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Business Donald Trump Social Media

Stock Price Of Trump’s ‘Truth Social’ Site Plummets After Kanye West Moves To Buy Parler

While disgraced former president Donald Trump may pretend to be friends with rapper Kanye West, a move West made to buy the right-wing Parler social media site has negatively impacted the stock price of Trump’s Truth Social site.

Forbes reports that in Monday trading, Trump’s company lost a full 8% of its share price.

Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), the special purpose acquisition company with turbulent plans to merge with Truth Social’s parent Trump Media and Technology Group, fell 8% to $16.11 Monday as a new brash billionaire threw his hat into the conservative social media ring.

Even worse for Trump is the fact that shares of DWAC are down 70% so far this year as Elon Musk begins to make rumblings about going through with his plans to acquire Twitter, a promise Musk has previously made and then backed away from.

West was booted from Twitter and Instagram for anti-Semitic comments in which he suggested that he was planning to carry out violence against Jews, with The Washington Post reporting:

His account, @kanyewest, was “locked for violating Twitter’s policies,” a Twitter spokesperson said in an email Sunday, declining to state which policy he had violated. The account shows that a recent tweet violated Twitter rules.

Though the tweet is no longer visible on his account, screenshots shared widely on social media show that Ye had said he would go “death con 3” on “JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to Defcon, the U.S. military defense readiness system. In the tweet, he used antisemitic tropes and said he could not be antisemitic “because black people are actually Jew also.”

A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Instagram formerly known as Facebook, said in an email that the platform “deleted content from @kanyewest for violating our policies and placed a restriction on the account. We may place restrictions on accounts that repeatedly break our rules, for example, we may temporarily restrict them from posting, commenting, or sending DMs.” Screenshots of the post show that Ye had posted an apparent conversation with the rapper Diddy, employing antisemitic tropes to allege that he was being influenced by Jewish people.

For months how, there have been reports that the inability of Trump and others to raise additional capital to keep Truth Social afloat will lead to a financial collapse before the end of 2022.

Categories
Corruption Crime Donald Trump Social Media

New Legal Problems For Trump – Gets Busted Shaking Down His Social Media Business Partner

Already facing massive legal problems for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, failed former president Donald Trump is now accused of shaking down a partner in his failing social media venture, Truth Social.

The Washington Post took a deep dive into why Truth Social is sinking into financial morass and discovered that the ex-president wanted a top executive at the site to hand over some of his shares to former first lady Melania Trump.

Will Wilkerson, then an executive at former president Donald Trump’s start-up Trump Media & Technology Group, was at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.,coffee shop with company co-founder Andy Litinsky last October when Trump called Litinsky with a question: Would he give up some of his shares to Trump’s wife, Melania?

Trump Media, the owner of the fledgling social network Truth Social, had just been boosted by a huge merger agreement and a flood of investment that had made the stake worth millions of dollars. Trump had already been given 90 percent of the company’s shares in exchange for the use of his name and some minor involvement, leaving everyone else to split the rest.

Litinsky tried to brush it off, telling Trump “the gift would have meant a huge tax bill he couldn’t pay,” Wilkerson said in an interview. “Trump didn’t care. He said, ‘Do whatever you need to do.’ ”

A few months after Litinsky refused to do as Trump had suggested, he was unceremoniously removed from the company’s board of directors, which certainly sounds like retaliation for not doing what the Donald wanted.

Though Litinsky has not spoken publicly about the incident, Wilkerson has and is now cooperating with prosecutors who are taking a close look at Truth Social, according to The Post.

Wilkerson is cooperating with investigations into Trump Media by the SEC and federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, said his attorneys, Phil Brewster, Patrick Mincey and Stephen Bell. Among the materials he filed with the SEC’s whistleblower office is a detailed, day-to-day computer log compiled by company co-founder Wes Moss, Litinsky and Wilkerson about their daily company-related activities.

Those investigations could serve as the end of Truth Social, which is already on the verge of financial collapse, as Trump and his partners cannot access more operating capital as long as federal regulators suspect illegal behavior by top excutives.

Wilkerson now says he believes Truth Social will fail, like so many of Trump’s business ventures have:

“We weren’t trying to be Trump Org 2.0. We always saw Trump as the rocket fuel to send this thing to space. I wanted this to succeed more than anything. … But these are glaring issues, and they’re threatening me now for calling them out. I couldn’t stay quiet anymore.”

Categories
Donald Trump Elon Musk Social Media

Elon Musk Mocks Trump’s Truth Social And Suggests New Name For The Site

Even though he claims he’s actually going to purchase Twitter this time, Elon Musk still doesn’t control the social media site, and is lashing out at a potential competitor.

Speaking with the Financial Times, Musk had this to say about Truth Social (a.k.a. Twitter for losers), which failed, one-term former president Donald Trump now uses since he was banned from Facebook and Twitter for spreading lies about the 2020 election, which he lost in a landslide to President Joe Biden.

