Trump’s Truth Social Sells Wall Street Early Access to Presidential Posts
President Donald Trump’s media company announced Thursday a paid service called Truth PSI that will provide Wall Street trading firms expedited access to Truth Social posts, including those from Trump himself on topics affecting national security and financial markets. The service enables institutional investors to see posts from the platform’s highest-ranking accounts, with Trump commanding 12.9 million followers, ahead of other users, potentially allowing traders to profit from market movements triggered by his announcements. Trump Media & Technology declined to disclose pricing or whether the president’s posts would be excluded from the offering.
Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at Washington University School of Law, characterized the arrangement as “brazen corruption” and “improper exploitation of government power to enrich himself,” noting that Trump is selling direct access to information about his presidential decisions. Conflict-of-interest law bars federal officials from owning companies that profit by selling access to their office decisions; however, presidents and vice presidents are statutorily exempt from this restriction. Every president since the law’s passage has voluntarily complied by divesting stock holdings or placing assets in blind trusts, but Trump has refused.
Trump has used Truth Social to announce major policy decisions including military actions against Iran, tariff implementations, and immigration enforcement operations. Iran-related posts are particularly significant because investors fear oil price increases will intensify inflation and potentially trigger Federal Reserve interest rate increases. The president stands to benefit directly as the largest shareholder in Trump Media & Technology, the publicly traded parent company.
Trump Media’s stock has collapsed more than 70 percent since Trump took office, erasing $6 billion in shareholder wealth, yet Trump’s annual financial disclosures show he extracted more than $1 billion in revenue from the same companies and ventures last year. The company recently replaced longtime CEO Devin Nunes with Kevin McGurn, a seasoned media executive, who described Truth PSI as part of a strategy to “monetize proprietary assets” and predicted it would generate “meaningful, ongoing source of revenue.” Trump Media stated it plans to launch the service next month after already securing customers.