(CNN) — Whether President Donald Trump and those around him are corruptly enriching themselves during his second term is a matter of personal judgment. Many Americans seem to think the president at least is.
But what is incontrovertible is that he and his team are doing almost nothing to disabuse people of that notion. Indeed, they seem to be increasingly leaning in on the idea that Trump can do whatever he wants — and that apparent conflicts of interest just don’t matter.
Thursday was a case in point for how in-your-face this dynamic has become, with several stories about potentially profiting from the presidency, or proximity to it.
- The first was a CNN investigation finding Trump has used his Truth Social account to promote more than 20 companies just days after buying stock in those same companies. He sometimes even announced government action that would benefit the companies.
- The second was that, for the first time, we got details on a White House aide potentially engaging in insider trading using prediction markets. Trump’s teleprompter operator made more than $90,000 by betting on what Trump would say in speeches and at events, according to a source. The news follows months of suspiciously well-timed trades making big money ahead of major Trump moves.
- And the third — the pièce de resistance, which effectively combines the above bits of potential corruption — is that Trump’s business is now going to let Wall Street firms pay to get quicker access to his Truth Social posts and try to make more money trading on them.
If that last one sounds like an uncharitable summary, it’s not.
Trump, through his revocable trust, is the largest shareholder in the Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social. And Trump Media just announced that a new data feed, known as an API, will be for sale next month.
The API gives firms real-time data from the 10 most popular Truth Social accounts — the most popular of which is, of course, Trump’s. Such firms use these feeds to scan for signals and execute trades automatically, before other investors can catch up.
Trump routinely uses his Truth Social account to make major announcements and send signals about his intentions.
Often, those signals actually seem intended to move markets. Witness just how much his posts about the Iran war were timed as markets were opening or closing for the weekend.
And in announcing the new API, Trump Media actually played up how much Truth Social impacts the markets.
“Markets already move on Truth Social posts,” said Kevin McGurn, its interim CEO.
He added that the API would provide a more instantaneous feed of the platforms “most market-moving Truths,” adding that it was part of a strategy to “monetize proprietary assets.”
Other social networks sell access to their APIs. But Truth Social is different. It is not only largely owned by Trump, but its platform, which has struggled mightily financially, has one asset that is far and away its most valuable: the president’s own posts. This new initiative is, in large part, “monetize[ing]” those posts, specifically. And the beneficiary, financially, could be Trump himself.
There is a major apparent conflict of interest here. The more Trump moves markets with what he says on Truth Social, the more incentive there could be to buy this API, and the more money could go to Trump. CNN has reached out to the White House.
It was certainly ironic that the announcement about Truth Social came on the same day we learned someone at the White House may already have been profiting off early access to information from Trump — his words. Longtime teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez is being investigated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for potential insider trading on a prediction site. (CNN has reached out to Perez, who has cooperated with the investigation, one source said.)
There’s no evidence that Trump knew what Perez was doing ahead of Thursday. After the story came out, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the president was aware of the reports and “he believes it’s deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace.” The White House has previously warned staffers against insider trading, and Leavitt said Perez had been placed on unpaid administrative leave.
On Trump’s stocks, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly emphasized that they are managed by third parties, not Trump. But he can still be aware of which stocks are being bought and sold. “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public,” Kelly said, adding: “There are no conflicts of interest.”
Of course, Trump has made little secret that he doesn’t much mind how all of this looks.
As this May piece from Tangle’s Isaac Saul lays out, there are myriad potential conflicts of interest between Trump’s and his family’s businesses, and Trump’s official actions as president. Favors for foreign countries have repeatedly overlapped with them doing business with Trump’s family. And that doesn’t even get to the more than $1 billion Trump made on cryptocurrency last year.
And when asked in January by The New York Times why he’s been so cavalier about mixing politics and business, Trump gave some telling responses.
“I found out that nobody cared; I’m allowed to,” Trump said. He added that he declined to have his companies stop doing business abroad, as he did last time he was president, “because I got no credit in the first term.”
It’s as if he’s daring people and Americans to start to care. Thursday reinforces how these questions might start getting harder and harder to ignore.
The-CNN-Wire
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