Hartmann: Exposing Josh Hawley's Fake Stock Ban

click to enlarge

Screengrab via Twitter

Sen. Josh Hawley introduced a bill to ban members of Congress or their spouses from buying, selling or holding stocks while serving, and he named it after Nancy Pelosi. But the bill was lipstick on a pig.

Insurrectionist Senator Josh Hawley did what he does best recently, which is to hoodwink people with a level of mendacity that would make Donald Trump blush.

Hawley garnered a fair amount of national attention in January by naming a bill to ban congressional stock trading after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That was clever. Pelosi didn't achieve her stature as one of the best speakers ever without a knack for attending to members' needs.

The art of monetizing public service is as old as government itself. But it's only recently that an idea has surfaced to rein it in — at least symbolically — in the wake of some egregious cases of self-dealing by members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle.

So, now there's loud talk about the need for piety. And where there's loudness and piety, Hawley can't be far behind. He has smartly pushed his way to the front of the line — his favorite position until the rioters show up — and now fancies himself the enemy of ill-gotten wealth.

What a strange place for a wealthy banker's son. But that's not important here. What matters is the salient point that the news media and almost everyone else has missed: If politicians can still squirrel away their stock portfolios in blind trusts, banning their stock trading doesn't rise to the level of cheap talk.

Hawley's proposal rightly "would ban members of Congress and their spouses from holding, buying or selling stocks or equivalent economic interests while serving in Washington," the Hill reported. But here's the catch: As with similar measures proposed by Democrats, there's an exception reading, "or transfer them to a qualified blind trust."

That exception falsely presumes that members of Congress slimy enough to enrich themselves with insider stock trading would rediscover their virginity by honoring rules that only ostensibly insulate wealthy people from the decisions of their blind trusts. That's a case of misplaced trust.

Think of stock trading as a pig. Think of blind trusts as lipstick.

Mind you, there's nothing wrong with the utilization of a blind trust in most contexts. But they're not about to deter the malfeasance of those vile enough to self-deal from the halls of Congress.

That's where Lucas Kunce comes in. You remember Kunce, the fire-breathing former Marine who came out of nowhere in 2022 to mount a long-shot campaign to become the Democratic candidate for the seat of retiring Senator Roy Blunt. That would result in Missouri becoming the Benedict Arnold State, with Senator Eric Schmitt joining Hawley to provide an insurrectionist tandem second to none.

Kunce ran a remarkable campaign buoyed by a stunning amount of national media coverage and small-ticket donations. But his withering populist attacks on the Democratic establishment earned him a last-minute opponent in Trudy Busch Valentine, an heiress whose chief qualifications were a large stack of Democratic political IOUs and an even larger stack of large-denomination bills.

Valentine was airlifted into the race. She's a very nice person and she unruffled the feathers of wine-and-cheese Democrats who weren't at all prepared to back someone who struck them as an ill-mannered creep. Never mind that Valentine was applying to become head of surgery without having attended medical school.

Money won. Populism lost. Film at 10.

Kunce spoke a language heretofore known as plain-talk Missourian in a way few Democrats dare to do, a quality that struck me nearly two years ago as "putting on a clinic" for detached party regulars.

I thought Kunce's approach was great. In a related development, he lost.

And now Kunce is trying again. He announced another Democratic race for U.S. Senate, this time against Hawley. It's as quixotic as the last one in that Missouri has become so red politically that Hawley markets treason as a selling point.

But here's the good news: Kunce is still Kunce. As he demonstrated recently with a blistering Twitter attack on the phoniness of Hawley's latest stagecraft, all he is saying is give populism a chance.

Here's what Kunce tweeted:

"Josh Hawley's latest campaign prop is a fake 'ban on stock trading' for members of Congress that is riddled with family and blind trust loopholes. It's just another lie to help this fraud get reelected, while rich politicians keep on stealing from us."

I spoke with Kunce last week after seeing that. True to form, Kunce has chosen to boldly go where no man has gone before. His message to members of Congress — or future ones —is quite simple:

"There should be complete divestment. No stock ownership — period — for them and their close families," he told me. "Now, when you say something like that, all these members of Congress who have become millionaires while in Congress whine and howl and complain and say, 'That's not fair, that's not American. We need freedom, etc., etc.'

"I'm sorry, if you want to trade stocks, don't join Congress. You join Congress to make decisions. You're in Congress to make decisions for the people, not for your stock portfolio."

I wasn't able to reach Democratic Party officials for comment. OK, I didn't try. Kunce is so much more interesting.

Being a little less of a populist than Kunce, I think it's important to note that the problem is not the wealth of politicians. It's their willingness to abuse their position to enhance that wealth. But to that point, Kunce did cite the perfect example of a wealthy person who is not part of the problem:

"One of the people talking about this is Mitt Romney," Kunce told me. "He was quoted as saying a blind trust is an age-old ruse, if you will. You can always tell a blind trust what it can and cannot do. So, if these members of Congress have a million dollars in Facebook stock, and then they put it into a blind trust, they know everything that went into it, and it's still there. And they're going to make decisions based on their stock portfolios."

There was also this from Kunce:

"A blind trust isn't some sort of mechanical mechanism. It's run by a person, usually somebody that you know. You know every single item that went into it, because it's your entire portfolio just being moved under the control of someone else. If you know the other person, you can tell them what to do. And even if you don't tell them what to do, you still know what you own.

"For example, Joe Manchin's coal company and all of his stuff, he put those assets into a blind trust, he still knows that that's what it is, and he makes decisions based on that. This also allows you to give things to your sons and daughters or brothers and sisters, which is another example of what these rich people do.

"They transfer stuff around the family and get away with it."

Boy, would it be fun to see Kunce debate Hawley about this. Admittedly, not as much fun as a debate on "manliness," the topic for which Hawley, as an author, has recently established the new gold standard for self-unawareness. He's better suited for a career as a supermodel for prissy chic.

Kunce, by contrast, is a dramatically cut former Marine who could pulverize "manly" Hawley with his pinky finger. Oh, dear God, if Hawley won't debate blind trusts with Kunce, please put the two of them in a cage match.

Maybe that would get mainstream Missouri Democrats on board.

Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at [email protected] or catch him on Donnybrook at 7 p.m. on Thursdays on the Nine Network.