President Donald Trump’s administration is allowing prediction markets to gamble on war, prompting one conservative critic to describe the practice as “satanic.”
“Like dogfighting, gambling on war is the sort of hobby that is best described in simple, direct moral terms,” Joe Perticone of The Bulwark wrote on Thursday. “(‘Satanic’ was the one that came to my mind.) But I wanted to pose the question about regulating or banning this industry to some of the lawmakers who are familiar with prediction markets.”
After Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour recently argued Americans should be able to “financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference of opinion,” Perticone interviewed members of Congress about regulating or even banning the practice of gambling on war.
“Polymarket. Kalshi. I love ’em!” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told Perticone “before I could finish my question.” The journalist added that when he asked Tuberville if “it’s good for society to be gambling on events tied to war and military engagements,” the senator changed his tune.
“Oh, well, I didn’t know they were doing that,” Tuberville told Perticone. “Well, if it’s legal, I guess you can do it. I wouldn’t do it. But everybody’s got their own opinion on that.”
By contrast Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) accused the Trump White House of using their insider information to profit on the prediction markets about the Iran war.
“To me, it’s pretty clear there were people inside the White House who were making bets on Friday that war would start on Saturday,” Murphy told Perticone. “That particular bet—that war will occur within twenty-four hours—was not a normal bet that was being made on Polymarket. It was made on one day, Friday, by an unusually high number of people.”
Murphy added, “Unquestionably, that is people at the White House or friends of the White House. So the Iran war is a disaster on its merits, but it is facilitating a new kind of corruption in the White House in which people are making money through Polymarket and Kalshi on war.” For this reason, the senator is drafting a ban on prediction markets gambling on government activity with “some exceptions for bond markets and financial markets.” At the same time, “Murphy pointed out that regulating and restricting the prediction markets will probably be an uphill battle, given how lucrative they seem to have been for administration insiders.”
“Obviously given that it looks like Trump’s crowd is making money on these prediction markets, Republicans are gonna react as if it’s an attack on them,” Murphy told Perticone. “It’s not. This would be really awful even under a Democratic president.”
Similar to Murphy, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told Perticone “the concept is predatory at its very core.”
“I think it’s very unhealthy, and I worry that these markets are not only speculative, but that there are insiders who may be manipulating them or manipulating the outcomes,” Warren told Perticone. “If this were an SEC-regulated market, there would be an automatic investigation into every one of those bets [on U.S. foreign policy]. But when the market is unregulated, insiders have free rein to manipulate it however they want.”
Earlier this week, the ongoing schism between Trump supporters over the war in Iran continued in earnest, with Trump supporter and influencer Laura Loomer sparring on X with former congresswoman and Trump critic, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
"This b—— is celebrating the death of American military members and thanking their families for their blood sacrifice,” Greene wrote of Loomer on Sunday. “But this is who Trump takes late night calls from and laps up her praise and worship. … And now Americans are once again coming home in flag draped coffins from another stupid pointless foreign war for foreign regime change on behalf of Israel.”
In response Loomer asked, "How much money are you making off of Muslims?"
Indeed, people in the Trump administration often seem not to be on the same page about whether the Iran action even constitutes a war. Appearing on CNN Monday with host Kasie Hunt, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Ok.) — who later that week was tapped as Trump’s new Homeland Security Secretary — insisted that Trump’s actions in Iran were not a war and had to be publicly corrected.
“This isn't a war, we haven't declared war. Everybody wants to say,” Mullin told Hunt. The CNN host then showed a clip of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying earlier that day that “we set the terms of this war from start to finish. We didn't start this war. But under President Trump, we are finishing it.”
Mullin responded by saying, “What he declared on us was war — meaning the Ayatollah declared war on us. We are not at war with the Iranian people. The Ayatollah declared war on us, we've already taken him out, and now we're eliminating the threat."
