Trump starts new media company: Pravda

[SLD]

Well actually it’s called Truth. But there’s got to be a Soviet, errr, Russian language version.

He’s either a Russian agent or so fucking obtuse that he’s utterly unqualified to serve anything than dog catcher.

 

[ideologyhunter]

In a related story, Bill Maher's startup news site is called Jesus Is Lord.

 

[ZiprHead]

Key Investor Bails After Learning He's In New Trump Company: 'Not A Close Call'
Trump's new social media company shot up in value, but at least one investor says it's not about the money.

Donald Trump’s proposed social media company came as news to some of its investors ― and at least one pulled out when he learned his money was now tied to the former president.

“Many investors are grappling with hard questions about how to incorporate their values into their work,” hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein told The New York Times in a statement. “For us, this was not a close call.”

The newspaper said Weinstein’s Saba Capital had been a major investor in Digital World, a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, formed for the purpose of acquiring another company.

As is common in SPAC arrangements, investors put their cash in before the acquisition target was chosen. When Weinstein learned it would be with Trump’s firm, he bailed.

Trump announced the new company this week, saying it would launch a right-wing rival to Twitter called Truth Social. Shares in the company more than tripled on Thursday, the day after the deal was announced.

One unnamed investor who held 10% of the company told the Financial Times he sold everything as soon as he could.

“The idea that I would help [Trump] build out a fake news business called Truth makes me want to throw up,” he said.

Too bad, Now he'll miss out on being associated with the business genius that bankrupted multiple casinos!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Well actually it’s called Truth. But there’s got to be a Soviet, errr, Russian language version.

He’s either a Russian agent or so fucking obtuse that he’s utterly unqualified to serve anything than dog catcher.

Probably as truthful as the original.

 

[southernhybrid]

Orwell didn't have the year right, but it's beginning to appear as if he knew what the future held. War is peace? How about Lies are Truth!

 

[lpetrich]

Trump could get big ‘bonus’ shares in new social media firm | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Donald Trump’s social media company will get tens of millions in special bonus shares in a new publicly traded entity if it performs well, handing the former president possibly billions of dollars in paper wealth based on current stock prices, according to a filing with security regulators Tuesday.

Marjorie Taylor Greene invested as much as $50,000 in the Trump SPAC before its stock plunged - CNN
Marjorie Taylor Greene buys stock in Trump SPAC, Digital World Acquisition Corp. - The Washington Post

Greene, an ardent Trump supporter, on Friday purchased between $15,001 and $50,000 in shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp. The firm is a SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company, created to buy another business and give it a stock-market listing. Digital World trades on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker “DWAC.”

Digital World’s stock price swung widely on Friday, opening at $118.79 per share and rising as high as $175 per share. At its lowest, a share in Digital World sold for $67.96 that day. It is not clear what price Greene bought the shares at.

On Tuesday, when Greene disclosed the purchase in a congressional filing, the stock closed at $59.07 per share. On Wednesday, it closed at $64.89. The disclosure was first noted by congresstrading.com, which tracks stock purchases by members of Congress.

...
Trump Media and Technology Group said last week that it would merge with Digital World as it announced the development of a new social media platform called Truth Social. Trump said in a statement that the network would “stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech.” The former president was booted from Facebook and Twitter after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

Does Trump want to play the stock market with his new social-media company?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

He does realize making money on a social media company isn't easy, right? Facebook has all sorts of users like old conservatives and old liberals and old people who don't care about politics. Trump's venture will only have one portion of that.

 

[Jayjay]

He does realize making money on a social media company isn't easy, right? Facebook has all sorts of users like old conservatives and old liberals and old people who don't care about politics. Trump's venture will only have one portion of that.

You don't think he's actually going to run the company, do you? Trump's going to make money by hyping it up to his followers, then selling the stock. If he hasn't done so already.

 

[lpetrich]

Rep. Devin Nunes is resigning from Congress to be CEO of Trump's new media company : NPR

Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, gained admiration from the right and scorn from the left as he defended the former president during the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election.

The California Republican will take the helm of the Trump Media & Technology Group next month, giving up his seat in the middle of his 10th term.

Devin Nunes to Quit House, Take Over Trump's Media Company - The New York Times

Mr. Nunes faced almost impossible odds in being re-elected to the Central Valley district that his family has farmed for three generations. A new map emerging from an independent citizens’ redistricting commission was almost certain to flip it from a district Mr. Trump won handily to one President Biden would have won.

But political analysts and politicians in the district had predicted that Mr. Nunes — who was the chairman, then the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee during the Trump administration — would jump to a newly created, Republican-friendly district. That would have allowed him to continue his congressional career and assume the helm of the powerful Ways and Means Committee if Republicans took control of the House, as they are favored to do.

