Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

T R E 4 5 O N

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Second rate reporter says what?

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

You are here: Home / Economics / Grifters Gonna Grift / Monday Evening Open Thread: The (Latest) Trump Pump & Dump

Monday Evening Open Thread: The (Latest) Trump Pump & Dump

by | 109 Comments

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Per CNN, “Trump’s net worth plunges $1 billion as his media stock tumbles”:

Shares of Truth Social owner Trump Media & Technology Group plunged Monday after the company disclosed that it lost more than $58 million and generated very little revenue in 2023. Former President Donald Trump is the company’s majority shareholder, and his net worth tumbled by more than $1 billion Monday as a result.

The figures underscore why some experts warn Trump Media’s multibillion-dollar valuation defies logic and is reminiscent of the meme stock craze.

In a regulatory filing on Monday, Trump Media said it lost $58.2 million in 2023, compared with a profit of $50.5 million in 2022…

Former President Donald Trump owns a commanding stake of 78.8 million shares in the newly public company. At Monday afternoon’s prices, that stake is now worth approximately about $3.8 billion. This represents a massive boost to Trump’s net worth, though it is down significantly from a peak of about $6.3 billion just last week.

The losses disclosed Monday are so severe that Trump Media’s accountants warned at the time they “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern,” which is Wall Street for: We may not be able to stay in business. That warning echoes one made in November when accountants said Trump Media might not survive unless it soon completes its merger to go public…

The problem for Trump Media is its main product — Truth Social — is shrinking.

Monthly active US users on iOS and Android plunged in February to 494,000, down 51% year-over-year, according to Similarweb. By comparison, X has 75 million monthly active US users. Even Threads has more than 10 times as many users as Truth Social, according to Similarweb…


Per the Washington Post, “Trump Media stock plunges as 2023 Truth Social loss put at $58 million”:

… The new financial figures throw into stark relief the gap between Trump Media’s highly hyped investor-driven valuation on the public stock market and the reality of its business performance.

They also raise questions about the possibility that Trump could use the company as a financial lifeline. Trump cannot sell his shares or use them as collateral for a loan for six months due to a provision in the company’s merger agreement, known as a lockup.

The company’s board could vote to waive that requirement but has yet to do so, the filings state. Cashing out early could sink the stock price further by flooding the market with shares and undermining investor confidence in Trump’s commitment to the brand, financial analysts said.

Trump, who invested no money in Trump Media, was given 78 million shares of the company last week and stands to earn tens of millions more over the next three years if the stock stays above $12 to $17, a filing shows.

Trump Media said in a filing that it expects to incur more “operating losses and negative cash flows” as it works to expand its user base but that it expects its growth will come from Truth Social’s “overall appeal.”…

You have no idea how many morons will throw more money down our rathole!…

Reader Interactions

109Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    By comparison, X has 75 million monthly active US users.

    Higher than I would have expected.

  3. 3.

    Ken

    How fortunate that the merger was completed just days before this distressing news came out.

  4. 4.

    Urza

    @Baud: They never had a huge user base.  News orgs got into it though after they missed out on some other tech trend right before it first came out.  Twitter hasn’t lost nearly as many users, at least that they report, as we would imagine given all the uproar of it being taken over and platforming nazis.

  6. 6.

    Sure Lurkalot

    I get it that a fool and his money are soon parted but just how many fools are there?

    Inquiring minds (don’t) want to know.

  7. 7.

    Anne Laurie

    @Baud: By comparison, X has 75 million monthly active US users.

    If my very tiny, never-use-the-‘For You’ feed is any indication, at least a third of those users are bots & (other) scam artists.

  8. 8.

    terraformer

    Make no mistake – everything bad that happens to this person is subsequently used as “rigged” or somesuch

    the same orange fella who is so fixated on stock market performance will seamlessly pivot to his losses as “very unfair” and “the worst hoax the world has ever seen” and, of course, will blame it – directly, indirectly, or both, on Jews

  10. 10.

    Jay

    The Vancouver Stock Exchange was infamous for decades for “penny stock” pump and dumps.

    Most common were carousel scams. Guy 1 sells his 1,000 shares of “Stock Nym here”, valued at $0.02 a share to Guy 2, at $0.08. Stock price goes up on the VSE to $0.08. Guy 2 sells to Guy 3 at $0.12. Guy 3 sells to Guy 4 at $0.15, Guy 4 sells to Guy 1 at $0.20 and so on, a trend line is established, and people outside the scam think, what do these “buyers” know that I don’t?

