“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT”

That personalized message went out from President Donald J. Trump’s Truth Social account at 9:37 a.m. on Wednesday morning.

For those of us who saw it on X or elsewhere, the missive did not at first seem anything out of the ordinary.

Presidents named other than Trump have talked up U.S. markets. Tanking stocks in the face of a growing Trump-ignited trade war clearly are a threat to the president’s agenda and even the most transactional chief executive in American history surely is at least somewhat aware of the pain being inflicted on followers and enemies alike, possibly stirring whatever empathic capacity lies in the man’s soul.

So it made sense that Trump would try to boost the market, not unlike how he previously had tried to stem the fallout from Elon Musk’s political activities by temporarily turning the White House front lawn into a pop-up Tesla dealership.

Plus, anyone who watches Jim Cramer or the fleet of self-appointed TikTok experts well knows the adage that the most money is made in the market by those with the nerve to buy when there is retiree (and near-retiree) blood in the 401(k) waters. The stock market will recover. Such are the lessons from the collapses due to the financial crisis of 2008 and the COVID moment in 2020 when most previous assumptions about the progress of the human race were scrambled and then locked down.

But at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Trump announced that there would be a 90-day pause on his most egregious and widespread tariff increases, excepting those imposed on China, which Trump hiked all the more. Subsequent reporting said that the White House observed (a) that this pause was a personal decision on Trump’s part and (b) that the decision in favor of the switcheroo was made in the morning. Stocks took off after the announcement.

So the salient questions there are: When did Trump begin contemplating pausing the tariffs and when did he definitively decide to do so?

If the answer is he knew for sure at 9:37 a.m., that sounds to us like an attempt to privilege his own followers, giving MAGA adherents who watch and leap on Trump’s every utterance some inside information. Simply put, insider trading on the highest imaginable scale.

No president, even this one, operates in a vacuum. Thus, additional questions worth asking would be whether or not any of Trump’s inner circle made trades Wednesday based on advance knowledge of the imminent tariff pause. We’ve not yet seen evidence that any of them did, so the denials should be easy to make and document.

Of course, given that we are talking about the president of the United States, this whole business is another example of Trumpian topsy-turvydom taking over our psyches.

Since Trump is the ultimate decision-maker here, especially since Republicans in Congress have relinquished to the White House so much power in regard to the application of tariffs on foreign nations, the absurd question here probably is not whether Trump did or did not know something but where he was in the decision-making process.

One could easily imagine his potential legal defense strategy as Democrats howled: “I was only 49% sure by 9:37, your honor, and so I was not imparting nonpublic information in the absence of my own certitude.”

Still, there is plenty here that should appall both Democrats and Republicans.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said Thursday on X that “it’s time to ban insider trading in Congress,” a sentiment with which we agree. “Any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now,” the Democratic congresswoman wrote. “I’ve been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor.”

Of what, she did not say.

California Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, was smart Wednesday to call on Congress to investigate whether Trump engaged in insider trading and/or market manipulation. In a letter addressed to White House chief of staff Susan Wiles and Jamieson Greer, acting director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Schiff and fellow Democratic Sen. Rubén Gallego of Arizona pointed out that on Wednesday the Standard & Poor’s 500 index “recorded a 9.5 percent single day gain, the index’s largest gain since 2008.”

Firm evidence of illegal improprieties requires the kind of investigation Schiff and Gallego rightly are seeking. The appearance of impropriety on the part of a president whose idiosyncratic personal actions are driving Wall Street lurches is a charge that can be made right now.

So, no, Trump should not be giving tips on when to buy stocks or other assets. He should focus on restoring confidence and stability both in the American economy and in this nation’s leading place in the world under the rule of international law.

As for the advice to buy? Well, that turned out great on Wednesday, but Thursday was a different story. That same S&P index fell back down by 3.5% at the market close.

As ever, the future is unknown at least by anyone not named Trump. But maybe not such a good time to buy after all.

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