What's on Page 38 That Trump Doesn't Want You to See? And why Nobody in the Media Would Touch This.

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:06]And joining us now is Jud Leam. He is the author, the founder of Popular Information on Substack, a terrific Substack. And Jud has been tracking uh Donald Trump's uh stock trades, which has been they've just been going through the roof. And uh Jud, welcome welcome back. Thanks for coming on.

[00:00:25]>> Thanks for having me.

[00:00:26]>> Yeah. And I guess like we should show a couple of things. I guess first of all, you you put out a story just a few days ago um on all of this and on popular information, which is terrific by the way. And you know, you you talk about how on March 11th, Trump took a tour of a manufacturing facility in Ohio owned by Thermoffisher Scientific, a medical supply company. He he lavished praise on the company when he was there. Um you know, asked the one of the executives to share some great information about this incredible company. And then you wrote this. Trump did not mention that the same day of the tour, March 11th, he purchased between 15,000 and 50,000 of Thermoffisher stock.

[00:01:06]Um, Trump did not publicly disclose the purchase until May 14th. It was listed on page 38 of a 113page document cataloging Trump's stock purchases in 2026. How I mean, how I guess a couple of questions. How big is this and how undercovered is this? Because it seems to me it's it's just woefully undercovered.

[00:01:27]Well, I think it's a very significant story. Uh, you know, just somebody who's followed uh politics for a number of decades now, I think if any other president uh was involved in in even one uh of the sort of examples that uh I talk about in my story and there's there's other examples that have been uh brought about in brought out in you know by other reporters. um it would be a presidency defining scandal. Um you know here you have a president who is actively trading stocks. That alone is something that we really haven't seen.

[00:02:05]you know, you've we've either had presidents use the blind trust uh so that they don't know what assets they have or uh you know, and Obama took this route and others you just go into index funds and that's it and there's no active trading. You just have the fund and it just goes up and down with the market. Um here we have a president who's just involved in very hyperactive trading and uh the process that has been set up by the federal government to try to insulate any of this kind of activity from conflicts of interest completely ignored. It's just in a trust controlled by Donald Trump Jr. which is sort of the opposite of what these trusts are supposed to be which is controlled by somebody independent. I mean, it's literally his son who, you know, I don't know how often they talk, but I'm sure it's uh pretty regularly.

[00:03:02]>> Yeah. I'm assuming that this is not a a blind arrangement between uh Trump and his son. And and um I mean, the Financial Times did a did a graphic just the other day showing just how these things have shot through the roof. It's just astounding to look at. And I'm just kind of curious, you know, do we even know how he's doing this? I I guess we don't know if he's he's on his phone or a loago and he's he's just like on Erade or something just you know day trading like a day trader. I guess we don't know.

[00:03:30]>> I mean they have said that there's someone doing this on his behalf and you think there have to be you know one or more people involved because we're talking about thou this is a the filing that you kind of referenced in the introduction. This only covers January through March >> and there's thousands of trades. So, this is somebody who's doing trades. You know, the trading is going on many, many times per day. You only 90 it's only covering the whole thing only covers 90 days and there's over 3,800 trades. So, that's going on, but we don't know.

[00:04:08]There could be multiple ways. You know, there could be some automated trading.

[00:04:11]There could be, you know, I think what what I tried to show in my report when you have something where the president is at a location at a talking about a particular company and buying stuff the same day, it's hard to believe that he's not involved. And it's not the only instance where that occurred. you know, with another thing I talk about in in the piece on Monday is he bought an even larger amount of Micron stock and then calls into Fox >> the next day, says that he has just met with the Micron CEO and calls it one of the hottest companies. So, you know, the coincidences kind of add up. And I think that's really the question that needs to be answered is what is going on, how are these trades being made on what what criteria is being used and why does Trump keep talking about the companies that he is investing in right around the time that he's invested in them.

[00:05:17]>> Yeah. I mean it it sounds like almost uh you know a a grand pump and dump kind of uh situation or something similar to that or you know um pump and buy. I don't know what you would call it but I mean he did this with Palunteer. We can show the truth social post. He is he's just like um he's like Jim Kramer now he's just he does this on his true social Palunteer technologies has proven to have great warf fighting capabilities and equipment. Just ask our enemies. And he's doing this as I guess, you know, he's waging war and so on, Jud. But I mean, the it it sounds as though he's using the office of the presidency to en enrich himself. I I know that sounds like a simplistic way of describing it and Captain Obvious, but that's what it is, >> basically.

