WASHINGTON, May 19, 2026 — Vice President JD Vance snapped at a reporter Monday for asking about President Donald Trump’s stock trades in tech and defense companies, accusing him of delivering “a speech masquerading as a question” — before conceding moments later that “nobody should be taking proprietary information gained from public service and buying and selling stocks.”
“Have a little bit of objectivity in the way that you ask these questions,” Vance told Andrew Feinberg of The Independent at a White House press briefing. “Because there were a lot of things in that speech masquerading as a question that didn’t actually get asked.”
The Question Vance Called a ‘Doozy’
Feinberg asked Vance how the administration could argue it was fighting corruption and protecting Americans financially while Trump was publicly promoting companies on Truth Social — sometimes including their stock ticker symbols — in which he held disclosed positions, and simultaneously trading hundreds of millions of dollars in securities through what the administration has described as independently managed accounts.
Feinberg also noted that Vance himself had called for making stock trading by public officials illegal when he ran for Senate in Ohio in 2022, and that the president — who arguably has access to more non-public information than any senator — was trading at a scale that dwarfed anything seen from a sitting president in modern history.
“This is a hell of a question,” Vance interjected before Feinberg finished. After Feinberg completed his question, Vance said: “That was a doozy. Before I answer your question, I wanna just observe there are different ways to ask a question.”
The ‘Speech Masquerading as a Question’ Attack
Vance accused Feinberg of embedding political attacks inside his question rather than asking factually. “You can just ask a question, try to get your answer, or you could do, like, a speech where you say, ‘You know, Mr. Vice President, you’re a terrible human being, and so is the president, so is the entire cabinet,'” Vance said. “And then I’m like, ‘What’s your question?’ And then your question is, ‘How dare you?’ Come on, man.”
The exchange drew laughter in the briefing room — but Vance’s substantive answer then walked directly into the contradiction at the heart of the question. After defending Trump’s trades as the work of independent financial advisors, Vance acknowledged that the underlying principle Feinberg raised was correct.
“I am a big fan of banning members of Congress from trading stocks,” Vance said. “So is the President of the United States. All of us believe that nobody should be taking proprietary information gained from public service and buying and selling stocks. We want to ban that process and make it illegal, which is exactly what the president has proposed doing.”
The Contradiction
Vance’s statement that “nobody should” trade on government information came in the same briefing in which he was defending Trump’s disclosed trades in Nvidia, Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon, Eli Lilly, Axon, and Boeing — companies whose regulatory and procurement fates are directly shaped by decisions made by the administration Trump leads.
The OGE disclosure forms show Trump purchased Nvidia stock on January 6 — one week before the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security approved Nvidia chip sales to China on January 13. He purchased Palantir stock while Palantir was expanding its contract with ICE — a relationship Palantir confirmed in its own FAQ grew in April 2025 to include enforcement prioritization and immigration lifecycle operations. He bought Axon shares weeks before ICE outlined a $220 million Taser contract. He bought Eli Lilly stock as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services advanced the BALANCE Model to make Lilly’s GLP-1 obesity drugs available to Medicare patients for $50 a month, according to KFF Health News.
Vance’s defense rested entirely on the claim that Trump did not make these trades himself. “The president doesn’t sit at the Oval Office on his computer on his, like, Robinhood account buying and selling stocks,” he said. “He has independent wealth advisors who manage his money.” The disclosure forms, however, bear Trump’s own signature, KFF Health News reported.
Vance’s Own History on the Issue
When Vance ran for Senate in 2022, he said at a Toledo town hall: “I think it should be illegal for members of Congress to trade stocks in this country. That is something you can actually get done on a bipartisan level,” according to HuffPost. He said he would likely put his own assets in a blind trust if elected and supported Sen. Josh Hawley’s legislation to ban congressional stock trading.
At Monday’s briefing, Vance maintained that position — but drew a distinction between congressional trading and presidential trading, offering no explanation for why the principle he articulated in 2022 should not apply to the executive branch.
When another reporter followed up asking specifically about the vice president’s own stock trading, Vance said: “We want to ban that. We want to ban that process. And I think the way to lead by example is banning that process, banning that approach, and making it illegal.”
The Scale of the Trades
The disclosures filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics on May 14 show Trump made more than 3,600 individual trades in the first quarter of 2026, collectively worth between $211 million and $687 million — a dramatic departure from his first year back in office, when he largely invested in bonds. Trump has also been fined $200 — the third time — for disclosing tens of millions in Microsoft and Amazon trades months after the legal 45-day deadline required under federal ethics law.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who has introduced multiple bills to ban stock trading by members of Congress and executive branch officials — most recently the PELOSI Act — responded to Monday’s disclosures by calling for a ban covering everyone in government. “I’d be in favor of a uniform rule for everybody — Supreme Court justices, you pick it — that says you can’t trade in stock,” Hawley said.
At his State of the Union address earlier this year, Trump himself said: “Let’s also ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information.” Democratic Rep. Mark Takano of California shouted back from the floor: “How about you first?”
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