Nancy Pelosi has spent months fighting one of the largest political scandals of her life.
Now, things just went from bad to worse.
And it’s all because Donald Trump just threw the gauntlet down against Nancy Pelosi with two words.
Nancy Pelosi has gotten rich off of the stock market in a major way.
After years of bagging returns that only the richest of hedge funds could possibly hope to achieve, the general public is finally catching on.
And with Pelosi’s own husband trading massive options on companies that regularly bag government contracts, often to great financial success, there are growing complaints that Pelosi and her husband use her position as speaker of the House to enrich herself.
That’s why there have been growing calls for a major crackdown on stock trading by members of Congress in the past year.
But now, after more and more members of Congress have signed onto legislation that could ban people like Pelosi from trading stocks so blatantly, she ended up using her position to kill the bill at the last second.
And when Pelosi did so, the general public went livid.
Now, after weeks of widespread criticism for her actions, President Donald Trump himself is even weighing in on Pelosi’s stock trading record.
And he didn’t pull any punches.
“Look at her stocks,” the former US president said about the House speaker during a Republican rally in Arizona while campaigning for Republican candidates for the 2022 midterms. “I mean, she did better than Warren Buffett.”
Trump’s comments come at a time when there are more eyes on Pelosi’s portfolio than ever before.
And it isn’t hard to see why.
“Pelosi regularly discloses investments made by Paul Pelosi, her husband and the head of an investment firm. He’s made several high-profile bets during the pandemic, including Tesla, Alphabet, Nvidia, and Crowdstrike,” adds Business Insider.
“However, Pelosi’s office has repeatedly emphasized that the lawmaker herself doesn’t own any individual stocks, and has no prior knowledge of her husband’s dealings.”
It’s clear that even if what Pelosi is doing is completely legal, the optics of her actions, as well as her husband’s, are awful.
Pelosi may not be breaking the law, but few can argue that her stellar returns in the stock market cannot have been influenced by her own position in government.
And Trump himself has taken note.
“Trump said Pelosi is slow-walking legislation that would ban members of Congress and other government officials from owning or trading specific stocks, and impose stiffer penalties for violating federal conflict-of-interest laws. Pelosi shared a draft of the bill in late September, but hasn’t yet put it to a vote,” adds Business Insider.
“Pelosi’s supposed trading prowess has become a popular meme on finance forums, with some amateur investors hailing her as the ‘Queen of Stonks’ and mimicking her husband’s picks. Online trackers of her investment disclosures have sprouted up, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) mirroring her investments are in the works.”
It remains to be seen whether the stock trading bill Pelosi killed will be brought back to Congress after the 2022 midterms, or whether it will ever be signed into law.