    Quite often, (because this was often done with mining stocks, issued by a Company with just a PO Box and often not even a valid mineral claim), there would be an announcement of a planned merger or new “profitable” assay results and the stock price would triple.

    Only to collapse after the four cashed out and the Company would go dormant once again.

    Given the dominance of algorithmic trading, (invented by Al Gore), I am surprise that more pump and dumps don’t happen.

  12. 12.

    Martin

    Monthly active US users on iOS and Android plunged in February to 494,000,

    Just to let people know, it’s impossible to verify those are US users. That could easily be 494,000 FSB bot accounts being managed through a VPN connected to a US IP address.

    Social media companies can verify this by doing some work. None do, and none want to.

  13. 13.

    Jackie

    Sorry to go OT, but this is important for Floridians! Not only do they get to vote for abortion, they also get to vote on legalizing recreational pot!

    Florida’s Adult-Use Cannabis Measure Will Land on 2024 Ballot.

    The state’s Supreme Court approved the Trulieve-backed constitutional amendment despite opposition from Florida’s attorney general.

    Florida voters will decide the fate of a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment to legalize adult-use cannabis in the November 2024 election after the state’s Supreme Court approved the measure’s ballot language in a 5-2 decision April 1.

    The court’s justices, who heard oral arguments on the proposal in November 2023 after state Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a four-part argument against allowing the measure to go before voters, had until April 1 to approve or reject the language, per Florida Constitution. 

    As part of the normal judicial review process, the state’s top justices regularly review citizen-initiated amendments to determine if the ballot language is clear and unambiguous in a manner that does not mislead voters, and if the proposal embraces no more than one subject matter. 

    In Monday’s decision, the majority opinion ruled that the proposed adult-use legalization ballot language is sufficient to go before voters on Nov. 5.

    https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/news/florida-supreme-court-ruling-2024-cannabis-ballot-language/

  14. 14.

    Jay

    @Ken:

    the “news” was part of the SEC filings. Up until the merger was approved and open trading began, there were few “real” numbers, it was all hype. The SEC however demands “real” numbers, (not TIFG imaginary numbers).

  19. 19.

    Citizen Alan

    @Baud:  I wonder how many of those 75 million are like me–permanently suspended after telling some piece of Trump Trash exactly what I thought of them yet unable to leave the platform because if you’re suspended, you don’t have access to delete the account.

  23. 23.

    Anoniminous

    @Martin:

    Post-Reality Capitalism depends on Company A believing Company’s B Bullshit and Company B believing Company C’s Bullshit and Company C believing Company A’s Bullshit.

    Where “Bullshit” is defined Frankfurtianly.

  25. 25.

    PsiFighter37

    Honestly, the only reason to invest in DJT is if you believe Trump is going to turn the US into a truly authoritarian country where news outlets are obligated to post on Truth Social.

    There’s a reason all the smart money out there is short as much of the stock as possible.

  27. 27.

    Frankensteinbeck

    By the time Trump is allowed to sell stock it will be worthless.  He’s one of the marks here.  I find that funny.

    @Urza:

    Twitter hasn’t lost nearly as many users, at least that they report, as we would imagine given all the uproar of it being taken over and platforming nazis.

    Yeah, I thought it would die faster, but it is dying.  Musk is keeping it financially afloat with his own money, and it has been steadily losing accounts, down 18% in the last year.  Again, it’s a steady drop, not an initial drop then leveling off, and no other platform is showing anything close to that.

    @Albatrossity:

    How is it possible to “invest no money” in a business and end up with millions of shares of that business?

    The merger was obviously rigged.  Very, very obviously.  Truth Social doesn’t fit the definition of what the merger company told their investors they were buying at all.

    As for the ‘invest no money’, Trump got lots of stock in Truth Social because he was in charge and its face, not an investor.  It’s not unusual.  Then that became lots of stock of a much more valuable company during the merger.

    Which is obviously a scam, and the guys who rigged it are getting out with the money.  Trump is left holding the bag.

  28. 28.

    Martin

    @Anoniminous: Well, to be fair, that’s how it always worked. But now we have these near-instantaneous globe-spanning and dirt cheap to implement digital communication systems to turn that wheel faster than humans can process. By the time someone sticks their hand up and says ‘this is bullshit’ which might be hours, someone else has cashed out a million dollars.

