Ex-MAGA darling accuses Trump of 'manipulating stock market for insider trading'

Thomas Kika
6h
President Donald Trump arrives at a dinner for NATO heads of state and governments at Huis ten Bosch Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, June 24, 2025. REUTERS/Toby Melville

A former MAGA darling lashed out against the Trump administration this week, accusing it of manipulating the stock market as it tried to strategically hide signs that its Iran ceasefire is failing.

On Friday evening, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. had carried out new military strikes against Iran, claiming that they were in retaliation for an attack the Middle Eastern nation carried out on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, which Trump called a "foolish violation" of the recent "memorandum of understanding" it recently signed. Iran claimed that the ship was targeted because it was using an unauthorized pathway through the Strait.

In a post to X on Saturday, the Kobeissi Letter, which tracks news about "global capital markets," highlighted something notable about the timing of the announcement.

"BREAKING" The US Pentagon delayed publicly announcing US strikes on Iran until after the US stock market had closed at 4 PM ET on Friday, per NBC News," the account posted. "The timing of the announcement was reportedly intended to 'reduce the immediate impact on financial markets.'"

This sort of effort has become commonplace during the second Trump term. Given that the president is famously known to be the most concerned about television ratings and stock market performance, his administration has frequently tried to manage the release of information that might cause markets to tumble, making sure that the news breaks after they close for the day, and preferably heading into the weekend as well.

This became especially evident during the Iran peace talks, when Trump would often hype up an impending deal as the weekend approached, only to then begin issuing threats again during the weekend, when markets would not be able to react to renewed hostilities.

Responding to the Kobeissi Letter's post, ex-congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a stalwart Trump supporter and darling of the MAGA movement, made the accusations clear.

"Two things here: 1. The ceasefire is not holding," Greene wrote in a post to X. "2. They are manipulating the markets for insider trading."

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