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- [00:00]
Senator Andy Kim
I've had some members of Congress come up to me upset about my legislation and say, what, you don't trust me? And I said, it's not about any individual person. Right. It's not up to me to, like, know and trust, you know, every single person that's in Congress. It's also the American people. The American people don't have a chance to meet every single member of Congress and others and determine their trustworthiness.
- [00:25]
John Avlon
Welcome to how to Fix It. I'm John Avlon, and you know the drill. The purpose of this podcast is to focus on finding solutions to the problems we face, not just endlessly fixating on the problems themselves. Joining us this week, Senator Andy Kim from the great neighboring state of New Jersey. He has made combating corruption a core part of his duties. And damn, we need that combating corruption right about now. Senator, good to see you.
- [00:52]
Senator Andy Kim
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [00:53]
John Avlon
So, this week, and I just wrote a piece for Rolling Stone looking at just 48 hours in the life of the Trump presidency and the life of our country where this sort of avalanche of corruption came down. We found out that Donald Trump's stock portfolio had made over 3, 600 trades in the first quarter of the year alone. That's almost 60 a day for those of you keeping dress score at home. And it's completely insane. And it involves companies the US Government is invested in or companies that his political decisions have had an impact on. Now, this is an 80% ish, but we've never confronted this kind of naked monetizing of the presidency. Understand you've got legislation that you'd put forward to stop this insanity. Explain.
- [01:39]
Senator Andy Kim
Yeah, that's right. Because, you know, you're, as you said, you know, over 80% of Americans believe that their elected officials are engaged in some type of corruption. And over 80% want to see banned bans on stock trading, and not just in Congress, but across the government. So I introduced legislation. It's currently the only legislation that would ban the president, the vice president, members of Congress, and also the Supreme Court justices, also the Cabinet. It would have a single standard across all three branches of government, saying that they cannot engage in stock trading. This is to prevent the insider trading that we know is happening. We've seen it in the past cases, as well as just the blatant corruption that we're seeing with Donald Trump right now. I mean, this is someone who just went to China. He brought 17 CEOs with him. Fifteen of those companies had CEOs with him. He is invested in their companies. He has stock in those companies. We have seen him take on Palantir stock just weeks before. He personally promoted that stock by ticker name on Truth Social. We have seen him invest in stocks in a company on the day that he was visiting that company's facilities. I mean, this is just so blatant. And that is why we need to make sure we're shining light. I think there's been a good momentum over the last few years in banning members of Congress from trading stocks, and that's getting bipartisan support. I helped pass one of those pieces of legislation out of committee with bipartisan support. But what we saw with Donald Trump is the total amount that he traded last, over the last quarter, upwards of $700 million. That's about the same amount of the totality of what was traded by members of Congress last year. So we're really showing the magnitude of what President Trump is doing right now.
- [03:34]
John Avlon
So let's just reality check that. Right? Donald Trump is trading the dollar amount 700 million. For those of you having trouble living on a financial edge right now, having trouble making mortgage payments, house payments, rental payments, grocery payments, President United States got $700 million in stock trades. That's more than all of Congress combined.
- [03:55]
Senator Andy Kim
Yeah, pretty much. It's about the same as the entirety of the monetary amount that Congress members traded in the entirety of 2025. And that's just what Trump did in Q1 of this year. And when you look at it, I mean, he, you know, Trump bought Nvidia stock a week before the Commerce Department announced that they were going to allow for some of the Nvidia's chips to be sold to China. I mean, like, again, like, the timing of this is just so blatant in terms of the insider trading, but also just in terms of him being able to profit off of his own actions, the things that he's doing. And as I said, he literally had Palantir's ticker name in one of his true socials. That's not something that you just know off the top of your head, there is clearly an effort to boost that stock, not just to raise attention to that company. And so the way I frame it is if you have a job whose job description is in the Constitution of the United States, whether that means you're a president or vice president, a member of Congress, a Supreme Court justice, Cabinet officials, senior officials across these three branches, you should be held to the highest of standards. And there should be no doubt about whether or not you are taking action that is going to benefit the country or benefit your own bank account and stock portfolio. That's what is causing so much distrust right now is this sense of elected officials enriching themselves, looking out for themselves in that way. That's why my piece of legislation is called the Restoring Trust in Public Service act, because I do not think you can restore trust until you can get rid of these clear conflicts of interest that are right before us every single day. You know, no one's holding a gun to my head to do this job. We do it voluntarily. And if you care more about making money through the stock market rather than serving the people, then maybe you're in the wrong job.
- [05:56]
John Avlon
Go be a dredge trader. Like, there are plenty of like.
- [05:58]
Senator Andy Kim
Exactly.
- [05:59]
John Avlon
But the pace of this, the rapaciousness of it. Now, the Trump administration organization says Trump doesn't do any stock trading. But when you point out, you know, things like, you know, making decisions ahead of Commerce Department announcements about selling chips to China, when you talk about, you know, use of ticker symbols from a truth social account, either those invest advisors are psychic or there's advanced knowledge at work.
