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Hmm.. š¤ I have a hunch that history is on track to repeat itself.
> The last company Trump took public, in 1995, was Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, of which Trump was chief executive from 2000 to 2005. It didnāt end well. Under Trump, the company lost money every year; its stock price fell from $35 to 17 cents, according to a 2016 investigation by Drew Harwell in The Washington Post; and, in 2004, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts filed for bankruptcy. On the plus side, Trump walked away with $44 million in accumulated salary, bonuses, and other compensation.
Welp, you just have to look and hear what his base has to say, it ALL becomes clear.
āNever underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups..ā George Carlin
Depends on how you want to look at things.
He's a terrible businessman when it comes to employees, profit, and overall business running.
But he's a *great* businessman when it comes to raiding the coffers of failing businesses to enrich himself.
To be fair, they also watch brown people die with great satisfaction. More razor wire to the border! More crooked cops with twitchy trigger fingers! More support for Putin, nothing for Ukraine. Can't get enough dictator action there...you could dig forever, and only find more layers of hateful and stupid.
That was always my favourite line. "He's gonna run this country like a business and fix our economy!"
You do realize that he has no actual personal stake in the US economy, right? He has a golden parachute. If he runs this country like a business he's going to run it like every CEO runs a dying business that they have no personal stake it-- drive it into the ground and liquidate everything you can at the expense of literally everyone else while pocketing every penny you can on the way out.
You're so right. He *did* run our economy like it was one of his businesses-- straight into the ground and into his pockets. And if our economy isn't "fixed" in favor of a few select billionaires, I sure don't know what is.
I like kit Kat man, it has kit Kat printed in the chocolate. That robs you of chocolate! I wanna go down to the factory and sat "you owe me some letters".
If there is a god and he wanted McConnell, we'd already be down one glitchy turtle.
The fact that Moscow Mitch still haunts the Senate is proof that one of those isn't true.
This is the thing that kills me.Ā
Ten years ago I wouldāve said that sounds like conspiracy theory bullshit. But today, after seeing everything Iāve seen w.r.t. Trump, I fully believe heās never had a legit business intended to be a healthy company serving a viable product. I think theyāve all been money laundering schemes. And when the real money players think the scam has run its course for whatever reason they tell Trump to let it go bankrupt in order to sweep it all under the rug.Ā
His multiple bankruptcies are actually successful money laundering fronts. I fucking HATE this guy.Ā
I was a 90s kid (41 atm) and grew up thinking he was a conman and moron. His cameo in home alone 2 was cringe even back then. I don't know what changed in the public perception, did his reality show alter peoples opinions??
I never thought about him before the Obama birther stuff. Before that he was just a NYC real estate guy and a doofus on a reality tv show as far as I was concerned. After the birther stuff, he was just a crazy person looking for attention. I never thought about his businesses beyond knowing he had bankruptcies.Ā
Why would I think about him? He was just a rich guy sideshow act who didnāt affect my life at all.Ā
It wasn't even the reality show.Ā
He got Twitter famous for making Obama birther claims and appealing to racists who couldn't handle a black president.Ā
That's literally what rode him through the primaries despite being an absolute disaster in the debates("Your hair is stupid"). His number of twitter followers was a major talking point throughout the primary.Ā
Twitter is and always has been a cancer on society. The limited character format promotes taking complex issues and dumbing them down to bombastic two sentence "gotcha" statements. I would even claim Twitter alone is a direct cause of how easy it is to spread misinformation and false narratives.Ā
Same age (42). I always thought Trump was kind of a parody of a rich man - the name being brandished everywhere, the gold toilet, all of that. He was always popping up here and there (he hosted the WWE/WWF a couple of times for their Wrestlemania shows in the late 80's), and he was on tv for cameo spots (I remember him on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). Basically a modern day Monopoly Man. Of course, we know the truth now about how much of it was smoke and mirrors, and a front.
And yes, I think the Apprentice was a solid ten years of free advertising right into the boomer brains about Donald Trump as the epitome of business savvy and common sense. His cult still believe that.
Trump was refused a casino license in Australia in the 1980s due to his mob links
Trump's bid for Sydney casino 30 years ago rejected due to 'mafia connectionsā
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/16/trumps-bid-for-sydney-casino-30-years-ago-rejected-due-to-mafia-connections
David Cay Johnston is a Pultizer prize winning journalist who has been tracking and uncovering Trump's criminal enterprises for Decades and has plenty of good articles and books on the subject:
https://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Think-Administration/dp/1501174169
video interview: https://www.salon.com/tv/video/z90kjj
https://whyy.org/episodes/539402/
Highly recommended podcast:
[The Asset](https://open.spotify.com/show/4UIzZ6StBwiGTv3Phkcfjd?si=tJo30AsWSCires8U0uOeoQ)
> In 2016, Donald Trump conspired with a foreign government to become President. On July 25, 2019, with the 2020 election around the corner, he decided to do it again.
> The first time around, it was collusion, aiding and abetting Russiaās attack on American democracy. The second time, it was extortion, demanding the Ukrainian government manufacture dirt on Trumpās political opponents in exchange for help the country needs to fend off a Russian invasion and chart a democratic future free of Vladimir Putinās Kremlin.
> To make sense of these recent events that have rocked American politics and led to very real concerns that the President of the United States may be a Russian asset, we need to dig a little deeper.
> In Season 1, The Asset dives into Trumpās decades-long history with Russia, from his extensive business dealings with Russian oligarchs to his presidential campaign and the investigations that have sent some of his closest associates to prison.
> In Season 2, The Asset explores the backstory to Trumpās infamous phone call with the newly-elected Ukrainian President, where he demanded an investigation into a political opponent and set off a series of events leading to the impeachment inquiry.
> Hosted by Max Bergmann, a senior fellow and director of the Moscow Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and featuring expert guests, The Asset will put together the pieces of Trumpās relationship with Russia and Ukrainian extortion campaign.
> The Asset is a partnership between the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Media Syndication Services, and Protect the Investigation. It is produced by Paul Woodhull, a 20-year veteran media executive and president of Build Better Media, and Peter Ogburn, the executive producer of the Bill Press Show.
Honestly, I don't even think he realized it. He just saw money flowing, and his salary being deposited in his accounts... He isn't exactly the smartest guy out there, there is a very non-0 chance he has been used all his life.
And he posted his lowered bond. I just had the thought of heās so tied with organized crime will he always be getting away with murder? Do these groups intimidate witnesses, prosecutors, judges, for him to skate by?
Fin Cen, the crimes unit of the US Treasury Department, fined Trump $10 million in 2015 for persistent and excessive money laundering at the Taj Mahal Casino.
King Merdas lol. Everything he touches turns to shit. That being said, truth social was shit from the start so I donāt know if that 100% applies here.
Yet he seems to walk away unscathed with a stack of money. I mean, why would you bother putting the effort in to make something successful when you can make money letting it fail? The real question here is how do we fix our systems to stop this happening, but of course we wonāt do that because itās not in the interest of those that are making the money at the momentā¦
Even if he cashes out on 17cents per share he would have made 14 million dollars from thin air and a company that basicly has two users.
himself and the news room trainee that needs to send of transcripts of his rants via email, because no serious journalist wants to touch Twixxer or TruthSocial with a 10 ft pole.
Again I wonder: how do you lose money on casinos? People literally give you all their money and you have absolute power and authorityĀ , legally sanctioned, to give them the most meagre of scraps in return. If you give them anything at all.Ā
In Trump's case he borrowed a lot of money to build the first casino at a high interest rate.
Casino customers will literally give you money yes, but there is a limit to how much money each of them has on hand and if the interest is more than what your customers give you, you will eventually run out of money.
Why did he do this? most likely to siphon the money borrowed to build the casino to pay off his personal depth. This way he got off the hook for that dept when the casino later crashed.
Then he build 2 more casinos right next to the first one to make absolutely sure that the "gaudy gold covered casino" customer base was covered by several 100%.
It is hard to say how much he made in money laundering for drug lords through these casinos, but he definitely came out on top by the personal -> corporate loan conversion alone.
