Trump's New Complaint May Worry Big Banks

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration is preparing to crack down on banks thought to be discriminating against conservatives. On Tuesday, President Trump himself didn't exactly dispel the banks' worries. In an interview with CNBC, Trump didn't confirm the report, but he did air some related personal grievances:

• "The banks discriminated against me very badly," Trump said, per the New York Times.
• Trump called out JPMorgan Chase and the Bank of America in particular. JPMorgan, he said, once gave him 20 days to move "hundreds of millions of dollars in cash" elsewhere. He didn't specify when this allegedly took place. He also said he approached Bank of America and asked to "deposit a billion dollars-plus" and was turned down.

• Bank of America chief Brian Moynihan was "kissing my a-- when I was president," Trump said, referring to his first term, per the Times. But he said the bank wouldn't do business with him after his first term ended. Neither bank has responded to the Trump allegations.
• More broadly, conservatives and cryptocurrency companies complain that banking giants have "debanked" them because of their politics, a claim the banks deny. The Journal says the draft of an executive order "doesn't name any specific banks but appears to refer to an instance where Bank of America was accused of shutting down the accounts of a Christian organization operating in Uganda based on the organization's religious beliefs." The bank, though, said its policy is not to serve small businesses outside the US.
• The draft order also criticizes how some banks helped in the investigation of the 2021 Capitol riot.