Mr. Nunes’s decision to take over Mr. Trump’s fledgling media enterprise instead of the influential House panel that writes tax and health care policy signals where he thinks power lies in the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

California lost a House seat, and given increasing urbanization, it was likely the Republicans who lost a safe district there. Something like how Adam Kinzinger lost a district in Illinois, and some Republican is likely to lose a district in New York State.

Trump:

“Devin understands that we must stop the liberal media and big tech from destroying the freedoms that make America great,” he said in a statement.

Still bleating about what left-wing ogres these capitalists are.

Katie Hill on Twitter: "Having been in closed door hearings with him leading up to the first impeachment, I can tell you definitively: Devin Nunes is straight up dumb. Can’t wait to see him “lead” Trump’s media company into the ground." / Twitter

 

[lpetrich]

francesca fiorentini on Twitter: "Oh by all means take the reins of Trump’s new social media site, guy who sued parody accounts of cows. This. Will. Be. Epic. (link)" / Twitter

Yes, there's an account called "Devin Nunes's Cow" - Nunes cannot sue Twitter over accounts posing as his mother and a cow, judge rules - CNNPolitics -- @DevinCow on Twitter

From DN once having been a dairy farmer.

 

[lpetrich]

Trump Social Media Blows Deadline, Still Claims $1 Billion Commitment From Secret Investors

Donald Trump’s new social media venture announced Saturday it has won a commitment for $1 billion from an unidentified “diverse group of institutional investors” — even though his operation missed a partial launch deadline last month.

Where is the money coming from? Some oligarchs somewhere? Like Russian oligarchs or Saudi Arabian oligarchs. It was some Russian oligarchs who bailed him out after a series of bankruptcies in the late 1990's.

Trump’s Truth Social media venture was supposed to launch an invitation-only beta test version of the social media site last week, but it didn’t happen. It still only exists as a largely promotional website (with a waiting list) six weeks after Trump announced the venture.

CNBC called the deadline the first “test” of whether Trump could deliver what he promised.

...
But Trump crowed in a statement Saturday that $1 billion sends an “important message to Big Tech that censorship and political discrimination must end ... As our balance sheet expands, TMTG will be in a stronger position to fight back against the tyranny of Big Tech.”

He has promised a free-for-all social media site that will apparently skirt typical limits on such issues as spreading falsehoods and hate speech.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Where is the money coming from?

 

[Ford]

When I hear that Trump - or others like the pillow guy - are starting up a social media company, I think about the Steve Buscemi meme:




Only...Steve gets the joke.

 

[ZiprHead]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/06/trump-space-sec-investigation/

The publicly traded company that plans to merge with former president Donald Trump’s media company is under investigation by two federal regulators, which have asked for stock trading information and communications.

Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that it had received “certain preliminary, fact-finding inquiries” from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in late October and early November regarding stock trading tied to the merger agreement announced Oct. 20.
Separately, the SEC asked for information related to meetings of the company’s board of directors, information on investors, and communications, according to the filing.

The company said the filing should not be construed as an indication that either agency has concluded anyone violated the law. Spokespeople for DWAC and Trump did not immediately respond Monday to requests for comment.
Trump’s new social media SPAC is soaring. Also, what is a SPAC?
A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) is a shell company that is set up to take a private company public by merging with it. They are called “blank check” companies because investors can purchase shares without knowing what business the SPAC will eventually acquire. For investors, the hope is that the stock price will shoot up when an acquisition target is announced.

 

[Gospel]

I swear on everything I know, white people don't get enough respect in the black community for their comedy. Some of the comments on this board are proof.

 

[lpetrich]

People are laughing at Trump’s new company

Is this the revenge of Four Seasons Landscaping?

That was the worn-down venue in Philadelphia where Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, launched the doomed effort to block Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election. The Giuliani group meant to book the Four Seasons hotel, but somebody goofed and Giuliani ended up spouting his familiar election lies in front of an industrial garage door plastered with Trump signs. The Trump effort to overturn the election never got any more professional than that.

Trump’s new media company, called the Trump Media & Technology Group, may suffer the same amateurish delusions. An “investor presentation” the company recently filed with the Securities and Exchange commission is provoking guffaws among business analysts, with laughable evasions and barely any business strategy. “It does feel like every public action by this company is designed give the impression that it is a joke,” Bloomberg analyst Matt Levine wrote on Dec. 7

Like listening team members only with a first name and last initial, one only by initials.

The TMTG investor presentation is vague about how exactly the company will make money. It points out that Trump’s following on Twitter before the platform banned him in 2020—89 million followers—is more than one-third of Netflix’s entire subscriber base, as if TMTG could rival Netflix out of the gate. But that’s apples and oranges. One account on Twitter—free to the account holder and followers alike—is nothing like a Netflix account in which users pay a monthly fee to access a deep library of content.

Closing with an assessment of Trump himself.

Trump fancies himself a business icon, even though his current company is under investigation for fraud. His business history includes 6 bankruptcies and several thousand lawsuits. Trump’s real success came as a reality-show entertainer flacking a gilded lifestyle, not as a builder or dealmaker. His latest company may find a way to convert Trump’s jocular mendacity into steady profits, but it might also become little more than a Trump fan club that amuses outsiders who occasionally peek inside the fence.

