Trump Bought Lots Of Dell Stock — Then The Pentagon Gave Dell A $9.7 Billion Contract
The president was hyping Dell in public speeches not long after he invested somewhere between $1 million and $5 million in the tech company.
President Donald Trump bought a load of Dell Technologies stock just months before the computer maker received a massive Pentagon contract, in yet another example of how the president can benefit financially from his work in the White House.
The Defense Department announced Wednesday that Dell had won a $9.7 billion, five-year contract to provide software to the military. Back on Feb. 10, Trump purchased somewhere between $1 million and $5 million worth of Dell stock, according to his periodic financial transaction report.
The public did not become aware of that stock purchase until the disclosures were filed earlier this month, as required by law. But in the meantime, the president repeatedly hyped Dell in a series of public speeches, even going so far as to urge people to “go out and buy a Dell computer.”
“They make a great product,” the president said less than two weeks after the stock buy.
Before scoring the Pentagon deal, the Dell family had effectively promoted the president by donating $6.25 billion in funding for so-called “Trump accounts,” the new tax-advantaged savings vehicles created by the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“I want to thank the Dell family. It’s a great family. He is amazing; she is amazing,” the president said on May 8, referring to Susan and Michael Dell, the company’s billionaire founder.
The White House referred questions about the president’s stock purchases to his family business, the Trump Organization. White House spokesperson Kush Desai maintained that Trump’s “only interest is doing what’s best for the American people.”
″[H]is effusive praise for the Dells is rooted only in their patriotic contribution of over $6 billion to the Trump Accounts of 25 million working-class American children,” Desai said.
The Trump family has previously said that the stock trades are placed automatically and that the president doesn’t control them.
“President Trump’s investment holdings are maintained exclusively in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions,” his son Eric Trump said on X last week. “These institutions have sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions, including asset allocation, trading, rebalancing, and portfolio management.”
The younger Trump called the media’s reporting on conflicts of interest “dishonest.”
“The president doesn’t sit at the Oval Office on his computer on a Robinhood account buying and selling stocks,” Vice President JD Vance said dismissively at a press conference on May 19.
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