[00:06:00]>> Yes. I mean, I think he's he's trying to take advantage of the increase in certain companies. um you know and and what I talked about in my piece were these very specific incidents but the broader you know landscape here is he's deregulating the sale for instance of these GPL tube drugs that are very popular and help a lot of people and I don't know if there's anything necessarily wrong with it but at the same time he's buying up the company you know He's front running that process and buying up company stock in companies that um make those drugs and and are and are benefiting from his policies. This is why of course other presidents did not do this. And what's interesting is the other presidents that did not do this include Donald Trump himself during the first term. M >> he announced or we didn't find out about I think until December after he you know won the 2016 uh election but in June of that year liquidated all of his stocks you know and I and obviously that's I don't I don't think he came out and said it but there was sort of implicit understanding of okay I am going to be president so I cannot own and trade all of these individual stocks that I'm going to have influence over, you know, and so so there's been an evolution, I think, in even even for himself of how this has been handled.

[00:07:40]>> Yeah. And and that may stem from, I mean, there's sort of first term Trump versus second term Trump, first term Trump. There were there were more professional people around him. You know, they they may be hardcore conservatives, but they sort of were for the from the more normal establishment wing of the Republican party and people who were of almost his same stature and were willing to push back on them.

[00:07:59]People like John Kelly. I mean, you can go down the list and on. So maybe he felt more constrained at that point and so he was playing by those rules to some extent. that now he doesn't really have any of those people and he has sort of this you know sort of mentality that he can just do whatever he wants now obviously and perhaps that is playing a part in this I I don't I mean I'm just completely >> speculating I think that's right Jim and because also if you look at sort of across all of his holdings you know he actually now has a lot of stock that that isn't actually something that he's done a lot of in his sort of investing career it's never been a big stock guy.

[00:08:39]>> Uh but the main sort of vehicle was the Trump organization real estate and you see the same shift there right in the first term. Now he didn't set this up in a way that meets any other presidential standard but he did have an ethics policy that said we are not going to do any new foreign deals while I am president. you know, it's not much, right? But it's it's something, you know, he's not gonna he's it's something. But now on this, they're signing up >> people. They're signing up new uh towers uh all over the Middle East, all over Europe. um in in some cases, you know, in on land owned by government using funds from sovereign wealth funds or sometimes there's these investment vehicles that are basically have no separation from the government itself.

[00:09:35]So that's all been thrown out. So I do think that there is a real difference, you know, and then you kind of take their stock denials, which is, oh well, Trump didn't have anything to do with this. This is just turned over by an independent manager. It's not really.

[00:09:52]But, you know, it's interesting. Eric Trump, who's obviously essentially leading the Trump Organization in Donald Trump'sstead while he is president, you know, came out and said, "Well, everything's in a blind trust and it's only in, you know, invested in index funds, you know, so it's clear that they're not, you know, you could just look at the document. It's posted there.

[00:10:17]This is not index funds on here. you know, these are all stocks. I mean, it's listed 3,800. You can go through the whole I spent a lot of time with this document, so I know the, you know, what was going on. And so, I think you have to look back at that and say, well, can we take these denials very seriously when the head of the company that is making them will just say seems to be willing to say anything about, you know, the nature of Trump's stock trades.

[00:10:46]>> Yeah. And I guess, you know, I mean, just to show how um massive this is, even the people at CNBC uh had their, you know, their breath was taken away by this. We should play this because it is kind of an amazing canary in the coal mine kind of moment that, you know, they I think they were just sort of blown away by this. Let's if we could play that.

[00:11:07]>> US government got in, he could sell it and >> according to the filings, the president's been trading some intel in the quarter. Yeah.

[00:11:14]>> Yeah.

[00:11:16]Tra got nothing to say about >> Yeah. All right. Don't worry. We're not having technical difficulties here, everybody. But we got to go.

[00:11:30]>> Jim, we'll see you.

[00:11:31]>> Yeah, that strange things are a foot, Jud. When when those guys are doing doing that there it's sort of whistling past the graveyard, sort of nervously chuckling about what looks like just out andout corruption that's happening.

[00:11:43]>> Yeah. I mean, I think it is so uh, you know, insane. Uh, the Bloomberg and and sort of the Stead uh, financial press has gone out and talked to investment managers about Trump's activity and they're like, this is crazy. We have no idea what could possibly be going on. um even one trade in these kinds of companies um would be notable and he's doing it every day, you know, multiple times. Um and I don't think he's sitting behind the desk doing these individual trades.

