The ‘Depraved Essence of Insider Trading’
An API built by Truth Social, offering financial institutions faster access to the most influential posts on the platform — Trump’s — for $100,000, has gone live. The company has struggled for years to find a business model that works. Now it proposes to distribute early access to the thoughts of the president, which move markets and which he makes exclusively available on the platform, which his family also has a stake in.
In a letter to Truth Media and Technology Group, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MA) called the program the “depraved essence of insider trading.” “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,” he wrote.
This story has captured our attention because it compounds the corruption that has become endemic throughout the executive branch with a new, ridiculous feature of our economy — Trump manipulating the markets through his bespoke social media platform, prompting sell-offs and rallies with his statements about the status of such things as tariffs or the Iran war, regardless of those statements’ grounding in fact.
The problem, however, is not limited to big global issues. The Truth API also compounds Trump’s ability to manipulate the market as it relates to specific companies he favors or disfavors, prone as he is to attack firms and individuals via social media with little notice.
The program appears targeted at the world of computerized, high-frequency trading, where firms take new positions rapidly in response to emerging information, aiming to do so before other actors in the market can catch on that something has changed. Even milliseconds can make a difference.
The Truth API has attracted attention from both the House and Senate. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) have urged the SEC to investigate. But under the Trump administration, that prospect seems unlikely.
“When you don’t have enforcement of the rules and regulations, when there are different legal outcomes for the president than there would be for any other market actor that acted this egregiously,” Corey Frayer, former senior advisor at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, told TPM’s Layla A. Jones, “it becomes hard to hold anyone accountable.”
Trump’s Reflecting Pool Prosecution Implodes Gradually, Then Suddenly
The Trump administration dramatically dropped its troubled case against Olympian David Hearn amid a flood of finger pointing.
- In a Friday filing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. said the Interior Department had provided new documents that showed the damage to the pool to not be the result of vandalism, but instead the product of a botched installation by the contractor. (Kudos to former TPMer Ryan Reilly, who wrote for NBC that the DOJ concluded the allegations did not “hold water.”)
- The remarkable filing also blamed “the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.”
- This left Trump raging throughout the weekend at D.C. U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro. “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM,” he wrote, comparing it to a large “86 47” that was etched into the National Mall.
Tabs
- The Tate Brothers, and Trump world’s connections to them, should be a second, more reality-based Epstein scandal, Brian Beutler writes.
- Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), who is Republicans’ nominee to run against Jon Ossoff (D-GA) for Senate, is avoiding questions about his white supremacist son in law.
Man of the Hour
It’s Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who finally has his off-ramp! He’s ready to greenlight Todd Blanche for attorney general after receiving “assurances.” A vote on the nomination will be scheduled for Tuesday after a weekend of angst. David Kurtz will have more on what to make of this deal in Morning Memo.
Are We at War?
A question with an evolving answer. After Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke with Trump this weekend, urging him not to attack Iranian infrastructure out of concern that the country would retaliate against Gulf States, Trump suddenly claimed a deal with Iran to be at hand, and later said talks would begin Monday. Iran said there are no talks. Regardless, whether we are at war or not at war, we are never at war, per Trump.
