President Donald Trump bought a significant amount of Dell Technologies stock just a few months before the computer company landed a large contract with the Pentagon, showing how the president can gain financially from his role in the White House.
The Defense Department announced on Wednesday that Dell secured a $9.7 billion, five-year deal to supply software to the military.
On February 10, Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million worth of Dell stock, according to his financial transaction report.
The public only learned about this stock purchase after the required disclosures were filed earlier this month.
During this time, the president often praised Dell in his speeches, even encouraging people to “go out and buy a Dell computer.”
“They make a great product,” he said less than two weeks after buying the stock.
Before winning the Pentagon contract, the Dell family had supported the president by donating $6.25 billion for “Trump accounts,” which are new tax-advantaged savings plans created by the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“I want to thank the Dell family.
It’s a great family. He is amazing; she is amazing,” the president said on May 8, referring to Susan and Michael Dell, the company’s billionaire founder.
The White House directed inquiries about the president’s stock purchases to his family business, the Trump Organization.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai insisted that Trump’s “only interest is doing what’s best for the American people.”
“His strong praise for the Dells is based only on their patriotic contribution of over $6 billion to the Trump Accounts of 25 million working-class American children,” Desai stated.
The Trump family has claimed that the stock trades are done automatically and that the president does not control them.
“President Trump’s investment holdings are managed solely in fully discretionary accounts by independent third-party financial institutions,” his son Eric Trump said on X last week.
“These institutions have complete authority over all investment choices, including asset allocation, trading, rebalancing, and portfolio management.”
Eric Trump described the media’s coverage of conflicts of interest as “dishonest.”
“The president doesn’t sit in the Oval Office on his computer using a Robinhood account to buy and sell stocks,” Vice President JD Vance stated dismissively at a press conference on May 19.
Even if third parties make the trades, the president can still know about them because his investments are not in a blind trust, as The New York Times pointed out.
The potential conflicts of interest related to Trump are so many that they can be hard to track.
He broke with tradition by not selling off his businesses during both of his presidencies and has mixed official duties with personal profit throughout his time in the White House, including investing in cryptocurrency while seeking to deregulate the field.
Just this month, administration officials announced a new $1.78 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that might allow them to direct taxpayer money to Trump supporters, including those involved in the Capitol riot.
Ethics experts have labeled this as blatant corruption.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group focused on government accountability, stated that the president’s Dell stock purchase and the related events highlight “why ethics laws matter.”
“The president has used his position to support a private company, promoting them as a solid investment and granting them a profitable government contract to enhance their profits, while other businesses—both large and small—struggle to compete,” said Cynthia Brown, the group’s senior ethics counsel.
“The administration should be working to create better opportunities for all American businesses, not showing favoritism.”
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