The MeidasTouch Podcast - Senator Mark Kelly on Introducing Bill to Ban Congressional Stock Trading

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on MAGA Mike showing sympathy with MAGA Congress Members who engage inside stock trading and Meiselas interviews Democratic Senator Mark Kelly who introduces legislation today to stop insider stock trading by Congress. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The economy of the United States of America should not look like a Trump meme stock. And we know with Trump meme stocks that there are a group of insiders who are usually the ones benefiting. I mean, I think it's 22 of the crypto wallets made money on the Trump meme stuff while like 50,000 people ended up losing money. So when I see this in our markets, it really pisses me off. And then layer on top of that, all the unusual trading patterns around when Trump announces tariffs, when he takes off the tariffs, you see all of this activity that at least resembles insider trading. And then it pisses me off to no end

when you see that members of Congress are involved in trading these stocks and making huge amounts of money off it and doing weird trades that would never otherwise exist unless you had some knowledge about what the heck was taking place. And we showed the photo there of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rapacious stock trader all of a sudden. But look, let's be clear. It's a bipartisan issue in my view. I don't I think that public servant should be public servants. And so even though Maga

Mike Johnson has, you know, he's he's claimed to some extent that he's against stock trading by members of Congress, I guess, but who knows what the hell he says is true or not. But then he gave this weird press conference also where he said, well, I don't like this stock trading, but I have sympathy. I get it. Members of Congress, they're not making enough money. They need this.

They need stock trading. I get it. Here's what he said. Let's play. Well, look, the salary of Congress has been frozen since 2009, when you adjust for inflation, a member of Congress today is making 31% less than they made in that year. It goes down every year.

And over time, if you stay on this trajectory, you're gonna have less qualified people who are willing to make the extreme sacrifice to run for Congress. I mean, it's just people just make a reasonable decision as a family on whether or not they can come and move to Washington, have a residence here, a residence at home, and do all the things that are required.

So the counterargument is, and I have some sympathy, look, at least let them engage in some stock trading so that they can continue to take care of their families. Let's bring in Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona, who today, along with Senator Ossoff, introduced the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act, as well. Tell us about everything. Well, Ben, let me start off by saying I have zero sympathy.

Zero. I mean, Mike Johnson, a Speaker of the House, he can work to raise the salary of members of Congress. These things are totally unconnected. When you're in this job, you get enormous access to information. I sit on the Armed Services and the Intelligence Committee.

There are people on the Ag Committee that know what's going on with crops and cattle, and could use that information to trade futures I do believe there is somebody that sits on the Senate ad committee I'm not going to name names here but does actually trade future contracts for agricultural products so with this access to information. I imagine there is a temptation by members of Congress to use this information to gain, to just build their wealth and that is not right. That's not information that the general public has. I get the issue

that Mike Johnson has with the salaries of members of Congress. He is the speaker of the freaking House of Representatives and he could do something about that and I think there should be something done. Folks that have been here for a long time because of inflation, you know, they, they're, they're, you know, buying power has been reduced. I'm sympathetic to that argument. So Ossoff and I, Senator Ossoff and I, reintroduced our legislation to basically compel the rest of Congress to do what the two of us do.

And that's putting your assets into a blind trust where you don't have the ability to use any of the information you have to make money because of your job. We're supposed to be public servants here. And Senator Ossoff and I take this very seriously. You can also diversify and, you know, so there's another option there too.

But we want this to be the rule for all 535 members of Congress. In the Senate, as far as I know, it's just the two of us that have taken these steps in the House. I'm not sure how many people, but this needs to happen. And there is bipartisan support for this. You know, we see what's going on with the House though, and the budget, and we see what's going on, you know,

with some of your colleagues in the Senate. You know, the focus seems to be, I don't know, cruelty seems to be the point with, you know, the focus seems to be, I don't know, cruelty seems to be the point with, you know, with this budget and I guess enriching the billionaires. I think the second part is really the point, I think, is it's the enriching the billionaires, it's making sure that they don't have to pay more taxes if we got, if, if Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts went away and these are the guys that are supposed to be you know the fiscal conservatives they're gonna add trillions of dollars of debt you know to the well to the deficit and

to the ultimately to the national debt in order to give put more money in the pockets of rich people the cruelty part comes in where they're trying to make it not look so bad Instead of adding six trillion. It'll be only four trillion so they can feel a little bit better about it But to do that they're gonna kick people off their health care And kids aren't gonna get meals I mean, that's the cruel part is hungry kids are gonna continue to go hungry I mean, that's the cruel part is hungry kids are going to continue to go hungry so rich people can pay less in taxes and

