On Saturday morning, Donald Trump posted more than 40 times on his own social media platform, Truth Social, which is his primary megaphone. Nearly all of these posts could charitably be described as AI slop, and none of them is worth dwelling on at any length. OK, fine: In one image, he wore a garish, bedazzled white jumpsuit reminiscent of Vegas-era Elvis; in another, he was depicted as a screaming George Washington, leading soldiers in the Revolutionary War. He posted a doctored photo of Bruce Springsteen looking haggard, and bragged about his own physique at 80, claiming he was “aging in reverse.”
How much would you pay to access such posts slightly faster than nearly every other human? Truth Social reportedly is charging as much as $100,000 per month to high-frequency trading firms to gain access to the website’s API, allowing traders to see these stupid posts a few milliseconds before everyone else. The service was announced a few weeks ago, resulting in accusations of self-dealing and a Democratic bill (that will go nowhere) to ban selling speedy access to the president’s posts. Meanwhile, thanks to congressional Republicans, Trump has held onto his immunity from IRS audits, his (probably spyware-filled) plane from Qatar, and the billions of dollars he’s already raked in by selling the presidency.
This is the story of so much of Trump’s presidency: an unending series of scandals that amount to the biggest act of public corruption in American history. The scandals just keep coming, and yet, aside from complaints from the usual corners—the minority party, The New Republic, etc.—they’re largely greeted by a collective shrug. Of course Trump is corrupt. Of course he’s profiting from the presidency. What will it take to snap Americans out of this complacency?
The Truth Social API scheme is debased, even by Trump’s standards. As with many of his scams, it comes with a fig leaf: Truth Social is not just selling access to Trump’s posts, but to those of the top-performing accounts on the platform, which likely include those belonging to other administration officials like JD Vance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Kash Patel, as well as the official White House account. But there is only one account that matters on Truth Social—and it certainly matters a lot, especially to high-frequency traders. Trump’s posts have gotten dumber and more deranged, but they still have the power to move markets. You’re at least as likely to hear updates about the Iran war or tariffs there as you would from “official” White House sources.
More importantly, Trump’s updates are more chaotic and unpredictable than others, making them all the more appealing to traders. Selling access to them is a flagrant and naked act of corruption, allowing the most vampiric buyers and sellers on Wall Street an edge to make vast amounts of money that will never “trickle down” to ordinary Americans. Most of the time, these traders will get AI-generated images of Trump’s various obsessions, like his planned “triumphal” arch or his belief that he’s up there with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, or “ReTruths” of Fox News and Breitbart stories. But sometimes they will get real news that they can act on, to the tune of millions or more.
They may also get news that has been ginned up especially for them. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this scheme is the fact that it incentivizes Trump to use his Truth Social feed to make news that moves markets—and therefore increases demand for these $100,000 subscriptions. Given the volatile war in Iran, this could quite literally be a matter of life and death: The bigger the news Trump creates, the more subscribers he will likely rake in. And that money ends up in his pockets.
At the same time, Trump has used one flagrantly offensive and unconstitutional move—a propose $1.8 billion slush fund that would go to people who claimed they were victims of malicious prosecution by the Department of Justice (like January 6 rioters)—as cover for another: permanent immunity for himself, a long-suspected tax cheater, from IRS investigations. Senate Republicans successfully held up Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general until he provided (nonbinding) guarantees that the slush fund would not move forward; the IRS immunity deal is very much still in place, and has, predictably, received much less coverage than the comparably more odious slush fund.
Some of the apathy surrounding these stories stems from the fact that the president has long benefited from the common belief that American politicians are corrupt, which has ironically helped cloak Trump as he swiftly became the most corrupt politician in American history. As with much of his political persona, there is the sense that he is doing things openly that other politicians do secretly—even when that’s not really true, as in the case of his literal selling of the presidency. Similarly, because the Democrats are out of power and the GOP is completely under Trump’s control, there’s nothing that really can be done officially—at least not yet. This, too, has oddly helped Trump because it has provided the perception of invulnerability. Because Trump is getting away with it, which he is, it must be OK. And for those who don’t think it’s OK, the assumption is that Democrats aren’t stopping him because they’re feckless, when in fact it’s because voters denied them a scintilla of power under Trump’s second term.
This has also led to a prevailing narrative that Trump is a teflon politician, someone uncommonly immune to scandal. It is certainly true that no president has ever faced so many serious scandals and nonetheless survived. Still, I’m not sure this narrative is quite right. Though Trump is still president, he has clearly been damaged by his laundry list of misdeeds. He is historically unpopular, with an approval rating hovering in the low 30s. He has held onto power in large part because he has held onto a sizable support among Republicans, allowing him to wield unprecedented influence over his party, and because he is the most shameless figure in American political history. By never apologizing or admitting wrong, he can always fight on—even if each fight diminishes him.
Still, these two stories from the past week—Trump selling access to his social media posts, and Republicans preserving his IRS immunity—tell us something important about his presidency. These scandals have largely been treated separately by opposing politicians and the media, which is understandable: They are separate stories. But they are also part of a larger story—perhaps the largest story—of Trump’s presidency, which is his brazen and ever-expanding corruption. He is lazy and stupid, but he has been very dogged in using his perch as the country’s leader to pilfer taxpayers and enrich himself and his billionaire cronies.
Trump hops from scandal to scandal because each one is treated as a separate. By the time public interest focuses on one scandal, another has emerged. It is exhausting, but—from Trump’s perspective—effective. He takes damage but always lives to see another day (and make another dollar). That’s made possible in part by his destruction of presidential norms and ethics, but also by the fact that his party controls the House and Senate. The Republicans will run cover for him as long as he remains popular with the base, which, I suspect, he always will be.
But the Democrats will almost certainly retake one, if not both, chambers of Congress in the fall. When they do, their biggest task will be to restrain this administration—and a huge part of that will involve investigating this corruption. But to do that effectively, they must weave these scandals into a larger narrative, not just pick one or two that seem particularly odious or emblematic. This should be easy. The Democrats will spend the fall campaigning primarily on what has been the biggest issue of the post-pandemic era: the affordability crisis. Prices are rising, real wages are going down, and Americans are anxious and pissed off. While many voters are struggling to get by, one man is doing better than ever. He made more than $2 billion last year alone. And he did it by selling the highest, most sacred office in the land.