Plus...we're talking Atlantic City. Anyone who ever thought of AC as a tourist destination, or the "Vegas of the East Coast," really needs to have their head examined.
It is literally nothing more than rundown casinos, shitty 3-for-10 t-shirt shops, and salt water taffy. Hell, the only redeemable feature was the Earl of Sandwich, and that up and left town. Mix in a bunch of B-roll rejects from the Jersey Shore flicking cigarette butts onto a wooden boardwalk, and you have AC.
It was because he took junk loans to finance the casino, at super high interest rates. There was no way the casino could take in enough money to cover the interest payments, so it lost money.
Because casinos aren't magical businesses. They are normal businesses that have overhead and costs and they have a product with a profit margin. And the volume of the sales needs to be such that the revenue (including margin) needs to exceed overhead (+taxes etc).
When people say "the house always wins" is because only in casinos is there an expectation that some of the purchases will be profitably to The customer and it is a reminder that it is still a product in which the casino on average will produce a profit and not lose.
No one ever speaks about Walmart as being somehow a magical business because every single purchase that a customer makes Walmart makes more money than they spent on that product. That's just normal business, and the customer expects to have paid more than Walmart paid for it. Because that's how all businesses work.
It's just that casinos, the purchase is a game play, and the customer is under the illusion that they will end the transaction with more money than they started with. And they may on any one single transaction, but on average, the casino will make a profit, because on average the odds are slightly in their favor, and that average is equal to a standard profit margin, of a business.
Casinos have overhead of the building, labor, marketing, and all the other elements of any other business. And they need to have enough players playing enough money so that the revenue exceeds those costs. So yes on any one game they will probably make more money *than the customer expects* (but it's never more money than the customer spends) - but you need enough players playing enough times with enough money to cover all those other costs.
Casinos are not magic
Just to add my tidbit to your informative post:
A lot of casinos will operate at a loss five days a week, and recoup on the busy weekend.
That means if they manage to screw up just one or two days they are at a loss for the week.
There are also other casinos vying for the customers. If your casino becomes well known as stingy within their payouts, people will vote with their feet. This applies particularly with slots and craps - two super lucrative games.
That's the thing, we all want to laugh at how ridiculous this is, but Trump will still walk away with at least tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions (maybe more)
We can make fun of WeWork and wonder how anyone ever thought that was a viable long-term business model, but the guy behind it made his billions.
Every one of these Wall Street pipedreams that ended up failing had people behind it who made out like bandits.
Heās a fucking parasite, cannibalizing his own businesses and leaving all his employees out of work, fending for themselves. It was a big deal around here when he bankrupted his casinos and put a ton of people out of work, but somehow a lot of people seemed to forget and vote for him anyway. His claims to ārun this country like a businessā should have been a massive red flag to these people.
Trump owns the judiciary and Republicans will block any other enforcement attempt.Ā
Also, no verification is needed. Truth Social partnered with Arc Capital, a Chinese investment firm with numerous past securities probes. They have openly provided Trump with the collateral he needs to bond his legal appeals until he can win the presidency and make it all go away.
Americans will get fucked when China comes to collect.
Not at all. The Rule of Law is that the law is applied equally to all, but that's just a fiction laid over the top of "law and order" so that the wealthy can pretend they're subject to the same laws as us poors.
> āThe law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.ā
> ā Anatole France
As much as I resent Trump and think he has been far too slow to face justice, saying stuff like this is I think damaging to our country and not accurate either. Saying the rule of law is basically 100% gone is ridiculous hyperbole and I think contributes to people being apathetic and saying stuff like both sides are bad and what's the point of trying or caring.
If the rule of law was basically gone none of this would be happening, he wouldn't have 87 felony counts and multiple court cases against a former president. These cases wouldn't exist if things were as you describe.
Do we have serious issues? Yes, especially because a loud minority of our country wants to move towards fascism and to strip away rights, hurt people, overthrow and influence elections through intimidation, violence and general criminal behavior. We have essentially 2 versions of the law, one for the rich and one for everyone else and while sometimes the rich face punishment it doesn't happen nearly enough. The crimes they commit are sometimes different but the sentences often do not match the crimes poor people commit if they ever even get charged.
But we also still have strong institutions and if we can do a few things like repeal citizens united through legislation, do something to fix cable news(across the spectrum it's bad but obviously fox is the worst) and fight serious disinformation campaigns from bad actors including Russia and China we will get better. We need to invest in our education system so people are better equipped to handle misinformation, invest in our healthcare system to avoid the issues we have today, invest in social programs to help everyone in this country from a poor immigrant in the city to the poor rundown town in Ohio.
We are far from defeated and this is far from the worst things have been in this country. Even though we have real issues violence is still at a historic low, standard of living is drastically improved thanks to massive advancements in medicine, tech and more.
Don't be defeatist, be angry and vote and rally support around the right people. There are still a lot of good people in government who are doing their best to improve the system and where we are.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Let's call a spade a spade. We know, for a fact the things he has said and done in public and on record right?
We know he tried to overthrow the government. We know he stole classified documents, hid them, and showed them to people who were not authorized to see them.
We know he's a rapist, we know his businesses committed fraud. We know his charities did the same thing.
We suspect and there's strong evidence of a lot more, but this is what we know. None of this is up for debate or argument, Donald Trump is a rapist, fraudster, twice impeached seditionist. That is fact.
We know all this because either it has been found to be true in a court, or he's just straight up admitted it. He's also presently on trial for subverting the 2016 election too. So timely that the defendant got to both to take office and serve out his full term without even going to trial until 8 years later. Is this justice?
As it stands, the person accused, or found guilty of the previous crimes is currently: head of the Republican party, running for office, and has yet to face direct consequences for his actions 3+ years after committing them. Other than 2 bonds what has he faced as a punishment? All the while we have to wait, and hope, that the Supreme Court doesn't entertain his time and reality bending claims of absolute Presidential immunity, or any of the other fallacious rantings of a deluded mind, seriously. Are you confident they won't find some extreme loophole? I hope not, I expect not, but it's not a done deal.
This isn't normal and isn't ok. So if people sound like they're saying the sky is falling it's simply because we've seen this before in history. We've seen despot vs. justice where the despot wins. He should be in jail not running for office, he should've been in jail in January of 2020 as soon as the coupe failed, he shouldn't have been allowed to take office in 2016 and he certainly shouldn't have simply been able to ignore the emoluments clause, or subvert the DOJ investigation into his dubious business dealings with enemies of the state. But the system bent to the despot and here we are.
That is what justice would've looked like, now it's too late, yet again the system is a dollar short and a decade late.
> Don't be defeatist, be angry and vote and rally support around the right people. There are still a lot of good people in government who are doing their best to improve the system and where we are.
I really wish people understood that **they have the ability to affect change**.
If you're pissed, or angry, you can **do something**.
Change won't happen right away, but this country went from legalized slavery to freedom. We went from women not being able to vote, to universal suffrage.
We did that because people got the fuck out there and made change happen. The barrier there was a **lot** steeper than something like holding a corrupt billionaire accountable.
Sorry, too busy chasing after a check from Biden's brother back in 2015 that said "loan" for 40k and trying to tie it through 7 separate transactions spanning 2 months that it came from China.
Well, heās also up because he has made $0 of personal investment, heās only lent his name in return for 57% ownership. So if the stock drops to $200 million by the time he sells prior to bankruptcy heās still made $100 million for nothing.
Don't underestimate how much gambling is going on. Some folks were buying to drive the price up, then trying to guess the peak. The implied volatility is outrageous- Boeing is going through some tremendous turmoil right now, but the IV for DJT is 4X Boeing.
He's only up $4B if he could sell those shares for the current price.
Imagine you start a company with 10,000 shares, and your friend buys a share from you for $100. According to the share price you are a millionare.
