President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image on Truth Social showing himself day trading Intel stock from $20 to $95, then added a boast that he had made "Hundreds of Billions of Dollars" on stocks. It was the second time he has shared that same image style, and the timing again pushed his stock-related social media habits back into view.
The new post came after Intel shares had already climbed hard, closing at $95.80 on September 4 and touching $95.89 two days later. That rally put the stock near a level more than four times its 52-week low of $24.05, so the image landed in the middle of a move that was already underway rather than on the edge of one that had just begun.
Trump had used a nearly identical post last September, when the image showed Intel moving from $20 to $30 after the government took a 9.9% stake in the chipmaker at $20.47 per share in August 2025. The government’s position is now worth several times what it cost on paper, and the optics of a presidential stock boast tied to that kind of move are hard to separate from the political questions around it.
The broader pattern matters because Trump’s Intel post fits a longer trail of favorable messages that have appeared near stock gains. A review by found he bought stock in 21 companies shortly before posting favorable messages about them on Truth Social, and ethics filings with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics show accounts tied to him built Intel and Dell Technologies positions before he publicly praised both. Dell stock has since climbed more than 300% this year, and a similar post about SpaceX in August also drew scrutiny after later data showed the gain had already started in premarket trading before Trump posted.
Still, the picture is not as neat as Trump’s post makes it sound. Most of his thousands of disclosed trades were never followed by a related Truth Social post, and there is no direct evidence tying the posts to his trading decisions. Presidents are not barred from trading stocks while in office the way most other federal officials are, and Trump has not placed his assets in a blind trust, which means he can still see what his managers buy or sell.
That is why the post is drawing attention now rather than fading as another boast. Republican Senator Josh Hawley joined Democrats last year on a bill to ban both congressional and presidential stock trading, and Trump pushed back hard, calling it an attack from a junior senator. The latest Intel image does not answer the old ethics question; it sharpens it, because the post looks less like a casual joke than another example of how closely Trump’s public praise can sit beside market movement without proving what caused what.
