Las Vegas Sun93%
Trump's plan to charge for Truth Social alerts institutionalizes insider trading 79%
7/21/2026, 2:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 33 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Biased Writer Voice, and Availability Heuristic, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 43.5% saturation with 590 hits. Analysis detected 3,607 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,356 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 71.4% and a BS Rank of 79% (4,161 of 19,502 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 78.70% of the article peer group.
There was a time when we could assume that when the president of the United States announced a major policy decision, every American would receive that information simultaneously.
Presidential statements belonged to the public sphere because they carried the force of a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
That expectation now faces an extraordinary challenge.
Trump Media & Technology Group's plan to charge as much as $100,000 per month for early access to posts on Truth Social — including posts from Donald Trump and other high-ranking administration officials — crosses a line that should concern Americans regardless of party.
This is not simply another technology product or social media feature.
Presidential proclamations frequently influence financial markets in general, specific stocks and financial instruments, international relations, trade policy and national security.
By charging for early access to White House statements, the administration is effectively transforming official government policy announcements into a private commodity.
There is only one reason for anyone to pay $1.2 million a year for early access, and that is to profit from the posts.
Trump’s Truth Social plan is, in no uncertain terms, institutionalizing insider trading, which is trading on advance information not generally available to the public.
Those with the deepest pockets can subscribe to this "POTUS+" service and receive the earliest opportunity to react to market-moving announcements.
Everyone else — including working-class Americans, not only risk being left behind on the upside, but being on the losing end of aggressive short-selling trades and other investment strategies that incentivize betting against the success of American businesses.
Any individual or company rich enough to buy early access to Trump’s announcement that the government was going to take stakes in Intel or Nevada’s MP Materials could have made hundreds of millions off that news in a matter of seconds.
Likewise anyone who got a one-minute advance notice of the size of the tariffs on “Liberation Day” or the commencement of attacks on Iran could have shorted the S&P or NASDAQ and again made billions off that trade.
The losers are America’s average investors and 401Ks that end up providing the liquidity for this insider trading.
Trump himself savors the act of manipulating the market.
He has a pattern of attacking public companies in posts and driving their stocks lower or telling people to “buy a Dell” when a company does something to curry favor with him.
And of course, the administration routinely announces attacks on Iran on Friday night after the market closes, only to announce a new plan to reduce hostilities before the market opens Monday.
Advance knowledge of a president’s actions — particularly a president like Trump who has no sense of proper boundaries — can make mountains of money.
Trump remains the majority shareholder of Truth Social's parent company, and his son serves on its board of directors.
Every successful subscription sold to Wall Street firms will directly benefit the president's family financially.
That reality is particularly striking given the years Republicans spent criticizing Hunter Biden for allegedly profiting from his proximity to his father.
Those accusations centered on the possibility of access to the president of the United States.
Today, the president is not merely trying to sell proximity; his company is proposing to monetize direct, privileged access to presidential communications themselves.
If the former was portrayed as unacceptable, this is exponentially more troubling.
It is, to borrow a familiar word, deplorable.
Any person who complained about the Hunter Biden scandal who isn’t similarly outraged about Trump’s pay-to-play scheme is a hypocrite and liar.
Insider trading accusations have risen like flood waters with Trump’s arrival for his second term.
Unusual Whales, a web team that is obsessed with catching and exposing insider trading, has consistently found very curious behavior and timing of trades that appear to be associated with Trump’s inner circle or people with access to his decisions.
In addition, a series of suspicious trades on prediction markets suggest advance knowledge of Trump posts.
Last week, it was announced that a teleprompter technician for Trump was identified as one of these people placing bets on Trump decisions.
All he needed was access to the speech while he loaded it into the teleprompter and a phone to pull down $100,000 of inside knowledge.
This is illegal and the odds are the Securities and Exchange Commission will prosecute the technician.
The SEC has been criticized for reduced enforcement activity of suspicious trades that may be tied to inside knowledge of Trump’s actions.
Also worth noting: Trump’s sons have been given shares and paid advisory roles at Kalshi and Polymarket, the dominant prediction markets, and the president has been highly protective of prediction markets' interests.
Unfortunately, the Truth Social scheme does not stand alone.
It fits into a much broader pattern of grift and corruption surrounding the Trump family's financial interests during the president's second term.
As Forbes reported last week, the president took in $2.4 billion dollars last year, while he was serving in office.
Reports have documented investment firms associated with his children, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, receiving more than $3 billion in Pentagon business, with another $3 billion in additional projects still under consideration.
Critical minerals ventures connected to the president's sons have similarly benefited from significant federal financing proposals as administration officials promoted those very industries.
And none of those figures account for the fortune made by the Trump family’s cryptocurrency ventures — a sector that Trump has shielded from regulatory reform using his executive oversight powers and legislative bully pulpit.
In several cases, watchdog groups and members of Congress have raised concerns that companies with financial ties to the president's family received unusually favorable treatment during contracting or financing processes.
Larry Ellison, a major Trump contributor, was almost gifted the valuable app TikTok, and Trump put his thumb on the scale to benefit Ellison’s son's quest to buy Paramount, CBS and, unless legal actions are successful, Time Warner/CNN.
Such profiteering at taxpayer expense stands in stark contrast to previous presidents from both parties, who generally divested business interests, sold individual holdings or placed assets into blind trusts precisely to avoid questions about whether official decisions could enrich themselves or their families.
Those traditions were never merely symbolic.
They reflected a recognition that public office is a public trust.
Corruption rarely announces itself through a single dramatic scandal.
More often, it emerges gradually as ethical boundaries are repeatedly weakened until conduct once considered unimaginable becomes normalized.
Every new precedent makes the next one easier to justify while adding to the tally of public funds being redirected away from taxpayer benefits and into the pockets of the president, his family and their political allies.
Encouragingly, there are signs that lawmakers recognize the urgency of the situation.
On Monday, Senate Democrats — including Sen.
Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada — announced a new anti-corruption initiative aimed at exposing presidential self-dealing, demonstrating how such conduct harms American families and developing legislation to ensure that future presidents cannot use the office for personal enrichment.
Whatever one's political affiliation, the underlying principle deserves broad support: The presidency should serve the American people, not function as a business enterprise.
In the House, Reps.
Dina Titus and Steven Horsford, both Democrats from Nevada, have signed on as sponsors of complementary legislation requiring members of Congress, their spouses and their dependent children to place specified investments into qualified blind trusts during their service and for a period afterward.
Importantly, that proposal does not merely target one administration.
It recognizes that ethical rules must apply consistently to everyone entrusted with public power.
These efforts deserve bipartisan support.
Americans may disagree passionately about taxes, immigration, foreign policy or regulation.
But safeguarding the integrity of public office and taxpayer funds should never become a partisan issue.
A government that allows elected officials to profit personally from the powers entrusted to them invites distrust, weakens accountability and undermines the very foundation of representative democracy.
Corruption and grift have no place in a healthy republic.
Neither does turning the presidency into a subscription service.
Analysis
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