  29. 29.

    Martin

    @Ishiyama: I wouldn’t count on it. Right now this is all an unintended ‘feature’ of how these markets work.

    It should be criminal, but it’s not. I don’t have a lot of faith there’s 60 votes in the Senate to fix it properly either.

  31. 31.

    Anoniminous

    @Ishiyama:

    Adam Neumann walked away free & clear with $1.7 billion after the WeWork scam collapsed.  Do it right and there’s all kinds of money to be made.

    See Jay’s Vancouver Stock Market Pump & Dumps for another example.

  33. 33.

    Another Scott

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    By the time Trump is allowed to sell stock it will be worthless. He’s one of the marks here. I find that funny.

    If he’s forced to keep to the 6-month timeline, yes. Hehe.

    It would be good to see the SPAC MotUs left holding the bag, also too.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  34. 34.

    hueyplong

    Wouldn’t mind seeing a bunch of Trumpist investors ruined.  Maybe personal bankruptcy will accomplish what nothing else could among certain of the cult members.

  36. 36.

    JaneE

    This is far from the first company to be seriously overvalued, but this has to be one of the most. Obviously idiotic investments I have ever seen. At least Tesla has a product that they sell for money and maybe profit. The people at least used to want to buy quite often. But truth social come on. Nobody wants it.

  37. 37.

    Anoniminous

    @Martin:

    Humans haven’t been making Buy/Sell decisions in the Real Time financial markets for decades.  The markets are too big and too complicated.  Just in the USD Forex market there are $7.5 trillion worth of transactions per day (2022 figure.)  It’s all done by millisecond-to-millisecond Financial Analysis on computers with minimal oversight by humans.

  38. 38.

    Jay

    @Another Scott:

    DWAC was created with the help of ARC Capital, a Shanghai-based firm specializing in listing Chinese companies on American stock markets that has been a target of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigations for misrepresenting shell corporations.[4][5][6] Some investors were surprised to learn that their investment money was being used to finance a Trump company.[7] In 2021, the DWAC Trump venture was linked with another company, China Yunhong Holdings, based in Wuhan, Hubei,[8][9] until its lead banker who was running the merger promised to sever ties with China in December 2021, stating that Yunhong was to “dissolve and liquidate”.[10][11] In February 2022, Reuters reported that the connection between Shanghai-based ARC Capital and Digital World was more extensive than thought, with ARC having offered money to get the SPAC off the ground.[11]

    In late 2021, the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority asked DWAC for information about stock trading and communications with TMTG prior to their deal being announced. (DWAC disclosed this request in a December 2021 regulatory filing.)[22][23] The company disclosed in June 2022 that the SEC was expanding its inquiry, and days later said a grand jury seated by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) had subpoenaed DWAC and each member of its board, as well as documents.[24][25]

    On July 3, 2023, DWAC announced its intent to settle by paying an $18 million fine to the SEC and revising some of its filings.[26] On July 20, the SEC announced the settlement.[27]

    Notable stockholders
    In October 2021 it was reported, based on information provided by congresstrading.com, that House representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) had purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 DWAC shares after the Trump merger was announced.[28][29][30]

  42. 42.

    Freemark

    @Another Scott: ​
      He put no money into it so he can’t lose. Plus Fidelity is showing that DJT is paying a $0.25 per share dividend this month. Haven’t been able to confirm anywhere else. If true Trump will make $20 million cash. The SPAC had at least $200 million in cash before merger so it can do this.

  44. 44.

    scav

    As though they don’t know all the background ways to profit from these classic oldies.  The headline magical unsellable shares bring the pious veil to this multiply layered dance of find the pea nonsense.

  46. 46.

    thruppence

    There should be a tiny per transaction excise tax that could feather the brakes on all these millions of automated transactions.

    Never gonna happen but still.

  50. 50.

    B1naryS3rf

    I have a protected Xitter account. I used to get an average of one follow request every few months. Now I get something like 4-5 a day, all pron scammers of course. If the interface on Bluesky were as polished I’d dump it right now.

    No sympathy for any greed head or MAGAt investor. They should’ve listened to king MAGAt himself: https://youtu.be/IxaaJY605mQ?si=6pgMXgdv2QPQk1gf

  51. 51.

