Anyone who wants to keep up with President Trump’s views knows to go to his Truth Social account. There, one finds his reasoning on a panoply of issues, including military strikes in Somalia, tariffs on Canada and Mexico, relations with Russia, the causes of a deadly aircraft collision, American ownership of the Gaza Strip and a budget bill now before Congress.
On Wednesday, for instance, after initial cease-fire talks between the United States and Russia over the war in Ukraine, he employed the account to attack Ukraine’s leader. “Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start,” the president’s post said. “Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”
In some ways, such statements are akin to how Mr. Trump turned Twitter, now called X, into his megaphone in his first term, when administration officials declared his posts to be official White House communications.
But one major difference stands out: Mr. Trump is the biggest shareholder in Trump Media & Technology Group, the company that owns Truth Social, and so stands to benefit directly if his posts drive traffic to the site. Even though he has put his Trump Media shares in a trust controlled by his oldest son, the president remains the main draw to the platform that is the company’s signature product.
His Truth Social posts are only one example of the intersection of Mr. Trump’s official role and Trump Media. On Wednesday, in an extraordinary move, Trump Media sued a Brazilian Supreme Court justice who is overseeing multiple criminal investigations of Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president whom Mr. Trump has described as a one of his “great friends.”
The lawsuit, which accused the judge of illegally censoring right-wing voices on social media, appeared to be an effort to pressure the foreign judge as he considered whether to arrest Mr. Bolsonaro.
Trump Media also plans to expand from social media into financial services, opening up another realm for conflicts of interest. That venture would involve investment vehicles that industry experts predicted would need approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Trump has nominated Paul Atkins, a longtime Republican commissioner, to be the agency’s chair. He is awaiting confirmation by the Senate.
In yet another apparent commingling of interests, Mr. Trump picked Devin Nunes, Trump Media’s chief executive, to serve as head of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and Scott Glabe, the company’s general counsel, as a board member.
All of this fits a pattern of far bolder violations of the norms that once governed conflicts of interest than occurred in Mr. Trump’s first term, when foreign officials and others seeking his favor flocked to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort, and to the luxury Trump hotel near the White House, ethics lawyers and experts say.
“The potential for conflicts of interest has broadened and deepened relative even to the president’s first term because he has stakes in a much wider range of businesses than he did when he was last in the White House,” said Daniel I. Weiner, a government expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank focused on democracy issues. Even the appearance that the president’s personal interests are intertwined with the public interest “is very very corrosive to our political system,” he said.
Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman said in response to questions from The New York Times about the president’s possible conflicts of interest that “President Trump is committed to using every direct line of communication to the American people. Alongside his consistent interactions with the press corps, this cements his legacy as the most transparent president in history.”
When asked to comment, a spokeswoman for Trump Media criticized The Times, saying it was making false insinuations, but did not address questions related to his company.
Trump Media makes no bones about its heavy reliance on Mr. Trump’s fame and popularity. In a filing last week with the S.E.C., the company noted that Mr. Trump has the discretion to minimize his Truth Social posts, “which could have a material adverse effect on the business.”
But that is exactly what he should do to avoid mixing his private financial interests and his official role, said John Pelissero, a government ethics expert at Santa Clara University. “He should, as other presidents have done in the past, use just official White House communications when he’s talking about the government and not the company he owns,.”
Mr. Trump’s communications also serve to boost X, which is owned by Elon Musk, now a top adviser to Mr. Trump and a special government employee. Mr. Trump’s Truth Social messages of presidential import are routinely reposted on Mr. Musk’s social media platform, typically after an interval of several hours, in an apparent effort to bolster traffic on Truth Social.
Mr. Trump has about 101 million followers on X, compared to nearly nine million on Truth Social, a number that has been growing since his election in November.
“Whether through Truth, X, Instagram or any other social media platform, the president and the White House will continue to speak directly to the American people — a long-overdue change from the last four years,” Mr. Fields said in response to questions including about the president’s reposts on X.
While social media companies are only loosely federally regulated, Trump Media’s plans to expand into the financial services and products will put it more squarely under the purview of federal regulators.
Trump Media said earlier this month that it planned to invest up to $250 million in the venture to offer financial products that will be developed with Charles Schwab, one of the country’s biggest brokerage firms, and a small New Jersey investment firm, Yorkville Advisors. Industry experts said that federal regulators could feel pressured to grant favorable treatment to those products.
As of now, the commissioners can be fired only for cause, but the Trump administration is mounting a legal challenge to the independence of the S.E.C. and various other regulatory agencies. An executive order signed Tuesday requires White House review of their proposed regulations, asserts a power to block spending on efforts that conflict with presidential priorities and declares that the agencies must accept the president’s and the Justice Department’s interpretation of the law as binding.
The financial services industry is also overseen by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal watchdog agency that the White House is now trying to shut down. Mr. Trump has called the agency a hotbed of “waste, fraud and abuse” run by a “vicious group” whose only purpose is to “destroy people.”
Supporters point to the fact that the bureau has returned about $21 billion to consumers through its enforcement actions.
Earlier this month, Russell T. Vought, who runs the Office of Management and Budget and was named as the consumer agency’s new acting director, ordered the bureau’s staff and contractors to stop work. A federal judge ordered a temporary halt to mass layoffs, data erasures and funding cutoffs at the bureau on Friday, but the agency’s future is deeply in doubt.
Without that watchdog in place, it will be easier for financial services firms to run roughshod over consumers, said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in government ethics. In light of Trump Media’s plans, “no wonder he wants to destroy it,” she said.
Ethics experts also warned during the presidential campaign that if Mr. Trump was elected, Truth Social could be a straightforward avenue to try to influence him. Foreigners, corporations and others seeking to sway him could buy shares in the companies or advertisements on Truth Social in efforts to push up stock values and enrich the Trump family.
“A foreign nation no longer has to rent out the floor of a hotel in order to line President Trump’s pocket,” Ms. Clark said.
Since Mr. Trump created Trump Media in 2021, the company has incurred hefty losses and struggled to generate revenues from advertising on Truth Social or through video streaming. Last year it reported $3.6 million in revenue — 12 percent less than the year before — and $130 million in expenses. Much of the costs apparently related to a merger and its advent as a public company.
Nonetheless, it has $777 million in cash, apparently generated through the merger and sale of stock, mainly to Yorkville. Its market value of $6.6 billion is nearly 2,000 times its 2024 revenue.
While Mr. Trump is not an officer or director of Trump Media, he owns 53 percent of the company’s shares, a stake now valued at about $3.5 billion. He transferred those shares in December to a trust solely controlled by Donald Trump Jr., his oldest son who is a company board member.
But multiple legal experts said that action does nothing to address the links between his personal financial interests and his role as president.
“Whether it is in a trust is completely irrelevant,” Ms. Clark said, “because ultimately the money ends up in Trump’s pocket.”
Julie Tate contributed research.
Content Source: www.nytimes.com