The President Posted a Meme of Himself Trading Stocks From Behind the Resolute Desk and Profiting Off Intel — a Company He Personally Bought Shares In and His Own Government Has Propped Up — Captioned "I Do This for Our Country, Not Myself," a Claim That Is False on Its Face Because the Money Is His: He Made $2.2 Billion in 2025 and Ran About 3,600 Stock Trades Worth Over $100 Million in a Single Quarter
In September 2026, Trump posted a meme on Truth Social depicting himself at the Resolute Desk, studying trading screens across four monitors and profiting from a rise in Intel's share price, over the caption: "I do this for our Country, not myself." In an accompanying post he wrote: "I've made Hundreds of Billions of Dollars on Stocks, and many other type Holdings, for the U.S.A., not myself, and all I do is get criticized by the Radical Left Dumocrats." The boast is self-refuting in two ways. First, personal stock profits are, by definition, personal — they accrue to Trump, not to the country, so "for the Country, not myself" describes the opposite of what stock trading does. Second, the choice of Intel is self-incriminating: Office of Government Ethics filings show Trump personally bought Intel shares earlier in 2026 (between $50,000 and $100,000 on February 3, and more on March 11, 13, 17, and 23), even though the U.S. government itself acquired a 10% stake in Intel in August 2025 — the textbook conflict of interest that presidents have historically avoided by placing assets in a blind trust, which Trump has not done. The scale is staggering: about 3,600 stock trades in the first quarter of 2026 alone, worth more than $100 million, and a 2025 financial disclosure showing $2.2 billion in income. His "hundreds of billions" is itself an exaggeration of even that enormous figure. The president is not hiding the profiteering; he is turning it into a meme and daring anyone to object.