Amid Orgy Of Grifting, Trump Still Wants To Paywall His Posts
A new lawsuit aims to stop him.
BREAKING! ACHTUNG! Donald Trump has figured out yet another way to monetize the presidency. He’s turning official communications into a pay-per-view event for anyone willing to fork over a million dollars a year for early access. After the high-frequency traders have placed their bets, the rest of us can watch it in what is effectively reruns.
The scam is being run by Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Trump’s janky X knockoff, Truth Social. After he tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election and got kicked off the other major social media sites, Trump created a safe space where he and his degenerate followers would be free to violate common decency and the terms of service of any responsible platform.
On August 1 of this year, the company rolled out “Truth API,” offering early access to official government announcements by Trump and his closest cronies, for the low-low price of $100,000 per month, or $720,000 annually with a three-year subscription.
This is a clear violation of the Emoluments Clauses, particularly if, say, a foreign sovereign wealth fund decided to buy a subscription. But there’s no obvious mechanism to put a stop to it, thanks to Chief Justice Roberts and his merry band of stochastic jurists.
Twice during Trump’s first term, plaintiffs sued to block him monetizing the presidency under the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses, and twice they established standing to sue after protracted litigation. But when Trump left office in January 2021, the Supreme Court immediately vacated both cases as moot. We’re 235 years into the Republic, and no appellate court has ever defined what an emolument actually is, because the only president who ever got close to finding out wandered off and got his pals at One First Street to hit the reset button. And now he’s back, and he doesn’t give a shit because he’ll be gone again before the Supreme Court deigns to weigh in — but this time with untold billions in his pockets. Plus, he’s got that magic cloak of immunity from Trump v. US to protect him from any unpleasant criminal fallout.
Yesterday, the Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation waded into this shitpile of John Roberts’ making with a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York aiming to block this shameless grift. In a funny echo, they’re represented in part by the CREW crew, who filed one of the original Emoluments Clause cases and are back seven years later for another round.
The wheeze
With Truth API, Trump Media sells faster access to posts by Truth Social’s ten most-followed accounts: Trump himself; his deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino; the official White House account; Vice President JD Vance; FBI Director Kash Patel; White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt; Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy; and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy.
Subscribers see the posts before the public does, although the company won’t say exactly how much before. Trump Media executives are less cagey about why anyone would pay six figures for it, though.
