Both Donald Trump and Elon Musk present themselves as superb businessmen. Yet neither man has succeeded in operating a social network. Musk is killing one in a slow death march; Trump’s will probably finish going south after November.
Musk’s purchase of Twitter, rebranded as X, has lost approximately 80% of its value, which is now estimated at $9.4 billion.
Trump’s social network, Truth Social, operates as the sole business run by Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (Trump Media,) which went public in 2024 at almost $8 billion. The stock high: $66.22 on March 27, 2024. Its stock value (DJT) on October 1 is $16.16 per share for a market capitalization of $3.2 billion. That’s a 76% loss from all-time value. Given its inability to make a profit, that still seems quite over-valued.
Twitter aka X
Almost two years ago (October 28, 2022), Elon Musk bought Twitter for approximately $44,000,000,000. That’s $44 billion.
Today, rebranded as X with advertisers fleeing the alt-right swamp, the company has lost almost 80% of its value, based on a report from Fidelity Investments. Musk took the company off the stock exchange, so there are no public reports of its financials. He financed the purchase with “a combination of equity and debt.”
Fidelity’s Blue Chip Growth Fund values its stake in X at $4.19 million. The initial Fidelity investment? $19.66 million.
That makes X worth about $9,400,000,000 ($9.4 billion).
Truth Social
Almost 2.5 years ago (February 21, 2022), Donald Trump launched Truth Social, part of Trump Media (February 8, 2021). Neither company has never operated in the black despite loans with Chinese and Russian fingerprints.
Nevertheless, Trump took Trump Media public in a loophole/round-about manner in 2024. He merged Trump Media with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) is an SPAC that began trading on Nasdaq on September 3, 2021. ARC Capital, “a Shanghai-based firm specializing in listing Chinese companies on American stock markets” (which “has been a target of SEC investigations for misrepresenting shell corporations“) helped launch DWAC. .
ARC also provided at least $2 million to get DWAC off the ground through a Singapore-based fund… In an October 2021 SEC filing, the special-purpose acquisition company Yunhong International stated its goal was to “capitalize on growing opportunities created by consumer/lifestyle businesses that have their primary operations in Asia.”
The Guardian reported in March 2023 that federal prosecutors had investigated an $8 million investment that had “suspected Russian ties.” The investment originated with “two obscure entities that both appear to be controlled in part by the relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.”
In April, The Guardian followed up:
Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.
A Russian-American businessman, Anton Postolnikov is the nephew an ally Vladimir Putin. A lawyer in St Petersburg, Russia, set up ES Family Trust; it was funded for the first time on December 2, 2021. Trump Media received a $2 million loan on December 23, 2021, and a $6 million loan on February 17, 2022. They loans were granted in exchange for shares of company stock.
The ES Family Trust is connected to Paxum Bank; Postolnikov is a co-owner. The bank provides “banking services for the pornography and sex worker industries.”
According to The Guardian: “Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank itself could not furnish the loan.”
Lots and lots of smoke.
Google shows no news stories on Postolnikov since April. And only one at the NY Times.
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The stakes in November have never been more urgent, nor the choices more extreme.
Remember: you are not voting for one person. You are voting for a team.
I’m voting for Team America not Team Russia-Hungary-North Korea.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com