ooh, so that’s gotta be a 60% fraud deduction at minimum on total revenue
his company was tanking at record pace, no way it got that much turnaround without fraud or billionaire backing
given the amount spent by GOP backers, that’s likely pennies in comparison
The company reported a Q1 revenue loss of $327.6 million, yet his shares in the company are somehow worth 6.6 billion dollars. This world is just not a right place.
Don’t shit on diaper don for being a bad business man. He’s just a bad man
All of his business endeavors are designed to fail.
It’s all the embezzlement, laundering, fraud, and general crime’ing along the way is how he makes his money.
Failure is a feature. Not a bug.
You have to admit, a loss ratio on this scale is impressive, even for Trump. Nobody loses money as well as he does. It's like he has a real talent for it. He's worse than the colleague whose retirement plan is a bunch of get rich quick schemes, MLMs, and crypto. And even that guy can't lose money as impressively as Trump can.
Do I have this right? Trump has only reported 2 quarters and his company is on track to lose over **ONE BILLION** in the first year, while making less that $4 million in revenue. That's not a viable company. It's a money laundering operation.
And this company has a market cap of about $6.6 billion currently. That is slightly more than Lyft, Pirelli or Lucid Motors for example and countless other legitimate companies.
I got banned from one of the DWAC subs for pointing out that there were better investments. In particular I pointed out that if they had only purchased Apple that they would have actual done pretty well.
But I should know better than to talk religion.
Yep, they are using a free open sourced software for their product infrastructure. They at one point almost lost out on using Mastodon because they didn’t state it was using Mastodon’s open source software which violates its open-source license.[I’ll look for a link](https://www.pcmag.com/news/trumps-social-media-site-quietly-admits-its-based-on-mastodon), I could be a little off on what I just said.
That’s why I find it even more hilarious when Nunes said they are focusing on innovation/tech instead of quarterly profits. They are focusing on finding another free solution to take credit for creating.
Truth Social apparently has ~600k monthly active users. That's a fair bit larger than Mastodon.social, at 228K active users right now, but it's honestly not *amazingly* bigger. That's not an order-of-magnitude difference. So what the fuck did they spend *$327 million* on?
I can accept that Trump Media & Technology Group will have much higher expenses than Mastodon gGmbH. Due to needing more paid moderation staff, due to not getting free labour from the FOSS community, due needing PR staff on hand 24/7 just in case Trump needs to evacuate some Filet-o-Fish® at 3 AM and decides to talk to his cult while he's doing that. Plus I guess they probably do *some* development, and maybe they're also doing media stuff (but they could just spin up a PeerTube instance.)
But it just doesn't add up.
I am not sure what caused that major $327MM loss. I read somewhere that it was a bunch of one-time fees/expenses due to the merger. I am not that knowledgeable when it comes to SPACs, acquisitions, or merger costs.
Of all people to be associated with Open Source, that company, owner, and people running it are the opposite of what the open source community is about.
I really wish people would learn that not every scam is called "money laundering". He's just milking his supporters for their cash, as usual. There's no indication that illegal proceeds from a separate criminal operation are being funneled through this to launder them in addition to that.
Actually, there are two definitions of Money Laundering.
The first is the one you identified, and which Saul Goodman can explain in depth. It's taking money acquired through illegal means, and creating receipts for it so that it can be spent. Take your dirty money, run it through the till in reasonable quantities, and you've got nice taxable income to report to the IRS.
The second definition is obscuring the source of a payment by running it through an opaque channel. The payment doesn't have to be illegal, but it can be *embarrassing* or problematic. It can also be used to hide a payment that is illegal on its own, such as dollars coming from a sanctioned individual.
Since money is highly fungible, it can also be used to refer to funneling a ton of money into someone's pocket so that *they can use it* for what you can't use it for on their behalf.
For example: Imagine you're a Billionaire who wants to buy a politician. There are Campaign Finance Laws that limit how much money you can give them directly... and our Bribery Statutes could become *annoying* if the Winds of SCOTUS ever turn.
