(Getty images/The Atlantic)
Donald Trump claimed his obscure and money-losing social media website was a success when its public offering opens with an apparent — and fake — bang that gave the site a value into the billions.
On opening day, some of his ardent followers spent up to $100,000 to buy stock at $79.38 a share when it opened last week. Then April Fools Day arrived on Monday and their 100 grand lost nearly half its value.
Tech stock offerings often are inflated but Trump Media crashed because it delayed reporting a massive loss in the previous quarter and investors quickly found that it was a Trump Turd.
Reports Dana Milbank in The Washington Post:
Let’s say you’re an ardent Donald Trump supporter and you decided to invest $100,000 of your retirement savings into Trump Media because your favorite former president says it’s a “highly successful” company.
Well, if you bought in during last week’s initial pubic offering at the peak of $79.38 a share, your $100,000 nest egg was worth only $57,000 this week when the stock hit a low of $45.26 after an April Fool’s Day crash — a 43 percent loss in just three trading days.
Not for the first time, Trump has played his supporters for suckers.
The skid came after Trump Media reported this week that it lost $58.2 million in 2023 on sales of just $4.1 million — which suggests that Trump Media is practically worthless. The shares are bound to collapse further unless some wealthy entity — Saudi Arabia? China? — buys shares to gain leverage over Trump, who can’t dump his own stake for six months.
–-The Washington Post
“Trump Media is sounding more and more like the Trump presidency,” Milbank reported.
He continues:
I thought about the Trump stock bubble while watching the former president and presumptive GOP nominee address adoring supporters on Tuesday here in Green Bay, where he held his first rally in 17 days. In a sense, what he did with Trump Media was just a variation on what he does to his supporters every day, whether convincing them to buy Trump-endorsed Bibles and sneakers, or selling them on election lies and white nationalism.
Three thousand die-hard Trump fans had come to the convention center to see him in the teeth of a winter storm that dumped up to a foot of snow on northern Wisconsin. In their rapturous reception for the “real president,” as election-denying pillow magnate Mike Lindell called Trump during a warm-up speech, I saw the kind of unshakable faith in a man that could lead someone to invest hard-earned money in a worthless company.
And Trump was, as always, rewarding their adoration by selling them one self-interested swindle after another.
He announced that he had won his fraud case in New York: “The appellate division said, ‘You won the case, that’s it.’” (The court has not yet heard his appeal of the fraud judgment against him.)
He also announced that “it came out that we won this state” in 2020. (Trump lost Wisconsin by 20,682 votes.)
At the heart of the speech was his original swindle, and still his go-to scam: convincing his supporters that their lives were being destroyed by dark-skinned invaders. It was the story of how “Crooked Joe and his migrant armies of dangerous criminals” are producing a “bloodbath” among innocent, native-born Americans.
It’s not the least bit true. Homicide and violent crime, after rising during the pandemic, have dropped for two straight years and are lower than during Trump’s final year in office. There is scant evidence that immigrants — legal or undocumented — commit more than their share of crime, and a lot of evidence that migrants are more law-abiding, as The Post’s Glenn Kessler has detailed.
–-The Washington Post
A New York jury has found Trump guilty of outright fraud and it turned out he did not have the cash he needed to post an appeal bond, even after a judge cut the bond from $450 million to $175 million. Turns out his “cash on hand” is running short, with him shutting down campaign offices and firing campaign staff because he legal costs have ballooned and the cadre of small dollar donors weren’t happy when they found that their contributions weren’t going to his campaign but were being used to pay his mounting overdue legal bills and to support his lavish lifestyle.
His hotels and golf courses, which provided the bulk of income, are losing money as well and Trump has turned to a shady California Bank to sub-par higher interest “loan shark rates” to keep at least some of his mounting overdue bills.
As we reported this morning:
Over the past two years, Axos Bank, as well as its largest individual shareholder, California billionaire Don Hankey, have collectively extended more than $500 million in financing that has benefited Trump, records show. The cash influx has helped Trump to pay off debts and pocket a tidy profit while escaping from a lease on his money-losing former hotel in Washington.
It also covered a $175 million down payment he made this week on an eye-popping civil fraud penalty.
–Capitol Hill Blue
But that bond may, itself, be a fraud. CBS reports:
When former President Donald Trump posted a $175 million bond in New York on Monday, it appeared that he had evaded a financial crisis. He had paused enforcement of the more than $460 million judgment against him following a civil fraud trial, while his appeal is pending.
But the surety bond was missing vital information typically included in those filings, experts say. These standard elements include documents related to power of attorney for the bond provider, Knight Specialty Insurance Company, a financial statement from the company and a certificate of qualification from the Department of Financial Services.
New York Attorney General Letitia James indicated in a filing Thursday, after the original publication of this story, that she, too, has concerns about the bond.
James took “exception to the sufficiency of the surety” given by Trump and the other defendants. She objected to the fact that the bond was issued by a company that is not an admitted carrier in New York, and lacks the certificate of qualification required by New York Insurance Law Section 1111.
A hearing is scheduled for April 22 on this lates suggestion of fraud, a week after Trump goes on trial on felony criminal indictments on charges of illegally paying “hush money” to a porn actrsss to keep her quiet about screwing her while his third wife was pregnant with son Baron.
“There seem to be serious issues,” Bruce H. Lederman, an attorney who has filed many bonds in New York, including for a real estate developer challenging a judgment, told CBS. Lederman said he was struck by “glaring errors” in the bond.
“In all the years I’ve been doing this, you always have to have a certificate from the Department of Financial Services saying that you’re licensed to issue a surety bond,” he said, referring to the missing certificate of qualification. Lederman said Knight Specialty is not listed on New York’s Department of Financial Services website.
The trial is also expected to examine an elaborate scheme using the National Enquirer tabloid to bury stories about other affairs with a Playboy playmate and other women. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who went to prison for doing bidding fas Trump’s “fixer” of such scandals, is set to testify against his former boss, as his former White House aide Hope Hicks, who was on the phone with participants in the scheme, taking notes .
“Time and time again, I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds,” Cohen said about Trump at his sentencing. As he often does with those who serve him and get into trouble, the disgraced former president tried to walk away and, as the saying goes, “throw him under the bus.”
“He shouldn’t be worried about me,” Cohen told MSNBC in an interview. “He should be worried about the Manhattan district attorney, the district attorney of New York prosecutors — he should be worried about the documentary evidence, he should be worried about all of the witnesses that are going to be coming into that trial simply because, as others have also appropriately put it, this is a simple case.”
Trump has a long and sordid record of defaulting on his loans, failing to pay contractors who work on his buildings and leaves lawyers high and dry with unpaid bills.
It’s plain and simple. Donald John Trump is a fraud, a con man and a criminal who belongs in prison for the rest of his miserable life.
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