This could change the presidency forever
If Wall Street can pay for faster access to presidential announcements, the conflict of interest isn't hypothetical anymore.
Donald Trump has always blurred the line between public office and private business. Hotels. Golf clubs. Branded merchandise. Cryptocurrency. But the latest idea connected to his media company raises a question that goes beyond the usual ethics debate.
What happens when access to presidential decisions becomes something that can be sold?
Because if the reporting is accurate, that is essentially what is being proposed.
Trump Media, the company behind Truth Social, has unveiled something called the “Truth API.” The idea is straightforward. Banks, hedge funds, and high-frequency trading firms would be able to receive posts from a group of influential Truth Social accounts, potentially including Donald Trump’s, faster than ordinary users.
According to Reuters, the company plans to charge as much as $100,000 per month for early access to those “Truths.”
At first glance, it might sound ridiculous. Truth Social is hardly the center of the social media universe. Why would anyone pay well over a million dollars each year just to see posts a little earlier than everyone else?
The answer is that, in modern financial markets, “a little earlier” can be worth an enormous amount of money.
Milliseconds can become millions
High-frequency trading firms operate almost entirely through automated computer systems. These systems are built to react to market-moving news almost instantly. That means a fraction of a second can be the difference between buying before prices jump or selling before prices fall.
Donald Trump has repeatedly used Truth Social to announce consequential government actions. Tariffs. Sanctions. Military developments. International negotiations. Markets often react immediately.
Think back to April 2025, when Trump announced on Truth Social that many tariffs would be paused for 90 days. Stocks surged almost immediately after the announcement.
Now imagine learning about that decision moments before everyone else and being able to place your trades before the public even knows what happened.
That is the product being marketed here.
Turning government power into private profit
The concern is not simply that Trump has access to valuable information.
The concern is that, as president, he creates the information that moves markets.
A presidential decision on tariffs, sanctions, trade, or military action can shift billions, sometimes trillions, of dollars in global markets. If a company tied to the president’s family is selling faster access to those announcements, it creates an extraordinary conflict of interest.
Trump’s revocable trust reportedly owns roughly 41 percent of Trump Media. His children oversee the trust, while Trump remains its beneficiary.
That means the company potentially profits because of decisions Trump makes as president, decisions that only he has the authority to announce. Decisions he is now putting behind a paywall, allowing Wall Street to buy an advantage.
This is not merely about owning stock in a company that benefits from favorable policies. It is about creating the market-moving event itself and then monetizing access to it.
The law may not have caught up
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this story is that it may not clearly violate existing law.
Ethics experts have pointed out that insider trading laws generally focus on material non-public information. Trump Media could argue that the information is technically available to anyone willing to pay for the service.
Likewise, many federal conflict-of-interest rules simply do not apply to the president in the same way they apply to other executive branch officials.
Sometimes the law fails because it cannot anticipate every future scenario.
Technology evolves. Business models change. New opportunities for abuse emerge before lawmakers ever imagine them.
That appears to be what may be happening here.
The legal framework was not necessarily written with the expectation that a sitting president would package official policy announcements into a premium commercial product.
The swamp wasn’t supposed to get VIP access
One of Trump’s defining campaign promises was to “drain the swamp” and confront the corrupt financial elite.
If this service launches as described, the opposite seems to be happening.
Wall Street firms with the resources to spend $100,000 every month would gain faster access to presidential announcements that could reshape financial markets. We still do not know who the customers are, and that matters. Some could be lobbying the administration. Others could be pursuing federal contracts or seeking favorable regulatory treatment.
The appearance alone raises obvious questions.
Government information is supposed to belong to the public.
It is difficult to defend a system where access to presidential decisions becomes another premium service available only to those who can afford the subscription fee.
The bigger issue
There is certainly value in debating whether laws should be updated to address situations like this.
But there is also a practical political reality.
If Congress is unwilling to create stronger guardrails while the same party controls both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, those reforms are unlikely to happen anytime soon.
That leaves another path: reducing the concentration of unchecked presidential power through elections, oversight, investigations, and institutional accountability.
Whatever reforms ultimately become necessary, the broader principle should not be controversial.
The presidency is a public office. It is not supposed to function as another revenue stream.
So here’s the question: if presidents can legally profit from selling faster access to their own policy announcements, where would you draw the line? Or do you think that line should have been impossible to cross in the first place?
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It just keeps getting more criminal by the minute! Sigh.
Welp, this is what he does. And his deals are always corrupt. Like he said, “there’s a lot of money to be made here (the Presidency)!” And here we are.