    Shalimar

    I get that no one wants to advertise on Truth Social and it does not have very many users, which explains the complete lack of revenue.  But there is obvious demand for the stock.  That should mean that offering some membership level at $x per month would be a lot more successful than Twitter has been at the same thing.  Surely they can get some revenue from that, at least enough to where it isn’t losing money every quarter.

  52. 52.

    karen marie

    @Urza: I heard a news report the other day, when TFG’ s thing went public, that twitter has lost 25% of US active users every year since Musk bought it. I think global numbers were down 15% each year.

  54. 54.

    bbleh

    @brendancalling: I have NO sympathy at ALL for those fools.  If ever there were clearer, louder signs of a scam from more sources, I don’t know when it was.

    Frankly, better their money go to his legal fees than to Republican campaigns where it might have some effect.

  55. 55.

    Jay

    @Shalimar:

    as the price drop shows, there is minimal interest in buying the stock.

    A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC; /spæk/), also known as a “blank check company”, is a shell corporation listed on a stock exchange with the purpose of acquiring (or merging with) a private company, thus making the private company public without going through the initial public offering process, which often carries significant procedural and regulatory burdens.[1][2] According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), SPACs are created specifically to pool funds to finance a future merger or acquisition opportunity within a set timeframe; these opportunities usually have yet to be identified while raising funds.[3

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_acquisition_company

    Two Chinese State backed Corporations are the biggest investors in the SPAC,

  57. 57.

    MattF

    All more or less legal. The US philosophy about protecting investors is to mandate that potential investors be supplied with all the adequate and true relevant information. If those potential investors proceed to flush assets down the toilet despite the flashing lights and waving red flags, that’s just too bad. It’s how natural selection does its job.

  59. 59.

    danielx

    OT but happy: six weeks with arm in a sling over today. At least I can wear a coat or jacket normally!

  61. 61.

    ColoradoGuy

    Not that different than Bitcoin. Speculation piled on speculation, using arcane formulas combined with legalese and lots and lots of lawyers.

    Underlying value: Zero.

  62. 62.

    Tony G

    I have a hard time feeling sympathy for anyone who buys ANYTHING that Trump is selling — whether sneakers, Bibles or stocks.  Burning your money in a dumpster is much more prudent investment.

  63. 63.

    sdhays

    Dagnabit, Dumpy Dump managed to post the $175m bond for his fraud appeal. Oh, well.

  65. 65.

    Quadrillipede

    The beatings will continue until at least 55% of US voters internalize the manifest reality that nothing good can happen while Republicans continue to have any political power whatsoever.

  66. 66.

    Dan B

    @sdhays: The insurance company that posted Trump’s bond is located in the Cayman Islands.  It has a very low Chamber of Commerce rating.

  67. 67.

    NotMax

    Short-term alert for video gamers.

    Free on Steam today only, Content Warning.

    In Content Warning, you and up to three of your friends journey to the underwater Old World to film all kinds of spooky shit. Survive the night, upload your video, ???, profit!

  68. 68.

    Jackie

    Judge Merchan has expanded TIFG’s gag order to cover Braggs’ and his family members.

    Justice Juan Merchan amended his gag order, issued last week, to include his own daughter at the behest of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the records show.

    The New York Times, among the first to report the ruling, notes the amended gag order still allows Trump to speak out against the judge and the district attorney.

    https://www.rawstory.com/trump-gag-order-2667649119/

  71. 71.

    Mike in NC

    Per CNN, “Trump’s net worth plunges $1 billion as his media stock tumbles”

    That made my week and it’s only Monday.

  73. 73.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Quadrillipede:

    The beatings will continue until at least 55% of US voters internalize the manifest reality that nothing good can happen while Republicans continue to have any political power whatsoever.

    The larger problem is convincing them that the Democratic Party is not to going take away their hamburgers, golf courses, or big pick-ups, that they will not impose Sharia Law, and that all the things they have been scared of for the past 50 years or so are in their imaginations.

    The don’t vote for Republicans as much as they vote against Democrats. The highly effective right-wing propaganda has convinced to associate all their fears and grievances with Democrats.

  74. 74.

    JoyceH

    I kind of love that the stock’s ticker initials are DJT so that Trump can watch the value of his own initials sink and sink and sink.

  75. 75.

    NotMax

    @JoyceH

    The last time DJT was listed on an exchange it didn’t go well.

    That previous, decades-ago experience, however, did not end well for the company or its investors. While a 2016 Washington Post review found that Trump made over $44 million, the company — Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts — lost more than $1 billion and ended up in bankruptcy.

