Is 'thrillionaire' Trump addicted to stock trading? | Will Bunch Newsletter

I literally had to sort through more than a half-dozen column ideas this week, including: What is the deal with Donald Trump’s health? His “annual” physical (now twice a year) at Walter Reed Medical Center last week included news that the president has a visible scar on his right ear from the 2024 Butler shooting (he doesn’t) and that those massive bruises are caused by shaking hands (they aren’t, if you believe reputable doctors). So what else aren’t they telling us?

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Calling all “thrillionaires,” if you don’t mind me quoting that incessant and thoroughly annoying TV commercial for the betting site FanDuel that some critics have described as an ode to the national pastime of addictive gambling.

It may be time for an intervention with the newest member of your totally invented club, who’s buying and selling stocks an average of more than 40 times a day, which is about four or five times the number of daily races at Aqueduct. This guy seems to think he’s found a surefire way to beat the market.

OK, maybe he has. The stock degenerate in question is, after all, the 47th president of the United States. He hears things.

Why do I worry that maybe Donald Trump, with a cell phone in one hand and the nuclear football in the other, should be calling 1-800-GAMBLER? Well, the president is now openly admitting that he finds the actual job of chief executive, with its responsibilities for things like war and peace, a total bore.

Trump made that somewhat stunning confession Monday in an interview with CNBC, when he said that he doesn’t really care if the on-again, off-again talks with Iran to end his American war-of-choice — that’s accomplished little except raising your gas bill — had collapsed, again.

“I think they took too much time,” Trump said of the Iran negotiations. “Frankly, I thought they started to get very boring.”

Hey, we all know someone who’s grown thoroughly bored with their job. They can waste hours in their cubicle watching cat videos, or nipping from the hidden flask in the bottom drawer. Or trying to make a killing with short-term plays on Wall Street.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a column about the revelation in a mandated government ethics form that Trump had made a gobsmacking 3,700 stock trades in just the first three months of 2026, and that many were in companies that could be boosted by various White House or federal-agency actions. Which is exactly what happened in a number of cases.

I’m revisiting the topic a) because as I and many others predicted at the time, the stock trading scandal — which probably would have meant impeachment for Trump’s 45 presidential predecessors — was almost immediately buried by the tsunami of other news, including that dismal, dull affair in Persia. And, b) because we are learning new details about the president’s actions, and they are appalling.

Exhibit A has to be the curious case of Texas-based tech icon Dell Technologies. The company that launched as a computer brand more than three decades ago hadn’t been getting as much buzz as its newer rivals over in Silicon Valley — at least not until around Feb. 10. That was the day that, according to the ethics filing, Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million in Dell stock, when it was at $126.01 a share. He bought additional Dell stock the next month.

Last month, Trump surprised a Mother’s Day event at the White House when his talk abruptly “weaved” into a riff on Dell. Dell had just cemented its bond with the Trump White House after founder Michael Dell and his wife’s foundation donated $6 billion to help launch a kids investment program called Trump Accounts. Trump thanked the couple and told the nation, “So go out and buy a Dell. They’re great.”

Trump famously doesn’t send emails or really use computers at all, so maybe he meant the stock has been great, as the Trump regime went well beyond that product plug. Last week, his Pentagon announced a massive $9.7 billion software contract for Dell Technologies. The company’s stock has gone nuts — increasing about 270% since the president began touting it back in February, closing Monday at just under $466 a share.

If Trump had in fact bought $5 million in Dell shares, he would have reaped a remarkable $13.5 million profit. There’s a lot we don’t know about the mechanics of these stock purchases, and how much intermediaries like brokers or financial advisers or family members were involved. But we know that Trump used both the bully pulpit of the presidency and the power of the federal purse to boost the fortunes of the company in which he invested probably more money than you or I will ever accumulate in our lifetimes.

I hate to keep bringing this up but in 1973 Spiro Agnew was forced to resign the vice presidency in disgrace and plead to a felony for taking envelopes in the White House with a few thousand dollars. Agnew didn’t understand the maxim that if you’re going to steal, steal big.

Trump gets it.