Say this Ben unite some teachers in here today with some kids from schools in Arizona and These teachers pay a higher percentage of their income in federal taxes than many, many billionaires and millionaires. I mean, Warren Buffett is a guy who pointed this out all the time, his secretary, paid a higher percentage of taxes than he did. And I think that is, that's true and it's a problem

and we gotta fix it. They're doing the opposite thing here. They're making this situation worse. You know there was a moment, I don't know if it was a month or so ago, where Donald Trump had some tech billionaires in the Oval Office and he was asked a question about profiting off of his own mean coins and he looked at the billionaires and he said well they're very rich. Why shouldn't I be rich and it feels like these MAGA Republican Congress members who hang out at Mar-a-Lago See all these billionaires and doing all the things that they're doing and saying, you know what me too I deserve that as well. Look at what I'm doing for them. I want to be rich like them and the Degrade trickles down to all of the MAGA Republicans, but the wealth doesn't trickle down

to the rest of the Americans. No, and a lot of envy, I think, among these billionaires. I mean, we have a whole different class of billionaires now. It used to be if you were worth a billion or two or three, you were incredibly wealthy. Now we have folks that are worth 50, 60, 100, $150 billion and more. I mean, Elon Musk is somewhere north of that.

I don't keep track of how rich the guy is, or Zuckerberg or others are just so incredibly wealthy that I think there's a lot of envy from the poorer billionaires. The reality of the situation is that the wealth has moved from predominantly the people around the middle income in our country used to own an enormous amount of wealth collectively. And a lot of that wealth has been transferred to the people in the top 0.1%. It's not

sustainable. It means the buying power of people in the middle has gone down dramatically. These are folks that are having to deal with rising costs. Billionaires don't have to deal with, you know, the price of groceries going up or housing. It doesn't matter to them. And this trend is unsustainable. Billionaires can pay more in taxes. They can do it right now.

And then we don't have to kick kids off of their healthcare. And we can continue to give them, you know them free lunch and school when they can't afford to bring lunch money. So that's what we're talking about here. It's taking money, I mean, physically taking money from the people that can least afford it and putting it in the pockets of the wealthiest Americans. And that's just not right. Well, I got, John, I got to ask you

a national security question, of course, which is Trump's trip to the Middle East, I think just a stain on the United States, you know, what he was doing in Qatar and United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. We know that the Pentagon formally accepted the free gold plated Qatari jet, but we're even seeing with the president of South Africa,

President Ramaphosa, who was in the Oval Office today, basically saying, I'm sorry that I can't get you a jet if that's gonna influence you. And just seeing how it is that the international community is now perceiving us, seeing China hosting that meeting last week with the Latin American and Caribbean countries, projecting itself now as a stabilizing force and speaking the way America once spoke

as America under Trump sounds like China used to speak and me as an American saying, what the hell is happening here? It's gone upside down. What are you, what's your observations of it from all the national security experience you have? Well, you're right Ben. The big problem is China's going to step into this this vacuum. This, you know, a place where we were the most, you know, ethical. We were the leaders of the free world. We helped other countries when they were in need. It didn't cost us a tremendous amount of money. We fed starving kids on the other side of the planet just

because they were starving. And the programs that we, I was in South Africa last year, and President Bush's PEPFAR program has saved more lives than probably any federal government program the United States government has ever supported. It was George Bush's program. And it provided medication and it kept babies from being born HIV positive. That program's ended because of Elon Musk and Donald Trump right now.

And kids are starving around the world because They don't think we should support these programs And that gives a wide opening for the Chinese on the question of the the airplane Yeah, I mean I saw I saw the Ramaphosa press conference in the Oval Office and I thought it it I Mean it's wrong. I mean to put this guy on the spot, you know, in the way, and I don't know if the president put him on the spot or he just brought it up, but yeah, he can't bribe the president with a $400 million airplane.

Only Qatar or the UAE or Saudi Arabia or maybe some other countries can do that. You gotta call it what it is. It is a gift to a president outside of our laws. We have ethics laws that do not allow this. And these countries are gonna expect something from it. Senator Mark Kelly, keep us posted on the developments with the bill that you had there.

And always you're invited back on whatever. We love having you on and hearing your wealth of experience. All right, thank you. Thank you, Ben. Appreciate it. All right, everybody. Hit subscribe. Let's get to five million subscribers.