by WorldTribune Staff, August 11, 2025 Real World News
The de-banking of "deplorables" has been going on for more than a decade and has targeted top leaders as well as ordinary citizens with ties to the conservative movement. For average working Americans, to learn suddenly that their liquid financial assets could not only be confiscated but are no longer welcome at their preferred bank is unsettling verging on traumatic.
Even billionaire President Donald Trump has recently revealed that he knows all about this from personal experience. How did such "de-banking" phenomenona — reported in nonchalant tones by major media organizations — come about?
In 2013, President Barack Obama’s Justice Department allowed regulators to order banks to close accounts for “reputational risk” and instructed regulators to handle “negative public opinion” of account holders the same as a serious financial risk.
"Businesses and individuals, including firearm shops, gun manufacturers and Jan. 6 defendants, had their accounts shuttered," Kerry Pickett reported for The Washington Times on Aug. 7.
Earlier this week, Trump described to CNBC how American banks refused to accept him as a customer after his first term as president, when he was being targeted in an unprecedented lawfare operation.
Trump said JPMorgan Chase told him he had 20 days to move “hundreds of millions of dollars in cash” to another bank. He said he went to Bank of America but was told he couldn’t set up an account to “deposit a billion dollars plus.”
“[Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan] said, ’We can’t do it,’ ” Trump said on CNBC. “So I went to another one, another one, another one. I ended up going to small banks all over the place. I mean, I was putting $10 million here, $10 million there.”
Trump added: “The banks discriminated against me very badly, and I was very good to the banks.”
Neither Bank of America nor JPMorgan Chase responded to the Washington Times' request for comment.
Others in the Trump family were also given the cold shoulder by woke banking institutions.
Lara Trump, in an interview for the book "Lawless Lawfare", said the family had a difficult time getting a mortgage during her father-in-law’s legal battles ahead of the 2024 election.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son, said insurance agencies had dropped the family.
“The de-banking, the de-insurance, the de-everything. It was rough,” he told The Washington Times’ Alex Swoyer on his podcast “Triggered.”
On Aug. 7, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at putting an end to the de-banking that started under Obama.
Under Trump's new order, excuses such as “reputational risk” can no longer be a reason for banks to reject a customer or expel a current client.
According to the order, federal banking regulators must eliminate reputational risk and equivalent concepts from guidance and examination manuals.
The Small Business Administration will require financial institutions to reinstate customers who were denied services because of past de-banking policies.
The order directs federal banking regulators to review supervisory and complaint data for instances of unlawful de-banking based on religion.
De-banking cases can be referred to the office of the attorney general. Fines may be considered along with consent decrees and other remedial actions for financial institutions involved in de-banking.
Trump's order also requires the Treasury secretary to create a strategy to prevent de-banking activities, including legislative and regulatory action.
