CNBC host Jim Cramer was at a serious loss for words Monday after one of his co-workers noted just how many stock trades President Donald Trump made during the first three months of the year.
During a segment on “Squawk On The Street,” co-hosts Carl Quintanilla and David Faber were saying favorable things about Intel, which gave the U.S. government a 10% stake last August.
After Cramer started to suggest the government could sell some of its shares to benefit the American people, Quintanilla quickly noted that “according to the filings, the president’s been trading some Intel in the quarter, yeah.”
Cramer didn’t know how to react to that news and actually sputtered for 10 seconds, trying to formulate a response.
It didn’t help that Quintanilla and Faber teased his stammer, with Faber needling him with “Got nothing to say about that?”
Eventually, Faber rescued Cramer by telling the audience, “All right, don’t worry, we’re not having technical difficulties here everybody, but we gotta go.”
Yes, there’s video, and it’s something to behold.
JS reached out to Cramer to find out what caused his sudden stammering, but no one immediately responded.
However, it was recently revealed that Trump has purchased stock in companies he later promoted or ahead of his moves that would benefit those companies.
Last week, he disclosed making at least $220 million in transactions related to major U.S. companies, according to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.
So the prevailing theory on social media was that Cramer was shocked by what looked like Trump’s open insider trading.