Democrats eye investigations as Trump Media starts selling access to president’s posts
Democrats eye investigations as Trump Media starts selling access to president’s posts
Steve Benen Mon, August 3, 2026 at 3:49 PM UTC
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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 and Technology Group hopes to capitalize on the trend.
MS NOW reported two weeks ago that the president’s media company was moving forward with plans to offer 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.
As CNBC reported, the controversial service is now live.
Trump Media and Technology Group’s new paid data service launched on Aug. 1, providing faster access to Truth Social posts from President Donald Trump and other top accounts on the platform.
“Truth API,” the new application programming interface, is designed to give firms “a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform’s most market-moving Truths,” interim CEO Kevin McGurn said in a release announcing the launch.
The statement didn’t explicitly refer to the president’s “market-moving Truths,” but given the circumstances, and the fact that we’re talking about Trump’s media company touting Trump’s platform in which Trump’s content dominates, there’s no great mystery as to what buyers would get for their money.
How much money? According to The ’ latest report, the monthly fee is $100,000, confirming earlier reporting from The Financial Times.
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 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 may very well be inclined to pay up.
“Every single day, we see a new example of Trump’s rampant corruption,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer recently said on the Senate floor. “Senate Democrats are putting all of Trump’s scams under the magnifying glass in the coming weeks, and Trump’s new ‘Truth API’ stands out as one of his most corrupt grifts yet.”
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The New York Democrat added, “Trump imposes new tariffs? Subscribers can short their stocks before anyone else. Trump announces a new contract? Subscribers know where to invest. Trump shakes up the Fed? Subscribers get to reposition before the rest of the market blinks. Meanwhile, Trump rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars in subscription fees. Truth API is the exact definition of insider trading. It’s textbook pay to play.”
He’s hardly alone in making this case. Indeed, Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether the gambit is even legal.
“This appears to be an outrageous abuse of the President’s office for his personal benefit that undermines everyday investors and the integrity of our markets, while enriching Wall Street and other wealthy insiders,” Warren and Schiff wrote in a letter last week to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins dated Tuesday.
Time will tell what, if anything, the SEC intends to do, but in the meantime, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, launched an investigation into the service on Friday afternoon.
“A public official with access to the ultimate insider information — his own next actions and policies as the Chief Executive of the United States — is selling advance access to that market-moving information to the high bidders at the expense of all other investors who may lack the steep $100,000 subscription,” the Maryland Democrat said. “This White House-Wall Street-Trump-Business feedback loop represents the depraved essence of insider trading.”
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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This article was originally published on ms.now
Source: “AOL Breaking”