- [06:26]
Senator Andy Kim
And also right now, what I'll say is like, you know, with all this attention and Trump being asked about this directly, like he certainly knows now what stocks he owns and is still doing business with these companies, still taking actions that can very well boost. That's the problem is like there are members of Congress that sit on armed services committees that are owning stock in Lockheed Martin and Boeing and things like that. That's just wrong. Everyone knows it. The American people can totally understand that. But it's unfortunately something that's still allowed. And I really just think this is something that needs to continue to grow. I talked to you before about building an anti corruption movement in this country. This is something tangible that the American people can completely understand. And I hope that we can use this to be able to push forward on this legislation. I'm willing to work with any of my colleagues. As we're getting momentum on the members of Congress ban on trading, I'm going to continue to push now to try to have all three branches of government, a single standard of ethics across our government. I think it's easy for Americans to see it is.
- [07:35]
John Avlon
And look, this is an 80% issue. That is that, you know, poll after poll shows that over 80% of Americans, that's a super majority of Americans agree that Congress shouldn't be trading stocks. Insider trading shouldn't be legal for members of Congress, but it should apply to the president, vice president, Supreme Court as well. And so you've got the vast majority of public opinion on your side. I've got two questions for you. First of all, I want to hear what the legislation looks like. You know, can members of Congress invest in an etf, you know, an index fund, or, you know, does it have to be a blind trust, which is what Jimmy Carter did to his peanut farm, by the way, in 1976. Let's start there. What is the specifics of this legislation?
- [08:20]
Senator Andy Kim
Yeah, so my legislation requires divestment into diversified mutual funds. And I think that that's something where, you know, we can understand that, you know, there's not going to be some single company that you own that you're going to be able to push forward. Personally, don't necessarily think the blind trust is enough, especially because some of the proposals out there, they don't require divestment before it goes into a blind trust. So you kind of know what's in your blind trust when you move it on over. Plus, it's something that takes transparency away from the American people to understand what you own. And so that's something where if it is revealed what's in your blind trust, then you know it too, and it's no longer blind. So we need to make sure that we have that sense of maximum transparency for the American people. Right now, I don't trade any individual stocks, any investment I have, whether my 401 or anything else is in diversified mutual funds. And that's all upfront for everyone to see, to see what my family's invested. And that should be the case for everybody. So that's the approach. And I just think that that keeps things simple because we've certainly again seen all sorts of issues where who's running someone's blind trust? Is it a family member, is it a friend? Is it any number of other circumstances where I don't necessarily feel comfortable in that type of arrangement? And again, if making the amount that you can off of an index fund, a diversified mutual fund, if that's enough for you, especially for some of the wealthiest members of Congress, if that's not enough for you, then again, this is probably not the right job for you. And we should be able to find 535 people in this country. This is a country of 350 million people. All we need are 435 in the House, 100 in the Senate, and President, vice President, some more with Supreme Court justices. We're looking at around several hundred people in this country that are willing to not profit off of individual stocks to be able to serve our country. Surely we can find that in a country of 350 million.
- [10:28]
John Avlon
Of course you can. And again, this is a super majority issue as a member of Congress. I mean, how bad is it with regards to effectively making it legal to have insider trading? I mean, is this something that members talk about? Do they exchange tips based on their, you know, their various committees? I mean, give me some granular detail about what you've seen behind the scenes. Because effectively, if not literally, insider trading is legal only for those folks who have constitutionally defined job.
- [10:59]
Senator Andy Kim
Yeah, yeah, look, I mean, with, for instance, the National Defense Authorization act or different legislation that we have before us, we hear about information. We hear about likely Defense Department contracts to different companies. Who's going to win this contract for this weapon system or this platform. We hear information about what legal action might be bubbling up against this company or that company during the pandemic and other times, we get a sense of what companies leading the charge on innovations or vaccines or other things that might come forward. I hear about what companies might get FDA approvals for different drugs and different actions that can move forward. This is all information that would, in the wrong hands, be very much weaponized to be able to make a lot of money. And this is something where I don't know exactly what my colleagues are doing with it. And I've had some members of Congress come up to me upset about my legislation and say, what, you don't trust me? And I said, it's not about any individual person. Right. It's not up to me to know and trust every single person that's in Congress. It's also the American people. The American people don't have a chance to meet every single member of Congress and others and determine their trustworthiness.
- [12:18]
John Avlon
Any other American would go to jail. Senator.
- [12:21]
Senator Andy Kim
And when you have, like, when you look at other industries, I mean, you have like, literally like law firm associates that aren't able to trade stocks or get investments in certain things because of conflicts of interest. Surely again, people whose job descriptions are in the Constitution should be able to held to higher standards than law firm associates or others that are told in their industries that they're not allowed to make those types of trades. So that just it's common sense and it bothers me. And they make all sorts of. I heard Speaker Johnson make arguments, oh, well, we're not earning enough money and that's why we need to allow these types of side hustles. And I just think that that's absolutely bogus, especially at a time when so many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, it just kind of shows again, the sense that the rules don't apply to us. Just furthers that feeling like, you know, that politics is just some exclusive club for the well off and the well connected.
- [13:19]
John Avlon
That's right. And again, this is an 80% issue and you should be able to pass this. Do you think this legislation will pass? And if not, given that it's bipartisan, where are the roadblocks? Is it Speaker John is it Trump and his sort of, you know, his weak toughs trying to, you know, say that he'll veto this? Where does the legislation stand? Why didn't it pass yesterday?
- [13:39]
Senator Andy Kim
Yeah, so it should have passed a long time ago. And I think that there is momentum towards banning members of Congress from trading stocks. And that's a sea change from when a few of us started down this path back in, you know, 2019 when a number of us were elected into Congress, many of us elected because of our anti corruption platform.