Two MSNBC hosts on Tuesday suggested that President Trump may be violating federal securities laws by criticizing Amazon in public and driving the company’s stock lower.
Trump tweeted Monday that the U.S. Postal Service loses a “fortune” by delivering packages for Amazon, and warned, “this will be changed.” On Tuesday, Trump said he is “right about Amazon” costing the Postal Service money.
MSNBC host Ali Velshi argued that Trump was wrong, and said people might normally get in trouble for “lying” about Amazon the way Trump was.
“If a person were to go out and knowingly spread false information about a stock, causing it to go down, that might be the kind of thing, in a normal world, the Securities and Exchange Commission would look into,” Velshi said. “The president is absolutely lying about Amazon, and it caused the stock to go down, but he’s the president.”
MSNBC tweeted out Velshi’s comments with its own comment saying normally, lying about a company would be called “securities fraud.”
WATCH: If a person knowingly spreads false information to drive stock prices down it’s called securities fraud.
But what about when the president does it? #VelshiRuhle pic.twitter.com/xWHB3wSRDB
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 3, 2018
The U.S. Postal Service has been losing money for years, but in the wake of Trump’s tweets, some have said this is because the agency is required to pre-fund its pension benefits several decades in advance.
Some have also argued that the Postal Service’s package delivery segment is profitable, although last year, an analysis from Citigroup said Amazon is being charged nearly $1.50 less per package than it should be.
