Trump 'tried to sell Truth Social to Musk' as SPAC deal stalled Faced with mounting legal troubles and a sputtering special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) deal, former president Donald Trump reportedly turned somewhere unexpected last year to offload his flailing social media platform, Truth Social: X owner and Tesla technoking Elon Musk. News of the reported offer comes from the …
There are, sadly, millions of people who are willing to give this "rich" asshole money. Money they often can't really afford, and he shouldn't need if he were as wealthy as he claims to be. If of the 70-something million people who voted for him last time, they all gave him an average of like $13, you arrive at a billion dollars if my math is correct.
But, as with anything involving the stock market, the valuation is generally a worthless figure useful only for bragging rights.
The whole point of a SPAC is to end run the IPO process. An already public company, created for the sole purpose of merging with a privately held company, merges with the privately held company and it's then instantly publicly traded. Which is why it's something I say should be outlawed, or at least very tightly regulated. There may be a few edge cases where it's the legitimately best option, but probably 99.9 times out of 100, it's going to be a bunch of grifters looking to scam gullible idiots.
>If of the 70-something million people who voted for him last time, they all gave him an average of like $13, you arrive at a billion dollars if my math is correct.
If he follows the playbook and party membership is mandatory for government jobs. Say 20M employees all paying $30/month and 50% is kicked back to him = $300M/month, $3.6Bn/year
Let him try. The US govt can just seize any assets he owns, like property, and sell it off. Not to mention freeze his bank accounts. He'd basically be dependent upon Putin to provide basically everything for him, and I doubt Putin would be terribly inclined to do so. He might be willing to allow Trump to claim asylum in Russia because it will annoy the US and provide him with a valuable bargaining chip, but I doubt very much he'd be willing to supply Trump with the kind of lifestyle he's accustomed to. Sort of like Snowden, he might be given a work visa and allowed to apply for jobs with Russian companies, but I'm betting that's about as far as Putin'd be willing to go.
Though, I have to say, I'm very curious to find out what would happen if a former US President were convicted of a felony and sentenced to time in prison. Does the Secret Service continue its protective detail or does being convicted of a felony mean that is forfeit? What about the pension and other perks former POTUS' get? Does that continue or does it also go away? They'd have to keep Trump in protective custody, but that was never really designed to be a long-term thing. He'd be completely isolated for years. Just all kinds of things that, up to now, no one has ever really had any reason to really even think about, because every previous POTUS (maybe save Nixon) was smart enough to avoid all the shit Trump just did right out in the open and even bragged about.
Also, as a number of cases involving Bill Clinton have demonstrated, a sitting POTUS can still be expected to stand trial for things that happened before they were POTUS, not to mention states can do their own thing regardless. So, things like the hoarding of classified documents and refusing to give them back when asked (numerous times) along with conspiring to obstruct efforts to retrieve them... that all happened when he wasn't POTUS, so could continue on regardless. Which would be another interesting one. What if a sitting POTUS is convicted of a crime they committed before being POTUS? You'd think if we had a functioning legislature, it would be a pretty swift impeachment and conviction to remove them from office, but a functioning legislature is not something we have right now.
While it hasn't been set in stone yet due to that lack of precedent, as I understand it, the best guess is that the Secret Service would basically hand their duties over to whichever Bureau of Prisons, Department of Corrections, or whatever gets possession of him, and that other entity would then have the responsibility for him for the duration of his stay. But yeah, given how unprecedented everything is, that's just the most likely of many possible and very different options.
aerogems,
That sounds like a great idea for a TV series!
The imprisoned crime boss who rules the prison because of all his henchmen is a well worn theme. But what if we have a person sent to a prison who has a boss, but that person is guarded by a team of Secret Service agents who decide to take over the joint?
The crims have got prison experience, guile and cunning. The Secret Service have got guns (or maybe not) and combat training.
I'm thinking of a cross between Porridge and a martial arts movie. So a comedy / drama / satire / horror?
Horror: the minion is caught by the Secret Service and dragged to Trump's cell in the middle of the night. Trump is asleep in his chair and the minion is thrown to the floor in front of him.
Then the orange mop moves, drops onto the floor and attaches itself to the minion, whose screams are suddenly cut off.
The next morning, the minion is shown walking into the cell of The Boss and, just before the door closes, we see a few strands of orange poking above the back of the minion's collar.
Theme music, roll credits, end of first season.
Truth Social never really took off as a major social network. Probably largely because its an echo chamber of like-minded people. Like-minded people who got their kicks out of upsetting people who thought differently. That doesn't really work on Truth Social as they're preaching to the converted. I also suspect its quite risky posting too much there as anti-terrorism investigators will be hoovering up every word that gets posted there to foil plans before they get too far.
