Shocking News!
Truth Social is not doing all that well.
Via WaPo: Truth Social faces financial peril as worry about Trump’s future grows.
Former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social website is facing financial challenges as its traffic remains puny and the company that is scheduled to acquire it expresses fear that his legal troubles could lead to a decline in his popularity.
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.
How could it be that someone with Trump’s business acumen could be in such a position?
Truly a shocking development that no one could have seen coming.
Truth Social hasn’t paid its bill to the hosting company since March. It owes 1.6 million.
Bwa haha hahahaha hahahahahaha.
Well played, Dr.T, well played indeed.
Just like his hands.
Won’t Trump blame it on Devin Nunes? After all, Nunes is the CEO of Trump Media and Tech. Group.
I suspect Truth Social has succeeded very well at its actual purpose: setting up a rah rah marketing scheme, convincing people who think with their emotions that they are getting in on the ground floor of Trump’s next and greatest business success, and suck all the investor money into a few people’s pockets (Trump included, of course, but by no means the biggest beneficiary) without ever actually producing a viable business. It collapses, so no one expects to recover any money.
Trump has been running variations of this type of “The Producers” con since he burned through his father’s fortune in the 80’s.
Years ago there was a story about an organization of fortune tellers going bankrupt. You’d think they’d have seen it coming.
I’m not paying much attention to it, but apparently the guy who started, and collapsed, WeWork has a new venture going, disrupting real estate sales or something. What I’ve seen is that it’s like an open secret that he and the other vulture capitalists will raise a lot of money, sell out to the greater fools, and the whole thing will, as expected, collapse. Trump may actually be a good businessman who once again sold his name and left the losses for others.
As predictable as the sunrise.
@MarkedMan: Probably not, it will only likely be successful from a Trump internal PoV if somehow the SPAC acquisition goes through. Although it may be enabling some political fund raising, which is his other major grift.
@gVOR08: WeWork founder has a play for apartment rentals, it is nothing truly innovative (as the Financial Times has been snarkily covering). He is not a “VC”, he is a pitchman or perhaps liberally an entrepreneur. The only VC investor who has plumped on this is Andreessen Horowitz (of whose Partners, Mr Netscape), who are sitting on idiotic amounts of cash and are clearly are making moonshots for a unicorn. A-H already raised large amounts of cash. The play you are misunderstanding is they will want to try to rapidly go IPO to foist on the traded markets as WeWork tried. Why A-H has fallen for the idea that this can work rather escapes informed observers. Who this A-H fund investors are I don’t know, but you can be confortable it is likely people you love to hate regardless so you can simply observe with pleasure.
Trump is regardless, not a good businessman. He is a good marketer, but an utterly terrible businessman.
@MarkedMan: I’m reminded a bit of the early- to mid-1990s, when one of the questions the VCs asked before putting any money into a software venture was, “What is your plan for getting Microsoft to acquire you?”
@CSK: Maybe someone should check with his cow. Does it still post on Twitter?
@Lounsbury:
I’m not so sure. Back in the 90’s and 00’s I saw more than one interview with actual NYC real estate movers and shakers who, if they were asked about Trump (because of “The Apprentice”), were dismissive in a very interesting way. Not just as a “real estate tycoon” which was just a farce, but essentially as a con man too. More than one commented on how much money he left on the table because of his insistence that he get all his money up front. Of course, once he had it he would start to poison the deal anyone, insulting everyone, setting them against each other, etc, etc.
“… it will only likely be successful from a Trump internal PoV if somehow the SPAC acquisition goes through.”
So it’s more like his usual ideas–Trump Fashions, Trump Vodka, Trump Shuttle, Trump Steaks, and so on–that never actually make any money before they go banko? Got it. Thanks.
@Lounsbury: like the Fyre Festival guys, y’know?
(Forgot where I read the article about the WeWork guy, but the commentator said that anyone who would invest in anything he was propounding had to have rocks in his head.)
Oh, and Shkreli has gotten out of prison and is eager to jump back in entrepreneurial work again.
Forget about blue-sky legislation; we’ve got to have something equivalent for venture capitalists as well. Maybe: if this doesn’t work out you get to break rocks for 10 years?
@MarkedMan: I believe you are in fact agreeing with the overall view – he is a shyster marketer but not a real deal-maker, nor very good at business.
However, Trump’s likely goal (which as in many of his deals he is likely self-sabotaging) was to get SPAC $$ so his probable prime goal is likely to fail – not certain of course but likely. It brings a modest degree of pleause to think of that money escaping his tiny grasping hands.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: It would be quite the solid market bet that it will end up as a Trump Vodka or Uni type result.
@grumpy realist: Blue Sky legislation is a public markets regulatory mechanism. As in listing on a public exchange / bourse which individual / retail investors may buy. VC is non-public, restriction of investors to be High Net Worth or “Qualified” (meaning tons of capital).
Why are you concerned about government intervention to “protect” high-net worth investors? Other than perhaps you may not understand what VC is?
Keeping robust rules for public listings (said rules in their entirity helped upend WeWork IPO schemes) is quite logical but beyond that makes little sense as regulatory budgets are rather better and more effectively spent on public markets. There might be an argument for specific oversight of government entity savings schemes placements, but not a general oversight – being certainly unwanted by the very wealthy, certainly impossible to fund properly to be effective and hard to see the public interest for the bother and cost of it all.
@Lounsbury:
I saw a lot of this in small-scale rental housing ownership (“you don’t make money on the rent, you make your money on the tax write off and when you sell the property for a paper loss (which more often than not turned into a tangible one).
Never understood it. But I did get why the “Make a Fortune in Real Estate–WITH NO MONEY DOWN!!!” guys always went banko after a few years.
@Lounsbury: And I don’t think you heard what grumpy realist was saying. That happened earlier today in a comment to Ozark (I think), but I’m not feeling a need to search for it.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: if this
does not mean that some form of blue sky regulation on VC is being said to be needed, then its meaning escapes me.
The lamestream media is once again lying about your favorite president. Truth Social is not going bankrupt. It’s not losing money. In fact, it’s getting more traffic than Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram combined. You only don’t know that because like the Russia Hoax, the stolen election of 2020, and the fake impeachment, the leftist loser media don’t want the people to know the truth. MAGA world knows that it’s the ONLY place they can get the TRUTH directly from me. In order to fight the media fighting me, you please send $25 to http://www.donaldsneverendinggrift.com to help us fight for you.
@EddieInCA:..neverendinggrift.com…
Here I’ve got a half a jar of pennies and you give me a bad link…
@Lounsbury:
Oh, I get what you are saying and while it makes logical sense, I don’t think it passes the Trump-sense test. I suspect he cashed out for pennies on the dollar before Truth Social was even announced to the public. Ever notice how rarely he posted on it in the early days? Not the actions of a stakeholder…
Does it matter? I don’t use either Truth Social or Twitter, but I’m aware of Trump’s every petulant post, because the news sites and political blogs all share whatever TFG vomits up as though it were important. We could all try ignoring him. It would drive him crazy.
I am on Twitter as my local pubic safety organizations use it to broadcast local stuff like road closures (common occurrence in the winter in the PNW). Plus fires in the summer. Gets updated faster than the official websites. I follow a few other folks (including one here). I’ve retweeted maybe 5 times. I’m a twitter lurker.
The idea I’d also get a Truth Social account – um no. I barely use Twitter, and I’m a not a fan of Trump or Biden. Hype.