President Donald Trump took aim at Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Wednesday when he said that “it’s not fair to the rest of this country” to allow her to trade stocks when he was asked about the Speaker of the House while promoting his new photo book, “Our Journey Together.”
The question comes after much debate ensued around the moral judgement of members of Congress and their ability to participate in the stock market while holding public office.
Pelosi finds herself in the middle of the argument due to her husband, Paul Pelosi, being a luxuriant stock trader. Adding fuel to the fire, Pelosi has amassed almost $30 million in her private life from insider dealings on the technology organizations the congresswoman oversees in her public role. Agreeing with the bipartisan support to ban lawmakers from stock trading, Trump said, “it’s not right,” and that “it’s inappropriate,” because she “has insider information”
Earlier this week, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., announced his plan to draft the “Banning Insider Trading in Congress Act.” If signed into law, the legislation would prohibit legislators and their marriage partners from committing stock transactions. The congressman left no one guessing when he said, “It’s time to stop turning a blind eye to Washington profiteering.”
Hawley’s left-wing colleagues, Sens. John Ossof, D-Ga., and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., also put forward a bill with similar intentions. In contrast to Hawley’s bill, congressional members would be mandated to move their financial holdings within 120 days of assuming office.
Defending herself, prior to the bipartisanship attempt to prevent inside trading, Pelosi asserted that she is a “capitalist,” and that elected members should be allowed to participate in the practice if they so wish.
House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., supports the ban, and if Republicans win control of the House after the midterm elections, Pelosi’s dealings may come to a halt. Doubling down, Trump said that Pelosi is “clever,” but that she’s also “stone cold crazy,” and that “she should not be allowed to do that with the stocks.”