He also seems to be a great stock pundit, Mr. Secretary. Earlier this morning, before the pause, he he put out a message saying it's a great time to buy. And here we are. Here we are. Much higher. I'd always bet on Donald Trump. Every time. He also wrote DJT, which is a ticker for for his media company. [00:00:18] No no no. Every, every it was just his. That was just. Every text he sends to me. That's his name. But that was a great time to buy the market, right? - I mean, uncanny. - Donald. Look, Donald, Donald Trump understands that it's America is the greatest country. [00:00:35] Sir, I will ask you directly, is the president of the United States participating in insider trading through his own private social media network? I always bet on the guy. What I do is I bet on shifting the focus of this conversation as fast as possible. [00:00:52] That's right, folks. Less than four hours before President Trump's announcement that he was pausing most of his tariffs for 90 days in the most schizophrenic economic policy this side of the Mississippi. He told his millions of followers on Truth Social that it was a good time to buy. [00:01:08] Which obviously raised questions about whether Trump was intentionally manipulating the market, an accusation you just saw. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick skirt around on CNBC. Before we get into more details, Jake, your initial thoughts? Yeah. So I might have a surprising opinion here and we got to pull up on it [00:01:26] on the live chat. Obviously shows live 6 to 8:00 eastern every day on YouTube. So is Trump intentionally manipulating the market? A yes. B no. C I'm not sure. You might want to hold on. Your vote is going to be a compelling case that he is, but I'm going to make a case [00:01:44] that he might not have. But I'll explain. I'll explain why. But first, let's give you, some of the evidence, which is pretty damning. Yeah. No, I do see how this can be both ways. It's a pretty broad post. Here's the post again. This is a great time to buy DJT. [00:02:02] He posted on Truth Social is posting to a broad audience the same as telling a few people or a few people told. Let's get into it. As you can see, that was posted at 9:37 a.m. Eastern time. Then around 1 p.m., he announced the tariff pause, which shot [00:02:18] the cratering stock markets way back up. Shortly after that, Trump had Charles Schwab and other businessmen in the Oval Office, where he touted how much money they'd made personally since the tariff reversal. Take a look. [00:02:34] This is Charles Schwab. It's not just a company. It's actually an individual. And he made he made 2.5 billion today and he made 900 million. That's not bad because, you know, he's a financial. And Trump himself also benefited from the market turnaround. [00:02:51] But how cute to see Trump and his billionaire buddies joking he made 2.5 billion. Much of Trump's own net worth is in his stake in Truth Socials parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group. And what do you know? The company's stock rallied with the broader markets after [00:03:07] the announcement of the tariff pause, closing the day up more than 21%. And now, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is suggesting that other Republican lawmakers were tipped off and cashed in as well. She told Spectrum News, quote, if people are pissed about insider trading [00:03:24] here at the house, look at what's happening at the white House right now and with the Republican Party. Correspondent Kevin Frey or Frey asked her, do you think he knew what he was doing when he sent out that message about stocks before he made the announcement? To which she replied, it sure seemed like he did. [00:03:39] I don't think it was a coincidence. And, you know, I've heard murmurings on the floor. There may have been people that knew this was coming. And I'm very interested in seeing some of the stock disclosures that come out when those reports are due. And I'm very interested in what members of Congress have been buying and trading stocks in the last 24 hours prior to this tariff announcement. [00:03:58] Two other Democratic lawmakers, Senators Ruben Gallego and Adam Schiff, are now demanding a federal investigation into whether any white House officials or Trump family members were informed of the tariff pause in advance and use that information to conduct trades. [00:04:13] Also of note, before we go back to Jake for more commentary here on this is the clip we showed you up top of the CNBC host pressing Letnick on Trump's manipulating of the market was removed from the video they published on their website and YouTube. It's only on the Internet Archive. [00:04:29] So we were able to bring it to you here today. But shady, but also out in the open. Jake, what do you think? - Please elaborate. - Yeah. So, look, I'm very curious about the receipts. And there will be receipts, which is what trades did these, people in Congress do? [00:04:45] There might not be receipts for, you know, friends of Donald Trump. Are we going to investigate all of them and figure out which ones knew the stock market boom was coming and made billions upon billions? Well, he just pointed to two of them. Okay, but but other than that, I don't know. [00:05:00] Okay. So that all looks very bad. And, but the two things that cut in favor of not necessarily insider trading is one he made the post public. So if you were going to tell all your buddies and your insiders [00:05:16] and your Republican congressmen. They should buy the market because you're about to boost it tremendously by going back on the tariffs. You know, you might want to do that in private so that everybody doesn't have access to that information. So on the other hand, if you do it in private, it's definitely illegal. [00:05:35] If you do it in public, you might get to have plausible deniability, for whoever's following your account, etc., and knows what you mean by that, right? Although that one is not really subtle, this is a great time to buy. So it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what he means. So, but you can see how that could cut in both directions. [00:05:52] So and then, the other factor for me is he did this hours ahead of, when the decision was announced. So if you had it prearranged with people. Hey, five minutes before I make a decision. 