What did Donald Trump do today?

He announced he'd start charging for premium-tier access to information about what he does as president.

Trump's media company, which runs his boutique microblogging website Truth Social, announced today that it would begin charging for “licensed, real-time access” to Trump's posts. 

Truth Social is already the de facto communication platform for the White House. Trump uses it to announce trade wars, actual wars, and any number of other matters of public interest. He also uses it to manipulate the price of securities he owns or controls: he's hyped dozens companies he'd secretly bought stock in, and he's used it for pump-and-dump schemes on his own cryptocurrency.

In other words, Trump is proposing to create a premium-access tier for news about what he does in his role as a public officeholder.

Truth Social is a money-loser for its parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, of which Trump is the majority owner, with total 2025 revenues coming in at less than a million dollars before expenses. The company itself is even worse from an investment standpoint: financial experts consider it a meme stock, and as with Trump's crypto scheme, most people who have bought into it since it went public have lost money.

 

The most obvious customers for premium-tier access to Trump's government work would be speculators—people trying to get in front of the waves Trump causes in stock markets, or more likely prediction markets. Trump's son, Donald Jr., is an "advisor" to both major prediction market firms, and Trump Sr. has fought states who are regulating them as gambling. 

Coincidentally, a White House staffer with access to Trump's speeches was accused today of winning more than $100,000 by placing bets about their content—in effect, making the kind of quick buck off of access to Trump that Trump now proposes to sell.

Why does this matter?

• The President of the United States doesn't get to put what he's doing behind a paywall.