BILLBOARD News Now
Can You Believe?
(Editor’s note: Axios AM by Mike Allen published “Trump’s presidential paywall”. Coupled with the Wall Street Journal Exclusive we shared yesterday readers can learn what Trump’s focus is money.)
For years, Truth Social was President Trump’s money-losing megaphone.
- Now his company is charging Wall Street clients up to $1.2 million a year for a license giving a split-second edge on posts that can — and frequently do — jolt global markets, Axios’ Dan Primack and Zachary Basu write.
Why it matters: Trump has transformed his second term into the most lucrative venture of his entire career, raking in more than $2.2 billion in 2025 from his family crypto empire, legal settlements and various licensing deals.
- Truth API, as the data feed is branded, is the logical endpoint of that profiteering: the presidency’s unrivaled power to move markets, packaged and sold as a subscription.
🔎 Zoom in: The product offered a live demonstration of its value almost immediately.
- Hours after Truth API launched, Trump announced he’d canceled massive planned strikes on Iran. Oil prices fell nearly 5% when markets reopened.
- A March 23 post postponing strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure sent Brent crude tumbling nearly 11%.
- Trump’s March 2025 announcement of a U.S. crypto reserve drove XRP up 27% and added roughly $300 billion to the global crypto market.
- His threat last October to impose massive new tariffs on China sent the S&P 500 down 2.7%.
🔄 How it works: The real-time feed from Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) went live Saturday, delivering Truth Social posts directly to institutional clients in milliseconds.
- A source familiar with the matter tells Axios that access to the platform’s 10 top-trending accounts costs $60,000 to $100,000 per month. Customers seeking a broader range of accounts could pay more.
- At least five high-frequency trading firms have signed up, according to The Wall Street Journal. Trump Media says customers also include financial news organizations.
💸 Follow the money: Trump Media is publicly traded, with Trump as its dominant shareholder. He is the sole beneficiary of a revocable trust that owns 41.5% of the company. Donald Trump Jr., the trust’s sole trustee, controls the shares.
- Trump Media generated just $871,000 in revenue during the first quarter of 2026 and $3.68 million in all of 2025.
- Its shares have risen 7% since the eve of the API announcement, adding nearly $77 million to the paper value of Trump’s stake.
Between the lines: Customers are buying a fractions-of-a-second advantage.
- Truth API gives trading algorithms a direct, machine-readable feed they can act on before most investors receive a push alert or refresh their screens.
🥊 Reality check: TMTG says the posts are already public when they reach the API. What the company sells is the latency gap — the brief interval between publication and widespread awareness.
- The company explicitly markets the service to firms for which “the cost of a delay in information” is highest.
- A TMTG spokesperson told Axios: “Senate and House Democrats continue to mischaracterize Truth API either out of ideological opposition to free markets or a failure to grasp the distinction between public and nonpublic information.”
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