James Cross
Donald Trump has been a frequent visitor of the news cycle ever since he left the White House in 2020. His legal troubles and political campaign are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to news of the former president, and each new piece of information only adds to the image of a man who is attempting to win a spot in the Oval Office for the third time.
Controversies Around Truth Social
Some of the more controversial news around Donald Trump involves his social media platform, Truth Social. After Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter in 2021, following his repeated lies about Joe Biden, the 2020 election, and the ultimate attack on the capitol on January 6, he decided to branch off and start his own social media platform.
Truth Social was conceived, essentially, as a Twitter lookalike intended for conservatives. Of course, there was already conservative leaning social media platform at the time in Parler, but Trump wanted to capitalize on his name and create a platform that would be bigger and more popular than Twitter.
Musk Reinstating Trump
This was prior to the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk. Since Musk’s takeover of the platform, he has rebranded and reorganized the company, and has essentially turned Twitter into exactly the kind of platform that Trump was seeking to create when he started Truth Social.
Musk has even seen fit to unban several individuals who were once permanently banned from the platform, including Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene. While Greene has resumed her usual activities on the platform, Trump has seen fit to remain in his corner of the internet on Truth Social.
A Truth Social Merger
Trump has claimed that he stays on Truth Social due to the fact that other social media platforms are “woke” and don’t cater appropriately to conservatives. Of course, this isn’t true, and many social media experts believe that this is Trump’s way of subtly calling out platforms like Meta for fact checking him.
Staying away from other social media means that, necessarily, Trump has been looking for ways for his company to expand. Truth Social is owned by a company called Trump Media, and a recent merger took place between Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. and a special purpose acquisition group (SPAC), Digital World Acquisition Corp.
Becoming Public to Trade on the Stock Market
This merger allowed for Trump Media, under the ticker DJT, to start trading on the Nasdaq. Initially, the company soared in its debut on the stock market, with Trump boasting that the company brought in more than $5 billion in gains on the stock market when it first debuted.
Since then, though, DJT has erased all of its initial gains and more. On Wednesday of this week alone, the share price fell nearly 9%, and since April 1, the stock has lost almost 45% of its value.
A Lawsuit against Trump Media
Issues with its public debut are not the only thing weighing on Trump Media, though. The company has recently found themselves slapped with a lawsuit, which was brought by investment firms led by the former CEO of Digital World Acquisition Corp.
The lawsuit alleges that a current member of the media company board of directors, Eric Swider, plotted a coup in early 2023 to replace Patrick Orlando as CEO of DWAC.
Troubles at DWAC
Orlando was fired from DWAC in March of 2023, and replaced by Swider. Shortly afterwards, a lawsuit was filed that alleged that Swider misled DWAC’s directors and business partners by publishing “false and misleading representations of what was occurring at the company.”
According to the lawsuit, Swider also “offered outsized compensation to the other directors he enlisted to collude with him in exchange for supporting his coup.”
An Ally in the Coup
Swider also evidently stood to massively increase his compensation through his accession to CEO of DWAC. He also sought to take control of ARC II, which owned about 19% of DWAC prior to the merger; ARC II also owns approximately 7% of the post-merger company.
To access the information about ARC II, Swider allegedly enlisted Cano, Orlando’s former assistant, to access the account on an electric file storage website. The firms that brought the lawsuit against the post-merger company accuse Swider of promising to make Cano the president of DWAC in exchange for access to the account.
Further Details About the Coup
Cano evidently agreed, and Swider “made good on his promise” while also providing Cano with a convertible note worth 165,000 shares of DWA’s stock. Swider has defended himself against this accusation, stating in an interview that Orlando voted for Cano’s award and that Swider never hired Cao as his assistant, as the suit alleges.
The lawsuit states that Cano, since February of 2023, repeatedly accessed the storage account and “immediately” provided the information within it to Swider. Swider then used it to email “false and defamatory” claims about Orlando to ARC II’s members.
A Key Piece of Digital Evidence
One email, sent on March 5, is one of the key pieces of evidence in the lawsuit, and in it, Swider accuses Orlando of “failure to maintain a fiduciary responsibility” to ARC II, among a series of other claims.
“Patrick has threatened me with pending litigation for speaking out to fellow membership holders, so I want to be clear about this. I am not disparaging patric. I am sure he is an amazing Human being, Honest. Hard working. Looking out for your best interest. He is good looking. He is cool. I like him. Nothing in this email is meant to be defamatory.”
Further Legal Troubles for Trump Media
Following the initial lawsuit and the following merger, Trump Media suffered through a series of legal blows. In July, DWAC settled fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission, though the agency found that SPAC had filed “materially false and misleading” filings.
Then, in late March, Trump Media sued its co-founders over alleged mismanagement of the merger. This lawsuit is currently pending, and is seeking to ban said co-owners from owning any of the merged company’s stock.
Public Opinion Regarding Trump Media
Said co-founders have also countersued over their stock in the company, leading to a complicated legal back and forth that has made the first months of the merged company’s existence challenging, to say the least.
These legal troubles come in the midst of significant financial troubles for the company. Critics of Trump Media have labeled the newly created public trading option a “meme stock” and have pointed to the lack of profitability of the company as the reason why.
False Rhetoric From Trump
Trump Media has not formally commented on the ongoing legal issues in the company, nor the financial struggles that the company is currently going through.
Trump himself, in his usual way, though, has gone out of his way to diminish the issues that the company is currently facing. He has boasted that Truth Social is the most popular social media platform, and that the stock is one of the most valuable on the current market despite all evidence to the contrary.
Symptomatic of Larger Issues
The ongoing legal troubles at Trump Media are symptomatic of a bigger issue, primarily Donald Trump. Like many of his other businesses, it appears that the actions that Trump Media is taking are in pursuit of profit until the company collapses.
The evidence of impending financial distress doesn’t appear to have deterred many of the company’s supporters, though. Positive sentiment around Truth Social and DJT has continued despite ongoing financial issues, and to an outsider, it seems that supporters are willing to go down with a slowly sinking ship.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings