Trump Media to sell traders an early peek at Trump's Truth Social posts
Trump Media said it will sell trading firms millisecond-early access to Truth Social posts, including President Trump's, as a legal ethics expert called the plan "brazen corruption.
Trump Media and Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, plans to sell Wall Street trading firms paid access to posts from the platform's top accounts — including President Donald Trump's — milliseconds before those posts go public, according to Protos.
The offering is a Truth Social interface granting "real-time access to posts from the highest-ranking Truth Social accounts" ahead of public publication, Protos reported. Trump's account on the app has 12.9 million followers. The company, which Protos reports is running at a loss, is pitching the service to multi-billion-dollar trading firms, for whom shaving milliseconds off news-to-trade latency can be the difference on a position. Trump Media says some firms were already scraping its data, and that it would block those third-party feeds in favor of its own paid access — a rationale that also happens to convert an existing leak into revenue.
Kathleen Clark, a conflict-of-interest expert at Washington University School of Law, told Protos the plan is "more brazen corruption" and "an improper exploitation of government power to enrich himself," adding: "He's selling expedited, privileged access to information about what he is doing as president."
The plan lands amid a run of insider-trading allegations around the administration. CNN reported this week that Trump promoted at least 20 companies — including Nvidia, Tesla and American Eagle — on his account days after buying hundreds of thousands of dollars of their stock, per Protos's account of that reporting. Separately, a longtime government teleprompter operator, Gabriel Perez, was placed on unpaid administrative leave after allegedly making more than $100,000 on the prediction market Kalshi using Trump's pre-written speeches; the Commodity Futures Trading Commission flagged the trades and is reportedly seeking a settlement.
Key facts
- Trump Media plans to sell firms early, millisecond-advance access to top Truth Social posts, including Trump's (Protos).
- Trump's Truth Social account: 12.9 million followers (Protos).
- Kathleen Clark, WashU Law, called it "more brazen corruption" (Protos, quoting Clark).
- CNN: ~20 companies, incl. Nvidia, Tesla, American Eagle, promoted days after Trump bought their stock (CNN, via Protos).
- Gabriel Perez, teleprompter operator, allegedly made $100k+ on Kalshi off Trump speeches; CFTC flagged it, reportedly seeking settlement (Protos).
The real-world read
The framing to watch is Trump Media's: it casts selling early access as stopping unauthorized scraping, which reframes monetizing a market-moving leak as a security fix. What's left unsaid is the mechanism the critics name — a sitting president's posts move markets, and the company controlled by him would sell a head start on them to the highest bidders. Note the sourcing chain: the on-its-face description of the product comes from Protos, a secondary outlet, not from a Trump Media filing quoted here; the specific figures ($100k+, ~20 companies) trace to CFTC action and CNN reporting relayed by Protos, not to primary documents in hand. Trump Media has not, in this account, disputed the characterization.
Opinion, and whose
Clark (WashU Law) frames the service as corruption and abuse of office. Protos characterizes it as "a light form of insider trading." Trump Media's implied position — that this displaces unauthorized scraping — is a company rationale, not a neutral finding.
Sources
- Protos (Tier 2, secondary) — reported the Truth Social early-access plan, follower count, the loss-making context, and relayed the CNN and CFTC allegations; also supplied Clark's quotes. Not marketing.
- CNN (via Protos) — the ~20-company stock-promotion reporting.
- CFTC (via Protos) — flagged the Perez/Kalshi trades.
Not financial advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything.