U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance speaks during a press conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on May 19, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Heather Diehl | getty images
Vice President J.D. Vance defended President Donald Trump against a question about heavy stock trading in the president’s latest showdown on Tuesday financial disclosuresIn which transactions worth millions of dollars were exposed in just three months.
“The President doesn’t sit at his computer in the Oval Office buying and selling stocks like a Robinhood account,” Vance said in response to a reporter at a White House press briefing.
Vance said, “It’s absurd. He has independent wealth advisors who manage his money. He’s a wealthy man. He’s had success in business.”
“He’s not making these stock trades himself,” the vice president said, accusing the reporter of suggesting otherwise.
The filing made public on Thursday showed more than 3,700 transactions in the first three months of 2026 alone. They include securities of companies that Trump has “talked about at events” and in social media posts — some of which even include stock ticker symbols, the reporter told Vance.
For example, the disclosures show purchases of an artificial intelligence software giant and a government contractor palantir in March. In April, when Palantir’s shares suffered their worst week in a year, Trump praised the company true socialWriting, “Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has proven great war fighting capabilities and tools. Just ask our enemies!!! Chairman DJT.”
White House spokesman Davis Ingle told CNBC in a statement Friday that Trump’s assets “are held in a trust managed by his children,” adding, “There is no conflict of interest.”
A spokesperson for the Trump Organization later said that the President’s investment stakes “are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions.”
The spokesperson said, “Trades are executed and portfolios are balanced through automated investment processes and systems administered by those institutions. Neither President Trump, his family nor the Trump Organization play any role in selecting, directing or approving specific investments.” “They receive no advance notice of trading activity and have no input regarding investment decisions or any type of portfolio management.”
“According to recent polling, Americans are increasingly saying the president is corrupt,” the reporter who broached the subject with Vance on Tuesday said in his question.
The reporter added, “That’s a very strange question,” Vance quipped.
When the reporter compared Vance’s prior support for banning public officials from trading individual stocks to Trump’s apparent trading activity, Vance interjected: “Well, what’s the question?”
Vance confirmed that he is a “big fan” of Congress banning stock trading, and “so is the President of the United States.”
He said, “We all believe that no one should take away proprietary information obtained from a public service and buying and selling stocks.”
“We want to ban that process. And I think the way to lead by example is to ban that process, to ban that approach, and to delegitimize it, which is exactly what the president has proposed to do,” he said.