19 hours ago
7
July 20, 2026 — 11:59am
The Trump family has shown a remarkable ability to monetise Donald Trump’s second term in the White House. Their latest effort is turning his social media posts into a financial asset.
Last week, the Trump Media & Technology Group announced a plan to charge investors $US100,000 ($143,000) a month for instant access to Trump’s posts on his Truth Social platform. Some investors have reportedly already signed up.
Trump Media has launched a real-time data feed via APIs (application programming interfaces) that would give subscribers earlier access to Trump’s posts than non-subscribers.
Given that Trump’s posts often move markets, that advantage – measured in milliseconds – could be hugely profitable for hedge funds, Wall Street banks, algorithmic traders and wealthy private investors. Institutional traders couldn’t afford not to pay up to get that access.
Trump Media didn’t explicitly say that subscribers to the service would get privileged access to Trump’s posts – it said they would get access to the 10 highest-ranking accounts – but Trump, with 12.9 million followers, is the highest-ranked account, with his sons, Donald Junior and Eric, also among the most popular.
In its pitch documents to prospective subscribers, the company also reportedly highlighted 10 Trump posts that moved markets.
No one would pay the $US100,000 a month (or $US60,000 a month if they sign up for three years) for anything other than Trump’s posts.
Trump’s second term as president has been an immensely successful one for him and his family in adding to their wealth, with most calculations of the wealth added in his first year back in office topping $US2 billion – some estimates are far higher – thanks largely to the success of the family’s crypto businesses.
While those dealings, and the family’s fortuitously well-timed investments in companies just before they received hefty government contracts, have generated controversy, the proposed monetisation of Trump’s social media posts by a company that he has a 41 per cent shareholding in creates a clear and obvious conflict of interest and breach of ethical norms.
Trump’s posts are often announcements – the first announcements – of US government policy. Effectively, the Trump Media plan is to charge for early access to those announcements so that wealthy insiders can profit.
Other social media companies, like X, also charge for API access – but they don’t have the presidential posts.
That prior access to the posts, even if for milliseconds, can be valuable is irrefutable.
During the war in the Middle East, Trump’s posts have significantly moved markets, whether it’s the market for oil, shares or even bonds.
When he used Truth Social to announce he was imposing 25 per cent tariffs on Mexico and Canada in February, the peso and Canadian dollar fell significantly.
When he announced a US cryptocurrency reserve, Bitcoin’s value jumped more than 10 per cent.
In April, having posted that it was a “great time to buy,” he announced his Liberation Day tariffs would be paused for 90 days and the sharemarket soared.
His touting of particular stocks has led to significant price movements.
There is, therefore, plenty of evidence that his posts move markets.
It’s not clear whether the Trump Media plan is legal or not and, in any event, thanks to the US Supreme Court, Trump has immunity for his actions as president. It is also unlikely that the US Securities and Exchange Commission or any other government agency would, in this administration, even consider the question.
The Democrats in Congress are, as you’d expect, outraged, but their Republican colleagues have shown no interest in pursuing Trump’s profiteering.
The midterms could, of course, change the balance of Congressional power, but whether they could do anything to stop Trump Media from profiting from presidential posts is doubtful.
US presidents and vice presidents are not covered by the conflict of interest and self-enrichment provisions that apply to other government officials. Trump also has the presidential pardon that he could deploy, if required, to protect his family and other Trump Media officials.
Trump Media would, in any case, argue that it isn’t selectively offering privileged access to Trump’s posts.
It publishes the posts and makes them available to all Truth Social subscribers at the same time – those paying for API access are arbitraging latency – the time it takes for traffic from the site to reach normal users – rather than being provided access to the posts ahead of their publication.
Latency is why institutions and traders co-locate their trading technology with securities exchanges. Milliseconds matter.
Even without APIs, some traders have made a lot of money from front-running Trump posts, which has given rise to suspicion of insider information.
US presidents and vice presidents are not covered by the conflict of interest and self-enrichment provisions that apply to other government officials.
One of Donald Trump’s teleprompter operators has been suspended after allegedly making bets on prediction markets about what the president would say in his speeches.
There have been some very big and successful wagers made on those markets – and in share and futures markets – ahead of Trump’s Truth Social posts, including the capture of Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, the killing of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other developments in the conflict with Iran, along with prescient bets on the US economic data that Trump has sometimes released, ahead of the official release, on his platform.
Ever since its launch in 2021 (after Trump was de-platformed by other sites after the January 6 violence on Capitol Hill), Trump Media has been a vehicle in search of a profitable business.
As a social media platform, it has been a dud, with a sliver of the audience of competing platforms. Its original vision of becoming a massive digital media conglomerate, with video-on-demand, podcasts and news services, hasn’t come close to being realised.
It has diversified into cryptocurrencies and financial services, expressed interest in establishing a predictions market for sports betting and is currently merging with a leading fusion energy researcher. Plans to spin out Truth Social ahead of that merger appear to have been abandoned.
Trump Media has lost about 90 per cent of the sharemarket value it had when it launched and has lost money ever since that launch, with losses of more than $US2 billion in the past two years. In the first quarter of this year, it reported another $US405.9 million loss – on revenue of less than $US900,000 – albeit that most of those losses were non-cash.
The plan to allow Trump Media to profit from the presidency offers a lifeline for the company.
The monetisation of Trump’s truths might also allow the proposed spin-off of Truth Social to be revisited because every institutional investor and algorithmic trader would need to sign up to the service, which could generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year – even billions – for the beleaguered company.
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.
