XPost: or.politics, talk.politics.guns, alt.politics.republicans
XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics

On paper, the value of the former president's stake in the social-
media platform Truth Social is up $2.5 just since his victory in the
Iowa caucuses last month

A very liberal friend messaged me on Friday. She'd just heard the
news about the $350 million-plus civil fraud judgment against Donald
Trump in New York.

That's on top of the tens of millions he has to pay former magazine
columnist E. Jean Carroll, whom he was adjudged to have sexually
assaulted and then defamed.



My friend figured that - financially, at least - Trump was down for
the count.

She's not alone. Much of media seems to be taking the same view.

They could not be more wrong.

Away from the headlines, Donald Trump has just made a staggering sum
of money, all of it driven by the publicity from his campaign for
the White House. (A terribly, terribly cynical person might even
suggest that is part of the point.)

How much? Forget these fines, which add up to less than $500
million. Trump is suddenly on track for a windfall of nearly $4
billion. And he has made most of it just in the five weeks since his
big win in the Iowa caucuses put him in pole position for the
Republican presidential nomination.

The windfall is from the forthcoming IPO of his social-media
platform, called Truth Social, which he launched - amid massive
derision from the mainstream media, I might add - in 2021 after he
was kicked off Twitter following the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Truth Social secured approval for its IPO from the Securities and
Exchange Commission this week.



It will come to the stock market through a merger with a so-called
blank-check, or "shell," company known as Digital World Acquisition
Corp. (DWAC). (Blank-check companies are paper companies that list
on the stock market first and then have a prescribed period of time
to find a business to acquire or merge with.)

Under terms of the deal, which has been in the pipeline since 2021,
Trump personally is set to end up with 79 million shares in the
company when the deal is complete, possibly as soon as this quarter.

Or so reports a new SEC filing by the company, on Page 309.


(Let it be added that Devin Nunes, the Trump acolyte and former
Republican congressman from rural California who is the CEO of the
Truth Social holding company, will make out more modestly. At
current prices, his stock will be worth, er, $5 million.)

That values Trump's personal stake in the company at $3.8 billion -
up $2.5 billion just since winning in Iowa over Ron DeSantis and
Nikki Haley, et al. Who says it costs money to run for president?


What the stock is really "worth" is anyone's guess. It's a
speculative investment, to say the least, even a meme stock. It
could easily plunge to Earth. But as long as it stays above $17.50,
Trump is in the pink.

There's no mystery as to why the stock is booming. Some traders are
riding the new Trump hype train as he marches toward the Republican
Party's presidential nomination - and, quite possibly, back into the
White House.

And many are betting that if Trump becomes president again he will
do for Truth Social in his second term what he did for Twitter in
his first.

In case you have forgotten, Trump effectively used his Twitter
account as a semiofficial presidential communication tool. You
couldn't follow politics without following him on Twitter. Actually,
you couldn't really follow the news. His tweets permeated the
culture - as when Andy Serkis, the actor who played Gollum in "Lord
of the Rings," read a number of them in character on late-night TV.

In total Trump tweeted more than 25,000 times during his four years
in office - an average of more than 18 times a day.

Twitter's value trebled during Trump's four years in office. It was
worth $40 billion when he left. (There were many factors involved,
but all this free publicity, courtesy of the P.T. Barnum in the
White House, hardly hurt.)

Trump's new windfall from Truth Social comes at a useful time for
him. He faces not only huge fines but also mounting legal costs. He
currently faces four criminal trials, involving 91 felony counts.

Two are for allegedly attempting to overturn the 2020 election
result, in which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7
million votes and a 306-232 count in the Electoral College. One is
for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the
White House. The fourth, for allegedly paying hush money to porn
star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign, is
scheduled to begin next month.


As I've pointed out before, Trump wouldn't be facing this trial at
all if he'd paid off Stormy Daniels with gold coins instead of
checks.

Getting access to his new Truth Social billions to help pay his
legal fees will be a challenge, though. Presumably, if need be,
Trump can borrow against his shares. Lawyers involved in the deal
refused to comment. The phone number listed for Digital World
Acquisition Corp. in the company's filings has been disconnected.
Emails sent to the media-relations address bounced back.

Trump, recall, was trailing Florida governor DeSantis in the
presidential race until the first of his legal indictments landed.


You see how this whole thing fits together? The establishment
indicts Trump. The publicity gives him an unassailable edge in the
Republican presidential race. That lands him a $4 billion windfall.
And he can funnel some of that money - through fines, and legal fees
- back to the establishment. The cost of doing business.

A truly cynical person might wonder if they're all in on it. And the
rest of us are getting played.

-Brett Arends

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow
Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones
Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

02-20-24 0827ET

Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/2024022066/cha-ching- how-trump-is-making-4-billion-from-his-2024-campaign-for-president

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)