then posted negative messages about the firms or their executives shortly afterward. Government watchdogs say Trump’s social media posts and high-volume trading raise questions about whether the president has a conflict of interest – as Congress debates whether presidents and lawmakers should be allowed to trade stocks at all. Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the interim vice president of policy and government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, called Trump’s combination of social media posting and stock trading “a case study in presidential conflicts of interest.” “This is why we’ve long said government officials should not be able to trade stock while they’re in office,” he said.

“That definitely applies to the president and the disproportionate power of that office.” Even if Trump is not actively directing trades or working to boost his portfolio, Hedtler-Gaudette argued, “the appearance of impropriety” leads to “a slow chipping away” of public trust in elected officials. Trump’s financial disclosure, which was released last month by the Office of Government Ethics, lists more than 21,000 financial transactions he made over the course of 2025, largely purchases and sales of stock. The amount of each transaction is reported in broad ranges.

Trump’s stock portfolio is held in discretionary accounts, which give his brokerage firms full authority over the trading and prevent Trump and his family members from requesting or placing trades. “Neither President Trump, his family, nor The Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments,” a Trump Organization spokesperson said in a statement. “They receive no advance notice of trading activity and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio management of any kind.” The way Trump’s assets are set up differs from all of his recent predecessors.

Every president going back at least five decades who has owned individual stocks or businesses put those assets in a blind trust, meaning that they weren’t aware of what specific stocks they held. Trump bucked that trend, opting instead to put his assets in a trust with his son Don Jr. as a trustee.

That means that even if Trump cannot direct trades, he can know about his holdings, and he reports individual stocks and transactions on his financial disclosures. Greenberg said Trump’s use of discretionary accounts that are managed by outside advisers “does not provide a fig leaf here” because it isn’t a true blind trust. The overlaps between Trump’s trading and posting started even before he took office, CNN found.

On January 6, 2025, Trump bought at least $1,000 in US Steel stock, and the same day, posted on Truth Social that his planned tariffs would “make it a much more profitable and valuable company.” “Wouldn’t it be nice to have U.S. Steel, once the greatest company in the World, lead the charge toward greatness again?” Trump wrote. “It can all happen very quickly!” It’s not clear whether the purchase or the post came first that day.

Among Trump’s most frequently traded stocks was Tesla. He made more than 50 purchases of Tesla stock last year, investing at least $4 million, while also making a few sales. Several of those purchases – totaling at least $17,000 – were made days before Trump posted videos of himself and Tesla CEO Elon Musk admiring Tesla vehicles at the White House in March, and promoted the company’s plans to increase production in the US.

By the summer, however, Trump and Musk had an acrimonious falling out, with Trump suggesting his administration could cut government subsidies to Tesla and even publicly speculating about deporting Musk. He continued making several purchases of Tesla stock during this period. Then, on July 23, Trump made one of his largest individual Tesla purchases of the year, buying between $500,000 and $1 million in the company’s stock.

The following day, he sent a Truth Social post deescalating the feud with his former ally. “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!” At times, Trump bought stock in multiple companies that he posted about together. On March 10, he bought between $15,000 and $50,000 in stock in each of GE Aerospace, Eli Lilly and Apple.

Two days later, he mentioned all three companies in a single Truth Social post, quoting from a Fox News article highlighting their recently announced investments in US industries. The huge volume of stocks that Trump is trading means that it’s unclear whether his purchases and messages are ever related. On March 10, in addition to the three companies he posted about, Trump also bought stock in more than 300 other companies.

While much of Trump’s most sizable purchases were of prominent tech companies, he also traded and posted about smaller consumer brands. On July 31, he bought between $15,000 and $50,000 in stock in the clothing retailer American Eagle Outfitters. Four days later, he sent a post complimenting the brand’s ad featuring the actress Sydney Sweeney, which had attracted controversy online.

“Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there,” Trump wrote. “It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying off the shelves.’ Go get ’em Sydney!” Not all of the messages Trump posted about companies he had recently invested in were complimentary. For example, Trump made several purchases of Comcast stock before posting missives tarring the company as “Concast” and criticizing its news channels, NBC and MSNBC.

He similarly purchased at least $1.3 million in stock in Microsoft days before a post attacking the company for hiring a former Biden administration official. In other instances, Trump posted messages related to companies he had recently bought stock in or their products without specifically naming them. On August 18, Trump bought at least $250,000 in stock in two defense contractors involved in producing components of the F-22 Raptor jet – RTX and Boeing – as well as at least $100,000 in stock in a third, Northrop Grumman.

(He also sold at least $100,000 in stock in the jet’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, the same day.) Days later, he posted a video of the F-22 Raptor, proclaiming it “the greatest and most beautiful fighter jet ever made.” Trump has said he would support a bill to ban congressional stock trading, but opposed efforts to pass a broader bill that would also restrict trading by the president and vice president. After GOP Sen. Josh Hawley joined Democrats last year to support a bill to ban both congressional and presidential stock trading, Trump lashed out, 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!” In recent months, members of Congress have been debating more limited bills that would only ban trading by lawmakers, and not the president.

Gary Kalman, executive director of Transparency International US, noted that previous presidents have sought to avoid financial conflicts of interest – with Jimmy Carter even voluntarily putting ownership of his peanut farm in a blind trust. “The fact that we have exempted the one person who can’t actually recuse themselves from a conflict of interest should be a huge red flag for people,” Kalman said. “We need to close this gap.” CNN’s Em Steck contributed to this report.