White House Recognizes Advance Knowledge As Merit Based Public Service
The White House declared Monday that former teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez had demonstrated exceptional merit-based public service by wagering on President Donald Trump’s prepared remarks after reading them in advance. Federal regulators ordered Perez to surrender more than $100,000 in Kalshi profits, pay a $65,000 penalty and stop trading for three years, penalties the administration described as routine government hostility toward employees resourceful enough to monetize confidential information before the public receives it.
Administration officials said Perez had not exploited insider knowledge but participated in an innovative federal compensation program known as “reading the document directly in front of you.” Under the White House interpretation, the confiscated profits represent a retroactive performance bonus, the fine will count as tuition for an advanced seminar in prediction-market ethics, and the trading ban qualifies as a three-year entrepreneurial sabbatical. Officials noted that any American could have placed the same successful wagers by obtaining West Wing credentials, securing the relevant passwords, operating the president’s teleprompter and quietly betting against people who had none of those things.
“Gabriel knew the words because they were right there, very beautiful words, and frankly anybody could have known them if they had his password and security clearance,” Trump said. “That’s not insider trading. That’s reading, which Democrats have always opposed because books are very unfair to people who don’t read them.” Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said future concerns would be addressed by making confidential presidential speech drafts equally available to every citizen who already has authorized access to confidential presidential speech drafts.
Officials added that the episode proved prediction markets remain perfectly fair because every participant enjoys the same legal right to know what the president will say before he says it, even if only one participant is being paid by the government to display those exact words. Perez’s profits were therefore not an unfair advantage but the purest available measurement of merit.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.