Trump Media will charge traders for quick access to Trump's posts
Analysts note that the U.S. president is effectively monetizing the work of his private press office / Photo: Tada Images / Shutterstock.com
Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns the social network Truth Social, will launch “licensed real-time access” to posts by U.S. President Donald Trump and other accounts for paying customers starting August 1. The company will provide access via an API—an application programming interface. This will allow traders and various bots to react more quickly to Trump’s posts that influence the market.
In its press release announcing the launch of the API, Trump Media did not mention the president, but the company made it clear that the offering could be of interest to Wall Street participants, according to CNBC. “Posts on Truth Social are already moving the markets,” Trump Media Interim CEO Kevin McGurn said in the press release.
According to a 2025 study by SEO.ai, President @realDonaldTrump’s account is the largest on this social network. As of Thursday morning, he had 12.9 million followers. The Trump family is the largest shareholder in Trump Media & Technology Group. Trump regularly posts official messages first on Truth Social, which is why Wall Street firms and news agencies follow his account, according to CNBC.
“This is a massive conflict of interest,” Virginia Kanter, an ethics lawyer at the nonprofit Democracy Defenders Fund, told CNBC. “The president is obligated to publicly convey information to the American people, yet he is now channeling it through a private platform in which he has a personal financial stake as one of the largest shareholders,” Kanter emphasized. According to her, Truth Social “has effectively become the presidential press office.”
The president is constantly posting on Truth Social—sometimes as many as 12 or more posts a day. On Monday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he was reinstating the naval blockade of Iran and intended to impose a 20% levy on commercial vessels. On Wednesday, he abandoned the plan to impose that levy.
Trump Media is following in the footsteps of other social media platforms that also provide API access to paying customers. Hedge funds and other Wall Street firms use low-latency data feeds to more quickly access market-moving information posted on social media, CNBC explains. Access to post archives allows them to create algorithms that respond to sentiment and emerging trends.
Trump Media shares have been trading on the Nasdaq since March 26, 2024, and, according to FactSet, the stock has fallen 84% since then. According to SEC filings, Trump Media reported a net loss of $406 million in the first quarter of 2026.
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