On a live Monday broadcast of CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, one of Wall Street’s most high-profile media personalities, Jim Cramer, was left visibly stunned and speechless for 10 full seconds when a co-host brought up the staggering wave of stock trading executed by former President and current U.S. President Donald Trump in the first quarter of 2026. After Cramer’s prolonged incoherent mumbling left viewers confused, fellow co-host David Faber stepped in to clarify that the program was not experiencing any technical glitches — Cramer, it turned out, had simply been rendered speechless by the revelation of Trump’s controversial trading activity.
The scope of Trump’s trading first came to light last week, when ethics disclosures published by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics confirmed that Trump completed more than 3,700 separate stock transactions between January and March 2026. Among these trades, more than 30 individual purchases each exceeded $1 million in value. The Financial Times first highlighted a striking connection: many of the top stocks Trump traded are owned by major corporations whose chief executives accompanied Trump on his official diplomatic trip to China just one week before the disclosures were released, including industry giants Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Meta, Visa, Citi, Boeing, Qualcomm, and GE Aerospace.
Independent journalists and ethics watchdogs have since uncovered multiple clear patterns that raise urgent red flags for potential illegal insider trading. In a detailed analysis published Monday, reporter Judd Legum documented multiple instances where Trump purchased shares in a company either immediately before or on the exact same day that he publicly praised the firm to move its share price. For example, Trump bought tens of thousands of dollars in stock of biotech manufacturer Thermo Fisher Scientific on the exact same day he toured one of the company’s production facilities. He acquired hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Apple shares the same day he delivered a public speech lauding the firm as “a great company” and praising then-CEO Tim Cook. Just one day after purchasing a large stake in Micron Technology, Trump called the company “one of the hottest companies” during a national Fox News interview. Nine days after acquiring millions of dollars in Dell stock, Trump urged a crowd of supporters at a Georgia rally to “go out and buy a Dell computer.”
Legum’s analysis emphasized that Trump has systematically dismantled every remaining ethical guardrail designed to prevent sitting U.S. presidents from using their public office for personal financial gain. Unlike previous presidents who have placed their assets in qualified blind trusts to remove themselves from active investment decision-making, Trump transferred his holdings to a trust controlled directly by his son, Donald Trump Jr., after returning to the White House. This structure leaves no legal or practical barriers to Trump directing trading activity based on non-public information he accesses as president.
Investigative journalist Ryan Grim argued that Cramer’s stunned on-air reaction was entirely understandable, noting that many of the companies whose stock Trump traded have already directly profited from Trump’s controversial foreign policy decisions, including the ongoing military conflict with Iran that the Trump administration initiated. “Cramer here is having what should be the normal reaction to Trump actively insider trading on his own decisions,” Grim noted. “Just sputtering speechlessness.”
New York Representative Dan Goldman, a Democrat, has already sounded the alarm over the trading activity, calling it “blatant and criminal insider trading.” In a social media post, Goldman warned all parties involved that records of the trades will eventually be subject to congressional investigation, noting that congressional Republicans have signaled they will ignore the scandal. “Anyone involved in these trades should preserve their records for my investigation in January 2027,” Goldman added.
The stock trading scandal is not the only ethics controversy engulfing the Trump administration this week. On the same day Cramer’s viral on-air reaction made headlines, 93 House Democrats filed an official legal challenge to block a $1.77 billion taxpayer-funded settlement between the Trump administration and the Internal Revenue Service that critics say is a blatant grift to create a slush fund for Trump’s political allies.
The settlement grew out of a $10 billion lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS after his personal tax returns were leaked during the 2024 campaign. As part of a deal to dismiss the lawsuit, the Trump administration created what it calls an “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which the acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche has framed as a mechanism to compensate what the administration calls “victims of lawfare” allegedly carried out by the Department of Justice during the prior Biden administration.
But Democrats and ethics watchdogs have condemned the deal as an unprecedented abuse of power, noting that Trump is currently the head of the executive branch that oversees the IRS — meaning he is effectively both the plaintiff and the defendant in the lawsuit he arranged to “settle.” “No president can concoct a fake case for $10 billion in damages against the government so he can be plaintiff and defendant and then ‘settle’ his bogus case against himself as a judge,” said Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, calling the deal “pure fraud and highway robbery.” Raskin added that the fund is nothing more than a racket to divert taxpayer money to Trump’s most loyal supporters, including those convicted of violent felonies during the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection.
The amicus brief filed by Democrats with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where the case is being heard by Judge Kathleen Williams, seeks to have the entire settlement thrown out. The filing notes that the fund could be used to compensate roughly 1,600 individuals already charged or convicted of crimes connected to the Capitol attack, including seditious conspiracy, assault on law enforcement, and other violent felonies.
Richard Neal, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee, called the entire scheme “another self-enrichment scheme on the backs of hard-working taxpayers.” “Reporting detailing Trump’s interest in a billion-dollar slush fund for the J6 criminals and permanent immunity from any further IRS scrutiny only deepens the stench of corruption,” Neal added. Lawyers for the Democrats, Matt Platkin and Norm Eisen, noted that “it’s against the law for the president to in effect sue himself — and then settle for a huge sum. The court has the power to put a stop to these shenanigans and should do so.”
This latest controversy follows a pattern of ethics violations from Trump since his return to the White House, where he issued blanket pardons to hundreds of January 6 rioters on his first day in office. According to the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, dozens of those pardoned rioters have since been charged or convicted of additional serious crimes, including child sex offenses, rape, grand theft, burglary, illegal weapons possession, and threats against public officials.
Progressive advocacy groups and legal ethics experts have joined Democrats in condemning both the stock trading scandal and the IRS settlement. “Donald Trump and his compromised Department of Justice have created a slush fund to make payouts to Trump supporters and cronies,” said Lisa Gilbert and Robert Weissman, co-presidents of the public interest group Public Citizen. “This scheme amounts to the creation of a January 6 payment fund.”
Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and public affairs at the advocacy group Stand Up America, argued that the scandal lays bare the true nature of the Trump administration’s priorities at a time when many U.S. households are struggling with economic instability. “While Americans struggle with rising costs fueled by his economic mismanagement and war with Iran, Donald Trump is teaching a masterclass in grift,” Edkins said. “He’s negotiated with himself to create a $1.7 billion tax-dollar slush fund with no oversight, no transparency, and no accountability. In simple terms, Trump is stealing $1.7 billion in taxpayer dollars to hand out to himself, his cronies, his donors, or anyone he deems sufficiently loyal—including supporters who were convicted by juries of assaulting police officers on January 6, 2021. This is truly unprecedented corruption, and American taxpayers will foot the bill.”