Wall Street Execs Bolt From Trump’s ‘Insane’ Cash Grab

Top finance executives are already distancing themselves from President Donald Trump’s latest business venture.

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Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, is now offering a premium version of the app to deliver earlier access to the president’s posts. It’s prompted concerns that this new offering could give investors early access to the president’s oftentimes market-moving posts, so that they could move their money around before the posts are available to the public.

“It’s insane,” said one Wall Street executive told NPR. “I can say for myself and 200 of my friends in finance, we’re not getting anywhere near this. In another administration, this would be considered criminal.”

“Should he be able to monetize the office of the presidency like this? I don’t think so. But will investment banks stick their neck out over it? Probably not,” the executive added.

The new offer became available over the weekend for $100,000 a month, giving trading firms access to “Truth API.” Trump Media describes it as providing firms “a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform’s most market-moving Truths.”

Questions still remain on its legality.

Renée Jones, a Boston College professor and former top official at the Securities and Exchange Commission, told NPR that the new subscription appears to go against insider trading laws.

“So if the president’s Truth Social posts are being monetized, and if some people get special access to them, that’s misappropriated information,” Jones said. “And by giving people his posts early, he is also violating his duty of trust and confidence.

She also cited the 2012 Stock Act, which bars members of Congress and the executive branch, including the president, from trading based on nonpublic information.

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“That said, I could imagine Trump’s lawyers arguing that because they announced it out in the open, it’s not deceitful, it’s not fraudulent,” Jones said.

Truth Social has claimed that offering early access to Trump’s posts to investors does not amount to insider trading.

“Truth API offers customers the fastest way to ingest publicly available Truth Social data. Critics must have invented a new theory of ‘insider trading’ based on publicly available information,” Shannon Devine, a spokeswoman for Trump Media & Technology Group, said in a statement.

The president’s wealth also stands to grow from the new venture, as Trump is the largest shareholder of the company through a trust controlled by his son, Donald Trump Jr.

Trump launched Truth Social in early 2022, nearly a year after he was banned from X, formerly known as Twitter, and several other social media platforms after the violent Jan. 6 insurrection attempt. His friend-turned-foe Elon Musk later reinstated Trump on X after purchasing the platform in November 2022, but the president has hardly used it and primarily posts on Truth Social.

Senate Democrats have demanded that the SEC investigate whether the subscription violates the law.