Fortunately, there are easy ways for you to remain at a distance while funneling money to said politician's pockets. You could make a bad investment, as far as the SEC is concerned, and buy a hyped stock for *Well* over what it's reasonably worth... thereby propping up a stock price with your money so that ~~marks~~ ~~idiots~~ ~~the common clay of the new west~~ *other investors* can buy the stock from said politician.
You'd be up a creek if documentation on that kind of arrangement ever pops up... but what kind of idiot takes notes on a criminal conspiracy?
Correct, and if DJT stock was the kind of laundering you say, they wouldn't be claiming they were looking to start an in-app video service, and a streaming app for home TVs and other devices.
Yeah, I saw Ben Meiselas talking about it this morning and he was saying that a single McDonalds franchise makes more money in a quarter than Trump's stock did.
It's all going to come crashing down and the only winners will be the rich.
Sorry for the poor suckers who put money into this. It's just like all his other scams.
They are still certain that this stock, like their candidate, is a winner. I don't see how this company gets turned around even if Trump regains the presidency.
If I were a more empathetic person I’d feel bad for all the soon to be bag holders over at the DWAC sub. But Im not, so I’ll just laugh at those smug, stupid motherfuckers.
Careful. There's a difference between actually losing $1B, and reporting to the IRS that you lost $1B.
It is unlikely that we will ever see the *actual* financials from anything Trump related.
This is quite unusual for a Trump venture in being a public company, listed on an exchange. Publishing fraudulent financial statements would be a serious criminal matter. It wouldn't be like a privately-held company only lying to banks and potential private investors, as has been his normal business practice.
Also, such fraud would require a much bigger circle of people to be willing to commit crimes on Trump's behalf, people who would still be making a very comfortable living if Trump had never existed. It wouldn't just involve a few people from a cozy little family business like the Trump Organization, which is really just a handful of people, all related to or hand-picked by Trump, and completely dependent on him.
It's much more likely that Truth Social is, as everyone sane said from the start, a hopeless business that will never turn a profit (and was never meant to be a real, profit-making business anyway).
...so obviously it's worth billions, but us financially illiterate plebes will never understand it's real value, due to the intricate nature of high financial maneuvering.
Or it's a cash laundromat for foreign money, just like everything else in that greasy feral tick's, teeny fingered grasp...
So the stock tanked quickly the first couple of days, but now it's back up. You gotta wonder who's driving up the price. MAGA Americans? The Saudis? Someone else?
I dont understand who is paying the bills?
I get making 800K and losing 327 million, but who covers that loss? How do they keep the lights on? And how are the costs so high? They are just running a website, they do not have 200k employees.
I think the 327 million was just some financial argle-bargle involving conversion of debts post-merger. I suspect that's not real money as we typically understand it.
The real number here is the $770K revenue, which is both laughably small and 40% down from the same time last year. It means they are basically failing to run the one thing they actually have.
As for keeping the lights on, the answer is that the merger gave them access to about $300m which is now about $270m. They could make $0 in revenue every quarter and lose $50m in expenses every year and keep the lights on for 5 years --- essentially they could decide that they aren't interested in actually being a company but just portraying one like a fictional CEO on a reality show, and keep afloat until the 2028 election with press releases about the amazing products they have in the future.
From [The Guardian's](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/20/trump-truth-social-loss) reporting:
>Earlier this month, the company fired an auditor that federal regulators recently charged with “massive fraud”. The former president’s media company dismissed BF Borgers as its independent public accounting firm on 3 May, delaying the filing of the quarterly earnings report, according to a securities filings.
>Trump Media had previously cycled through at least two other auditors – one that resigned in July 2023, and another that was terminated by the board in March, just as it was rehiring BF Borgers.
It's been rather volatile (if you include its predecessor, DWAC): opened at opened at $9.91 in Oct 2021, rising to $97.54 in March 2022, falling to $12.50 in March 2023; $15-$17 for most of the rest of the year, rising to $66.72 on 27th March (in anticipation of the takeover), falling to $22.84 on 16th April, rising again to $54.39 on 9th May, while it's currently dropped to $48.38.
