⢠Back in 2022, after getting himself banned by Facebook and Twitter, Donald Trump launched his own social network, Truth Social. As Wikipedia notes, the site hasnât grown much since then:
Trump Media has not reported the number of Truth Social users. Data aggregator SimilarWeb estimated their number of visitors per month at 5 million in February 2024 and the number of active users in the U.S. at 1 million per month. On March 25, 2024 ⌠Truth Social had 277,000 U.S. visitors, while Reddit had 32 million.
That date, March 25, is significant because thatâs the day that Trump Media & Technology Group went public, offering investors a chance to get in on the action with an initial stock price of $72 a share.
Three weeks later, the stock closed yesterday at $26.61. Thatâs not a dip in the price of a stock thatâs been going up and down. Itâs just been going steadily down. And then down some more. And then down again.
Thatâs bad news for some of Trumpâs biggest supporters â people who jumped at the chance to put their retirement savings into a stock bearing his name:
Jerry Dean McLain first bet on former president Donald Trumpâs Truth Social two years ago, buying into the Trump companyâs 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 â pretty much his âwhole nest egg,â he said.
That nest egg has lost about half its value in the past two weeks as Trump Media & Technology Groupâs share price dropped from $66 after its public debut last month to $32 on Friday. But McLain, 71, who owns a tree-removal service outside Oklahoma City, said heâs not worried. If anything, he wants to buy more.
âI know good and well itâs in Trumpâs hands, and heâs got plans,â he said. âI have no doubt itâs going to explode sometime.â
For shareholders like McLain, investing in Truth Social is less a business calculation than a statement of faith in the former president and the business traded under his initials, DJT.
Even the companyâs plunging stock price â and the chance their investments could get mostly wiped out â doesnât seem to have shaken that faith. The company has lost $3.5 billion in value since its public debut last month.
As a business, Trump Media has largely underwhelmed: The company lost $58 million last year on $4 million in revenue, less than the average Chick-fil-A franchise, even as it paid out millions in executive salaries, bonuses and stock.
None of this, somehow, gets included in the current brouhaha among political scientists about whether itâs better to speak of âWhite rural rageâ or âWhite rural resentment.â But I think itâs kind of relevant, especially since people like Jerry Dean McLain will turn around and direct their rage and/or resentment toward everyone other than the people who are openly swindling them out of their âwhole nest egg.â
Thereâs a reaping/sowing symmetry here for the victims of Trumpâs pump-and-dump. When people who have cheered and chanted in support of the Leopards Eating Peopleâs Faces party are suddenly having their own faces eaten, itâs tempting to think that theyâre just getting what they deserve. But Godâs bodkin, man, if we all got what we deserved, then who should âscape whipping?
⢠This story is like a New Yorker cartoon come to life: â3 men stranded on a Pacific island were rescued by spelling âhelpâ with palm leaves.â
To really appreciate that story, look up the Pikelot Atoll on Google Maps and then see how long it takes you to zoom out far enough to see anything else on the map. The Coast Guard found these men in the middle of nowhere.
The Coast Guard is a good example of how Americans think (or half-think) about âthe government.â They want it small and all but invisible, something they never have to think about or pay for. But they also expect it to be this massive, omnipresent thing that is capable of finding and rescuing them from anywhere in the world. The very same people who cheered Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich and all the Federalist Society judges striking down every regulation that corporations donât like will also say things like âWell, if it was dangerous, they wouldnât be allowed to sell it.â
By which they mean something closer to âIf it was dangerous, they wouldnât be allowed to sell it to me.â
⢠O.J. Simpson, the NFL hall-of-famer, sometime movie star, and domestic abuser who killed two people with a knife, has died at age 76.
OJâs death â like that of Jeffrey Epstein and David Koch and Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh and Henry Kissinger (finally!) â has prompted tons of funny jokes and laughter at those jokes. I havenât yet seen the Very Serious People and our self-appointed Moral Betters tut-tutting about the response to OJâs death the way they did about the response to the deaths of those lethally toxic wealthy men, which is odd given that his death toll and lives-ruined toll is way lower than theirs. Hmmm.
But as a reminder that speaking ill of predators is not just OK, but morally necessary, Iâll include these links again. If we donât need them right now, weâll need them soon enough because, like, Rupert Murdoch is 93.
- The Duty Of Speaking Ill Of The Dead
- And The World Will Be A Better Place
- âTheir Hearts Were Lighter And It Was A Happier Houseâ
⢠On the one hand, the Fictional Brands Archive is kind of fun.
On the other hand, thereâs no entry for Morley cigarettes or for Hudson University, so itâs usefulness for Tommy Westphall studies seems limited.
⢠The title for this post comes from My Morning Jacketâs âMahgeetah.â Weird name, pretty song.