When the President Sells Access to His Own Posts
Why Rural Michigan Should Pay Attention
An opinion piece from a member
Courtesy: PBS
Whether a farmer in Centreville checks commodity prices on her phone three times before deciding whether to sell her soybeans that week… or an American Axle worker pores over his stock portfolio for weeks before deciding what to sell or buy, it’s obvious that timing matters.
These average St. Joe County neighbors don’t have insider knowledge of markets. And thankfully our laws posit that no one else does, either.
But now thanks to an idea floated by the current administration, that could change for a select few who can afford it.
Here’s the thing. As average Americans, we aren’t trying to beat Wall Street and become billionaires. We’re just trying to make a fair decision with the information we have. That's what most of us want day-to-day. We check the weather app, the gas price tracker, the news alert on our phone, and we make our best call with what we've got.
Because right now, there's a story out of Washington that sounds like inside baseball until you realize it's actually about him. And about you. And about all of us in southwest Michigan who don't have a trading desk or a $100,000-a-month budget. This is corruption at the highest levels of our society.
Trump Media to Sell Traders ‘the Fastest’ Access to Truth Social Posts
Senators Question ‘Insider’ Access to Trump Truth Social Posts
Here's What's Happening
Trump Media, the company behind Truth Social, has been talking with Wall Street firms about a new product. It's called Truth API, and it's launching August 1. The pitch is simple: pay up, and you get posts from the platform's ten most influential accounts, including President Trump's, delivered in milliseconds. Pay less if you're not in a hurry.
Reuters reported that TMTG has discussed fees as high as $100,000 a month, with a discounted $60,000 rate for firms willing to sign three-year contracts. CNBC broke the same story around the same time, and the details line up.
Milliseconds matter here. When the president posts something that moves markets, a firm with a faster feed can trade on it before the rest of us even see the notification pop up. Remember when he announced a 90-day pause on tariffs back in April 2025 and stocks jumped within minutes? That's the moment this product is built for. A few milliseconds of head start, spread across a big enough trade, can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Makes sense, from a purely business standpoint. Trump Media's stock has taken a beating, down roughly 70 percent since the 2024 election by some counts, and the company needs revenue. I get looking for new ways to make money. TMTG's interim CEO has even said as much publicly, that markets already move on Truth Social posts and the API is just a way to license that reality.
I don't doubt that other platforms sell institutional data feeds too. Twitter/X does it. Reddit does it. Information is for sale everywhere. There's an argument that this is no different from a company selling access to a wire service.
Except it is different, and here's why.
But this isn't a new streaming tier or a software upgrade. This is public presidential speech turned into a paywall, with milliseconds worth real dollars to the people who can afford the toll.
A wire service doesn't write the news it delivers. It just moves it fast. Here, the person whose words are for sale is also the sitting president, and the company selling early access is one where his family's trust holds a big chunk of the shares. The person making the news and the person profiting off delivering it faster are, for practical purposes, the same family. That's not a wire service. That's something else.
This Isn't Even a Partisan Complaint
Here's the part that surprised me. This isn't just Democrats making noise.
Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, told The Hill plainly: "I think that's wrong. It's a form of buying access." Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called it out too, framing it as traders getting a shot at "a fortune" if they're first in line.
When you've got senators from both parties saying the same thing out loud, that tells you something. This isn't a normal disagreement about tax policy or spending priorities. It's a gut check about fairness, and both sides are failing it in the same direction.
Why Rural Southwest Michigan Should Care
I live here. You probably do too, or you care about someone who does. Constantine, Three Rivers, Sturgis, Mendon, White Pigeon... We know what it's like to be outside the systems built somewhere else.
We've got fewer newsrooms covering our town councils. Thinner broadband in some stretches. Fewer chances to double check fast-moving information before we act on it.
So when access to political and market-moving information becomes something you can buy your way into, guess who ends up on the outside looking in? Not the hedge fund with a $100,000 monthly line item. Us.
I'm not saying every person in Leonidas is trading commodities futures before breakfast. Most of us aren't. We’re relying on our 401(k) and IRAs. But the ripple effects reach us anyway. Interest rates, fuel prices, grain prices, even how a local bank prices a loan, all of that gets shaped upstream by the same markets these firms are trying to game with a faster feed. When insiders get the edge first, the price we pay downstream doesn't get better. It just gets set somewhere we can't see.
Think about who actually feels this:
Farmers watching grain and livestock markets shift on a headline
Small business owners tracking loan rates before they sign anything
Retirees trying to protect what they've saved for decades
Local township boards making decisions with two staff members and a part-time clerk
None of these folks have a seat at the fast lane. They're stuck on the regular feed, finding out after the money has already moved.
The Slippery Part
Here's what worries me most, and it's not really about Truth Social at all.
Once we accept that public power can be sold as a private product, that idea doesn't stay contained. Today it's faster access to a post. Tomorrow, why not faster access to a regulatory signal, or an early word on a government contract, or a heads up before a policy announcement?
The specific product changes. The pattern doesn't. Power becomes something you can subscribe to, and the rest of us become the audience standing outside the velvet rope.
I don't think that's a stretch. I think it's exactly the kind of thing that starts small and normal-sounding, and ends up rewriting what people expect from their own government.
Where I Land
I'm no constitutional scholar. I'm just a guy in southwest Michigan who thinks fairness ought to mean something, even when it's inconvenient for the people in charge.
A free press and open public information exist so regular folks can see what powerful people are doing and say something about it if it's wrong. This arrangement runs the opposite direction. It turns the president's public words into a premium product, sold by a company that shares his name and, according to regulatory filings, is largely held by a trust his own children oversee.
You can pay to know sooner. Or you can wait with the rest of us.
I don't think that's a business model we should shrug off as clever. I think it's worth naming out loud, especially here, where we already know what it feels like to be last in line for things that matter.
So here's my question for you: if this becomes normal, what's next in line to get sold off in milliseconds? And are we going to notice before it's too late to say something about it?
Let's talk about it.