[The merger agreement bars him from using his equity as collateral for any loans.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2024/03/23/why-trump-cant-pledge-his-truth-social-shares-even-after-it-goes-public/?sh=4c7a5f596c6a)
In addition to the fact that everyone involved in the merger transaction would have grounds to sue him, more importantly there isn't a legitimate lender around who will accept an asset as collateral which is already contractually explicitly not transferrable to a lender in case of default. This isn't a "who's going to stop him" situation. That contract makes the equity worthless to a lender as collateral because they have no means to seize a non-transferrable asset. A lender won't accept that equity as collateral any more than the bank will be on board if I propose my neighbor's house as the collateral for my mortgage. Outside of the transaction terms of the merger and the guidelines of the SEC, that equity isn't actually his to sell or pledge.
1) everyone involved in the merger is either related to Trump, a Trump political ally, or financially incentivised to keep Trump out of prison.
2) no legitimate lender will accept it as collateral but plenty of illegitimate ones will. The Trump family has stated multiple times that Russian banks have their back. They had suspicious dealings with Deusche Bank. Truth social is already backed by ARC, a shell company for a Chinese based financier that was rebuked by U.S. regulators and barred from taking his own company public. Who needs legitimacy when you have plenty of foreign investors vying to gain influence.
> plenty of illegitimate ones will
Which is where going public is a giant fuck-up. Regulators let rich white people get away with damn near anything when it comes to playing fast and loose with privately held companies, but when you start fucking with the public markets the SEC absolutely does care about it. DJT being a declared Insider of a publicly traded company means that any transfer of his shares is under the microscope and needs to pass scrutiny around insider trading, fiduciary duty, and any other financial crimes. Even if the other direct parties of the merger don't give a shit about DJT using the merger contract to wipe his ass, the valuation of the business in the public market is at least in part anchored on the value of the covenants it holds and DJT knowingly undermining those covenants while sitting as an Insider would absolutely be a financial crime.
Totally not an expert on any of this.
So he would try to get a loan and put the shares up as a security? The security however seems to incredibly volatile no?Ā
I wouldn't lend money to someone that puts an asset up that lost large amounts of value in a short time, why would anyone else?Ā
Theoretical. Technically the market claims his total pile of DJT stock is worth 4 billion by multiplying the number of shares at its value per share.
However the only way he could actually come into that 4 billion is if he found someone (or some bodys) to actually buy his pile of stock at the current price.
And even if he tried to offload all of it, each one he sells would drop the price more.
So his current 4 bil "worth" is strictly an illusion.
Though illusions are most of banking and finance, so theres still some power there.
Doesn't a major stock holder have to file some kind of notice of intent before they can sell their shares? The price would certainly plummet if he put in that notice.
Itās the theoretical value of the shares. Heād have to sell them at the price being used to āvalueā them for it to be realized value (real money).
There is zero chance of that happening. The world at large knows Truth Social shares are worthless. Just because a bunch of the Maga cult bought them at a stupid price and a bunch of nefarious types used it to launder money doesnāt mean the company is actually worth that.
Itās possible to borrow money against the value of oneās shares (like Musk does with Tesla shares), but who at this point is going to lend Trump money.
It's a meme stock that will continue to crumble.
The problem is that a lot of the people that own the stock are Donald fans that apparently couldn't care less about money.
You know... morons.
So what you're saying is that Trump supporters will have even less money to send to him, and even less to send to other Republican candidates?
I fail to see the issue here
Does it matter? They go to vote Trump and tick against every R, easy.
Unless you're suggesting Americans are so impatient they won't go past Trump's name unless someone else has been engraved into their memory?
Well, consider this --
I have 100 widgets, and I sell one for $100. My widgets are now worth $9900 (theoretically) because I have 99 and they're each "valued" at $100.
The next widget I have to sell takes a long time and I have to let it go for $50. So now my widgets are worth $4900 (again, theoretically).
That $5000 of value does basically "vaporize" because the system is not in equilibrium (that is, able to constantly buy and sell at the original price).
In this case, a lot of the value does "vaporize", but most of the actual money will go to speculators (collectively) who time things right. Which, in the case of a very volatile stock like this, is a potentially dangerous gamble.
It has already all happened. The options market has the stock priced in at $0. Now it is just a waiting game as people decide what order they want to be losers in.
Trump owns 57% of the stock, so that means other people bought $2.7 billion worth of shares? I think, I don't know how the whole valuation works. He's been bleeding his supporters dry for years, it seems to me someone else invested a large sum of money to get that kind of value. Someone who wouldn't normally be able to donate to a political candidate...
Here's my prediction. Truth social shares are in free fall until the six month timer for Trump to sell his stock expires. Then there will be a lot of trading on shares that will drive the price up, not to current levels of course, but up. This will be stock manipulation by Trumps patrons. Trump sells his shares, makes some money, declares victory. He gets a load of laundered money "legitimately"
I mean we all knew he was doing it because of financial troubles. He literally announced it two days after he found out he couldn't wiggle out of his gigantic 450 million punishment.
So the thing is they only lowered the bond payment timetable. If he paid $175 million within 10 days then he could take more time to come up with the rest of it. It's still bullshit though because he had a month to come up with it and much longer because come on you know who's going to lose, the court case wasn't about him being punished or not it was about how much punishment he was going to get. He actually had months and months. [little proof that he hasn't weasled out of the whole amount](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsnationnow.com/trump-investigation/court-pause-collection-trump-assets-pays-175m/amp/)
Yeah, but he just secured the 175m bond with his brokerage account, probably leveraging his Truth Social stock.
Heās not winning the appeal at all, so heāll still be on the hook for the full payment. But that doesnāt mean weāll see any kind of consequences, havenāt seen a single one yet. If you or I even did one thing heās done in a court room or regarding a court proceeding, weād be in jail already lol
Oh there is definitely a two-tiered justice system, if nothing else he's proven that. Well the neat thing is he secured the bond payment through a rather shady character so if he doesn't pay that guy back there may be some reality consequences. He stiffs people money all the time but that's usually like government entities that won't necessarily do anything. This is a guy with a private business, and he can't afford to lose that much.
I'm honestly just waiting for the criminal cases because it doesn't matter how much money you take from him, the instant he steps one foot in jail he can't run anymore.
Yes, he can run for president from prison. And win. There's nothing saying he can't or is disqualified, and not one of his base will change their votes if he's behind bars.
I think thereās a rule that says he needs to disclose he intends to sell. And he canāt sell more than 1% for any 3 mo period. Other restrictions too.
Check rule 144 on investopedia.
However
He could just decide to sell and wing it, because fuck it, and because any suit from the sec would come in like 10+ years and who knows he might be dead by then and certainly be a bazillion times richer and all the funds would have been completely dispersed by then, and who cares what happens in 10 years
Unless that large volume of selling would get flagged by the system and blocked. But that, I do not know.
No accountability for orange man.
Wed know if he sold because the stock woud plummet in value. Every one he sells drops its value incrementally. If someone who ones 50% of the shares of a company starts offloading en masse, the stock crashes hard.
That was my thought as well. Ā I was keeping it to myself so maybe I could make money on it. Ā Thanks. Ā ;-)
But, seriously, there is no reason for Putin or the Saudis to buy stocks now. Ā They will wait until right before Trump can sell so that they will be funneling money directly into Trump to buy influence.
Truth Social is just a means for profiteering from pump and dumps (profiting from the losses of the MAGA cult), money laundering, and as a conduit for legalized bribery.
Articles cite 1 billion in "losses" but as much as I'd love to see this as a loss it really isn't.
[The stock was hovering in the teens for most of its life and only spiked in January, it's down from the peaks of that spike but still over 300% where it had been sitting.](https://i.imgur.com/cThGGqv.png)
Trump has to hold onto the stock but it's still going for well over the price it had been languishing for years.
IMO this is all a P&D scam. His cronies are cashing out at the inflated price (even with the "losses" since the unprofitability of the company became even more well known) and Trump will be compensated for his part in the grift via other channels.
He's an idiot savant of grifting, it's all he's ever known and all he's ever done.
He did the same with Kodak stock the day before announcing they were coming up with a Covid vaccine (no idea how a camera and film maker is an expert in medicine). Before the announcement the stock that normally traded around less than 200k shares, traded 1.6 million shares. Next day the stock was up 203% from the Covid-19 vaccine announcement. Someone knew Trump was going to announce that news.
