Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

Trump’s Truth Social API Is a Blatantly Corrupt Favor to Wall Street

By selling off early access to his posts at a premium, the president is merging a public good with his own profit motives.

Dylan is a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, where she leads RDP’s Economic Media Project.

For the low, low price of $100,000 a month, the ever-oxymoronic Truth Social is now selling direct access to its most important posts — or, in the firm’s preferred parlance, “truths” — to Wall Street. That’s an expedited lane to access statements and data from the president of the United States and other government officials, which have significant potential to move financial markets, ahead of us suckers in the general public. 

This sort of product, called an Application Processing Interface, or API, is not a particularly unusual offering for a social media company in the abstract. But Truth API, which launched today, is uniquely positioned to fuel blatant presidential graft. 

The move has been rightly called “brazen corruption,” “the president’s most desperate grift yet,” and a “clear and unacceptable pathway for corruption.” In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sens. Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren called the offering “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.” All of that is true, but Truth API doesn’t stop at creating a new pathway to funnel de facto bribes to Trump; it also seeks to functionally merge the provision of a public good with a for-profit company. 

DOJ Wants to Scrap Watergate-Era Rule That Makes Presidential Records Public

It has become de facto administration policy for high-ranking government officials to make official announcements on Truth Social without going through traditional press offices. Trump has also set a new standard for blurring the lines between his communications as a public official and a private citizen.

For nearly half a century, communications from the president have been recognized as the property of the United States, not the president himself. Under the Presidential Records Act, any documents (with some carve-outs for national security and personal records like journals and diaries) that are “created or received by the President … in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President” are subject to the United States’........

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