 

[funinspace]

Another funky detail of the new social media scam, with Chinese money funneling Clownstick's way:

D.J. Trump and his foreign backers They deserve eachother...

Arc Capital, a Shanghai based company that has had numerous run-ins with the SEC, is a major backer of tRump’s latest scam, Truth Social (TS). Arc has been accused of misrepresenting their companies to investors and having virtually no products,...

www.dailykos.com

Arc Capital, a Shanghai based company that has had numerous run-ins with the SEC, is a major backer of tRump’s latest scam, Truth Social (TS). Arc has been accused of misrepresenting their companies to investors and having virtually no products, employees or infrastructure. Their track record includes autonamous drones, a bakery and touch screen technologies all run through shell companies with no noticible footprint. For the interested, there has been a lot of reporting on them by CNBC, Yahoo Finance, The Washington Post and others.

TS originally announced a beta product for November 2021 (Last month, for those keeping score) and there’s been no sign of said product to date. To the surprise of almost nobody, the association with Arc has landed TS in the middle of an SEC investigation about it’s funding. This has most likely put a kink in TS plans for an early 2022 “go live” and leaves Deven Nunes, and his cow, with not a lot to do except answer emberassing questions for the regulators of the world. Of the two, the cow is the more forthcoming.

 

[ZiprHead]

Trump Media Company Rated As 'Very Poor' By Stock Value Report

The Trump social media company still does not appear to be doing well. It was late last year, in November, when an early version of a Trump-backed social media site was announced to appear… but it’s yet to show up. The stock price for Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), which announced that...

bipartisanreport.com

The Trump social media company still does not appear to be doing well. It was late last year, in November, when an early version of a Trump-backed social media site was announced to appear… but it’s yet to show up. The stock price for Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), which announced that it would be merging with the Trump social media company (which is called the Trump Media & Technology Group) has gone all over the place — recently, it’s climbed to nearly $95 a share, but it’s been below $60 and even below $50 since the initial burst following the announcement of merger plans. Trump’s social media company sent a press release pointing readers to the rating from InvestorsObserver for DWAC stock… and InvestorsObserver, reporter Judd Legum noted this week, rates the stock as “very poor.”

“Digital World Acquisition Corp C (DWAC) gets a very poor rank from InvestorsObserver,” the entity said on its website as of early Monday afternoon, adding that it sits below 77 percent of other stocks that have been ranked by the organization — delivering yet another hit to the credibility of the social media operation. Financial volatility isn’t where the problems for DWAC and the Trump social media plans as a whole stop, though — the endeavor has also been placed under investigation by federal authorities governing the financial system, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). At issue is the fact that DWAC “may have committed securities violations by holding private and undisclosed discussions about the merger as early as May 2021, while omitting this information” from filings with the SEC, as summarized by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who’s among those to have expressed concerns.

 

[ZiprHead]

Trump’s 'free speech' app charges users a fee that goes to the NRSC

Many tech programs, from social media to browsers to business networking apps, are free to use — even if they try to entice users into paying for a premium account with premium features. But one platform that may not be free, according to The Focus, is former President Donald Trump’s new social media platform Truth Social.

Right-wing have media have been hyping Truth Social as a MAGA alternative to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram — one that, they insist, will be fair to MAGA Republicans, unlike those other platforms. Truth Social, according to The Guardian, is scheduled to go live on Monday, February 21.

The Focus’ Bruno Cooke reports, “Truth Social doesn’t currently appear on the Apple Store or Google Play Store, although former U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be active on a beta version of the app…. Ahead of its launch, those tempted to join the Truth Social app would do well to know (that) username reservation seems to cost money in the form of a donation, although joining the wait-list is free.”

Cooke goes on to describe what the registration process is like with Truth Social. Users, Cooke reports, are “required to enter your first and last names, an e-mail address and a mobile phone number.”

“The mobile number is required, although the accompanying text includes the sentence ‘if you would prefer to donate online without providing your phone number, click here,’ with a link to a similar webpage asking for donations,” Cooke explains. “The question is: why redirect people to a donation page as an alternative to providing a phone number? The answer appears to be a donation is required to join the Truth Social app.”

I have items in my fridge that will last longer than this site. Without someone to express their hate onto it will get boring very quickly.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Truth to launch today (?). Maybe make that Truth Beta launches today (?).

The next significant feature released on the platform will be direct messages, or DMs, between users, the executive wrote.

The company is also considering allowing users to sign up to receive notifications when others post content, the executive said. He signaled that the ability to block other users would be an important component.

"There will always be block functionality in the app," he wrote.

Truth Social will issue a policy on verified accounts "in the coming weeks," the executive added.

The details provided in the meeting with a person who's name wasn't even disclosed appeared to describe a service that wasn't even ready for release yet.