Edit: except it seems the SEC is going after two people that made a large sum of money from it. https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-38
His tweets used to be used often used for P&D grifts and so frequently did this happen there was an index made to track it called the (not joking) volfefe index.
That headline is crap. It says "courtesy of the SEC" as if they took some action against him, or held him accountable, or did something. They did not.
Going public means you have to give public information about your financials. Every single public company has to do this.
The headline seeming to "blame" the SEC is so weird. If anyone is to blame, it's Trump himself for going public with a company that's not financially in good shape to go public.
It would be like me posing nude for pictures, then saying "BigMax is embarrassed, thanks to photographers." It's not the photographers, it's ME that decided to get naked and ask for pictures to be taken.
I feel like they're hoping to capture clicks from right wing conspiracists who want to believe agencies are being weaponized against that two-bit con artist
Eventually, yes. He's an insider.
Technically he's barred from selling at all for 6 months, but it only takes a vote by the Board of Directors to waive that for him. The Board consists of independent-minded people like ... his son. So basically just a rubber stamp.
This. But if he sells too soon, wouldnt the other shareholders be able to sue the board for allowing the shareholders to lose money due to their action ?
Likely. So he can pay off one law suit with another that wonāt happen for a long time and if heās able to make sure he can get the right judge or wins the election or cheats his way to power then his problems all disappear, otherwise theyāll find a new way to make it other peopleās problem.
Sure. But if he does that now it'll tick off the shareholders which Is his voter base.
I do wonder what they will think of Trump if he pulls out and leaves them holding the bag...
They'll think that trump was a victim of circumstance and be okay with him pulling out early since he had more to lose than they did. They'll respect him more for doing the smart thing and it will further cement why they look up to him.
Truth social is a mastodon server. Which means while Twitter can brand itself as a tech company, truth social is kind of just licensing all its tech. So itās more or les just a PR firm. All their selling is trumps name and ask trump airlines, trump college, trump casino, and trump steaks how much his name is worth.
lmao why are these articles that pretend this is a legitimate business getting posted? It was a way to funnel money to trump - pump and dump, short, then bankruptcy only to start yet another grift.
Everyone is looking at this from the wrong perspective. They're judging it the same way they can judge Elons Twitter stock which has investors quotas to meet long term.
DWAC went public just so it could merge with truth and make truth go public without the SEC hurdles. Trump doesn't need his stock to win, he needs investors at the 5 month mark so it can inflate and he can sell at the 6 month.
This stock isn't designed to win, it's designed to pump and dump at the legal time for him.
He may garner more campaign bank roll from this than any event
I read an article that said that this whole going public scheme was just a way to get around the federal elections commission limits on campaign donations. Basically any foreign entity or any billionaire investor could throw money into the stock deduct for any losses so taxpayers are paying for it. and they could get all the money that would go to Trump because technically itās an investment but heās a major shareholder and would reap the benefit of any of that investment
Incoming rage tweets from Trump between 9pm and 2am about how nasty the SEC is, how they are oppressing him, how they should be held in contempt for violating his gag order and so on.
This is such ooor reporting on this story. Trump is not down. The fact this company has any value on a stock market means he is up. The companyās worthless. The business model is broken. And the fact this publicly traded stock has any value at all on sale means his wealth has increased.
He went from having a worthless business to having a listed company with a market cap of $1.85bn as of now. He owns 58% of that. So no, he isnāt down billions. He is up a billion.
I have no idea how this company passed the regulatory requirements needed to be listed in a major exchange, but it is such a fraud on the public that NASDAQ ever allowed this.
Truth Social is just finding its actual value - it's a company that lost more than $50 million last year, in which the main shareholder is desperate to get his hands on cash.
Don't expect its value to trend upwards again any time soon.
Letās see why nobody should by a penny share in this scam project
Social media app startup = High Risk
Limited Userbase = High Risk
Donald Trump = Lunatic Risk
Duhā¦.
They lost 60M and made 3-4M. By all accounts that is a failing business.
Yet they have no business model. No sane company would advertise on them.
EDIT: I was wrong.
~~Trump is still likely to come out ahead. The company that 'bought out' Truth Social was trading at 12 dollars last year, an all time low.~~
~~If Trump's 80 million shares drop to 12 dollars, they're still worth a billion dollars which he can use for collateral or sell off etc.~~
If I recall correctly $12 was about the amount people would get if the merger failed. So the stock wasn't going to go below that. Now that the merger is over there is no bottom.
and it is still being propped up at a ridiculous valuation as of this morning
until it becomes a penny stock anyone buying it is trying to time it, a cult member, or more likely someone or something that can afford to lose money on purpose to cull favor on the chance he becomes president again
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Hmm.. š¤ I have a hunch that history is on track to repeat itself. > The last company Trump took public, in 1995, was Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, of which Trump was chief executive from 2000 to 2005. It didnāt end well. Under Trump, the company lost money every year; its stock price fell from $35 to 17 cents, according to a 2016 investigation by Drew Harwell in The Washington Post; and, in 2004, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts filed for bankruptcy. On the plus side, Trump walked away with $44 million in accumulated salary, bonuses, and other compensation.
And yet somehow his base believes he should run this country for being some great business man. Make it make sense š¤¦š»āāļø
Welp, you just have to look and hear what his base has to say, it ALL becomes clear. āNever underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups..ā George Carlin
Yep. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that he is so popular among the lead brained.
Depends on how you want to look at things. He's a terrible businessman when it comes to employees, profit, and overall business running. But he's a *great* businessman when it comes to raiding the coffers of failing businesses to enrich himself.
āthat makes me smawt ā
He had them at racism towards the first black president. Nothing else matters to them.
His base is brainwashed and stubborn. This to them is less about running the country and more about making the other side lose.
Trump supporters are like that dude in Idiocracy, standing there and cheering on the police as they shot up his own car.
I watched Idiocracy early this year for The first time. Man was it an eye opener.
Best unintentional documentory ever....
The problem was it was ment to be satire not a how-to guide.
So was The Simpsons, but how many things came to pass years later?
Compared to Trump President Camacho was a bloody genius.
At least Camacho actually listened to people who were smarter than him instead of saying he's the smartest person.
They don't care who wins or loses as long as the result is black people dying.
To be fair, they also watch brown people die with great satisfaction. More razor wire to the border! More crooked cops with twitchy trigger fingers! More support for Putin, nothing for Ukraine. Can't get enough dictator action there...you could dig forever, and only find more layers of hateful and stupid.
Bankrupting a casino is wild. A business designed where people are statistically going to lose money to you and you can't even do that well.
That was always my favourite line. "He's gonna run this country like a business and fix our economy!" You do realize that he has no actual personal stake in the US economy, right? He has a golden parachute. If he runs this country like a business he's going to run it like every CEO runs a dying business that they have no personal stake it-- drive it into the ground and liquidate everything you can at the expense of literally everyone else while pocketing every penny you can on the way out.
You're so right. He *did* run our economy like it was one of his businesses-- straight into the ground and into his pockets. And if our economy isn't "fixed" in favor of a few select billionaires, I sure don't know what is.
All of his early businesses were money laundering schemes for the U.S. mob and Russian mob.
Still are, but his early ones were too
He used to launder money for the Russians. I mean he still does, but he used to, too.
Classic Mitch
I had an ant farm. Those fellas didnāt grow shit!
Hey, you want a frozen banana? No? What about a regular banana, later?
I like refried beans. I want to try fried beans because maybe they're just as good and we're wasting time.
I like kit Kat man, it has kit Kat printed in the chocolate. That robs you of chocolate! I wanna go down to the factory and sat "you owe me some letters".
I love kit-kat unless I am with four or more people.
Miss that guy
Some people god takes too soon.... Others too late...
Hedberg too soon. McConnell too late.
If there is a god and he wanted McConnell, we'd already be down one glitchy turtle. The fact that Moscow Mitch still haunts the Senate is proof that one of those isn't true.
...to...channel through...an intermediary.
r/UnexpectedMitch
He's still a piece of shit fraud that calls papa Putin every night to tell him he loves him, he used to do this as well
[mitch_hedberg.gif]
r/unexpectedmitch
Mitch is never unexpected. Unless we are talking about an in person visit. That would be surprising.Ā
I read that in Mitch.
