Gabe Perez - Who Could’ve Predicted This?
“I have a guy, Gabe,” Donald Trump bragged on the campaign trail. “I’ve had some real bad ones, but I have Gabe.”
And Gabe had something too: a Kalshi account.
Gabriel Perez, Trump’s teleprompter operator since 2016 and a deputy assistant to the president pulling $175,000 a year, got the boss’s speeches about an hour before the rest of us.
A lesser man would have just scrolled. Gabe saw a business opportunity.
On Kalshi, a prediction market, you can bet on whether the president will say a particular word. So Gabe did, wagering on the State of the Union, Davos, even a Medal of Honor ceremony. He’d check the script, then bet “yes” on words that were in it and “no” on words that weren’t. He won 39 of 43 bets and pocketed $107,539.
No easy feat when your boss insists he goes “off teleprompter about 80% of the time.” But Gabe adapted. When Trump skipped past one of his scripted words, Gabe bailed on the bet mid-speech. Agile! Hey, you don’t get a $175k salary for operating a teleprompter if you can’t multitask.
Kalshi eventually ratted him out to regulators, though, and Gabe was out of a job.
But not out of luck. Trump’s regulators let him off with a $65,000 fine, roughly 40% off for “exemplary cooperation,” payable in installments. Federal prosecutors passed on charging him criminally.
For its part, the White House proclaimed it upholds “extremely strict ethical guidelines,” and warned staff in March 2026 not to bet on inside info. That admonition came four months before the Trump Media & Technology Group launched Truth API, which delivers posts from Trump and other high-profile administration officials to $100k-per-month subscribers before they’re available to the general public on Truth Social.
You can bet on it.