    This time around, there’s at least one similarity between the two ventures separated by decades. The newly merged company that’s set to go public, Trump Media, will be listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange with the letters DJT, Trump’s initials. Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts used the same stock ticker when it went public with great fanfare in 1995.
    [snip]…The year the stock peaked, it lost $66 million. In 1999, it lost $134 million. And in 2004 — when the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange — it lost $191 million, according to a CNBC review. Source

  76. 76.

    Roberto el oso

    I’m utterly clueless when it comes to stocks etc. But I keep seeing that one of the reasons for the rapid tumble is the revelation, today, Monday, that Truth Social lost $58 million, considerably less than what they brought in. And yet I can swear I’ve seen that figure mentioned for some weeks now, and definitely prior to the stock going public so ….. even in my cluelessness it doesn’t seem possible that this jumped out at me but not investors (including, presumably, some folks who do this for a living)

    Of course, as is the nature with so many things related to high finance, it’s possible that I simply “don’t understand how these things work”.

  77. 77.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​
     

    Higher than I would have expected.

    ‘Monthly users’ seems like a pretty thin usage level. I’d really like to see what’s happened to daily users. I’m almost surely a ‘monthly user’ from the times I inadvertently click on one of AL’s links. But I woudn’t think the five minutes I spend there each month, even multiplied by a million others, would give advertisers much of an incentive to spend any money there.

  80. 80.

    NotMax

    Speaking of the NYSE, the story behind the bell(s) is pretty interesting.

    Bells were first used at the Exchange in the 1870s with the advent of continuous trading. A Chinese gong was the original bell of choice. But in 1903, when the Exchange moved to its current building, the gong was replaced by a brass bell — electrically operated and large enough in size to resonate throughout the voluminous main trading floor. Today, each of the four trading areas of the NYSE has its own bell, operated synchronously from a single control panel.

    The brass bells functioned without incident until the late 1980s, when the NYSE decided the time had come to refurbish them and purchase a new one for backup. With that decision, the Exchange learned just how unusual its bells really are.

    First, the Exchange had to identify the manufacturer of the bells — a firm with which the NYSE hadn’t done business in more than 80 years.… Source

  84. 84.

    frosty

    @danielx: Great news! After wearing a sling in college for six weeks I know what you’re going through. It was on my dominant hand, too, so writing finals left-handed was a skill I had to learn rapidly!

  85. 85.

    frosty

    @Jackie: TFG needs to spend a night in jail to teach him not to spew violence. I hope he violates the gag order and the judge brings the hammer down.

  87. 87.

    frosty

    @NotMax: ​Here’s the clue. The company went bankrupt but TFG made money. I read a couple of days ago that the way the transactions went down it was a classic Bustout. He bought the casinos, loaded them up with debt, took the equity, and bankrupted them.

  88. 88.

    Jackie

    @frosty: I wish! WE wish! I did hear on the Lawrence O’Donnell show, that if he violates the new updated gag order, the judge can prevent him from being privy to the jurors names. For THEIR SAKES I hope he does! TIFG will publicly name them, otherwise – gag order be damned.

  89. 89.

    Shalimar

    @Roberto el oso: The new numbers reported today were from 2023.  There were similar losses in 2021 and 2022, though this past year was worse than expected.  So numbers have been out there and this was expected by anyone paying attention, but there is new information too.

  90. 90.

    Soprano2

    So the tornado sirens are going off right now. It seems to be north of Springfield, hope it stays there. It’s a confirmed tornado, not radar indicated. It might get the airport!

  91. 91.

    Jay

    @rikyrah:

    SPAC’s don’t own anything, don’t make anything, don’t sell anything, (other than shares). As they are just a big pile of money, don’t have to disclose shareholders and are publicly traded, there is no need for fraudulent documents, (other than perhaps Exec compensation and the amount of money being held).

    Where fraud comes in is when you tell the SEC, “nope, we are still looking for a buy option and arn’t negotiating with anyone”, when you are, or if insiders are engaging in trades on the basis of yet public or complete specific plans.

    And as we have seen tens of thousands of times, the SEC prefers that a Corp rearranges the deck chairs and pays a minor fine.

    Truth Social didn’t engage in any fraud, either, their numbers were well known.