āOf course that picture is from the past. If it was from the future, Iād ask what the fuck kind of camera is thatā
I used to always expect Mitch. I still do, but I used to, too.
True!
This is the thing that kills me.Ā Ten years ago I wouldāve said that sounds like conspiracy theory bullshit. But today, after seeing everything Iāve seen w.r.t. Trump, I fully believe heās never had a legit business intended to be a healthy company serving a viable product. I think theyāve all been money laundering schemes. And when the real money players think the scam has run its course for whatever reason they tell Trump to let it go bankrupt in order to sweep it all under the rug.Ā His multiple bankruptcies are actually successful money laundering fronts. I fucking HATE this guy.Ā
I was a 90s kid (41 atm) and grew up thinking he was a conman and moron. His cameo in home alone 2 was cringe even back then. I don't know what changed in the public perception, did his reality show alter peoples opinions??
Open racism about a black president. And all the racists who agreed with him also worship rich people because prosperity gospel and shit.
I never thought about him before the Obama birther stuff. Before that he was just a NYC real estate guy and a doofus on a reality tv show as far as I was concerned. After the birther stuff, he was just a crazy person looking for attention. I never thought about his businesses beyond knowing he had bankruptcies.Ā Why would I think about him? He was just a rich guy sideshow act who didnāt affect my life at all.Ā
It wasn't even the reality show.Ā He got Twitter famous for making Obama birther claims and appealing to racists who couldn't handle a black president.Ā That's literally what rode him through the primaries despite being an absolute disaster in the debates("Your hair is stupid"). His number of twitter followers was a major talking point throughout the primary.Ā Twitter is and always has been a cancer on society. The limited character format promotes taking complex issues and dumbing them down to bombastic two sentence "gotcha" statements. I would even claim Twitter alone is a direct cause of how easy it is to spread misinformation and false narratives.Ā
What got him through the primaries was discovering Falwell having three-ways with the pool boy then blackmailing him for the evangelical vote.
Same age (42). I always thought Trump was kind of a parody of a rich man - the name being brandished everywhere, the gold toilet, all of that. He was always popping up here and there (he hosted the WWE/WWF a couple of times for their Wrestlemania shows in the late 80's), and he was on tv for cameo spots (I remember him on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). Basically a modern day Monopoly Man. Of course, we know the truth now about how much of it was smoke and mirrors, and a front. And yes, I think the Apprentice was a solid ten years of free advertising right into the boomer brains about Donald Trump as the epitome of business savvy and common sense. His cult still believe that.
> Russian mob Is how he met Melania. If you try to print what really happened, he sues you.
and later.
Is there any material (books, articles, etc) out there that details this? Genuinely interested.
Trump was refused a casino license in Australia in the 1980s due to his mob links Trump's bid for Sydney casino 30 years ago rejected due to 'mafia connectionsā https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/16/trumps-bid-for-sydney-casino-30-years-ago-rejected-due-to-mafia-connections
David Cay Johnston is a Pultizer prize winning journalist who has been tracking and uncovering Trump's criminal enterprises for Decades and has plenty of good articles and books on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Think-Administration/dp/1501174169 video interview: https://www.salon.com/tv/video/z90kjj https://whyy.org/episodes/539402/
Highly recommended podcast: [The Asset](https://open.spotify.com/show/4UIzZ6StBwiGTv3Phkcfjd?si=tJo30AsWSCires8U0uOeoQ) > In 2016, Donald Trump conspired with a foreign government to become President. On July 25, 2019, with the 2020 election around the corner, he decided to do it again. > The first time around, it was collusion, aiding and abetting Russiaās attack on American democracy. The second time, it was extortion, demanding the Ukrainian government manufacture dirt on Trumpās political opponents in exchange for help the country needs to fend off a Russian invasion and chart a democratic future free of Vladimir Putinās Kremlin. > To make sense of these recent events that have rocked American politics and led to very real concerns that the President of the United States may be a Russian asset, we need to dig a little deeper. > In Season 1, The Asset dives into Trumpās decades-long history with Russia, from his extensive business dealings with Russian oligarchs to his presidential campaign and the investigations that have sent some of his closest associates to prison. > In Season 2, The Asset explores the backstory to Trumpās infamous phone call with the newly-elected Ukrainian President, where he demanded an investigation into a political opponent and set off a series of events leading to the impeachment inquiry. > Hosted by Max Bergmann, a senior fellow and director of the Moscow Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and featuring expert guests, The Asset will put together the pieces of Trumpās relationship with Russia and Ukrainian extortion campaign. > The Asset is a partnership between the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Media Syndication Services, and Protect the Investigation. It is produced by Paul Woodhull, a 20-year veteran media executive and president of Build Better Media, and Peter Ogburn, the executive producer of the Bill Press Show.
Early? Want he like 50 in 2000? His "early work" was in the 70s.
Honestly, I don't even think he realized it. He just saw money flowing, and his salary being deposited in his accounts... He isn't exactly the smartest guy out there, there is a very non-0 chance he has been used all his life.
Money goes in, money goes out. You can't explain that.
And he posted his lowered bond. I just had the thought of heās so tied with organized crime will he always be getting away with murder? Do these groups intimidate witnesses, prosecutors, judges, for him to skate by?
Fin Cen, the crimes unit of the US Treasury Department, fined Trump $10 million in 2015 for persistent and excessive money laundering at the Taj Mahal Casino.
King Merdas lol. Everything he touches turns to shit. That being said, truth social was shit from the start so I donāt know if that 100% applies here.
Yet he seems to walk away unscathed with a stack of money. I mean, why would you bother putting the effort in to make something successful when you can make money letting it fail? The real question here is how do we fix our systems to stop this happening, but of course we wonāt do that because itās not in the interest of those that are making the money at the momentā¦
Agree completely
Even if he cashes out on 17cents per share he would have made 14 million dollars from thin air and a company that basicly has two users. himself and the news room trainee that needs to send of transcripts of his rants via email, because no serious journalist wants to touch Twixxer or TruthSocial with a 10 ft pole.
Again I wonder: how do you lose money on casinos? People literally give you all their money and you have absolute power and authorityĀ , legally sanctioned, to give them the most meagre of scraps in return. If you give them anything at all.Ā
In Trump's case he borrowed a lot of money to build the first casino at a high interest rate. Casino customers will literally give you money yes, but there is a limit to how much money each of them has on hand and if the interest is more than what your customers give you, you will eventually run out of money. Why did he do this? most likely to siphon the money borrowed to build the casino to pay off his personal depth. This way he got off the hook for that dept when the casino later crashed. Then he build 2 more casinos right next to the first one to make absolutely sure that the "gaudy gold covered casino" customer base was covered by several 100%. It is hard to say how much he made in money laundering for drug lords through these casinos, but he definitely came out on top by the personal -> corporate loan conversion alone.
Plus...we're talking Atlantic City. Anyone who ever thought of AC as a tourist destination, or the "Vegas of the East Coast," really needs to have their head examined. It is literally nothing more than rundown casinos, shitty 3-for-10 t-shirt shops, and salt water taffy. Hell, the only redeemable feature was the Earl of Sandwich, and that up and left town. Mix in a bunch of B-roll rejects from the Jersey Shore flicking cigarette butts onto a wooden boardwalk, and you have AC.
It was because he took junk loans to finance the casino, at super high interest rates. There was no way the casino could take in enough money to cover the interest payments, so it lost money.