[00:12:22]It's just impossible to believe. But I think like with everything, there's probably multiple aspects um to this story. and he clearly believes that there's money to be made here. Otherwise, why go through the whole process of all of this um if you didn't think there was there was something you could you could really take advantage of, >> right? And and you made the point and we can show uh your post on this that the corporate media, they really have not been covering this. And I mean, this is the number of stories about Trump buying and selling hundreds of millions of dollars in stocks in the first three months of 2026. CBS zero, CNN zero, Fox News zero, NPR. I mean, the list goes on and on. That's your major mainstream press right there. And I, you know, it is stunning. And, and the other thing that I have a question about in all this, Jud, is, you know, uh, that Trump just got sort of a get out of jail free card from the IRS the other day as part of this anti-weaponization fund announcement from the Department of Justice. And you know, I I wonder if it's because Donald Trump doesn't want to pay any taxes on all this money that he's making, you know, and and in in the crypto stuff and the stock trading stuff. And he doesn't want to be investigated, doesn't want to be audited, doesn't want to pay taxes. And so that I mean, could these things be connected? I don't know. It's a question. Well, I think that that deal that he struck um you know, if it kind of holds up, which I think there's some some serious questions about, although it's another thing about whether you can establish standing to challenge them.

[00:13:57]But when you say, "Okay, no audits on any of our my past taxes," that also really makes it pretty much impossible to do audits on your future taxes because when you're wealthy like this, you're always carrying forward different kinds of deductions. Right. So, in order to investigate, you know, if you were really to audit Trump's taxes even in, let's say, 2028, you're going to have to go back and look at 2023, 2024, because it's all connected. So, there is this broader effort to insulate himself from scrutiny.

[00:14:39]>> Yeah. And it seems to me, you know, moving forward and there there's going to have to be a whole raft of new laws, anti-corruption laws if and when Donald Trump leaves the scene as people leave the scene. And I think this is going to have to be one of them. And this is sort of what infuriates people about the stock trading that goes up on Capitol Hill. Um, people have access to insider information in government. They just do.

[00:15:03]And Trump is sort of the poster child for this now. maybe more so than Nancy Pelosi who got a lot of dings for it rightly so.

[00:15:12]>> For sure. And this is something and I've written about this like extensively, you know, long before this story talking about Democrats and Republicans. You know, this is kind of a bipartisan thing in Congress selling stock in companies that have business before their committee or might be influenced by, you know, the bills that are going through um you know, the funding bills or anything else. And what was what's interesting about this is just in the State of the Union this year, Trump himself s called for a ban on congressional stock trading. And so you have to wonder like what's going on? Because if >> Congress shouldn't do it, well, why should the president do it? I mean the the the the president's access and the ability of him to influence the companies especially this president who's you know cutting deals with individual companies taking stake uh stakes in a company like Intel and and others >> and flying Nvidia around on Air Force One and that sort of thing too.

[00:16:17]>> Yeah. when Vance, interestingly, when Vance was asked about this, he's been going into the press room because the press secretary is on uh maternity leave and he didn't grapple with this at all.

[00:16:30]You know, he basically said, "Hey, uh come on, man. Uh what Trump is doing is fine, and yes, we are both huge supporters of banning congressional stock trading." And it's sort of like, well, what's what's happening here? like what like why are you not connecting these two very similar things?

[00:16:48]>> Yeah. And it seems to me at the end of all this, Jud, you're going to need some investigating into the these future markets, the, you know, the betting markets uh and whether or not there was insider information going on being passed along. Were some of these Trump administration officials dumb enough?

[00:17:04]They probably weren't dumb enough to to email each other about this or anything that's documented, but you know, texts I signals, you know, I I I guess those are disappearing messages. I I suppose, but there's got to be some kind of paper trail, I would think, at some point that's going to establish whether or not there was a real pattern of insider trading and corruption going on in all of these markets, both on Wall Street and in the this wild west of uh prediction markets.

[00:17:31]>> Yeah, that's a topic I'm really interested in. There was a stunning report on 60 minutes uh over the weekend uh showing um you know they don't know exactly who it is but a wallet you know coming on with a 98% uh success rate in these sort of war related markets they have making millions of dollars. So who you know this is somebody who clearly knows how these markets are going to resolve and you know we don't know is it somebody in the White House is it somebody in the Pentagon? You know you don't really know based on that yet. Um I I'm not an expert in I do know that there's some ways that you can kind of figure out okay well here's where they created the wallet and and sometimes the weak link can be when they transfer the money from a more traditional at some point somebody has to transfer some money from a more traditional financial institution into one of these wallets. You know can you do a subpoena there or figure out you know how did the money get in? Maybe that gets you to a real person because they have the know your customer um laws. So yeah, maybe they can track it down, but absolutely. I mean, that's a that's a whole whole another can of worms, but something that's really important.

[00:18:49]>> Absolutely. Well, Jud, always great to talk to you. Uh the there he is on Substack at Chugleum and of course the always popular popular information Substack. Very uh I mean it's it's a it's an invaluable resource on Substack.

[00:19:03]This is why I love Substack and I love independent media because we have folks like you there just uh you know, lighting stuff on fire, man. really appreciate it.

[00:19:11]>> Thanks for having me.

[00:19:12]>> Thanks, J. Good to see you.

[00:19:14]>> Yeah, you too.