Trump’s Team Is Selling Early Access to His Truth Social Posts. It’s Every Bit As Corrupt As It Sounds.

This story is adapted from the Slatest newsletter. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every day. Donald Trump’s media company is selling early access to his Truth Social posts, allowing companies to pay to be first to get information that will move the market. It’s every bit as corrupt as it sounds! Let’s get into it. Sorry, that can’t be real. Prove it. Last month, the company that controls the Trump social media network Truth Social announced that companies would soon be able to buy a service that flags the president’s social media posts within “milliseconds” of Donny hitting publish. Corrupt promises made, corrupt promises kept: “Truth API” went live on Saturday. How much does this access cost? The announcement doesn’t list a price, but the Guardian reports that customers are paying as much as $100,000 a month. I reached out to see how much they’d charge, say, Slate—to be clear, our ceiling is $0—but haven’t heard back. Why would anyone pay that much for early access to a Trump post? Because it could pay for itself many, many times over. Let’s break it down: Trump’s pronouncements move markets all the time. Look at Iran: When the president posts wild threats about escalating the war, oil prices go up. When he says we’re days away from a lasting peace, oil prices drop. Now imagine you’re a stock or commodities trader who relies on high-speed deals to make a living. Getting that information even slightly early could be worth millions (or more) on a single trade. It’s also a shakedown of these companies by the Trump empire, because if they don’t have that information and their competitors do, it could cost them a lot of money. Got it. But companies pay for all sorts of services aimed at getting them fast information. Why is Trump’s company so corrupt for selling this? Where … to begin. In theory, a private company helping investors get information quickly is a legitimate, widespread, and prosperous business model. But this isn’t any private company, and it’s not just any information that’s being sold. It’s easy to forget, given all we’ve been through, but: As president of the United States, Trump is an employee of the American people, and the information he dispenses belongs to the American people. It belongs to them equally, and, critically, it should belong to them at the same time. Instead, that information is being sold by a Trump-controlled company in a way that enriches Trump. Is there a more direct way to explain it? If you cut out all the middlemen, what’s effectively happening here is that businesses are giving Trump money so they can be among the first to know what he’s saying. If those companies were bringing suitcases of cash to the Oval Office, it obviously would be illegal. The fact that the money goes through intermediaries doesn’t change the fundamentals of the arrangement. Finance is complicated, and you’re a politics editor. Why should I take your word for it? [LeVar Burton voice] You don’t have to! Here’s what a Wall Street executive told NPR about the scheme: “In another administration, this would be considered criminal.” Well, after that, I need a walk with my dog, a podcast to listen to while I’m out, and a good read (ideally about rubber-chicken world records) for when I’m back home. Fortunately, my colleagues have us all covered. What everyday activism can do: On the latest episode of Amicus, the team took a trip down (recent) memory lane to look at the successes of the fight for equal marriage and what we can learn from them today. Just listening through to all the celebrations after Windsor and Hollingsworth and, finally, Obergefell was like light therapy in the depths of winter. An antidote to August ennui: When Byard Duncan began to feel the creep of a midlife crisis, he realized that desperate times call for farcical measures. So he took up the strangest hobby he could think of. Snap out of the summer malaise with this delightfully weird (and surprisingly poignant) essay about Duncan’s attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the longest throw of a rubber chicken. Some advice for modern dating: What would you do if your partner wanted you to move to a new country—but wasn’t willing to commit to marriage? In the latest Unhinged column, Steffi Cao advises a letter writer who is excited by the opportunity to move abroad but doesn’t want to get burned. A ’90s time-travel challenge: Have you noticed that even though you’re more in touch with your friends than ever before, you’re not actually as close to them as you wish you were? Have you noticed that even though your every whim can be satisfied with the tap of a screen, you feel unsatisfied quite a lot of the time? If you’re feeling the malaise of life in the 2020s, we have a fun challenge for you: Starting on Aug. 10, longtime Slatester Dan Kois will be taking you on a six-week time-travel journey (via newsletter) to rediscover the lost art of hanging out, the way people did it during Slate’s birth year of 1996. You can sign up here! That’s it for us! Thanks so much for reading, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.