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Make America Great Again Trump Laughing

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People are laughing at Trump's new visitor

Rick Newman

Is this the revenge of 4 Seasons Landscaping?

That was the worn-downwardly venue in Philadelphia where Donald Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, launched the doomed try to block Joe Biden'due south win in the 2020 presidential election. The Giuliani group meant to volume the Iv Seasons hotel, only somebody goofed and Giuliani ended up spouting his familiar election lies in front of an industrial garage door plastered with Trump signs. The Trump effort to overturn the election never got whatsoever more professional person than that.

Trump's new media company, called the Trump Media & Engineering Grouping, may suffer the same amateurish delusions. An "investor presentation" the company recently filed with the Securities and Exchange commission is provoking guffaws amidst business organization analysts, with laughable evasions and barely any business organization strategy. "Information technology does feel similar every public action by this company is designed give the impression that information technology is a joke," Bloomberg annotator Matt Levine wrote on Dec. 7.

The oddest part of the TMTG presentation is the "technology team" listed on Slide 21. The company has apparently filled xxx important jobs already, but information technology only lists these team members with a first name and last initial. The primary engineering officer is "Josh A." "Steve East." is VP of applied science. One of the senior mobile developers is "BJ." Are these real people or stand-ins? We may never know: As a footnote explains: "personnel bailiwick to change."

Source: Securities and Exchange Commission
An all-star cast of anonynous heavyweights. Source: Securities and Commutation Commission

One key employee is very well known: Devin Nunes, the pro-Trump California Congressman who's quitting his chore in Jan to become CEO of TMTG, with Trump as chairman. Nunes has no business feel, except for fishy ties to a family farm. His social-media history is spotty. Nunes' fealty to Trump spawned a parody account on Twitter called @DevinCow, prompting a lawsuit by Nunes, seeking to shut information technology down. He lost last year, and started urging his followers to join Parler, a conservative version of Twitter. But Parler would compete with Trump'due south platform, if it ever materializes.

[Click here to go Rick Newman's stories past email .]

As a Republican, Nunes faces a tough re-ballot battle in a district that's growing more liberal. And so joining Trump's company at present may have been better than losing in 2022. Just working for Trump has obvious risks, as the New Yorker pointed out in a piece of satire speculating that Trump will stiff Nunes as he has done with many contractors and investors in his years as a real-estate developer. Maybe information technology's not satire.

The Trump company is a serious venture with existent money at stake. TMTG has plans to merge with a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, called Digital World Conquering Corp., which has raised roughly $1 billion for the deal. Normally, a public company would disclose who its investors are, which DWAC will take to do at some point. For now, even so, those investors are anonymous. Ii hedge funds that invested in DWAC before knowing of the Trump merger pulled their money in October after news of the deal broke.

Source: Securities and Exchange Commission
* Founded in 2020. Source: Securities and Exchange Commission

The TMTG-DWAC tie-up is already in a bit of trouble. Donald Trump met with Patrick Orlando, DWAC'south primary executive, early in 2021, earlier DWAC had raised coin every bit a SPAC and gone public in a September offer. If they discussed the very deal that happened, that would violate the rules for SPACs, which aren't supposed to have a specific target company in heed when they raise funds. The Securities and Exchange Committee is investigating and could issue fines or sanctions, or find no wrongdoing at all.

Assuming the merger goes through, it volition allow DWAC investors to buy shares at a disbelieve to the market price, then sell them right away, essentially guaranteeing a profit. Merely that isn't necessarily skilful for the stock, or the visitor. Investors who desire to cash out correct away—and have negotiated the right to do so—have no stake in the prospects of the business itself. The investors might fifty-fifty think the existent opportunity is cashing in on the initial hype, rather than longer-term profitability.

The TMTG investor presentation is vague about how exactly the company volition brand money. It points out that Trump's post-obit on Twitter before the platform banned him in 2020—89 1000000 followers—is more than one-third of Netflix's entire subscriber base, as if TMTG could rival Netflix out of the gate. Merely that'southward apples and oranges. One account on Twitter—free to the account holder and followers alike—is cypher like a Netflix account in which users pay a monthly fee to access a deep library of content.

Source: Securities and Exchange Commission
More questions than answers. Source: Securities and Exchange Committee

Other oddities abound. A forecast for the number of monetizable users—81 one thousand thousand by 2026—is based on a Forenoon Consult poll rather any internal analysis. Other forecasts, for subscriptions and revenue, are represented by question marks rather than the bodily numbers (even if inflated) found in most business proposals. The "key counselor" whose logo appears on every page is EF Hutton. Simply this isn't the storied brokerage business firm. It'south a reboot of a brokerage named Kingswood Capital Markets that dates all the style to 2020 and recently bought rights to the EF Hutton name. Apparently the gambit worked.

Trump fancies himself a business icon, fifty-fifty though his electric current visitor is nether investigation for fraud. His business history includes 6 bankruptcies and several one thousand lawsuits. Trump'south real success came as a reality-prove entertainer flacking a gilded lifestyle, not equally a builder or dealmaker. His latest company may discover a way to convert Trump's jocular mendacity into steady profits, but information technology might as well become footling more than a Trump fan club that amuses outsiders who occasionally peek inside the fence.

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including " Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success . " Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman . You tin as well send confidential tips .

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Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/people-are-laughing-at-trumps-new-company-214853729.html