15 minutes, 30 minutes. I'll put up a post on Truth Social. [00:06:07] Okay, maybe that threads the needle between. Hey, I didn't say it in private. It's not insider trading. I made it public, but wink, wink. Right? But if it's hours ahead, it really gives everybody an opportunity to buy. If they think that Trump means it. And the reason that the alternate explanation for why it might be [00:06:24] hours ahead is because Trump didn't change his mind until hours later. And and there is reporting from Washington Post, New York Times and all the others saying that a lot of the people inside the Trump administration didn't even know that Trump was going to make this decision, [00:06:40] because nobody ever knows what's in Trump's mind. He makes up his mind at the last second and then surprises everyone with it. So, you know, it took him a while to get there. He really, really didn't want to reverse himself, but the bond market was collapsing. [00:06:55] And you can't have the stock market and the bond market collapsing. That's an with utter calamity, right? So he was really forced into it. It is even possible that he was still in the mode of don't panic, don't panic, buy into the market before he changed his mind when he did that post. [00:07:11] I can't be any more generous than that. But I really do believe that both of those things are possible. And so I think in the poll, I'd vote, I don't know. But the most important thing, Ben, to me is. And what do we got? No, 77% are sure he was. [00:07:27] He was, trying to intentionally manipulate the market. And look, I get it. Given the circumstances, that's a fair conclusion. So to me, Ben, did the Republican congressmen and senators make a whole heap of trades before everyone else did? [00:07:44] That will determine whether it was intentional or not. Intentional? True. That will decide that. But to me, as far as the public post defense, I guess, and I don't know the legal standard on this, I don't even know if it's been established, but it's a little bit different just because he didn't post it on X or a widely [00:08:03] used public platform for most Americans, he posted it on his own platform while, granted, anybody can join it, so it's not the same as posting it, say in like a signal chat. He's posting it on a very Partizan platform that he owns only to people who follow him specifically [00:08:21] and follow a very propaganda filled channel that is all about presenting the world in a very skewed way. So people who are not blind supporters of this man may not, on moral grounds, want to be following this platform or supporting that business. And so in that case, is it just an insider tip to a broader but still sort [00:08:40] of very selective group of people? Because in those few hours you can't expect the news to cover it and report it and get enough time for people to make purchases on their own more widely. Yeah, I really don't know. Because, I, you know, I hear what you're saying, and it does [00:08:56] incentivize people to go to Truth Social. That's another conflict of interest form among many, many others. But the other thing that gives me pause, Ben, is like, is he really going to be worried about illegal insider trading? He breaks the law all the time and like, and what are they going to do, impeach him, right? [00:09:13] So I think my best guess and I got it at 5248. It's real neck and neck. But my best guess is at that point he was still trying to prop up the market before he decided to reverse himself on the tariffs. But they should definitely investigate because again, if the Republicans traded before the public, then they did know it ahead of time, and [00:09:31] that is a huge problem if that's the case. Yeah, I agree with you mostly. And I think also it probably it certainly, like you said, won't be anything with consequences even if found to be unethical. That obviously is fine in the administration these days in our in our government these days out in the open. [00:09:47] And of all the things he does, telling people now is a good time to invest pretty broadly, to encourage people to make money back that they had just lost, as long as it was sort of broad and not privately spoken, I don't see how they nail him on anything here or how it was definitively bad. [00:10:02] Oh yeah. Yeah. And last thing is, oh, don't get us wrong, there will be no accountability. Even if he intentionally did it and etc., they'll say, oh, it was a public post and it's over. No accountability at all. So don't even dream about it. So and they'll keep doing this, by the way, the market will keep going [00:10:19] up and down, and those billionaires will keep making tons and tons of money. And, and and they do have special access to Donald Trump that we know for sure. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.