Hawley shrugs off Trump’s anger over stock trading bill as misunderstanding

By Nicky Robertson, Morgan Rimmer, CNN

(CNN) — Republican Sen. Josh Hawley on Thursday dismissed a dustup with President Donald Trump over a stock trading bill to a misunderstanding, saying he’d spoken with the president in the hours after he dressed him down as a “second-tier senator” and the pair had a good conversation.

Trump had gone after Hawley on Wednesday after he voted with Democrats to advance a bill that would ban stock trading for elected officials and mandate officials divest from their “financial instruments” upon the start of their next term. The pair smoothed things over later in the day, the Missouri Republican said.

Recounting his conversation with the president, Hawley told reporters: “He said, senators, I don’t know who, had called and told him yesterday afternoon that the bill had been changed at the last minute and would force him to sell all of his assets, sell Mar-a-Lago, sell his properties. So, I said, ‘Well, that’s just false. I mean, it explicitly exempts you and all your assets.’ So, we walked through that, and he was like, Oh, that is not what he had been told.”

“He said at the end, like, ‘Oh, OK, great. This is good,’ you know,” added Hawley, noting Trump emphasized that he does want to see a congressional stock trading ban pass.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Thursday that the president and Hawley had spoken, and said the president “supports the idea of ensuring that members of Congress and United States senators who are here for public service cannot enrich themselves.”

While some members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have pushed to ban stock trading for lawmakers, the issue has opened up divides within the Republican Party with some GOP senators arguing that a ban could discourage people from running for Congress.

When Trump was initially asked about the bill Wednesday, he signaled he could be open to it, but later posted on Truth Social slamming Hawley over the measure.

“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!” Trump posted at the time.

The bill would require elected officials to divest from “securities, commodities, futures, options, trusts and other comparable holdings,” upon starting their next term, meaning that Trump, who is term-limited, would be effectively exempt. It could have impacted Trump and Vice President JD Vance in an earlier version of the bill.

A provision in the legislation banning stock trading that would kick in 90 days after the bill became law would apply to all lawmakers, as well as Trump and Vance.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Wednesday that he doubted Hawley’s bill would come to the floor for a full Senate vote.

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CNN’s Kit Maher contributed to this report.