Tarek Mansour, co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, told MS Now in an interview last month: “I get asked a lot of questions about Don. I mean, I think it’s a legitimate question… We’re kind of facing an optical problem, I think.”
Mansour claimed that the relationship was not political and that it began as a way to market Kalshi at a time when it was much smaller and the public did not know much about prediction markets. “The main thing is that we did it before the elections. It’s not a political decision, and it still isn’t. That’s the main thing,” Mansour said.
In fact, Kalshi appointed Trump Jr. as a strategic advisor more than two months after the November 2024 presidential election. Mansour announced Trump Jr.’s appointment as strategic advisor on January 13, 2025, a week before Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
Trump Jr. announced his position with Kalshi in an X message the same day and indicated that he had decided to help Kalshi on Election Day.
“On election night at Mar-a-Lago, while biased media outlets were calling the race a toss-up, my family and close friends were using the Kalshi Prediction Market to know we had won hours before the fake media outlets,” Trump Jr. wrote at the time. “I immediately knew I had to contribute to their mission. Today, I am proud to announce that I am joining Kalshi as a strategic advisor.”
CEO says there are no ‘regulatory implications’ for Trump Jr.
After Mansour’s assertion that “we did it before the election,” MS Now host Stephanie Ruhle said, “But you didn’t say afterward, you know what, maybe it’s a conflict of interest.”
Mansour’s response suggests that Trump Jr. did not help Kalshi on regulatory issues. “We never had any political and regulatory involvement,” he said. “It was always about getting the word out about prediction markets, how they work, looking at predictions, making sure people understand that it’s not a poll it’s probabilities. That’s always been our goal…we have advisors on both sides of the aisle. We have Democratic advisors, we have Republican advisors.”
Gn bussni
