UPDATE: Vance confronted with Popular Information report on Trump stock purchases

On Monday, Popular Information broke the news that President Trump publicly praised two companies, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Apple, the same day he bought their stock. Trump took a tour of a Thermo Fisher facility and called on large pharmaceutical firms to partner with the company on the same day he bought between $15,000 and $50,000 of Thermo Fisher stock.

In a third example from Popular Information’s report, Trump bought between $50,000 and $100,000 in Micron stock and, the next day, touted Micron as “one of the hottest companies” in an interview on Fox News. Trump also encouraged people to “go out and buy a Dell computer” nine days after buying between $1 million and $5 million worth of Dell stock.

Popular Information’s investigation was based on Trump’s 113-page financial disclosure that was belatedly disclosed on May 14. The filing revealed that Trump had engaged in thousands of stock trades in the first three months of 2026. The hyperactive trading was an egregious violation of the presidential norm to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest. In June 2016, in recognition that a president could not ethically trade individual stocks, Trump liquidated his stock portfolio.

Some major media outlets picked up the story. For example, MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow extensively covered Popular Information’s investigation during her Monday night show. You can watch that clip here:

It was also covered in detail on Morning Joe on Tuesday morning:

By Tuesday afternoon, J.D. Vance, appearing at the White House press briefing, was confronted by journalist Andrew Feinberg with Popular Information’s reporting:

FEINBERG: The president's financial disclosures were released recently, and they showed a lot of stock trades in companies that he has talked up at events, official events… [H]ow can you and your administration argue to Americans that you're cleaning up corruption… when the president seems to be talking up stocks that he owns, selling them and enriching himself?

Vance responded by scolding the reporter for not being “objective.” He then quipped that Trump does not have a “Robinhood account” and it was “absurd” to suggest he was “buying and selling stocks.”

Of course, no one has alleged Trump had an online brokerage account or that he personally executed the trades. Vance’s response was a deflection to avoid the incoherence of his own position.

“I am a big fan of banning members of Congress from trading stocks,” Vance continued, “So is the president of the United States.” Vance did not explain why members of Congress should be banned from trading stocks but not the president.

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Ignoring a major scandal

Other major media outlets have not only failed to report on the damning timing of Trump’s stock trades, but have failed to mention Trump’s May 14 financial disclosure at all. Media outlets who have ignored the story completely include Business Insider, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NPR, PBS, Politico, and Semafor.

The decision of outlets that employ hundreds of journalists to skip coverage is inexplicable. A sitting president trading hundreds of millions of dollars worth of individual stocks is undeniably newsworthy.

The real meaning of “independence”

Even among media outlets that covered Trump’s stock transactions, the coverage lacked critical context.

For example, the most widely distributed article about Trump’s trades was published by the wire service Reuters. The piece notes that Trump “disclosed a flurry of ‌at least $220 million in financial transactions earlier this year in the securities of major U.S. companies.” It also, appropriately, publishes the Trump Organization’s response:

President Trump’s investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial ​institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions. Trades are