It’s not exactly a secret that the messages Donald Trump publishes to his social media platform can affect financial markets. What might not be widely appreciated is how the Trump Media & Technology Group hopes to capitalize on the trend.
MS NOW reported last week that the president’s media company has begun offering Wall Street firms access to a new specialty service, dubbed “Truth API,” which would rapidly deliver and curate market-moving posts from his social media platform. According to a Financial Times report that hasn’t been independently verified by MS NOW, the company is planning to charge as much as $100,000 a month for the service.
It’s 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 market-moving 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 might very well be inclined to pay the $100,000 monthly fee.
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called this data-licensing plan an “egregious scheme to profit off the presidency and enrich Wall Street while doing nothing to help Americans.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer similarly characterized the move as “the exact definition of insider trading.”
But as Bloomberg News reported, it’s not just Democrats who are raising concerns.
Senators in both parties are questioning a plan by President Donald Trump’s media company to sell real-time access to Truth Social posts to Wall Street firms. […]
“The president is the president of the United States, he’s not in a position to use the position to enhance your own personal wealth,” said Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. “I hope he’s not thinking about that.”
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who’s retiring at the end of the year, similarly told Bloomberg, “Getting insider access to something that could be a market mover before the public does seem inappropriate.”
For his part, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said about the gambit, “My assumption is that will get tested somewhere.”
In other words, Trump Media may have floated an amazingly provocative idea that would allow Trump to profit even more from the presidency, but some legal and regulatory fights appear inevitable. Watch this space.
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