Two influential Senate Democrats are pushing back on the nearly unfathomable idea that a company owned by the sitting U.S. president can sell Wall Street early access to that president’s thoughts and actions.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins to “immediately” investigate a forthcoming subscription model from the company behind President Donald Trump’s Truth Social that plans to sell extra-fast access to the most influential posts on the platform to high-paying clients.
The subscription appears to be founded in the premise that Trump’s social media posts influence financial markets and investors. Providing high-paying institutional customers first dibs on that market-moving information, the senators said in the letter, could give them a trade advantage and further exacerbate the divide between a hyper-wealthy investment class and everybody else.
“The Trump Administration is the most corrupt in the nation’s history, and questions about inappropriate insider access to information about its policies and actions have raised questions on multiple occasions,” the letter, dated Tuesday, reads.
The Truth Social fast-access plan, though, “represents a shocking abuse of the office of the President and the trust of the American public for his personal gain.”
On July 16, Trump Media and Technology group announced Truth API, the “business-to-business” subscription model that would offer banks and trading firms “real-time” access to Trump’s market-moving musings on Truth Social. A press release about the program boasted that it would feed subscribers the platform’s most influential posts “within milliseconds.” And the company — 41% of which, according to the senators’ letter, is held by Trump’s revocable trust — didn’t shy away from the fact that this scheme will be profitable. It mulled charging as much as $100,000 a month for the subscription, according to a report from Reuters.
“As adoption grows, we expect Truth API to become a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue for the company, creating lasting value for shareholders,” TMTG interim CEO Kevin McGurn said in a mid-July release.
The plan is set to launch by August 1 and immediately drew concerns about insider trading. One former SEC official told TPM the plan should at least draw scrutiny from Congress and the SEC.
Warren and Schiff are calling on the SEC to provide an analysis of the TMTG plan as it relates to laws about insider trading and market manipulation, to detail plans for enforcement in the event of market manipulation relating to this subscription, and to share legal tools available for retail investors.
Warren and Schiff’s letter to Atkins goes on to list the well-documented ways in which stock performance has changed based on Trump’s social posts: Citigroup outperformed other banks the day Trump made a Truth Social post praising the bank, the letter said. After Trump used Palantir Technology’s ticker symbol to celebrate the Defense Department contractor’s equipment, the company’s stock shot up, it noted. And “Intel shares proceeded to jump 3%” hours after Trump wrote “Intel Stock continues to rise” on Truth Social.
“Ultimately,” the letter says, “Trump Media’s new service threatens to undermine the integrity of capital markets.”
They’ll look into it.
In six years.
“If Donald Trump had put his money in an index fund and left it, he’d be richer today.”
Personally, I wouldn’t take driving directions much less investment tips from him. The risk is all yours. He keeps your $100,000.
Manipulated markets is a bad investment.
They must be crazy… It’s a waste of time as long as all of TRUMP’s MAGAt flunkies remain in office.
So they should just stay quiet and provide no pushback?
Sure. Ask Trump’s SEC to investigate Trump’s social media platform. Not going to happen.