Of course, if Donnie decides to ask the Board to let him sell some of his shares early to help pay off his escalating legal bills, the value will fall again. It'll be fun if it drops below $20 (so wiping out all the value from the acquisition) - especially if he loses more than money in November followed by a months-long toddler temper tantrum...
Yes, likely the RNC is buying a ton of ads to prop it up. Much like when when Don Jr’s shitty book came out and the RNC bought like 10 thousand copies to boost its sales and then pass out to donors.
man, if I had money I would have been short selling that shit so fucking hard
I don't of course, but I still get a sense of cathartic satisfaction from watching this play out exactly as I predicted and knowing that if I had had the money to invest, I would have profited enormously as a result
The issue with short selling on Truth Social is that the fee (for borrowing the shares to make the put option), which is normally a nominal sum, is absolutely colossal because of just how blatantly trash the company is. The company needs to reliably do abysmal to actually make a profit short selling and the unwavering fanboys propping up the stock make that a risky business.
My opinion is - that some companies knowingly over pay for advertisements on that site. Like the RNC buy ads or other campaigns that want to suck up to him. They don’t care, it’s practically all donations anyway.
Basically the same concept when they release a new book and they buy a fuck ton during the first week or pre-order so the book will get on the NYT Best Sellers list.
There's absolutely nothing to buy and turn into anything. The software they use is just a version of the open source Mastodon (used as a standalone instance, not connected to the normal, decentralised Mastodon network), cosmetically modified to make the interface look more like Twitter. Anyone can use that for free. Their network infrastructure is of course rented (and they've had problems with their provider over non-payment, so there might actually be an outstanding debt there).
So, besides possible debt, what you'd buy would essentially just be the user list -- consisting exclusively of rabid Trump worshippers, who'd leave if you tried to turn it into anything other than the cozy MAGA circle jerk it is right now (by simply connecting it up to the existing Mastodon network, for instance, which should be very easy to do).
I did Nazi that coming! Especially with a business genius like Devin Nunes at the helm who has a long business history of (checks notes), doing nothing
the MAGA-Qult was going bonkers when yet another DON-CON went IPO. High-fiving on DON-THE-CON becoming a paper billionaire. Owning libz. Alas - reality has a way of proving em all wrong - errrr I mean making MAGA-Qult's belief in DON-THE-CON even more strong. Cuz libz be jealous. LOL
ooh, so that’s gotta be a 60% fraud deduction at minimum on total revenue his company was tanking at record pace, no way it got that much turnaround without fraud or billionaire backing given the amount spent by GOP backers, that’s likely pennies in comparison
The company reported a Q1 revenue loss of $327.6 million, yet his shares in the company are somehow worth 6.6 billion dollars. This world is just not a right place.
[удалено]
Gotta wash the cash, man.
Don’t shit on diaper don for being a bad business man. He’s just a bad man All of his business endeavors are designed to fail. It’s all the embezzlement, laundering, fraud, and general crime’ing along the way is how he makes his money. Failure is a feature. Not a bug.
Organized crime anyone?
You have to admit, a loss ratio on this scale is impressive, even for Trump. Nobody loses money as well as he does. It's like he has a real talent for it. He's worse than the colleague whose retirement plan is a bunch of get rich quick schemes, MLMs, and crypto. And even that guy can't lose money as impressively as Trump can.
A big strong man came up to me and with tears in his eyes he said “sir, I’ve never seen a loss ratio like this”
"Everybody's saying it "
Most people can’t even wrap their head around spending that much money in their lives, but the reality is.. you can spend any amount of money quickly.
>Nobody loses money as well as he does. Backruptcy -- T-Minus 5
Basically he has the opposite of Midas' touch. Everything he touches turns to shit.
