Trump’s Teleprompter Guy Made $100K Betting on What Trump Would Say — Now the Whole Crypto Bill Is on Fire

NPR reported Thursday that Gabriel Perez, who has operated President Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, placed bets through the prediction market platform Kalshi on the content of more than a dozen presidential speeches this year, profiting more than $100,000 by wagering on lines he already knew Trump would deliver. The revelation prompted Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, to renew his push for the bipartisan Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act, which he introduced earlier this year with Sens. Elissa Slotkin, Todd Young, and Adam Schiff to bar government officials from trading on inside knowledge in prediction markets [1, 2].

The scandal lands in the middle of a stalled Senate fight over the crypto market-structure bill known as the Clarity Act. Negotiations have hit a wall over an ethics provision Democrats are demanding to restrict the crypto holdings of the president, vice president, and members of Congress — a fight sharpened by Trump’s disclosure that he personally earned more than $1 billion from crypto ventures in 2025, with family-linked businesses generating an estimated $1.4 billion total. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has said any crypto legislation reaching the floor must prevent Trump from “profiting off the presidency,” and betting markets now put the odds of the Clarity Act passing this year at just 34% [3, 4].

Why It Sucks:

White House Allies

• One staffer’s bad judgment isn’t a presidential scandal. Allies argue Perez acted alone and without the president’s knowledge, and that conflating a teleprompter operator’s side bets with Trump’s own business interests is a bad-faith stretch [1].
• This is derailing legislation the industry actually needs. Supporters argue the Clarity Act provides badly needed regulatory certainty for crypto markets, and letting one unrelated betting scandal sink it punishes an entire industry for one employee’s conduct [3, 4].
• Prediction markets are legal — using them isn’t automatically corrupt. Defenders note Kalshi operates as a regulated exchange, and absent proof Perez broke a specific law, the outrage is getting ahead of any actual finding of wrongdoing [1].

Government Ethics Reformers

• This is the proof of concept critics warned about. Reformers argue a staffer profiting from advance knowledge of presidential speech content is exactly the insider-trading risk they’ve been warning prediction markets create around the White House [1, 2].
• It undercuts the case for a clean crypto bill. Sen. Warren and allies argue the episode strengthens the case that any Clarity Act must include hard conflict-of-interest restrictions on Trump’s personal crypto wealth before it should get a vote [3, 4].
• Bipartisan legislation already exists — just pass it. Reform advocates note Curtis, Slotkin, Young, and Schiff have a ready-made bipartisan fix sitting in Congress, and argue the only thing missing is political will to close the loophole [2].

Prediction Market Industry

• One bad actor could trigger a regulatory crackdown on everyone. Kalshi and similar platforms worry that a single high-profile insider-trading story will be used to justify sweeping new restrictions on a legal market used by ordinary bettors [1].
• The scandal muddies a legitimate product with a governance failure. Industry advocates argue the platforms did nothing wrong — the failure was a lack of internal ethics controls at the White House, not a flaw in the market itself [1, 2].
• Uncertainty is already tanking the underlying legislation. With Clarity Act odds falling to 34% amid the controversy, the industry stands to lose the regulatory clarity it has spent years lobbying for [4].

Sources & Citations:

[1] NPR: Trump’s teleprompter operator probed for prediction market trades
[2] Deseret News: Sen. John Curtis renews insider trading crackdown after White House teleprompter operator profits from Trump speeches
[3] Senate Banking Committee (Minority): Warren says crypto legislation must prevent Trump from profiting off the presidency
[4] Washington Times: Trump teleprompter operator reportedly used inside knowledge to make prediction market bets