Former President Donald Trump‘s niece is characterizing her uncle’s newly NASDAQ-listed DJT stock as a “possible campaign finance scam.” Mary Trump, a psychologist who has written two books excoriating Donald Trump and the Trump family — she is the daughter of Donald’s late elder brother Fred — called out the investors in the company’s stock as in-kind donators to the Trump campaign who don’t have to report their donations.
The headlines today are all about Donald’s plummeting stock prices, but that’s just scratching the surface.
— Mary L Trump (@MaryLTrump) April 2, 2024
The real story, the one that’s buried beneath the sensational headlines, is far more intriguing: Truth Social could be a front for a campaign finance scam.
Let me break…
Mary Trump especially eyes the potential for foreign actors to come through this stock market back door to line the pockets of the GOP’s presumptive nominee, reminding that unlike stock purchases, “direct donations to political candidates are subject to FEC laws, which impose limits on the amount that can be donated and require transparency about the source of donations.”
Then she issues this warning: “Now that Truth Social is a publicly traded company, however, supporters and even foreign entities have a new, surreptitious way to back Donald financially without having to make a direct political donation.”
Donald Trump is unable to currently unload his DJT shares — he owns more than half the company — without special permission from the board, so he can’t cash out what his niece calls the “donations” just yet. But the board that must approve Trump’s permission to sell shares before the official post-listing lockup period expires includes one of his sons and many of his loyalists.
Launched as a meme stock without the underlying fundamentals to justify its valuation, the Truth Social owner DJT reported a mere $4.1 million in revenue last year against a $58.2 million loss. That news sent the stock tumbling, but it’s reasonable to ask why. After all, the revenue and user base never looked remotely commensurate with its first week trading valuation of $8-$10 billion. And even after publishing its meager (though not unexpected) yearly results — and the sell-off on Monday– DJT still ended the day with a nearly $6.7 billion valuation. Ask another business booking $4 million in revenue if it is worth $6 billion…see what you learn.
[NOTE: The average P/E ratio for the S&P 500 in Q3 2023 was 23.27, meaning the stock price valued each company at about 23 times its earnings — a formula that would make Truth Social worth about $100 million.]
There is no universe in which a company with annual revenue of $4.1 million in revenue and LOST $58 million in one year is worth $10 billion. The Trump media merger with Digital World Acquisition was meant to be a massive infusion of cash to Donald–a gift masquerading as an…
— Mary L Trump (@MaryLTrump) April 1, 2024
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