Kevin McGurn, the interim CEO of the Trump Media & Technology Group, is clearly aware that there’s a serious controversy surrounding the company selling special access to President Donald Trump’s social media posts. He just doesn’t seem to care.
During an appearance Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” McGurn said the gambit, called Truth API, is simply about meeting market demand.
“We have incredible data, we have incredible information and it was in high demand,” he said. “This was demand that came to us from the market, so we want to make sure we satisfied that demand in the most brightly lit way.”
That’s not much of a pitch. No one has suggested the market for special access is non-existent, the question is whether it is proper and legal for a sitting American president to sell advanced access to his official online declarations to Wall Street.
That said, as part of the same on-air interview, McGurn also offered an update on its customer base. CNBC reported:
Trump Media & Technology Group interim CEO Kevin McGurn on Monday defended his company offering faster access to President Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts, and said more customers have signed up for the pricey and controversial service.
“We’re getting into the mid-teens now, and we’re climbing,” McGurn told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” when asked if more companies had started paying for the service dubbed Truth API, which costs up to $100,000 per month.
As a rule, a company with a “mid-teens” number of customers might sound unimpressive, but the arithmetic matters: If, say, 15 companies are paying $100,000 per month for advance access to Trump missives, that’s $18 million a year — which is a significant amount of money, especially in light of Trump Media’s massive recent financial losses.
As for the pushback, two weeks ago, the Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Intercept Media challenged the service in a federal lawsuit, calling Truth API a “scheme” that is “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional.”
The condemnation did not come as a surprise. The company’s statements on this endeavor have never explicitly referred to the president’s “market-moving Truths,” but under the circumstances, and because we’re talking about Trump’s media company touting Trump’s platform in which Trump’s content dominates, there’s no great mystery as to what buyers are getting for their money.
What Trump Media is selling is, for all intents and purposes, advance previews that allow deep-pocketed financial institutions to see presidential declarations before the rest of the public. If you were, say, a hedge fund manager and you don’t want competitors to have a timing advantage ahead of the White House’s next tariffs announcement, you may very well be inclined to pay up. Some, evidently, already have.
“Every single day, we see a new example of Trump’s rampant corruption,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer recently said on the Senate floor. “Senate Democrats are putting all of Trump’s scams under the magnifying glass in the coming weeks, and Trump’s new ‘Truth API’ stands out as one of his most corrupt grifts yet.”
The New York Democrat added, “Trump imposes new tariffs? Subscribers can short their stocks before anyone else. Trump announces a new contract? Subscribers know where to invest. Trump shakes up the Fed? Subscribers get to reposition before the rest of the market blinks. Meanwhile, Trump rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars in subscription fees. Truth API is the exact definition of insider trading. It’s textbook pay to play.”
He’s hardly alone in making this case. Indeed, Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether the gambit is even legal.
“This appears to be an outrageous abuse of the President’s office for his personal benefit that undermines everyday investors and the integrity of our markets, while enriching Wall Street and other wealthy insiders,” Warren and Schiff wrote in a letter dated last Tuesday to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins.
Time will tell what, if anything, the SEC intends to do, but in the meantime, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, launched an investigation into the service earlier this month.
“A public official with access to the ultimate insider information — his own next actions and policies as the Chief Executive of the United States — is selling advance access to that market-moving information to the high bidders at the expense of all other investors who may lack the steep $100,000 subscription,” the Maryland Democrat said. “This White House-Wall Street-Trump-Business feedback loop represents the depraved essence of insider trading.”
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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