President Obama's Company Begins Charging $100,000 a Month for a Head Start on His Own Official Posts
The service promises paying subscribers the president's market-moving announcements 'in milliseconds' ahead of everyone else; two press groups have sued, calling it 'profoundly corrupt'
Ink = the flip (fiction). Red = real Republican · Blue = real Democrat.
WASHINGTON — The media company controlled by President Obama has begun charging subscribers as much as $100,000 a month for the privilege of receiving the president's official social-media posts a few moments before the general public does, a service the company describes as a premium data feed and its critics describe as a toll booth installed on the front lawn of the People's House.
The product, which delivers the president's announcements to paying customers 'in milliseconds,' arrives with an unusually candid sales pitch: it is designed, the company says, 'for organizations most impacted by the cost of a delay in information.' The Press's translation desk renders this as 'for people who trade on what the president says before you have heard it,' and notes that the president has a documented habit of moving markets, and occasionally entire currencies, between one post and the next.
Two press-freedom organizations sued this week, arguing that selling faster access to a head of state's public statements 'for unreasonable sums' violates both the First Amendment's guarantee of equal access and the Fifth Amendment's aversion to auctioning a public good. A spokesman for the company replied that the feed is 'no different' from the subscription services offered by news organizations, an answer that would be more reassuring if news organizations were the government.
The Press's ledger desk observes that the president has thus achieved something no predecessor managed: he has made his own mouth a subscription. Every prior administration gave its statements away for free, a business model the current one has identified, correctly, as leaving money on the podium.
Reaction followed the standing choreography. Supporters heard an entrepreneur monetizing a platform he built, which is his right; opponents heard a president renting out the public record by the second. The Press archives confirm both parties own the full vocabulary — 'private enterprise' and 'selling the office' — and swap it, in milliseconds, whenever the other side is the one holding the paywall.
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📜 The Receipts
What actually happened: Trump Media's 'Truth API,' announced in July and launched August 1, charges roughly $60,000 to $100,000 a month to deliver President Trump's Truth Social posts to subscribers 'in milliseconds' ahead of the public; The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation sued, calling the service 'profoundly corrupt' and unconstitutional under the First and Fifth Amendments. Trump Media said the feed is no different from other subscription APIs.