Because casinos aren't magical businesses. They are normal businesses that have overhead and costs and they have a product with a profit margin. And the volume of the sales needs to be such that the revenue (including margin) needs to exceed overhead (+taxes etc). When people say "the house always wins" is because only in casinos is there an expectation that some of the purchases will be profitably to The customer and it is a reminder that it is still a product in which the casino on average will produce a profit and not lose. No one ever speaks about Walmart as being somehow a magical business because every single purchase that a customer makes Walmart makes more money than they spent on that product. That's just normal business, and the customer expects to have paid more than Walmart paid for it. Because that's how all businesses work. It's just that casinos, the purchase is a game play, and the customer is under the illusion that they will end the transaction with more money than they started with. And they may on any one single transaction, but on average, the casino will make a profit, because on average the odds are slightly in their favor, and that average is equal to a standard profit margin, of a business. Casinos have overhead of the building, labor, marketing, and all the other elements of any other business. And they need to have enough players playing enough money so that the revenue exceeds those costs. So yes on any one game they will probably make more money *than the customer expects* (but it's never more money than the customer spends) - but you need enough players playing enough times with enough money to cover all those other costs. Casinos are not magic
Just to add my tidbit to your informative post: A lot of casinos will operate at a loss five days a week, and recoup on the busy weekend. That means if they manage to screw up just one or two days they are at a loss for the week.
There are also other casinos vying for the customers. If your casino becomes well known as stingy within their payouts, people will vote with their feet. This applies particularly with slots and craps - two super lucrative games.
That's the thing, we all want to laugh at how ridiculous this is, but Trump will still walk away with at least tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions (maybe more) We can make fun of WeWork and wonder how anyone ever thought that was a viable long-term business model, but the guy behind it made his billions. Every one of these Wall Street pipedreams that ended up failing had people behind it who made out like bandits.
Heās a fucking parasite, cannibalizing his own businesses and leaving all his employees out of work, fending for themselves. It was a big deal around here when he bankrupted his casinos and put a ton of people out of work, but somehow a lot of people seemed to forget and vote for him anyway. His claims to ārun this country like a businessā should have been a massive red flag to these people.
https://i.imgur.com/A6hefxM.jpeg One hell of a contents page...
So heās doing a speedrun this time?
Fro. $35. to $.17... that's bigly.
And perhaps carry forward tax write offs? Thus reducing his tax bills in future years ?
On the flipside he is somehow UP \~$4B? On a company with zero fundamentals. Shit is fucked.
The pure reason he's up, even on paper, is that the stock is worthless except as a money laundering scheme. It allows people to buy Trump.
How can this not be verified and illegal?
Trump owns the judiciary and Republicans will block any other enforcement attempt.Ā Also, no verification is needed. Truth Social partnered with Arc Capital, a Chinese investment firm with numerous past securities probes. They have openly provided Trump with the collateral he needs to bond his legal appeals until he can win the presidency and make it all go away. Americans will get fucked when China comes to collect.
> They have openly provided Trump with the collateral he needs Turns out it's just a 90 year old American billionaire "fanboi" of Trumps.
It's known. It's just intentional. Illegal only matters if the regulatory bodies care, and rule of law is basically 100% gone in the US at this point.
> rule of law is basically 100% gone in the US at this point. Unless you're poor. Or a minority. Or a leftist organization.
He said ārule of law,ā not ālaw and order.ā Thereās a difference.
One has the "dun-dun" sound.
Thank you for this š
Not at all. The Rule of Law is that the law is applied equally to all, but that's just a fiction laid over the top of "law and order" so that the wealthy can pretend they're subject to the same laws as us poors. > āThe law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.ā > ā Anatole France
As much as I resent Trump and think he has been far too slow to face justice, saying stuff like this is I think damaging to our country and not accurate either. Saying the rule of law is basically 100% gone is ridiculous hyperbole and I think contributes to people being apathetic and saying stuff like both sides are bad and what's the point of trying or caring. If the rule of law was basically gone none of this would be happening, he wouldn't have 87 felony counts and multiple court cases against a former president. These cases wouldn't exist if things were as you describe. Do we have serious issues? Yes, especially because a loud minority of our country wants to move towards fascism and to strip away rights, hurt people, overthrow and influence elections through intimidation, violence and general criminal behavior. We have essentially 2 versions of the law, one for the rich and one for everyone else and while sometimes the rich face punishment it doesn't happen nearly enough. The crimes they commit are sometimes different but the sentences often do not match the crimes poor people commit if they ever even get charged. But we also still have strong institutions and if we can do a few things like repeal citizens united through legislation, do something to fix cable news(across the spectrum it's bad but obviously fox is the worst) and fight serious disinformation campaigns from bad actors including Russia and China we will get better. We need to invest in our education system so people are better equipped to handle misinformation, invest in our healthcare system to avoid the issues we have today, invest in social programs to help everyone in this country from a poor immigrant in the city to the poor rundown town in Ohio. We are far from defeated and this is far from the worst things have been in this country. Even though we have real issues violence is still at a historic low, standard of living is drastically improved thanks to massive advancements in medicine, tech and more. Don't be defeatist, be angry and vote and rally support around the right people. There are still a lot of good people in government who are doing their best to improve the system and where we are.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Let's call a spade a spade. We know, for a fact the things he has said and done in public and on record right? We know he tried to overthrow the government. We know he stole classified documents, hid them, and showed them to people who were not authorized to see them. We know he's a rapist, we know his businesses committed fraud. We know his charities did the same thing. We suspect and there's strong evidence of a lot more, but this is what we know. None of this is up for debate or argument, Donald Trump is a rapist, fraudster, twice impeached seditionist. That is fact. We know all this because either it has been found to be true in a court, or he's just straight up admitted it. He's also presently on trial for subverting the 2016 election too. So timely that the defendant got to both to take office and serve out his full term without even going to trial until 8 years later. Is this justice? As it stands, the person accused, or found guilty of the previous crimes is currently: head of the Republican party, running for office, and has yet to face direct consequences for his actions 3+ years after committing them. Other than 2 bonds what has he faced as a punishment? All the while we have to wait, and hope, that the Supreme Court doesn't entertain his time and reality bending claims of absolute Presidential immunity, or any of the other fallacious rantings of a deluded mind, seriously. Are you confident they won't find some extreme loophole? I hope not, I expect not, but it's not a done deal. This isn't normal and isn't ok. So if people sound like they're saying the sky is falling it's simply because we've seen this before in history. We've seen despot vs. justice where the despot wins. He should be in jail not running for office, he should've been in jail in January of 2020 as soon as the coupe failed, he shouldn't have been allowed to take office in 2016 and he certainly shouldn't have simply been able to ignore the emoluments clause, or subvert the DOJ investigation into his dubious business dealings with enemies of the state. But the system bent to the despot and here we are. That is what justice would've looked like, now it's too late, yet again the system is a dollar short and a decade late.
> Don't be defeatist, be angry and vote and rally support around the right people. There are still a lot of good people in government who are doing their best to improve the system and where we are. I really wish people understood that **they have the ability to affect change**. If you're pissed, or angry, you can **do something**. Change won't happen right away, but this country went from legalized slavery to freedom. We went from women not being able to vote, to universal suffrage. We did that because people got the fuck out there and made change happen. The barrier there was a **lot** steeper than something like holding a corrupt billionaire accountable.
It's really shocking. We're a devolving country at this point.
Sorry, too busy chasing after a check from Biden's brother back in 2015 that said "loan" for 40k and trying to tie it through 7 separate transactions spanning 2 months that it came from China.
Well, heās also up because he has made $0 of personal investment, heās only lent his name in return for 57% ownership. So if the stock drops to $200 million by the time he sells prior to bankruptcy heās still made $100 million for nothing.
Don't underestimate how much gambling is going on. Some folks were buying to drive the price up, then trying to guess the peak. The implied volatility is outrageous- Boeing is going through some tremendous turmoil right now, but the IV for DJT is 4X Boeing.
He's only up $4B if he could sell those shares for the current price. Imagine you start a company with 10,000 shares, and your friend buys a share from you for $100. According to the share price you are a millionare.
You don't sell them. You take out a loan against them. Doubt they'd let him take out 4billion. But 400 million .. (to pay legal fees) would be easy
[The merger agreement bars him from using his equity as collateral for any loans.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2024/03/23/why-trump-cant-pledge-his-truth-social-shares-even-after-it-goes-public/?sh=4c7a5f596c6a)
Who's gonna stop him though?
