U.S. President Donald Trump said when his kids invest in stocks or crypto, they benefit from “inside information.”
In July 2026, Trump said of his children, “Almost anything they do, if they want to buy a truck, if they want to buy, you know, if they buy an energy efficient truck, they have inside information.” The president made the statement during an interview with CNBC in which he discussed financial disclosures that revealed his family amassed hundreds of millions of dollars from stocks and crypto holdings.
Despite accusations, neither Trump nor his children have been charged or convicted of insider trading. Trump appeared to be arguing that due to the powerful office he holds and his direct participation in policy making, his family’s access to inside information is inevitable.
A rumor that U.S. President Donald Trump admitted that his children benefit from “inside information” when investing in the stock market and cryptocurrency circulated online in July 2026.
People on X, Reddit and other social media platforms shared a purported quote from Trump wherein he allegedly stated of his kids’ financial trading: “They have inside information.”
Some posts purported the full quote was, “Every time my kids invest in a stock, they have inside information.” It circulated following the release of Trump’s financial disclosure document for 2025.
Donald Trump:
“Every time my kids invest in a stock, they have inside information” pic.twitter.com/qQ5b2opF5t
— NoLimit (@NoLimitGains) July 4, 2026
It isn’t verbatim and it lacks crucial context, but the statement above is a reasonable approximation of part of Trump’s reply to a question asked by CNBC’s Joe Kernan during a televised interview on July 2. The clip can be viewed on CNBC’s website (archived).
According to CNBC, the disclosure featured “hundreds of millions of dollars from proceeds of crypto tokens and holdings of hundreds of individual company stocks.”
Trump was responding to Kernen’s question about whether Trump knew about the crypto, which Trump denied but said there was “nothing illegal” in knowing. “There’s nothing wrong with it. I could know.”
The full exchange went as follows (emphasis ours):
KERNEN: In the disclosure this week, the amount of money that you and the family made in crypto, it was an outsized number. I was just asking, did you, or you know about the crypto ventures?
[…]
TRUMP: I didn’t, I mean, there’s nothing illegal, there’s nothing wrong with it. I could know.
KERNEN: There’s a specific, I think it’s, remember Title 18, Section 208 from Congress, you, the vice president, and you do not have, you would have to recuse yourself—
TRUMP: You know I didn’t even know that. How do you know that—
KERNEN: You would have to recuse yourself on every decision that could, running the country that could have anything to do with you, so it just isn’t feasible to do it—
TRUMP: Well I feel badly in a way for my kids, because every time my kids do, if they invest in a stock, or they go and do a bill, anything they do, because the presidency is so powerful, so big, everything, if they buy a cupcake company, well, the energy to make the cupcakes is, you know, sort of like, how’s my energy policy, so therefore you have a conflict. Almost anything they do, if they want to buy a truck, if they want to buy, you know, if they buy an energy-efficient truck, they have inside information. So it’s pretty tough in that sense. I tell my kids, stay away from as much as you can stay away from, but they also have a life, you know. They, we were doing business long before I ever thought of, you knew me a long time before I thought of even running. You knew me before I even thought about running for president.
Trump appeared to be arguing that due to the powerful office he holds and his direct participation in policy making, his family’s access to inside information is inevitable.
Whether Trump or his children have actually made use of inside information for investment gains is another investigation entirely. Accusations of insider trading or using inside information to place bets on prediction markets are not new for the Trump administration.
Snopes previously investigated claims that a Trump insider bet $51 million on oil prices dropping before the U.S. announced an Iran ceasefire and that Eric Trump invested in a company that makes autonomous drones driven by artificial intelligence just days before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.
A White House spokesperson told Snopes via email:
This is the same, tired narrative that Democrats have pushed against President Trump, his family, and his administration for a decade. President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public – which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media. There are no conflicts of interest.
CNBC reported the disclosure featured “more than $580 million in crypto-related income, including about $515 million from Trump-linked World Liberty Financial token sales and $65 million from sales of equity in WLF’s holding company.”