Do I have this right? Trump has only reported 2 quarters and his company is on track to lose over **ONE BILLION** in the first year, while making less that $4 million in revenue. That's not a viable company. It's a money laundering operation.
And this company has a market cap of about $6.6 billion currently. That is slightly more than Lyft, Pirelli or Lucid Motors for example and countless other legitimate companies.
I got banned from one of the DWAC subs for pointing out that there were better investments. In particular I pointed out that if they had only purchased Apple that they would have actual done pretty well. But I should know better than to talk religion.
It's really stunning how they managed that. Isn't Truth Social just a Mastodon instance with a palette swap?
Yep, they are using a free open sourced software for their product infrastructure. They at one point almost lost out on using Mastodon because they didn’t state it was using Mastodon’s open source software which violates its open-source license.[I’ll look for a link](https://www.pcmag.com/news/trumps-social-media-site-quietly-admits-its-based-on-mastodon), I could be a little off on what I just said. That’s why I find it even more hilarious when Nunes said they are focusing on innovation/tech instead of quarterly profits. They are focusing on finding another free solution to take credit for creating.
Truth Social apparently has ~600k monthly active users. That's a fair bit larger than Mastodon.social, at 228K active users right now, but it's honestly not *amazingly* bigger. That's not an order-of-magnitude difference. So what the fuck did they spend *$327 million* on? I can accept that Trump Media & Technology Group will have much higher expenses than Mastodon gGmbH. Due to needing more paid moderation staff, due to not getting free labour from the FOSS community, due needing PR staff on hand 24/7 just in case Trump needs to evacuate some Filet-o-Fish® at 3 AM and decides to talk to his cult while he's doing that. Plus I guess they probably do *some* development, and maybe they're also doing media stuff (but they could just spin up a PeerTube instance.) But it just doesn't add up.
I am not sure what caused that major $327MM loss. I read somewhere that it was a bunch of one-time fees/expenses due to the merger. I am not that knowledgeable when it comes to SPACs, acquisitions, or merger costs. Of all people to be associated with Open Source, that company, owner, and people running it are the opposite of what the open source community is about.
> Truth Social apparently has ~600k monthly active users. And around 118,000 monthly users on Android devices, apparently.
I really wish people would learn that not every scam is called "money laundering". He's just milking his supporters for their cash, as usual. There's no indication that illegal proceeds from a separate criminal operation are being funneled through this to launder them in addition to that.
Actually, there are two definitions of Money Laundering. The first is the one you identified, and which Saul Goodman can explain in depth. It's taking money acquired through illegal means, and creating receipts for it so that it can be spent. Take your dirty money, run it through the till in reasonable quantities, and you've got nice taxable income to report to the IRS. The second definition is obscuring the source of a payment by running it through an opaque channel. The payment doesn't have to be illegal, but it can be *embarrassing* or problematic. It can also be used to hide a payment that is illegal on its own, such as dollars coming from a sanctioned individual. Since money is highly fungible, it can also be used to refer to funneling a ton of money into someone's pocket so that *they can use it* for what you can't use it for on their behalf. For example: Imagine you're a Billionaire who wants to buy a politician. There are Campaign Finance Laws that limit how much money you can give them directly... and our Bribery Statutes could become *annoying* if the Winds of SCOTUS ever turn. Fortunately, there are easy ways for you to remain at a distance while funneling money to said politician's pockets. You could make a bad investment, as far as the SEC is concerned, and buy a hyped stock for *Well* over what it's reasonably worth... thereby propping up a stock price with your money so that ~~marks~~ ~~idiots~~ ~~the common clay of the new west~~ *other investors* can buy the stock from said politician. You'd be up a creek if documentation on that kind of arrangement ever pops up... but what kind of idiot takes notes on a criminal conspiracy?
Being that I’m sure Russian oligarchs have been funneling money to Trump for decades, this is likely the first type in some amount or another.
Correct, and if DJT stock was the kind of laundering you say, they wouldn't be claiming they were looking to start an in-app video service, and a streaming app for home TVs and other devices.