The journalist Isaac Saul wrote for Tangle News an excellent and — by necessity — very long essay on the overwhelming magnitude of Trump’s graft that he dubbed “the everything, everywhere, all at once corruption story.” In the piece, Saul does a great job of summarizing most of the shady deals — around crypto, or with Middle Eastern oil dictators — that have caused the president’s net worth to roughly triple to more than $6 billion since he took the oath to become president.

Here’s the thing that mere mortals like us struggle to understand. If Trump is out there making another $4 billion on crypto and the art of the rigged deal, why go to so much trouble to make $13.5 million or less, on a transaction that, in a just America, would be probed for insider trading?

It’s because this is who he is. Trump reminds of what a great investigative journalist, the late Joe Demma, told me a long time ago when we worked together at Newsday, as he imparted what he had learned while covering the mob. He told me that a wiseguy is someone with a giant roll of $100 bills who puts a wooden slug in the toll booth at the Throgs Neck Bridge instead of a quarter.

Not because he needs the money. But just because he can.

Why would Trump risk the prestige of the American presidency on a bunch of middling stock trades? Why wouldn’t he? He is a bored “thrillionaire,” desperate for his next dopamine hit. Trump has spurned alcohol since The Drink killed his older brother at a young age, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have an addictive personality. Or that he’s not still jealous of the guys who’ve made even more billions than he has — still desperate at nearly age 80 to catch up with a “sure thing” on Wall Street.

The problem — well, one of them — is that the adrenaline rush of a green stock ticker still isn’t enough to thrill this man who ran for president three times yet now doesn’t find the job interesting. He needs the “likes” of his 2 a.m. Truth Social posts, or the joy he seems to get from snuff videos of his troops blowing up boats in the Caribbean or military targets and the occasional girls school in Iran. The hard work of negotiating a complex peace deal after all those nifty explosions is so boring, even if all of us continue to pay for that disinterest at the pump.

Trump has already moved on, even if the oil tankers anchored in the Strait of Hormuz have not. These days, the White House is dwarfed by a gaudy, tacky makeshift outdoor arena on its front lawn, and Trump has found literally the ultimate outlet for his restless thumb syndrome: An Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) cage match on the president’s 80th birthday, June 14.

What could be more exciting for Don’s addiction than an event that will merge his voyeuristic love of violence, as manly men beat each other to a pulp, with new opportunities to grift? Just two weeks after the event called Freedom Fights 250 was announced with heavy White House promotion, Trump bought stock in UFC’s parent company, TKO Holding Group. It wasn’t much, just $15,000 to $50,000, according to the ethics report, but it reveals a president desperate for a little side action.

The crowd of more than 4,000 will be a mix of free attendees — including soldiers, as long as they are not fat — with some fans who purchase a “partner investment opportunity” in UFC at a hefty $1.5 million price. Calling all thrillionaires, come and get your boy. He is on a wicked bender.

Question: Are some GOP members of Congress growing the tiniest of spines against their unpopular and criminally convicted leader? — David Beard (@dabeard.bsky.social) via Bluesky

Answer: David, the answer seems to be yes … with a big asterisk, so far. Nearly a year and a half into Trump’s second regime, with midterm elections fast approaching, Trump does seem to be facing a GOP mini-revolt, but only from a handful of Republicans he actively and successfully worked to make “lame ducks” in the primaries. The most powerful example came when after Trump’s successful endorsement of a rival caused Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy to, just days later, join Democrats and other renegades to pass a War Powers Act resolution seeking to halt the conflict with Iran. These moves seem to be giving strength to others who’d rather remain in the shadows, including GOP opposition to Trump’s $1.776 slush fund for his criminal supporters. If Trump’s poll numbers drop further, you will see more of this.

I received the anticipated robust response to last week’s question about the future of Israel and Palestine, and — jibing with the latest public opinion polls — almost everyone agreed with Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen that it’s time to halt military aid to Israel, under its current policies, and to formally recognize Palestine. Pat Eisenberg, noting that she is Jewish and started from a place of admiration for Israel, said “I have become concerned, troubled, outraged, and now completely opposed to its current leadership, if we can call it that.” The lone disagreement came from David Wolfson, who alleged “the Palestinians, by embracing jihadism, do not play by the same rules of civilization as the rest of us do.”

