“Truth Social” was always an odd name for a company founded by an antisocial pathological liar, but as we all know, gaslighting is what the ocher abomination does best. If Donald Trump started giving honest names to his shambolic business ventures, Trump Org would have been called Daddy Never Hugged Me, and So I Profane Your Skyline With This Gauche 58-Story Ape Phallus, Inc. Or maybe it would be an LLC. My commercial real estate expertise is even flimsier than Trump’s, if that’s possible.
But while Trump—who embraces failure like the cast of Alien embraced the face-mauling interlopers on their ship—is keen to take credit when things go well, he’s just as keen to transfer blame (and liability) to others when things go sideways—which in TrumpWorld happens somewhere between infinity times and always.
So now that the gendarmes appear to be at the door of Trump’s Truth Social, Trump himself is preemptively eyeing the exits and cutting doily patterns in everyone else’s parachutes.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune:
Donald Trump removed himself from the board of his Sarasota-based social media company, records show, just weeks before the company was issued federal subpoenas by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and a grand jury in Manhattan.
Trump, the chairman of Trump Media and Technology Group, was one of six board members removed on June 8, state business records show.
[...]
The SEC served Trump Media and Technology Group with a subpoena on June 27, according to a regulatory filing. Trump's media company owns Truth Social, an app similar to Twitter. Trump was banned by Twitter for inflammatory remarks concerning the insurrection.
In addition to Trump Sr., Don Jr. was removed from the board. Then, four days after the SEC served its subpoena, the Southern District of New York subpoenaed the company, signaling that a criminal investigation could be in progress as well.
The investigations are apparently connected to a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) named Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), which appears set to merge with Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group. While SPACs are barred from engaging with a partner before going public, there appears to be some question about the timing of merger talks between the two entities.
CNBC:
The Justice Department and the SEC, which regulates the stock market, are investigating the deal between DWAC and Trump Media. By merging with DWAC, which is a kind of shell company called a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, Trump’s firm would gain access to potentially billions of dollars on public equities markets.
Early criticism of the deal came from Sen. Elizabeth Warren in November. She wrote to SEC Chair Gary Gensler, telling him that DWAC “may have committed securities violations by holding private and undisclosed discussions about the merger as early as May 2021, while omitting this information in [SEC] filing and other public statements.”
Of course, it’s not necessary to understand the abstruse details of SPAC mergers to surmise that Trump may have started distancing himself from the company just as the wolf approached the door.
But the really funny part in all this is who remains on the board: namely, the company’s CFO, Phillip Juhan, and its CEO, former California congressman and fake-cowcatcher Devin Nunes, who is about to discover that decoupling from Trump is a bit like yanking your tongue off a frozen flagpole with a team of shitfaced Clydesdales.
There’s also the fact that Truth Social isn’t doing so great. As Vanity Fair noted in May:
Like a crazy old man who spends his days shouting at an empty blender and thinks the government is performing mind control on people through their microwaves, Donald Trump apparently believes that the reason his newly formed social media company, Truth Social, is not a runaway success is because Google has internally decided to sabotage him. “Is Google trying to fuck me?” the former president has reportedly been asking friends and advisers over the past several weeks.
According to Rolling Stone, Trump believes the tech giant has it out for him due to the fact that the Truth Social app is not yet available for Android users. Which, reporters Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng note, probably has less to do with Google trying to screw over the ex-president and more to do with the fact that, as of Tuesday, the company hadn’t “even submitted an Android app to Google to review for Play Store approval.” Nevertheless, Trump continues to labor under the idea that this is personal. “He keeps hearing about how Google and YouTube have it out for him…including on Truth Social, and I think he’s taking [it] seriously,” one source who’s discussed the matter with Trump told Rawnsley and Suebsaeng. According to the outlet, Trump, who reportedly doesn’t use email, once suggested that everyone in the U.S. should stop using computers, and reportedly calls iPads “the flat one,” has also asked if Google is is trying to “screw with me” or has simply wondered aloud, “What’s up with Google?”
In February, former California representative Devin Nunes, who left his job in Congress to be Truth Social’s CEO, said that the company’s “goal” was to have the network “fully operational” by the end of March, which obviously did not happen. In addition to reportedly being placed in waitlist purgatory, would-be Truthers have complained that attempting to use the app is a Kafkaesque nightmare.
Now, if Trump uses his new social media company to dishonestly enrich himself and/or screw over others, it won’t be the first time he’s made money off his failures. We all know that Trump failed big-time in the casino business—which is a little like shooting fish in a barrel and somehow hitting an emu—but that doesn’t mean he didn’t profit from it.
As The New York Times reported in June 2016, when we naively thought Trump’s history of lurid business failures might still have some impact on his electability, Trump made out like a bandit while running his failing casino operation, even as his investors got royally screwed.
His audacious personality and opulent properties brought attention — and countless players — to Atlantic City as it sought to overtake Las Vegas as the country’s gambling capital. But a close examination of regulatory reviews, court records and security filings by The New York Times leaves little doubt that Mr. Trump’s casino business was a protracted failure. Though he now says his casinos were overtaken by the same tidal wave that eventually slammed this seaside city’s gambling industry, in reality he was failing in Atlantic City long before Atlantic City itself was failing.
But even as his companies did poorly, Mr. Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen.
So, yeah, throwing his business partners under the bus when things get rough is kind of his M.O. Not sure why people keep falling for his snake oil pitches, but here we are.
Of course, it’s possible that Trump removed himself from the board of a company that was about to be subpoenaed by two separate government entities for a totally normal reason. Who really knows? But, as with all things Trump-adjacent, it sure doesn’t smell right.
P.S. For the record, Truth Social, in a statement that sounds suspiciously like it was drafted by Trump himself, has denied that Trump was removed from the board. And since the denial was posted on Truth Social, you know it must be true.
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.