Presidents aren’t supposed to pick winners, former White House ethics lawyer says. Trump keeps choosing Dell

Summary

When President Donald Trump rang the opening bell of the stock market from the Oval Office on Monday surrounded by Cabinet officials and CEOs, he thanked billionaire couple Michael and Susan Dell—standing mere feet away from him—for their contributions to his namesake investment accounts for children. “They are truly incredible people, go out and buy a Dell computer,” Trump said . “We’re going to get him that money back one way or the other.” Afterward, Dell shares rose as much as nearly 9% before closing up 4.4%, the third trading day since February when Trump’s public praise of Dell coincided with a same-day stock gain, raising a political and financial question: How much of Dell’s extraordinary run is Trump, and how much is just Dell being good at selling servers to companies building AI data centers? One of the most closely followed voices in enterprise hardware thinks the answer is the hyperscalers were always going to write Dell checks for its AI servers, and a former White House ethics lawyer thinks the question is a distraction from a simpler one: Presidents aren’t supposed to pick winners to begin with. Nine days before Trump first told the crowd to buy Dell in February , an account bearing his name bought Dell stock—between $1 million and $5 million of it disclosed in the annual financial filing Fortune previously reported. Then came the endorsement wave: In Rome, Ga., on Feb. 19; a White House Mother’s Day luncheon on May 8 (where Trump named Michael and Susan Dell directly and credited their pledge to Trump Accounts in the same breath); and the July 6 opening bell. On three trading days—Feb. 19, May 8, and July 6—Michael Dell’s paper wealth rose by an estimated $606 million, $8.0 billion and $4.6 billion, respectively. Those same-day, gross figures are based on Dell’s closing stock moves that don’t isolate the effect of Trump’s comments from other market forces. Dell’s current net worth is $217 billion, making him the world’s fifth-richest man . Bush’s administration, told Fortune Trump trading Dell stock was “egregious,” but even if he hadn’t done that, the president praising Dell at all flies against federal standards of conduct for executive branch employees. “The baseline rule is, even if the president is not trading, there should never be an endorsement of a particular company,” Painter said. “I would have been absolutely furious if someone had suggested that President Bush should do that.” Painter pointed out the same regulation has barred officials from endorsing private companies “for decades” in both Republican and Democratic administrations. Bush, he served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a private sector brain trust advising the White House on innovation and technology policy. Under former President Barack Obama, he joined a small group of tech CEOs at the White House to discuss trade, cybersecurity, immigration, tax reform, exports, and competitiveness.