Prediction markets allow anyone over the age of 18 to bet on fun stuff like what President Donald Trump is going to say in a certain speech. These platforms, particularly Kalshi and Polymarket, are pretty vulnerable to insider trading and market manipulation by users with close access to power or nonpublic information. The so-called mentions markets are very vulnerable to insider trading, considering a number of people know what will be in the president’s or a CEO’s speech. Including the teleprompter operators themselves.
On Thursday, ABC News reported that Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator is being investigated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for allegedly wagering on the Trump mentions markets on Kalshi. The operator, Gabriel Perez, has been on the prompter — whether Trump is reading from it or just riffing — since 2016. According to the report, Perez has made over $100,000 betting on the words he already knew Trump was going to say.
Perez reportedly bet on over a dozen Trump speeches from December 2025 through February 2026: the State of the Union address, the president’s speech at Davos, and his speech at a Medal of Honor ceremony in March. Investigators found Perez would wager in real time, bailing on bets when he realized Trump had ad-libbed past a section of the speech. In a statement to CNBC, Kalshi said it reported the suspicious activity to the CFTC in March, the same month the White House barred staff from using nonpublic info to place bets.
