Trump Media & Technology Group announced Thursday it is launching a paid API giving customers real-time access to posts from top Truth Social accounts, including President Trump's, drawing ethics concerns over the intermingling of official communications and private financial interests.
Trump Media & Technology Group, the public company that operates the Truth Social social-media network, announced Thursday it is launching a paid application programming interface — known as an API — that will give customers "licensed, real-time access to posts from the highest-ranking Truth Social accounts."
The move positions Truth Social alongside other major social platforms, which also offer API access to paying customers, including hedge funds and other financial firms that use low-latency data feeds to gain a trading edge on market-moving information.
The distinction, critics note, is that no other social network serves as the primary outlet for official communications from a sitting U.S. president.
"Markets already move on Truth Social posts," Kevin McGurn, Trump Media's interim chief executive officer, said in the company's press release announcing the service.
President Donald Trump routinely posts updates on policy decisions — including matters related to tariffs and the war with Iran — on Truth Social before those announcements reach other channels. His @realDonaldTrump account had 12.9 million followers as of Thursday morning, making it the platform's largest account, according to a 2025 survey by SEO.ai.
Trump Media did not mention the president by name in its announcement, though the release nodded explicitly to potential interest from Wall Street.
The announcement drew immediate scrutiny from ethics watchdogs. "It's a huge conflict of interest," said Virginia Canter, an ethics attorney with Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit that has been critical of the Trump administration. "He has an obligation to the American people to convey information to them publicly, and he's now funneling it through a private channel in which he has a private interest as one of its largest shareholders."
Canter also noted that Truth Social has "become the de facto presidential press room."
Trump's family is the largest shareholder in Trump Media. Roughly 114 million shares — amounting to 42% of the company — were issued to Trump, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. On winning the presidency, he transferred those shares to a revocable trust in the name of his son Donald Trump Jr.
Trump Media went public through a blank-check merger and has traded on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker DJT since March 26, 2024. Its shares are down 84% since that date, according to FactSet data.
The White House did not respond to a comment request and forwarded the inquiry to the Trump Organization, which declined to comment. Trump Media did not immediately respond to follow-up questions.
Truth Social was launched in 2021 after X and Facebook banned Trump's account following the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. He has since been reinstated to both platforms.
Wall Street firms have long used social media APIs to build algorithms that respond to sentiment shifts and emerging news, and to archive post histories for quantitative analysis. The addition of a direct, real-time feed tied to official presidential communications is likely to attract significant interest from trading desks, reinforcing the overlap between Trump's political role and his family's financial stake in the platform.
Marc Sabatini is a staff writer at TechEchelon covering enterprise software, cybersecurity, and the regulatory beats that shape both. He focuses on the deal flow and policy decisions that move markets.
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