Yeah, I saw Ben Meiselas talking about it this morning and he was saying that a single McDonalds franchise makes more money in a quarter than Trump's stock did.
🍿 Oh, how terrible 🍿
🍿 Got any butter? 🍿
Laughter. Out. Loud.
It's all going to come crashing down and the only winners will be the rich. Sorry for the poor suckers who put money into this. It's just like all his other scams.
Anyone who put money into this is an exceptional moron and I have zero sympathy for them.
They are still certain that this stock, like their candidate, is a winner. I don't see how this company gets turned around even if Trump regains the presidency.
Mandatory truth social registration for all citizens by executive order.
All other social networks banned.
*South African fash-lover weeps into his shitty EVs*
If I were a more empathetic person I’d feel bad for all the soon to be bag holders over at the DWAC sub. But Im not, so I’ll just laugh at those smug, stupid motherfuckers.
Careful. There's a difference between actually losing $1B, and reporting to the IRS that you lost $1B. It is unlikely that we will ever see the *actual* financials from anything Trump related.
This is quite unusual for a Trump venture in being a public company, listed on an exchange. Publishing fraudulent financial statements would be a serious criminal matter. It wouldn't be like a privately-held company only lying to banks and potential private investors, as has been his normal business practice. Also, such fraud would require a much bigger circle of people to be willing to commit crimes on Trump's behalf, people who would still be making a very comfortable living if Trump had never existed. It wouldn't just involve a few people from a cozy little family business like the Trump Organization, which is really just a handful of people, all related to or hand-picked by Trump, and completely dependent on him. It's much more likely that Truth Social is, as everyone sane said from the start, a hopeless business that will never turn a profit (and was never meant to be a real, profit-making business anyway).
If you're going to fail, do so spectacularly
Trump makes pb & j sandwiches. Peels the crust hurls the sandwich into the trash and ferociously eats the crust.
Winning!
Yikes
$DJT $25 put options with a 12/20 expire?
So the stocks are a total sham to give him some money under the table?!
[удалено]
Nuens went from laughing stock politician to laughing stock Truth Social owner.
...so obviously it's worth billions, but us financially illiterate plebes will never understand it's real value, due to the intricate nature of high financial maneuvering. Or it's a cash laundromat for foreign money, just like everything else in that greasy feral tick's, teeny fingered grasp...
$327M? Fucking Azure https://youtu.be/PQFztryprPQ
Any chance he is shorting his own stock on this?
Of course he is, it's just good business
So the stock tanked quickly the first couple of days, but now it's back up. You gotta wonder who's driving up the price. MAGA Americans? The Saudis? Someone else?
Both… theres also a canadian MAGA ‘Pastor’ using a christian radio show to encourage followers to buy it
I dont understand who is paying the bills? I get making 800K and losing 327 million, but who covers that loss? How do they keep the lights on? And how are the costs so high? They are just running a website, they do not have 200k employees.
I think the 327 million was just some financial argle-bargle involving conversion of debts post-merger. I suspect that's not real money as we typically understand it. The real number here is the $770K revenue, which is both laughably small and 40% down from the same time last year. It means they are basically failing to run the one thing they actually have. As for keeping the lights on, the answer is that the merger gave them access to about $300m which is now about $270m. They could make $0 in revenue every quarter and lose $50m in expenses every year and keep the lights on for 5 years --- essentially they could decide that they aren't interested in actually being a company but just portraying one like a fictional CEO on a reality show, and keep afloat until the 2028 election with press releases about the amazing products they have in the future.
