Intercept Sues Trump Over $100K Truth Feed; Left Calls Public News 'Insider Trading'

WASHINGTON — The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation filed a lawsuit Wednesday asking a federal court to declare the President’s paid early-access news service unlawful, calling it “extraordinary, corrupt and unconstitutional.” The arrangement in question: Truth Social’s Truth API, which sells high-speed access to the President’s market-moving announcements for up to $100,000 a month.

The plaintiffs seem to believe that the American people’s most important information should be free, equally available, and delivered to everyone at the same instant. This is, to put it mildly, a stunningly anti-American position.

“Critics must have invented a new theory of ‘insider trading’ based on publicly available information,” said Shannon Devine, a spokesperson for Trump Media & Technology Group, which offers customers “the fastest way to ingest publicly available Truth Social data”. She is exactly right. The President’s posts are public. Anyone can read them. The only difference is that some people read them sooner, because they paid for the privilege of reading them sooner — which is not corruption. That’s capitalism.

Consider how Wall Street already works. Bloomberg terminals cost tens of thousands of dollars a year for essentially the same news you could read for free in a newspaper. Fiber-optic lines are laid across the Atlantic Ocean at enormous expense so that a trade can settle 0.003 seconds faster. Nobody sues Bloomberg. Nobody sues the fiber-optic companies. But the moment the President of the United States decides to monetize his own announcements — the way any sensible family business would — the left calls it a scandal.

Nearly a dozen firms are already paying up to $100,000 a month for the service, which launched Aug. 1. The lawsuit names the President, his executive assistant Natalie Harp, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Daniel Scavino, and the Executive Office of the President — in other words, the entire administrative staff of the free world’s most valuable brand. The plaintiffs say the President should not profit from official announcements. One wonders whether they would say the same about the State of the Union address if it were monetized tastefully, with a brief word from a sponsor.

Legal experts quoted by NPR raised “market integrity questions.” Wall Street executives reportedly expressed concern that paying customers could act on the President’s economic announcements before the general public. To which the honest response is: yes, and? If you want the news faster, subscribe. That is how every other information business in America works. The only difference here is that the man selling the speed is also the man making the news, which any reasonable person can see is a vertical integration opportunity, not a conflict.

Rep. Ritchie Torres has asked the SEC to investigate, apparently unaware that the SEC’s own disclosure rules have never once required the President to disclose his thoughts in real time to the poors.

At press time, market analysts were reportedly refreshing Truth Social at 4 a.m., and several had begun referring to the lawsuit as “the most expensive free-speech case in American history,” which the plaintiffs’ lawyers said they would be happy to see in writing.