President Donald Trump on Thursday said he is “not happy” with prediction markets, after federal prosecutors charged an Army special forces soldier with turning $33,000 into more than $409,000 on Polymarket by betting on the raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

Master Sgt. Gannon Van Dyke allegedly placed the wagers using classified information about the operation in the days before it became public.

Asked about the case in the Oval Office, Trump reached for a sympathetic comparison. “That’s like Pete Rose betting on his own team,” he said. “Now, if he bet against his team, that would be no good, but he bet on his own team.”

Rose, the all-time MLB hits leader, was banned from baseball in 1989 for betting on games involving his own team.

Pressed on separate insider trading concerns around Iran war contracts, Trump’s tone shifted. “You know the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino,” he said. “I was never much in favor of it. I don’t like it conceptually, but it is what it is. I’m not happy with any of that stuff.”

The Rest Of His Orbit Disagrees

The comments are harder to square with what the rest of Trump’s orbit has been doing.

CFTC Chairman Mike Selig, a Trump nominee now running the agency as its lone commissioner, has built his tenure around defending the sector.

He called event contracts “exciting products” in his first public remarks, scrapped a Biden-era rule that would have restricted them, and has since sued Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois to assert exclusive federal jurisdiction over the category.

Donald Trump Jr. holds a stake in Polymarket through his 1789 Capital fund and is a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi, the two largest platforms in the industry.

A spokesperson has said he has “zero involvement in administration policy regulating prediction markets.”

Trump Media & Technology Group (NASDAQ:DJT), which the president controls through a revocable trust, announced plans last October to launch its own crypto-based prediction market on Truth Social.

The Market Reaction

Kalshi last month raised $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation. Polymarket is reportedly raising at around $15 billion, with Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE) committing up to $2 billion.

Neither is likely to flinch at an “I’ll look into it” from a president whose own people are the industry’s biggest institutional backers.

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