Rep. Roy Calls out Pelosi for ‘Free Market’ Hypocrisy on Stock Trading

On Tuesday, I joined Rob Schmitt on Newsmax to discuss the need to implement further restrictions on congressional stock trading to prevent potentially ill-gotten gains and even the appearance of corruption.

Full clip of the interview is available here and some key quotes are below:

• The purpose of [the TRUST Act] is pretty simple. We’re saying to members of Congress, put all of their assets in a blind trust, or in [a] widely held index fund, S&P 500 fund, right- where you’re not able to easily game the system. A lot of the stuff we look at is publicly available, that’s true. But, there are countless times where we’re looking at stuff, and then we’re getting first glimpses at the information. It impacts our ability, but more importantly, the perception, or the reality of corruption when we’re trading stocks, at a time when we’re making big public policy decisions that impact our country.
• Well, I like how the Speaker’s defense is she’s suddenly found this newfound respect for the free market. How often do you hear her talk about the free market? How often is she standing up in defense of small businesses getting crippled by her authoritarian tyrannical COVID mandates that she’s fully supportive of across the country, shutting down businesses, enriching Amazon, and big corporate America, by the way, in the process?
• Can you safely say you’re going to go after Google, or Facebook, or any of these high tech companies for what they’re doing on free speech, if you’re going to be making a 500 thousand dollar call this fall? I mean, these are the kinds of that things I think that the American people are sick of, so that’s why we introduced the TRUST [in Congress] Act.
• I want people to make money on their investments... But what I don’t want is corporate cronyism, and a bunch of people in public office, public officials, getting rich off it.