Donald Trump kicked off his week by scowling through the opening day of his “no peener payoff” trial in New York on Monday morning. (And apparently falling asleep “slack-jawed,” per Maggie Haberman.) Not far away at the New York Stock Exchange, another disaster with his name attached was continuing its agonizingly slow descent into worthlessness. Which is kind of what living in America has felt like since he announced his first presidential run nine years ago, but never mind.
We’re speaking of the stock price of the Trump Media and Technology Group, parent company of social media site Truth Social. As we’ve been noting, the stock that stood at around $72 a share on the day of its IPO three weeks ago has gone down faster than [INSERT GOING DOWN JOKE HERE]. It has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of two thirds of its value and looks as if it will keep sinking until it is lower than a hermit crab’s junk.
On Sunday The Washington Post had an amazing story on the Trump cultists who thought – and in some cases still think – that this company is going to do anything but go the way of all of Trump’s other business ventures like Trump Steaks and Trump Vodka. Seriously, almost every single sentence here is more incredible than the last. It’s like watching the captain of the Titanic yelling “It’s just a scratch, where are all of you going” as the water slowly crept past his chin.
Like this dude, who runs a tree-removal service in Oklahoma:
Jerry Dean McLain first bet on former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social two years ago, buying into the Trump company’s planned merger partner, Digital World Acquisition, at $90 a share. Over time, as the price changed, he kept buying, amassing hundreds of shares for $25,000 — pretty much his “whole nest egg,” he said. […]
“I know good and well it’s in Trump’s hands, and he’s got plans,” he said. “I have no doubt it’s going to explode sometime.”
Oh Jerry, you sweet summer child.
There was also this guy Todd Schlanger, a MAGA fan in Florida, natch, who is watching about $20,000 of the vast fortune he’s earned as an interior designer in a furniture store currently disappearing faster than the polar ice caps:
In a Truth Social post last week, he encouraged “everyone who supports Donald Trump and Truth [Social to] buy a share every day” and asked, “Do you think we have hit bottom?” (The stock slid nearly 10 percent after that post.)
He suspects the recent drops in share price have been the result of “stock manipulation” from an “organized effort” to make the company look bad. There’s no proof of such a campaign, but Schlanger is convinced. “It’s got to be political,” he said, from all the “liberals that are trying to knock it down.”
We’re not much on investing – our retirement fund consists of a vial of cyanide and a comfy pillow – but we think the stock dropping faster than the engine cover of a Boeing jet has more to do with the company somehow being valued at several billion dollars when last year it lost $58 million on revenues of $4 million than it does with liberals saying mean things about it.
Or maybe the drop can be attributed to Truth Social flat-out saying that it has no intention of reporting any information that investors could use as a yardstick to see how the company is performing:
Truth Social has attracted a tiny fraction of the traffic other platforms see, according to estimates from the analytics firm Similarweb — one of the only ways to measure its performance, given that the company says it “does not currently, and may never, collect, monitor or report certain key operating metrics used by companies in similar industries.”
About the only thing the company is being transparent about is how much dang salary and bonus money it is paying its executives while its investors watch little Billy’s college fund swirl down the drain.
For instance, Devin Nunes, former congressman, current Trump Media CEO, and continuous giant tool:
“There’s not another company out there that has retail investors like this,” said Nunes, who this year will receive a $1 million salary, a $600,000 retention bonus and a stock package currently worth $3.7 million.
We presume that when Nunes says no other companies have retail investors like Trump Media, he means no other company has as many suckers willing to hand over their retirement accounts to a lifelong conman who has screwed more workers and contractors and investors than the mafia.
Not that the suckers care. They’re too busy yelling “No suckers! You’re the suckers!”
After the billionaire media mogul Barry Diller called Trump Media a “scam” stock bought by “dopes,” one account, @Handbag72, claimed to have bought more shares, arguing Diller didn’t “get it” or was “at risk of [losing] .”
Yeah, what does Barry Diller know about investing in media companies, anyway.
While some of these small-time investors are still trumpeting buying the stock as some sort of badge of loyalty to Donald Trump, at least some of the suckers are showing slivers of self-awareness. One Truth Social user frantically posted that Congress should make short-selling illegal. Another seemed frustrated with his fellow idiots:
The user, however, posted afterward that the argument left him unconvinced. “I’m tired of blaming the deep state,” he said. Later, he added, “You would think that the ‘biggest political movement of all time’ would want to support the man leading it and get much better numbers than” this.
As of early Monday afternoon, Trump Media stock was down another nearly six points for the day, to a bit over $26 a share. Maybe all those supporters of the biggest political movement of all time figure they have yet to see the bottom of the dip.
And just to add to the hilarity, the geniuses running Trump Media on Monday filed to release another 21.5 million shares for sale, which could give the company a massive cash infusion to help it stay afloat. On the other hand, so many more shares could dilute the value of people’s investments and send the share price dropping even lower. Our vial of cyanide keeps looking like a better investment.
Wonkette is a much better investment than Trump Media.