Once upon a time, the notion of government officials placing bets using insider knowledge and making enormous amounts of money would have been an administration-shaking scandal. Under Donald Trump? It barely merits a headline.
New betting markets that allow users to bet on world events have exploded in popularity over the last year, and it seems each major move by the Trump administration is preceded by people placing some suspiciously timely bets on things happening and then waltzing away with hundreds of millions of dollars.
Now Trump himself has been quizzed on it and, all too predictably, doesn’t seem particularly bothered. While taking questions from the press, the situation was explained to him, and he was asked if it concerned him:
“Are you concerned about insider trading on these prediction markets re: the war?”
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) April 24, 2026
TRUMP: “The world is a casino. It is what it is.” 🤷🏼
And there you have it, folks! pic.twitter.com/9fy5Z7T9CV
“Well, y’know, the whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino and you look at what’s going on all over the world in Europe and every place they’re doing these betting things I was never much in favor of it, I don’t like it conceptually, but it is what it is. I think that I’m not happy with any of this, but they have all these different sites, predictive markets, it’s a crazy world, it’s a much different world than it was.”
By Trump standards, this is actually a surprisingly straight and lucid response. I guess the two functioning neurons in the presidential brain overcame their differences for once and decided to work together.
However, Trump’s position seems to be to simply shrug and overlook the corruption, likely figuring that if he did take a firm stance on it, he’d be opening fire on a huge number of people in his own administration.
Consequences are coming
Fortunately, the wheels of justice appear to be (very slowly) turning. A US special forces soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who was on the mission to capture Nicolas Maduro, has been arrested after allegedly trading on Polymarket using classified information.
He’s said to have made more than $400k betting on the mission he was involved and has now been charged with unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction.
Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed that they’re cracking down on this, saying:
“Our men and women in uniform are trusted with classified information in order to accomplish their mission as safely and effectively as possible, and are prohibited from using this highly sensitive information for personal financial gain.”
It remains to be seen whether this applies to politicians as well. We can only hope that if and when Democrats take power again they launch a thorough investigation into who’s using their insider knowledge to laugh all the way to the bank.
Published: Apr 24, 2026 05:14 am