It’s been utter chaos in the stock market this month, and AOC has a lot to say about it.
Quick recap: Following Donald Trump’s so-called Liberation Day and the details of his nonsensical tariff plan, the market nosedived earlier this month. In fact, the first week of April was officially the worst week since 2020 during the pandemic. People panicked about their plummeting retirement accounts and grew deeply concerned about the future of global trade.
On the morning of April 9, Trump posted on Truth Social, writing, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.”
A couple hours later, he shared, “I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately.” The market rallied HARD: The S&P 500 and the Dow saw their biggest single-day surges since 2008, and the Nasdaq ended the day with the second-largest one-day rally in its history, per Yahoo! Finance.
Well! If you know anything about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you can probably guess she wasn’t a fan of all this. AOC famously doesn’t own any private stocks and is one of the least wealthy members of Congress. In fact, she’s introduced several bills over the years that hoped to ban lawmakers from holding or trading individual stocks.
In a tweet that garnered over 209,000 likes, she wrote, “Any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now. I’ve been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor. Disclosure deadline is May 15th. We’re about to learn a few things. It’s time to ban insider trading in Congress.”
In an interview with Spectrum News NY1, she said, “If people are pissed about insider trading here at the House, look at what’s happening at the White House right now, with the Republican Party… I don’t think that Trump just coincidentally said buy stocks and then shortly later made an announcement that dramatically inflated and dramatically raised a lot of these asset prices.”
And AOC isn’t the only one. Elizabeth Warren wrote a letter to the SEC asking for an investigation into whether Trump’s actions “enriched administration insiders and friends at the expense of the American public and whether any insiders, including the president’s family, had prior knowledge of the tariff pause that they abused to make stock trades ahead of the president’s announcement.” The letter was signed by numerous Democrats, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.
Additionally, nearly 20 Democrats in the House signed a letter from Maxine Waters to the SEC demanding a similar investigation. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has also spoken out about the “need to get to the bottom of the possible stock manipulation that is unfolding before the American people.”
Compare that energy to Trump bragging about how much money his billionaire friends made in the rally!
Here’s what people are saying about all this:
Comments were taken from Reddit threads here, here, here, and here.
“Members of Congress should be banned from trading stocks while they’re in Congress and probably also some time after. It’s wild to allow them to trade while making rules that impact the value of the commodities they’re trading.”
—u/chubs66
“It’s wild that such a blatant conflict of interest has been able to go on for so long. I guess it makes sense though, considering that the people who benefit from it are the ones who would have to change it.”
—u/Millennial_Man
“If Obama or Biden ever did something like this, boyyyyyy.”
—u/HeadDiver5568
“A lot of people who hate AOC have been brainwashed by their media sources to forget that she primaried and beat one of the top, most entrenched Democrats. That’s why everyone hated her, Democrat and Republican. She is fighting against the system. That is why she and Bernie are such a natural pair to tour the country and ignite the resistance.”
—u/imadeathrow_away
“Not a single voter should be okay with this from either political party.”
—u/ChecksAndBalanz
“Hard not to like AOC if you have even half a brain.”
—u/RackCitySanta
“Doesn’t matter even if it were insider trading. DJT knows SCOTUS gave him a pass, and all he needs to do is claim it was a ‘presidential act.'”
—Classic-Dimension-54
“True, but it’s important for the people to know. If they choose to believe it, that is.”
—u/dolemiteo24
“Sorry AOC, Congress can’t hear you over all the money they’re making.”
—u/KidKilobyte
“Martha Stewart must be livid.”
—u/Separate_Today_8781
And finally, “I love AOC. She’s a true champion for the people.”
So, in summary: EAT THE RICH!