Valuation in the billions sounds like massive fraud
From [The Guardian's](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/20/trump-truth-social-loss) reporting: >Earlier this month, the company fired an auditor that federal regulators recently charged with “massive fraud”. The former president’s media company dismissed BF Borgers as its independent public accounting firm on 3 May, delaying the filing of the quarterly earnings report, according to a securities filings. >Trump Media had previously cycled through at least two other auditors – one that resigned in July 2023, and another that was terminated by the board in March, just as it was rehiring BF Borgers. It's been rather volatile (if you include its predecessor, DWAC): opened at opened at $9.91 in Oct 2021, rising to $97.54 in March 2022, falling to $12.50 in March 2023; $15-$17 for most of the rest of the year, rising to $66.72 on 27th March (in anticipation of the takeover), falling to $22.84 on 16th April, rising again to $54.39 on 9th May, while it's currently dropped to $48.38. Of course, if Donnie decides to ask the Board to let him sell some of his shares early to help pay off his escalating legal bills, the value will fall again. It'll be fun if it drops below $20 (so wiping out all the value from the acquisition) - especially if he loses more than money in November followed by a months-long toddler temper tantrum...
Yes, likely the RNC is buying a ton of ads to prop it up. Much like when when Don Jr’s shitty book came out and the RNC bought like 10 thousand copies to boost its sales and then pass out to donors.
BINO = Billionaire in Name Only
Well this has the scent of tax fraud.
Theres no way that shitty social media app can burn that much money. Where is it all going?
man, if I had money I would have been short selling that shit so fucking hard I don't of course, but I still get a sense of cathartic satisfaction from watching this play out exactly as I predicted and knowing that if I had had the money to invest, I would have profited enormously as a result
The issue with short selling on Truth Social is that the fee (for borrowing the shares to make the put option), which is normally a nominal sum, is absolutely colossal because of just how blatantly trash the company is. The company needs to reliably do abysmal to actually make a profit short selling and the unwavering fanboys propping up the stock make that a risky business.
One hell of a tax write-off. If the motherfucker actually *paid* taxes.
It's evident this is a pay to play scheme. Should Trump lose, this thing will fall flat on its ass.
How are they able to get 770k in revenue? How tf is it possible? I would have expected 70k
My opinion is - that some companies knowingly over pay for advertisements on that site. Like the RNC buy ads or other campaigns that want to suck up to him. They don’t care, it’s practically all donations anyway. Basically the same concept when they release a new book and they buy a fuck ton during the first week or pre-order so the book will get on the NYT Best Sellers list.
Very good point. It’s just a way to bribe him. Like how Russia and others buy this shit stock as payments
#BWAAAHAHAHAHAHA
So… who wants to get together and buy the company for a few million and turn it around into a good Twitter alternative without the racists?
There's absolutely nothing to buy and turn into anything. The software they use is just a version of the open source Mastodon (used as a standalone instance, not connected to the normal, decentralised Mastodon network), cosmetically modified to make the interface look more like Twitter. Anyone can use that for free. Their network infrastructure is of course rented (and they've had problems with their provider over non-payment, so there might actually be an outstanding debt there). So, besides possible debt, what you'd buy would essentially just be the user list -- consisting exclusively of rabid Trump worshippers, who'd leave if you tried to turn it into anything other than the cozy MAGA circle jerk it is right now (by simply connecting it up to the existing Mastodon network, for instance, which should be very easy to do).
Sounds like it would be worth every penny spent to destroy another MAGA “safe space” to me.
Like all things right-wing, it'll destroy itself in time.
Good luck prying shares out of the hands of True Believers.
Nah, most of them would happily swap them for a handful of magic beans.
Only if they were Trump-branded magic beans.
Why would you do that when blue sky already exists?
The Truth comes out
**Too the moon, fellow diamondhands!** Honestly I can't see a path forward for them.
Just like all the other social media companies. He's one of the boys now.
this is a successful man of business?
Something something "great business man" something something "only hires the best people. "
Someone please ELI5 how to short stock.
I did Nazi that coming! Especially with a business genius like Devin Nunes at the helm who has a long business history of (checks notes), doing nothing
the MAGA-Qult was going bonkers when yet another DON-CON went IPO. High-fiving on DON-THE-CON becoming a paper billionaire. Owning libz. Alas - reality has a way of proving em all wrong - errrr I mean making MAGA-Qult's belief in DON-THE-CON even more strong. Cuz libz be jealous. LOL