Four years ago, after Donald Trump launched his own social media platform he kept trying to convince people that it was succeeding. “TRUTH SOCIAL has become somewhat of a phenomena,” he wrote in 2022. “Last week it had bigger numbers than all other platforms, including TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest.”
That wasn’t exactly true, though in the weeks and months that followed, he continued to try to hype the platform, assuring the public, “Truth Social is sooo HOT. Even the Fake & Disgusting News Media is in agreement on that!” Even after the Republican returned to the White House, he continued to try to convince people that things were great, writing last year, “TRUTH (Social) is on ‘FIRE’ (in a positive way, of course!). It is my Voice, and the Real Voice of America.”
Reality appears to be pointing in a very different direction. The platform’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, reported a net loss of over $238 million in the second quarter — since going public more than two years ago, the company has never had a profitable quarter — which coincided with reporting from The New York Times that said traffic to Truth Social was down roughly 36% from a year ago, even as its more successful rivals show growth in monthly visitors.
The news, however, is not all bad for the president’s troubled venture. The Wall Street Journal reported:
President Trump’s media company Monday said more than 10 customers have signed up to a real-time feed of top Truth Social accounts, a product that has drawn criticism that the first family is mixing its business interests and White House affairs. […]
In Trump Media’s first-ever earnings call on Monday, Interim Chief Executive Kevin McGurn said the early sign-ups comprised primarily high-frequency trading firms paying between $60,000 and $100,000 a month. McGurn said the company is in “active” conversations with other potential customers, such as artificial-intelligence hyperscalers, and is eyeing an eventual push toward retail traders.
The product is known as Truth API, and it’s quite a scheme.
It’s not exactly a secret that the messages Trump publishes to his social media platform can affect financial markets. What might not be widely appreciated is how the Trump Media and Technology Group hopes to capitalize on the trend.
MS NOW reported last month that the president’s media company was moving forward with plans to offer Wall Street firms access to a new specialty service, which would rapidly deliver and curate market-moving posts from his social media platform.
Last week, the controversial service went live — and according to the company, it already has “more than 10” customers willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars per month for special access to “the platform’s most market-moving Truths.”
The company’s statements on this have never explicitly referred to the president’s “market-moving Truths,” but given the circumstances, and the fact that 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.
It remains a tough plan to defend. What Trump Media is selling, for all intents and purposes, is advance previews to deep-pocketed financial institutions to allow them 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 last week to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins dated Tuesday.
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 last week.
“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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