“[Truth Social] is essentially a rightwing echo chamber. It might as well be called Trumpet.”

So why is Musk suddenly interested in controlling Twitter, a deal he abandoned just months ago?

“I’m not doing Twitter for the money. It’s not like I’m trying to buy some yacht and I can’t afford it. I don’t own any boats. But I think it’s important that people have a maximally trusted and inclusive means of exchanging ideas and that it should be as trusted and transparent as possible.”

Musk’s interview with the Financial Times was wide-ranging and included the topic of his children, some of whom have publicly disowned him.

He also expressed his concern the American left has taken over academia and is warping the minds of young people. While he very briefly discussed his transgender daughter, Musk blamed “communism.”

“It’s full-on communism… and a general sentiment that if you’re rich, you’re evil,” He said. “[The relationship with her] may change, but I have very good relationships with all the others. Can’t win them all.”

The American left is evil, and yet Musk is still so ill-informed and brainwashed that he thinks anyone who disagrees with him is a communist. That’s classic right-wing propaganda, and it proves what an intellectually lazy person Elon Musk is and apparently always will be.

As for Truth Social, recent reports suggest it won’t be around much longer because it’s hemorrhaging money and losing investors.

Categories
Business Donald Trump Social Media

Investors Dump Trump’s Truth Social Site And Withdraw Millions As It Nears Financial Collapse

Failed, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump’s fledgling social media site, Truth Social, appears to be headed for a quick demise, much like nearly every business venture the Donald has attempted over the course of his life.

According to Reuters, major investors are now withdrawing millions of dollars in financing.

Some investors are backing out of Digital World Acquisition Corp’s (DWAC.O) plan to acquire former U.S. President Donald Trump’s social media firm Truth Social, the blank-check firm said on Friday.

Digital World said it had received termination notices from private investment in public equity (PIPE) investors ending nearly $139 million in investments out of the $1 billion commitment it had previously announced.

That move by some investors could lead to a complete collapse of the deal, which would mean Truth Social no longer has any operating capital. That would lead to the death of the site.

More investors could pull out in the next few weeks, sources said, as they can terminate anytime after the deadline. Many are waiting for DWAC to propose more preferred terms to PIPE investors, sources added.

Truth Social was created by Trump because he was permanently banned from both Twitter and Facebook. The plan was to serve as an alternative to those sites, but Truth Social has suffered numerous setbacks since it first launched.

The biggest problem for Truth Social, however, has been a lack of interest by potential users. So far, the site only has approximately 550,000 active daily users. In contrast, Twitter has 217 million.

Just last month, it was reported that Truth Social was unable to pay its bills, including for the server which hosts the site:

There are signs that the company’s financial base has begun to erode. The Trump company stopped paying RightForge, a conservative web-hosting service, in March and now owes it more than $1 million, according to Fox Business, which first reported the dispute.

The company also has struggled with some basics of corporate operation. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this month denied its application to trademark “Truth Social,” citing the “likelihood of confusion” to other similarly named companies, including an app, “VERO — True Social,” first released in 2015.

 

Categories
Business Donald Trump Social Media

Trump’s Social Media Site Is On The Verge Of Financial Collapse

Less than two years since it was founded and went into operation, Donald Trump’s social mediate site, Truth Social, is unable to pay its bills and on the verge of financial collapse.

The Washington Post reports that Truth Social has no reliable source of income, which is likely to doom it:

Six months after its high-profile launch, the site — a clone of Twitter, which banned Trump after Jan. 6, 2021 — still has no guaranteed source of revenue and a questionable path to growth, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings from Digital World Acquisition, the company planning to take Trump’s start-up, the Trump Media & Technology Group, public.

The company warned this week that its business could be damaged if Trump “becomes less popular or there are further controversies that damage his credibility.” The company has seen its stock price plunge nearly 75 percent since its March peak and reported in a filing last week that it had lost $6.5 million in the first half of the year.

How bad are things at Truth Social? The site is on the verge of lacking a hosting service, which would render it unable to appear on the web:

There are signs that the company’s financial base has begun to erode. The Trump company stopped paying RightForge, a conservative web-hosting service, in March and now owes it more than $1 million, according to Fox Business, which first reported the dispute.

The company has also been unable to trademark its entity name, which means anyone can start up at similar site and name it the very same thing, which would further erode efforts to build a loyal audience:

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this month denied its application to trademark “Truth Social,” citing the “likelihood of confusion” to other similarly named companies, including an app, “VERO — True Social,” first released in 2015.

Usage is also fading, especially since the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, with its views plummeting to about 300,000 a day, down from 1.5 million on the day of its launch.

Looks like the “great businessman” is about to destroy yet another company.