📮 This week’s question: Next week’s newsletter will be the last before the incredibly long-awaited arrival of the men’s World Cup soccer finals in North America. We’re all rooting for the oft-cursed U.S. national team, of course, but is there another nation that you’re pulling for, like Australia or France or Cote d’Ivoire? Why? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “World Cup favorite“ in the subject line.

I am a 67-year-old white, liberal, card-carrying member of the suburban upper middle class, so it would have been pretty shocking if I didn’t see Bruce Springsteen when he came to Philadelphia’s Xfinity Mobile Arena Saturday night for what — because of a 76ers playoff game postponement — proved to be the final night of his highly politicized Land of Hope and Dreams spring tour of America.

The almost-three hour show with the E Street Band (and Bruce’s new best buddy, the shredding guitarist Tom Morello, because every long-running sitcom needs a new character) was everything you hoped and dreamed it would be. In fact, it was the best of the six or seven times (my boomer brain has lost track) I’ve seen Springsteen, starting in Birmingham, Ala. back in 1984. That’s because the 27-song set was a linked narrative that managed to tell an epic story of the decline and fall of the American Dream and the artist’s remarkable life of chronicling this time, all while exhorting his crowd to “come on up for the rising.” It was quite moving to see the giant photos of slain Minneapolis activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti, followed by Bruce preaching that “I believe in a promised land.” I’ll spare you a full musical review but you should read the excellent one by my Inquirer colleague Dan DeLuca.

The crowd walked out of the arena spiritually drained, as if we’d just experienced a sweat-drenched tent revival, a speaking-in-tongues that blended the sacred and the profane. And yet the Land of Hope and Dreams tour has also had more than a few detractors, and I totally get the debate. On the most-read news site in Springsteen’s native state where he is a semireligious icon, NJ.com writer Bobby Olivier called the tour “hypocritical crap” — citing the sky-high ticket prices, the lines for “No Kings” merch that fetched as much as $90, a ban on working-class bootleggers in the parking lot, etc.

My take is more nuanced. There is a spectrum of resistance, and Springsteen is pretty far along. In America’s crisis of authoritarianism, there are too many artists who say nothing, honoring the famed Michael Jordan maxim that “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” Springsteen’s music has always been political but in an allegorical way. There were no allegories on Saturday. “Our democracy, our Constitution, our rule of law are being challenged as never before by a reckless, racist, incompetent, treasonous president,” he told the faithful.

But the question continues to loom: What is to be done? Morello has emblazoned one idea on his guitar: “Arm the homeless.” Somehow, I don’t think the Springsteen crowd really supports armed struggle … not yet, anyway. Springsteen urged folks to follow the lead of the late civil rights icon John Lewis, who was arrested 45 times. Invoking Lewis, Good, and Pretti, Springsteen said: “Find a way to take aggressive, peaceful actions to respect their country’s ideals.”

Figuring out what “aggressive” means in this context is the wall between a call to action and performance art. Someday girl, we’ll get to that place where we really want to go and we’ll walk in the sun — but I don’t know when. On Saturday, Springsteen challenged the outraged-but-comfortable to do even more to get there in our remaining days on earth. That challenge arguably includes Springsteen himself.

Apparently June 2 is an annual holiday in Will Bunch Land, as I truly struggled to find anything substantial that I’ve written on this dog day of pre-summer. In the days of my Attytood blog and its short, sometimes cryptic posts, I briefly addressed topics such as the Larry Mendte scandals in 2008, the evergreen Israel-Gaza conflict in 2010, and, in 2009, the demise of a short-lived attempt at a conservative newspaper for Philadelphia called The Bulletin. I wrote: “You know, this could mean there are other factors besides liberal bias that are killing off printed newspapers (the Bulletin had no significant online presence). Who knew?” Read the rest: “‘Liberal bias’ kills another American newspaper.”

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