President Trump spent part of his Sunday doing what he does best: broadcasting to millions of followers on Truth Social. By the time anyone had finished counting, he’d fired off 37 posts, but one in particular stood out from the usual mix of grievances and endorsements. In it, the president claimed a financial windfall so large it would make most hedge fund managers blush.
“I’ve made Hundreds of Billions of Dollars on Stocks, and many other type Holdings, for the U.S.A., not myself,” Trump wrote, signing off, as he often does, with “President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
He didn’t stop at the number. Trump insisted the money wasn’t for him personally, framing the gains as some kind of public service. “I do this for our Country, not myself,” he added, before pivoting to his favorite target. “all I do is get criticized by the Radical Left Dumocrats,” he wrote, capping the post with a shrug of resignation: “Very unfair, but what can you do!”
The post arrived with visuals. Trump attached an AI-generated image showing himself apparently trading stocks from inside the White House, with an Intel position climbing from $20 to $95 on the screen behind him.
The choice of Intel wasn’t random. Trump’s investment accounts have bought into the chipmaker several times this year, and his own administration holds a 10 percent government stake in the company. Whether that overlap is coincidence or something else, it’s the kind of detail that tends to catch people’s attention.
Intel isn’t the only stock getting a presidential shoutout. Trump has also pushed Americans toward Dell, a company whose founder, Michael Dell, helped get Trump Accounts off the ground. Dell shares have surged more than 300 percent since the calendar flipped to 2026, a run that has only added fuel to questions about how closely the president’s business relationships track with his public endorsements.
The White House’s answer to all of this is consistent: Trump’s investment accounts are managed independently, and he has no hand in directing individual trades, despite those accounts racking up thousands of transactions since he returned to office. Still, his own financial disclosure tells a striking story on its own, showing he personally pulled in at least $2.2 billion in 2025.
That backdrop made for fertile ground when Joe Rogan sat down for episode 2539 of his podcast with a panel that wasn’t shy about picking apart Trump’s expanding financial universe.
Rogan opened by noting that Trump had reported more than $1.4 billion in crypto-related income from 2025, a figure that led the group to wonder aloud who exactly is buying up Trump-linked digital coins, and why.
Rogan floated a hypothetical to illustrate the concern, imagining a fictional “Gillis coin” that a well-connected buyer could pump up in value through publicity, then quietly cash out on someone else’s behalf. “It’s a sneaky way to pay somebody off,” he said.
The conversation then shifted to Truth Social itself, where a reported subscription service lets paying users get early access to posts, some paying up to $100,000 a month for the privilege of seeing Trump’s words before everyone else.
That detail didn’t sit well with Shane Gillis. “Wait a minute. It’s literally insider trading,” he said. Rogan didn’t push back much. “It doesn’t seem like it should be,” he admitted, adding that Trump has a habit of operating in what the group called a legal gray area.
None of this proves wrongdoing, and the White House maintains there’s a firewall between the president and his portfolio. But between the Sunday boasting and the AI-generated trading floor image, the pattern is hard to ignore.