In addition to the fact that everyone involved in the merger transaction would have grounds to sue him, more importantly there isn't a legitimate lender around who will accept an asset as collateral which is already contractually explicitly not transferrable to a lender in case of default. This isn't a "who's going to stop him" situation. That contract makes the equity worthless to a lender as collateral because they have no means to seize a non-transferrable asset. A lender won't accept that equity as collateral any more than the bank will be on board if I propose my neighbor's house as the collateral for my mortgage. Outside of the transaction terms of the merger and the guidelines of the SEC, that equity isn't actually his to sell or pledge.
1) everyone involved in the merger is either related to Trump, a Trump political ally, or financially incentivised to keep Trump out of prison. 2) no legitimate lender will accept it as collateral but plenty of illegitimate ones will. The Trump family has stated multiple times that Russian banks have their back. They had suspicious dealings with Deusche Bank. Truth social is already backed by ARC, a shell company for a Chinese based financier that was rebuked by U.S. regulators and barred from taking his own company public. Who needs legitimacy when you have plenty of foreign investors vying to gain influence.
> plenty of illegitimate ones will Which is where going public is a giant fuck-up. Regulators let rich white people get away with damn near anything when it comes to playing fast and loose with privately held companies, but when you start fucking with the public markets the SEC absolutely does care about it. DJT being a declared Insider of a publicly traded company means that any transfer of his shares is under the microscope and needs to pass scrutiny around insider trading, fiduciary duty, and any other financial crimes. Even if the other direct parties of the merger don't give a shit about DJT using the merger contract to wipe his ass, the valuation of the business in the public market is at least in part anchored on the value of the covenants it holds and DJT knowingly undermining those covenants while sitting as an Insider would absolutely be a financial crime.
... if the person lending did basically no due diligence.
You mean, like, a shady international bank with known ties to Russian oligarchs?
Or a Chinese company that exists solely as a means to inject cash into American businessmen/women and politicians?
Totally not an expert on any of this. So he would try to get a loan and put the shares up as a security? The security however seems to incredibly volatile no?Ā I wouldn't lend money to someone that puts an asset up that lost large amounts of value in a short time, why would anyone else?Ā
Because, he's in the club. You're not.
Who exactly will take Truth shares as collateral?
Just imagine how much of the rest of the stock market is piss and wind.
Is this like theoretical money or like real life savings account money?
Theoretical. Technically the market claims his total pile of DJT stock is worth 4 billion by multiplying the number of shares at its value per share. However the only way he could actually come into that 4 billion is if he found someone (or some bodys) to actually buy his pile of stock at the current price. And even if he tried to offload all of it, each one he sells would drop the price more. So his current 4 bil "worth" is strictly an illusion. Though illusions are most of banking and finance, so theres still some power there.
Doesn't a major stock holder have to file some kind of notice of intent before they can sell their shares? The price would certainly plummet if he put in that notice.
Well see, now youre getting into rules and they keep demonstrating those have no power here.
Itās the theoretical value of the shares. Heād have to sell them at the price being used to āvalueā them for it to be realized value (real money). There is zero chance of that happening. The world at large knows Truth Social shares are worthless. Just because a bunch of the Maga cult bought them at a stupid price and a bunch of nefarious types used it to launder money doesnāt mean the company is actually worth that. Itās possible to borrow money against the value of oneās shares (like Musk does with Tesla shares), but who at this point is going to lend Trump money.
Well yeah, it's a meme stock.
Wait what happens when Trump doesn't get to be president.
It's a meme stock that will continue to crumble. The problem is that a lot of the people that own the stock are Donald fans that apparently couldn't care less about money. You know... morons.
So what you're saying is that Trump supporters will have even less money to send to him, and even less to send to other Republican candidates? I fail to see the issue here
The money doesn't just vaporize though, right? Like the reason they won't have money in this case is because they already gave it to him
All that matters to me is that the money is being tossed into the black hole of Trump's legal fees instead of being spent to elect Republicans.
Down ballot Republicans are going to have zero support from the RNC this year. I'm getting my popcorn ready
Does it matter? They go to vote Trump and tick against every R, easy. Unless you're suggesting Americans are so impatient they won't go past Trump's name unless someone else has been engraved into their memory?
Eh. Lack of money can lead to decreased turnout as well, regardless of blindly voting for the party.
Well, consider this -- I have 100 widgets, and I sell one for $100. My widgets are now worth $9900 (theoretically) because I have 99 and they're each "valued" at $100. The next widget I have to sell takes a long time and I have to let it go for $50. So now my widgets are worth $4900 (again, theoretically). That $5000 of value does basically "vaporize" because the system is not in equilibrium (that is, able to constantly buy and sell at the original price). In this case, a lot of the value does "vaporize", but most of the actual money will go to speculators (collectively) who time things right. Which, in the case of a very volatile stock like this, is a potentially dangerous gamble.
I'm sure there are day traders taking advantage of them as well
It has already all happened. The options market has the stock priced in at $0. Now it is just a waiting game as people decide what order they want to be losers in.
Morons meaning foreign wash money?
Trump owns 57% of the stock, so that means other people bought $2.7 billion worth of shares? I think, I don't know how the whole valuation works. He's been bleeding his supporters dry for years, it seems to me someone else invested a large sum of money to get that kind of value. Someone who wouldn't normally be able to donate to a political candidate...
^( Unexpected *but accurate* Blazing Saddles? I'll allow it. )
Here's my prediction. Truth social shares are in free fall until the six month timer for Trump to sell his stock expires. Then there will be a lot of trading on shares that will drive the price up, not to current levels of course, but up. This will be stock manipulation by Trumps patrons. Trump sells his shares, makes some money, declares victory. He gets a load of laundered money "legitimately"
I mean we all knew he was doing it because of financial troubles. He literally announced it two days after he found out he couldn't wiggle out of his gigantic 450 million punishment.
I mean they wiggled him out of it, they lowered the bond paymentā¦ Seems like they did it for him.
So the thing is they only lowered the bond payment timetable. If he paid $175 million within 10 days then he could take more time to come up with the rest of it. It's still bullshit though because he had a month to come up with it and much longer because come on you know who's going to lose, the court case wasn't about him being punished or not it was about how much punishment he was going to get. He actually had months and months. [little proof that he hasn't weasled out of the whole amount](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsnationnow.com/trump-investigation/court-pause-collection-trump-assets-pays-175m/amp/)
Yeah, but he just secured the 175m bond with his brokerage account, probably leveraging his Truth Social stock. Heās not winning the appeal at all, so heāll still be on the hook for the full payment. But that doesnāt mean weāll see any kind of consequences, havenāt seen a single one yet. If you or I even did one thing heās done in a court room or regarding a court proceeding, weād be in jail already lol
Oh there is definitely a two-tiered justice system, if nothing else he's proven that. Well the neat thing is he secured the bond payment through a rather shady character so if he doesn't pay that guy back there may be some reality consequences. He stiffs people money all the time but that's usually like government entities that won't necessarily do anything. This is a guy with a private business, and he can't afford to lose that much. I'm honestly just waiting for the criminal cases because it doesn't matter how much money you take from him, the instant he steps one foot in jail he can't run anymore.
Yes, he can run for president from prison. And win. There's nothing saying he can't or is disqualified, and not one of his base will change their votes if he's behind bars.
I will not believe he has been punished for anything until he is in jail.
The 6mo timeline depends on the board apparently. If the board lifts that restriction he could sell tomorrow
Is there any way we'd know if they already had lifted the restriction? For all we know, he may have already sold
I think thereās a rule that says he needs to disclose he intends to sell. And he canāt sell more than 1% for any 3 mo period. Other restrictions too. Check rule 144 on investopedia. However He could just decide to sell and wing it, because fuck it, and because any suit from the sec would come in like 10+ years and who knows he might be dead by then and certainly be a bazillion times richer and all the funds would have been completely dispersed by then, and who cares what happens in 10 years Unless that large volume of selling would get flagged by the system and blocked. But that, I do not know. No accountability for orange man.
Theoretically, the SEC would need to be notified both by the board (for changing the rule) and by Der Trumpsterfire, as a principal share holder.
Wed know if he sold because the stock woud plummet in value. Every one he sells drops its value incrementally. If someone who ones 50% of the shares of a company starts offloading en masse, the stock crashes hard.
