The headlines were full last week with so many other Donald Trump related disasters, that the ongoing crack up of Truth Social didn’t get much attention. September 20 was the deadline for Digital World Acquisition, the “blank check” company, to commit to the deal with Trump Media and Technology Group. Instead, they committed to its death, pulling a previously announced funding commitment of $1 billion in assets from the table. Ouch.

Ergo, Truth Social looks to be going soon to join its siblings Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Airlines and their spiritual cousin, the Titanic, at the bottom of the sea. (If Donald Trump has been around in the early part of the 20th century, he’d have gone into luxury liner building, believe me. I can hear him now, “Yuge!” “Tremendous!” “Unsinkable!”) Insider:

The investors who signed up for the deal about a year ago were able to back out if it was not completed by September 20.

The investors who walked away were not disclosed in the filings, but Reuters reported that Sabby Management, which planned to put in $100 million, is one that had bowed out.

Sources told the news agency that more investors may also withdraw their commitments now that the deadline has passed and were awaiting more favorable terms to be put to them by Digital World.

The company has struggled to close the Truth Social merger and previously blamed the SEC for delaying the deal amid criminal and civil investigations.

The SEC started examining the deal in June over the possibility that Trump Media and Digital World had held discussions before the special purpose acquisition company (Spac) went public last year without informing the watchdog.

As a result, the directors of Digital World received subpoenas in June from a grand jury in the Southern District of New York.

Digital World has faced difficulty in getting sufficient shareholder approval for the merger and could be forced to liquidate and return investors’ cash if the deal is not completed. It said earlier this month it had extended the deadline for completion by three months.

All the signs are here that a book will be written about this latest failed venture of Trump’s, because it is such a classic of high finance shenanigans. I mean it is text book on how to grift on Wall Street. All the signs were there from the beginning. It was a shell game. It was one acquisition company buying another acquisition company. There was no real business plan or cash commitment to begin with. The people hired to fill key positions were not expert in the requisite fields of endeavor. Devin Nunes as CEO for a social media company? The dairy farmer cum congressman cum Twitter litigator? That Devin Nunes?

And Nunes was not the only one, by any means. There were tech and business people who bailed early on, when they saw the enormity of the task before them. Say what you will about Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey, a thing such as Twitter or Facebook doesn’t spring into existence overnight and keep working at the level that those two platforms do.

Last week Trump directed traffic to his 45 Office dot com site. I predicted then that that is where he’s going to send the MAGAs (the grift must go on, right?) and I think that’s the case even more so now.

Trump took Junior off the board of Truth Social, so that leaves Devin Nunes to talk to the feds.  This story hasn’t busted wide open yet but Digital World only filed its paperwork with the SEC on Friday, saying that backers were pulling out, so give it a few days.

Meanwhile, Trump is shilling Melania’s Xmas ornaments on Truth Social and hoping to make a buck from that, we guess. Maybe his lawyers told him to go do that so that he’ll stay out of harm’s way and not talk to Sean Hannity anymore and worsen his legal situation. I think that’s very plausible.

 

Help keep the site running, consider supporting.

6 COMMENTS

  1. I hope you’re right that by the end of next week, if not well before then the other investors will have followed suit and withdrawn their funding pledges. I think (as I’m sure you do) that’s exactly what will happen.

    This…It’s really going to hurt Trump. He was never, ever going to spend the money necessary to build out a platform that would do what he promised. The cheap bastard would have pissed and moaned about every fucking dollar he DID have to spend to do it on the cheap. All while (as he’s done so far with this we now know) doing what he’s always done to vendors and contractors – stiffing them! He saw a billion dollars out of the gate, with more to come and he was intending to put it in HIS pocket. The dude is way the hell over leveraged and money from “Pootie And The Oligarchs” (Russian’s least popular band) ain’t coming any more. In fact, now that he’s no longer Prez they’ve been after him to start paying back what he owes them. Unlike banks, they can be shall we say more “intense” in how they go about calling in loans. He was probably able to keep them at bay with this whole Truth Social and all the investor money he was going to be getting. Without it he’s fucked.

    Cash flow has long been a problem for him and now on top of everything else it’s just gotten not worse but WAY worse. Trump’s ersatz “empire” is on the verge of implosion. The demolition charges have been set one by one, and this could be the pushing of the button that sets them off. (“Melanie” should have taken her pre-nup money and run. He’ll fight a divorce now, and she will be left with nothing. Boo fucking hoo for her.)

    22
    1
    • In addition to the obvious grift opportunities, I also wonder if this was yet another failed attempt to outdo our last true President before Uncle Joe, the latter’s ex-boss. In theory, a social media company headed up by an ex-president could have worked if managed properly. Please note the keywords in my previous sentence were the last three…and when have they ever applied to Trump? So Obama gets the Oscar and Mango Mussolini gets the finger.

    • “The dude is way the hell over leveraged and money from “Pootie And The Oligarchs” (Russian’s least popular band) ain’t coming any more. In fact, now that he’s no longer Prez they’ve been after him to start paying back what he owes them. Unlike banks, they can be shall we say more “intense” in how they go about calling in loans.”

      Well, I just have to wonder how “Pootie and the Oligarchs” plan on collecting the moneys due them thanks to that little bit of sanctions resulting from Pootie’s little invasion of Ukraine?

      3
      1

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

The maximum upload file size: 128 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video, document, spreadsheet, interactive, text, archive, code, other. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop files here