Flak for Trump firm selling early access to his ‘tweets’
THE TRUMP Media & Technology Group (TMTG) has begun selling Wall Street firms split-second early sight of posts from Truth Social’s most influential accounts — a service critics say allows the US president’s family business to profit from words that can move global markets within seconds, BBC News reported.
The paid data feed, called Truth API, promises institutional clients delivery of posts from the platform’s highest-ranking accounts in milliseconds. TMTG has stopped short of confirming that Donald Trump’s own account is included, though the report noted that his roughly 13 million followers make him the site’s most-followed user and, by most reckonings, its most market-moving voice.
The service was expected to go live for institutional customers on August 1. The Financial Times has reported that subscriptions could cost as much as $100,000 a month, a figure TMTG has not confirmed. The loss-making company hopes the feed will become a dependable new revenue stream.
TMTG says the product is aimed at high-frequency and algorithmic trading firms — outfits whose automated systems buy and sell far faster and in far greater volume than any human, earning slivers of profit on each transaction that add up through sheer speed and scale.
The launch has raised the prospect of insider trading, the illegal practice of trading on information not available to the public.
Richard Painter, who was chief ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told BBC News that even if Trump does not trade himself, so-called ‘tipper-tippee’ liability could apply: passing on government information to someone who pays for it and is likely to trade on it can implicate both parties. He said this would cover only certain subjects, such as the president’s intentions on tariffs, wars or other policy, and argued a securities regulator should demand either that the plan be scrapped or that posts touching on government business be excluded.
Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff have written to the Securities and Exchange Commission asking whether it will examine if the service breaks the law, describing it as an abuse of the presidency that enriches Wall Street insiders while undermining ordinary investors and market integrity. The commission has acknowledged the letter but declined to say whether it will investigate.
TMTG rejected the criticism, saying the senators either oppose free markets or fail to grasp the difference between public and non-public information, and accusing them of inventing a theory of insider trading built on information that is already public.
Trump owns about 41 per cent of Trump Media through a trust overseen by his children, and stands to gain personally.
Joe Saluzzi, co-founder of Themis Trading, said news organisations, exchanges and other data vendors already run comparable services, giving TMTG a precedent — but said that the ethics are a separate matter.
Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2026