    As we have seen with other events, (Tom Brady, Xshitter, FTX, Theranos) when there is stupid money chasing a property, the market valuation goes a little insane.

    Later, reality intrudes.

  92. 92.

    David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch

    Generational performance by Caitlin Clark, not only dropping 40, but putting out a defending national champion.

    Iowa deserves to talk alllllllll the shit.

    — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) April 2, 2024

  95. 95.

    Soprano2

    @Old School: Yep, it’s to the east now. It’s raining buckets and the wind is blowing, but no tornados. Still could get hail, though. I’m watching “weather porn” right now. No Colbert for us tonight!

  96. 96.

    frosty

    @NotMax: ​You didn’t post the quote in the article about the electrician who found a bell in the crawl space. 27″ diameter, much bigger that they were using, covered in dust.
    Great story, thanks for sharing it.​

  97. 97.

    Jackie

    Erin Burnett, CNN, interviewed RFK Jr tonight. I watched this show specifically to see him in an actual interview vs the snippets I’d seen. First off, JFC, he’s more hyper than Bing, Bing, Bing Ricochet Rabbit! He’s absolutely ALL OVER THE PLACE. Something tells me he doesn’t take meds that would actually help keep him focused on the actual subject at hand. Burnett did an incredible job harnessing him to the subject – which primarily was how he could consider Biden a bigger threat to democracy than the person who incited an insurrection. Burnett dedicated 2/3s of her program interviewing him. Well worth the watch if you have access to CNN.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/rfk-jr-calls-biden-greater-threat-democracy-trump-rcna145961

  98. 98.

    prostratedragon

    We’re confident that we have very good collateral,” Hankey said

    Proposition: The battle against cynicism cannot be won.

  101. 101.

    frosty

    @Glidwrith: ​Yes, that’s precisely what Romney and the Vulture Capitalists do. Goodbye K&B Toys, Toys’R’Us, and many others. Those were good businesses!!!​

  102. 102.

    Jackie

    “Speaker Mike Johnson has begun publicly laying out potential conditions for extending a fresh round of American military assistance to Ukraine, the strongest indication yet that he plans to push through the House a package that many Republicans view as toxic and have tried to block,” the New York Times reports.

    “His terms may include tying the aid for Kyiv to a measure that would force President Biden to reverse a moratorium on new permits for liquefied natural gas export facilities, something that Republicans would see as a political victory against the Democratic president’s climate agenda. The move would also hand Mr. Johnson a powerful parochial win, unblocking a proposed export terminal in his home state of Louisiana that would be situated along a shipping channel that connects the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Charles.”

    Is this a possibility?

  104. 104.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Jackie:

    There isn’t really a moratorium on new permits for LNG export facilities. The White House announced a pause in issuing new permits so the DOE can consider additional factors, including impact on climate change, but mostly potential impact on domestic supply.

    In my view, it would be a small price to pay for Ukraine aid and, if anyone cares, it’s total pork for Johnson. The facility that has been trying for a permit for the last couple years is in Lake Charles, LA.

  105. 105.

    SilentZ

    @eversor: He’s not exactly skating — the appeals court hasn’t taken the case yet; this just gives him a chance. And if he does get to appeal, it’ll be a few months before it’s heard, but he’s already paying like 8-9% interest on that whole 400-odd million; half a year of that is $25 million. Then the $175 mil bond probably is charging him 10% interest easy, which means that if he does buy himself time here, it could cost him like $50 million more. And he’s not going to win that appeal even if he gets one.

     

    -Z

  106. 106.

    Ruckus

    @Citizen Alan:

    Same here. I’d bet it’s set up that way so that even if you don’t have access or even if you want to leave – you can’t. Which means they get to count you as a member, even if you can’t even see the site. Which is where I’m at. I wonder how many of that 75 million really are not using the site at all – like me.

  107. 107.

    gene108

    In a regulatory filing on Monday, Trump Media said it lost $58.2 million in 2023, compared with a profit of $50.5 million in 2022

    I find the $50.5 million in profit hard to believe. Most startups can’t turn a profit that quickly, and Truth Social only started after Trump for kicked off Twitter in 2021.

  109. 109.

    trnc

    Too early to tell, but it made up a little ground after being down by 25% so unless it absolutely craters out this week, it’s probably around for a while. He will make a net profit no matter what because his investment was zero.

    I’ll be obsessively checking the price, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up too much that it tanks. Of course, happy to be wrong in this case.

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