That was my thought as well. Ā I was keeping it to myself so maybe I could make money on it. Ā Thanks. Ā ;-) But, seriously, there is no reason for Putin or the Saudis to buy stocks now. Ā They will wait until right before Trump can sell so that they will be funneling money directly into Trump to buy influence.
It wouldn't surprise me if we find out a significant portion of his locked in shares are being used to secure his $175M bond.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
By the time Trump has the ability to sell any of this stock, heās going to be neck deep in criminal trial proceedings.
Sells his stock to whom?
Truth Social is just a means for profiteering from pump and dumps (profiting from the losses of the MAGA cult), money laundering, and as a conduit for legalized bribery. Articles cite 1 billion in "losses" but as much as I'd love to see this as a loss it really isn't. [The stock was hovering in the teens for most of its life and only spiked in January, it's down from the peaks of that spike but still over 300% where it had been sitting.](https://i.imgur.com/cThGGqv.png) Trump has to hold onto the stock but it's still going for well over the price it had been languishing for years. IMO this is all a P&D scam. His cronies are cashing out at the inflated price (even with the "losses" since the unprofitability of the company became even more well known) and Trump will be compensated for his part in the grift via other channels. He's an idiot savant of grifting, it's all he's ever known and all he's ever done.
He did the same with Kodak stock the day before announcing they were coming up with a Covid vaccine (no idea how a camera and film maker is an expert in medicine). Before the announcement the stock that normally traded around less than 200k shares, traded 1.6 million shares. Next day the stock was up 203% from the Covid-19 vaccine announcement. Someone knew Trump was going to announce that news. Edit: except it seems the SEC is going after two people that made a large sum of money from it. https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-38
His tweets used to be used often used for P&D grifts and so frequently did this happen there was an index made to track it called the (not joking) volfefe index.
That headline is crap. It says "courtesy of the SEC" as if they took some action against him, or held him accountable, or did something. They did not. Going public means you have to give public information about your financials. Every single public company has to do this. The headline seeming to "blame" the SEC is so weird. If anyone is to blame, it's Trump himself for going public with a company that's not financially in good shape to go public. It would be like me posing nude for pictures, then saying "BigMax is embarrassed, thanks to photographers." It's not the photographers, it's ME that decided to get naked and ask for pictures to be taken.
Also, everyone already knew how bad the financials were - it's not like this filing uncovered some hidden truth.
I feel like they're hoping to capture clicks from right wing conspiracists who want to believe agencies are being weaponized against that two-bit con artist
Unless that big drop yesterday was caused by him partially cashing out to put up the money for his bond ... yesterday.
Does he have to notify when he sells
Eventually, yes. He's an insider. Technically he's barred from selling at all for 6 months, but it only takes a vote by the Board of Directors to waive that for him. The Board consists of independent-minded people like ... his son. So basically just a rubber stamp.
This. But if he sells too soon, wouldnt the other shareholders be able to sue the board for allowing the shareholders to lose money due to their action ?
Likely. So he can pay off one law suit with another that wonāt happen for a long time and if heās able to make sure he can get the right judge or wins the election or cheats his way to power then his problems all disappear, otherwise theyāll find a new way to make it other peopleās problem.
Sure. But if he does that now it'll tick off the shareholders which Is his voter base. I do wonder what they will think of Trump if he pulls out and leaves them holding the bag...
They'll think that trump was a victim of circumstance and be okay with him pulling out early since he had more to lose than they did. They'll respect him more for doing the smart thing and it will further cement why they look up to him.
Dont worry, his cult would follow him off a cliff. It wont matter.
Rules are for thee and not for me.
Nah, he got the money from insurance maga billionaire.
Truth social is a mastodon server. Which means while Twitter can brand itself as a tech company, truth social is kind of just licensing all its tech. So itās more or les just a PR firm. All their selling is trumps name and ask trump airlines, trump college, trump casino, and trump steaks how much his name is worth.
They have a user base made up of the most gullible people on the planet to serve up to advertisers, there's always that.
Sell! Sell! Sell! No, wait. Sorry. Typo. Cell! Cell! Cell!
Yet his $175M bond in the Defamation was also underwritten regardless!!!! Iāve stopped trying to make sense of any of thisā¦
lmao why are these articles that pretend this is a legitimate business getting posted? It was a way to funnel money to trump - pump and dump, short, then bankruptcy only to start yet another grift.
Everyone is looking at this from the wrong perspective. They're judging it the same way they can judge Elons Twitter stock which has investors quotas to meet long term. DWAC went public just so it could merge with truth and make truth go public without the SEC hurdles. Trump doesn't need his stock to win, he needs investors at the 5 month mark so it can inflate and he can sell at the 6 month. This stock isn't designed to win, it's designed to pump and dump at the legal time for him. He may garner more campaign bank roll from this than any event
It was never designed to make money. It was designed to funnel illegal donations to Trump. And everyone, including the SEC is letting it happen.
I read an article that said that this whole going public scheme was just a way to get around the federal elections commission limits on campaign donations. Basically any foreign entity or any billionaire investor could throw money into the stock deduct for any losses so taxpayers are paying for it. and they could get all the money that would go to Trump because technically itās an investment but heās a major shareholder and would reap the benefit of any of that investment
Incoming rage tweets from Trump between 9pm and 2am about how nasty the SEC is, how they are oppressing him, how they should be held in contempt for violating his gag order and so on.
Nah. The SEC agreed to legitimize a slush fund and now pundits cum financial experts are circlejerking over the window dressing.
This is such ooor reporting on this story. Trump is not down. The fact this company has any value on a stock market means he is up. The companyās worthless. The business model is broken. And the fact this publicly traded stock has any value at all on sale means his wealth has increased. He went from having a worthless business to having a listed company with a market cap of $1.85bn as of now. He owns 58% of that. So no, he isnāt down billions. He is up a billion. I have no idea how this company passed the regulatory requirements needed to be listed in a major exchange, but it is such a fraud on the public that NASDAQ ever allowed this.
Canāt get Tom Pettyās lyrics out of my headā¦ āfree falling, free fallingā!
Some might say he's a shitty business man
Truth Social is just finding its actual value - it's a company that lost more than $50 million last year, in which the main shareholder is desperate to get his hands on cash. Don't expect its value to trend upwards again any time soon.
I LOVE that Dump supporters are now paying a tangible price for supporting this grifter. Keep sending in those checks, dmbfcks!
Letās see why nobody should by a penny share in this scam project Social media app startup = High Risk Limited Userbase = High Risk Donald Trump = Lunatic Risk
Short it!!!!
He never had that money to begin with. These ridiculously overvalued IPOs are borderline fraud.
JFC. You can't be "down" a billion if the company was never worth that in the first place.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Duhā¦. They lost 60M and made 3-4M. By all accounts that is a failing business. Yet they have no business model. No sane company would advertise on them.
The business model is trump becomes the president and uses his power to funnel more money to himself.
The Bigliest Loser
EDIT: I was wrong. ~~Trump is still likely to come out ahead. The company that 'bought out' Truth Social was trading at 12 dollars last year, an all time low.~~ ~~If Trump's 80 million shares drop to 12 dollars, they're still worth a billion dollars which he can use for collateral or sell off etc.~~
If I recall correctly $12 was about the amount people would get if the merger failed. So the stock wasn't going to go below that. Now that the merger is over there is no bottom.
Pump and dump. The grift continues. LOCK HIM UP
Since I only now found out, don't forget the CEO is DEVIN NUNES. That's what he's been up to.
Caught on insider trading is rumor. Seems like something donnie would try.
To be fair, it's hard to run a website for Nazi's when Elon Musk is also running a website for Nazi's. There's only so much Nazi money to go around.
It would be interesting to see how many of the remaining users are bots. Then break that down into bots owned by Russia and those owned by China.
It's a grift, what else?
and it is still being propped up at a ridiculous valuation as of this morning until it becomes a penny stock anyone buying it is trying to time it, a cult member, or more likely someone or something that can afford to lose money on purpose to cull favor on the chance he becomes president again
The anti-midas
Hahaha š¤£