Trump’s Newest Grift Leaves His Own Allies Gobsmacked

The President’s scheme to sell early access to Truth Social posts to high-frequency traders faced immediate backlash.

President Trump’s latest grift is so egregious, not only is he being sued over it, he’s lost the support of his varsity cheerleader, Joe Rogan.

Last week, two news organizations, the Intercept and the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation, sued Trump for his scheme to sell early access to Truth Social posts to the highest bidder, for $100,000 a month. The suits allege this violates the First Amendment, which gives everyone equal access to the President’s statements.

Now, it’s absolutely a free speech issue, but in our apocalyptically game-ified economy, it’s also basically an insider trading issue. Case in point, the first ten customers to sign up are mostly high-frequency trading firms. They’re paying for early access to Trump’s statements on things like tariffs, the economy, and the Iran War - all topics that move markets. Even a few seconds of advance notice could amount to millions in profits.

So, obviously media outlets and press freedom organizations are going to sue, and they should. And naturally Trump’s detractors are going to put out statements against this, referencing the historic level of self-enrichment this president has engaged in, and they should.

But even Joe Rogan, Mr. Manosphere himself, can’t wrap his head around the level of corruption this move reaches. On his podcast, he questioned how this could possibly be legal, and said what we’re all thinking - that it is “literally crazy.”

I’ve spilled a lot of ink calling out Trump for everything he’s not doing for regular people and how it’s led to a marked decline in quality of life for Americans since he’s been in office. But this isn’t just a matter of what he’s not doing; it’s a matter of what he is doing for his cronies. The friends and family deals - of which this scheme is just one of many - is leading to a shocking concentration of wealth in the hands of just a few people willing to sell their souls to Trump.

When I was in high school, there was a social studies teacher who I loved. He was a curmudgeonly bald man with a Ralph Nader bumper sticker on his car, a real anti-establishment type. He’d been at the school forever; the kind of teacher who taught generations in the same family. In my senior year, I signed up for his class simply because he was the teacher. But that same year, he was diagnosed with late-stage cancer (I believe liver or pancreatic). He came to exactly one class. I remember clear as day him telling us to take out our notebooks and write the word: oligarchy. That was the only word we wrote that day.

In his first and only class with us, he would go on to do a 40-minute lecture about a problem that - all the way back in 2003 - was already becoming apparent. He only lived a few more months after that, and it was crushing not only because he was an institution in that school, but because he was a great teacher who had a huge impact on my life. It’s a strange full-circle moment for me because that teacher was in large part why I became interested in politics, and the very last thing he taught my class was about one of the preeminent issues of our time– an issue that has come to full maturity today.

The United States has descended into an oligarchy. Trump has allowed power to be concentrated in the hands of a few rich and powerful people close to him and his family, and together they’re running the country for their own benefit, rather than for the good of the people. This is what Russia looks like. This is textbook Putin, and we all know that Trump is the ultimate Putin fangirl.

I hope, for the sake of the country, that these lawsuits succeed in shutting down this grift. But with Trump, it’s just a game of whack-a-mole. If this scam gets cut off, I’d put money on the fact that another one will pop up in its place. Of course, I’d get better returns on my bet if I could just buy some early access to the inside track on what exactly Trump might do next.