WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Josh Hawley is brushing off President Donald Trump's quip that he's a “second-tier” senator after the Republican’s proposal to ban stock trading by members of Congress — and the president and vice president — won bipartisan approval to advance in a committee vote.
The Missouri Republican told Fox News late Wednesday that it’s “not the worst thing” he’s ever been called and that he and the president ”had a good chat” clearing up confusion over the bill.
The misunderstanding, Hawley
said, was that Trump would have to sell his Mar-a-Lago private club and other assets.
“Not the case at all,” Hawley said on “Jesse Watters Primetime.”
It was the second time in many days that Trump laid into senators in his own party as the president tries, sometimes without success, to publicly pressure them to fall in line. Earlier, Trump tore into veteran GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa over an obscure Senate procedure regarding nominations.
In a social media post, Trump called Hawley a “second-tier Senator” who was playing into the hands of Democrats.
Trump added: “I don’t think real Republicans want to see their President, who has had unprecedented success, TARGETED, because of the ‘whims’ of a second-tier Senator named Josh Hawley!”
Stock trading by members of Congress has long been an issue that both parties have tried to tackle, especially as some elected officials have become wealthy while in elected office. During the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, it was disclosed that lawmakers were trading as information about the health crisis before it became public. Insider trading laws don’t always apply to the types of information lawmakers receive.
Hawley’s legislation with the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, sailed out of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, after his support delivered a bipartisan vote over the objections of the other Republicans, who have majority control.
GOP senators had been working with the White House on the stock trade bill, and some supported a broad carve-out to exclude the president from the ban, but it failed, with Hawley joining Democrats to block it.
Trump also complained that Hawley joined with Democrats to block another amendment that would have investigated the stock trades of Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker emerita, and her spouse. Paul Pelosi has been a much-watched trader, but the California lawmaker's office said she personally does not own stock.
Hawley said after his conversation with Trump that the president “reiterated to me he wants to see a ban on stock trading by people like Nancy Pelosi and members of Congress, which is what we passed.” The senator also suggested the Democratic leader should be prosecuted, but it’s not clear on what grounds.
Pelosi has said repeatedly that she’s not involved in her husband’s work on investments, strongly supports the bill and looks forward to voting for it in the House.
“The American people deserve confidence that their elected leaders are serving the public interest — not their personal portfolios,” she said.
In a joint statement, Hawley and Peters said the legislation, called the Honest Act, builds on an earlier bill and would ban members of Congress, the president, vice president and their spouses from holding, buying or selling stock. An earlier proposal from Hawley, named after Pelosi, had focused more narrowly on lawmakers.
If the bill were to become law, it would immediately prohibit elected officials, including the president, from buying stocks and would ban them from selling stocks for 90 days after enactment. It also requires the elected officials to divest from all covered investments, but not until the beginning of their next term in office — shielding the term-limited president from that requirement.
“We have an opportunity here today to do something that the public has wanted to do for decades,” Hawley told the panel. “And that is to ban members of Congress from profiting on information that frankly only members of Congress have on the buying and selling of stock.”
During the committee hearing, tensions flared as Republicans sought other approaches.
GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida proposed one amendment that would exempt the president, the vice president, their spouses and dependent children from the legislation, and the other one that would have required a report on the Pelosi family’s trades. Both were defeated, with Hawley joining the Democrats.
“We are one step closer to getting this bill passed into law and finally barring bad actors from taking advantage of their positions for their own financial gain,” Peters said in a statement.
One Republican, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, said the overall bill is “legislative demagoguery.”
“We do have insider trading laws. We have financial disclosure. Trust me, we have financial disclosure,” Johnson said. “So I don’t see the necessity of this.”
Trump’s post criticizing Hawley comes after a similar blowback directed Tuesday night at Grassley.
In that post, Trump pressured Grassley to do away with the Senate’s longtime “blue slip” custom that often forces bipartisan support on presidential nominations of federal judges. The practice requires both senators in a state to agree to push a nominee forward for a vote. Trump told Grassley to do away with the practice.
“Senator Grassley must step up,” Trump said, while claiming that he helped the senator, who was first elected in 1980, to win reelection.
Grassley earlier Wednesday said he was “offended” by what the president said.
