Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday that he has made “Hundreds of Billions of Dollars” on stocks for the country, not himself — and that all he gets for it is criticism. He posted it with an AI-generated picture of himself trading stocks at the White House, with Intel on the screens. He didn’t say which stocks he meant.
Here’s what he’s probably talking about. Last August, the government bought about 10 percent of Intel for roughly $8.9 billion. Intel stock has climbed a lot since. That stake is now worth close to $50 billion, so it’s up around $41 billion. The government has done similar deals with at least 10 companies, which CNBC says is almost unheard of outside a war or a financial crisis.finance.
But the claim has three holes:
- The number is way off. Add up all those deals and you get tens of billions, not hundreds.
- It’s paper money. The government hasn’t sold any of it, so not a dollar has actually landed in the Treasury. Stock gains can vanish.
- He’s mixing two different things. “I’ve made” blurs the government’s investments with his own private stock accounts. Those are separate, and only one of them pays him.
His own trading is what people are actually upset about. In his first year back in office, more than 21,000 trades ran through his accounts, which grew to at least $858 million spread across about 1,600 companies — including Palantir, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Nvidia, all of which do business with the government he runs.
In June alone there were another 1,000-plus trades, some in energy companies affected by his war in Iran.
The White House says Trump doesn’t control any of it and there’s no conflict of interest. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Robert Garcia have formally demanded answers.
He’s made a similar claim before. In July he said he was only getting richer because the stock market was up. Fact-checkers at Poynter rated that Mostly False — most of his 2025 income, about $1.4 billion of it, came from crypto, not stocks.
Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday that he has “made Hundreds of Billions of Dollars on Stocks, and many other type Holdings, for the U.S.A., not myself,” complaining that he only gets criticized for it. He attached an AI-generated image of himself day-trading from the White House with Intel on the monitors, and named no specific holdings.
The Intel imagery points to the source. Washington bought a 9.9 percent stake in August 2025 — 433.3 million shares at $20.47, about $8.9 billion, funded from unpaid CHIPS Act grants and Secure Enclave money. At roughly $115 a share that position is worth near $49.8 billion, an unrealized gain of about $41 billion. The administration holds stakes in at least 10 companies overall, a scale CNBC called unprecedented outside crisis or wartime.
Three problems with the claim: the total lands in the tens of billions, not hundreds; the gains are unrealized, so nothing has reached the Treasury; and “I’ve made” conflates federal stakes with Trump’s personal portfolio.
That personal portfolio is the actual source of the criticism. More than 21,000 securities trades were executed in his first year back, with accounts reaching at least $858 million across roughly 1,600 companies including Palantir, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Nvidia. Another 1,000-plus June trades touched energy firms affected by his Iran war. The White House says he has no ability to direct the portfolio and there are no conflicts of interest. Warren and Garcia have formally pressed him on the filings.
It fits a pattern. Poynter rated his earlier “everybody’s profiting” claim Mostly False, finding two-thirds to 80 percent of his 2025 income gains came from non-stock sources, mainly $1.4 billion in crypto.