It has some monetary value, though, as Truth Social is essentially a Direct Marketing goldmine. It's a self-selected dataset of extremists, useful idiots, gullible nutjobs and vulnerable people. Didn't you have to upload your ID at some point to verify identity? That will be on file.
How is entity going to be worth billions? I am totally lost as to where that valuation is coming from.
From Uranus.
No, seriously. It's social media, donchano. It's value is whatever the seller says it is.
...and we all know by now that t'pineapple has a penchant for overvaluing his ass sets [sic]....
Truth Social is as much in the business of truth as the DPRK is a democratic republic or the PLA is there to free the people.
By definition, only what is not self-evident needs to be stated explicitly. Naming it "Trumpery Social" would have been something of a giveaway.
Trumpery derives from the Middle English "trompery" and ultimately from the Middle French "tromper," meaning "to deceive."
The Orange Jesus is short of the greenbacks. As he's got to come up with at least $450M in order to be able to file an appeal in the case that he lost late last month, he's getting desperate.
I'm no lover of Musk but for him to tell 'The Donald' to in the words of his wannabe VP, MTG, 'F**K off' is a good move.
Personally, I can't wait for him to be evicted from Trump Towers and for the contents to be auctioned off for 10 cents on the dollar.
“Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!”
-- George Carlin
https://youtu.be/iouZYYzQEjU
But you know, the longer you listen to this abortion debate, the more you hear this phrase ‘sanctity of life'. You’ve heard that. Sanctity of life. You believe in it? Personally, I think it's a bunch of shit. Well, I mean, life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realise that God is one of the leading causes of death. Has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians all taking turns killing each other ‘cuz God told them it was a good idea!The sword of God, the blood of the land, veangence is mine. Millions of dead motherfuckers. Millions of dead motherfuckers all because they gave the wrong answer to the God question. ‘You believe in God?' ‘No.’ *Pdoom*. Dead. ‘You believe in God?' ‘Yes.' ‘You believe in my God? ‘No.' *Poom*. Dead. ‘My God has a bigger dick than your God!
-- George Carlin
Truly one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age. Pick almost any topic and there's likely a fitting quote from Carlin on it.
Right up there with one of his sharpest observations, which was that your chance of getting the crap bombed out of you tracks very closely with the percentage of brown people that live there.
Probably aught to be a law political science demographics at this point.
Christianity
The popular belief that a celestial Jewish baby who is also his own father, born from a virgin mother, died for three days so that he could ascend to heaven on a cloud and then make you live forever only if you symbolically eat his flesh, drink his blood and telepathically tell him you accept him as your lord & master so he can remove an evil force from your spiritual being that is present in all humanity because an immoral woman made from a man's rib was hoodwinked by a talking reptile possessed by a malicious angel to secretly eat forbidden fruit from a magical tree.
And the crazy bit is that people are blowing each other up over different interpretations of the same 10th generation copy of a translation of a translation of the fairy story.
Imagine if there was a 30year war over which Spiderman movie was best?
Anyone who actually reads the Bible will quickly realize that God is not the hero of the story. Not saying Lucifer necessarily is the good guy either, but it's definitely not God. The "guy" creates humanity as exhibits in a private zoo, creates women for the sexual gratification of men, kicks humanity out of his zoo for gaining self-awareness, commits global genocide and later infanticide (which Christians still celebrate to this day), he helps the Jewish tribes roam around the desert wiping out various city-states for 40-years... then he cucks Joseph, is a deadbeat/absentee father who basically only shows up once during his kid's entire life, and has basically been completely absent from the world since the Old Testament days.
These are not "good guy" type activities, even based on the morality system "he" handed down to humanity.
So in the original the star is a violent unstoppable killing machine
Then in the sequel the same character changes sides to be the good guy that ultimately sacrifices himself for mankind
In the reboot, having killed the star in part2, they have to invent an entirely new character (but to save money you aren't allowed to take pictures of him)
It would make a good set of movies if you could get James Cameron interested
《Then in the sequel the same character changes sides to be the good guy that ultimately sacrifices himself for mankind》
The gnostics and the especially the cathars had a different take in the "the same character."
Unfortunately you are unlikely to find a cathar congregation today as the bad cop version saw to that.
I find it completely unbelievable that it escapes the comprehension of those afflicted that religion is primarily about how human beings ought to relate to other human beings and the world they inhabit. But it does. By its very nature religion must be a work-in-progress not a dangerously haphazard collection of loony ideas chisseled into stone.
In america the veneer of religion has supplanted patriotism as the last resort of the soundrel.
If there's one thing that Trump has proved in his life, it's that giving him money doesn't mean you own him. Once he's got the money, you're dead to him and he can't wait until he can steal that money - or seemingly in a lot of cases lose it when the business goes bust. But as long as he made his percentage of what came in, he was a happy bunny.
Right. Who's successfully ridden Trump's coattails? At the moment, Melania and Ivanka are the only ones I can think of. The boys are clinging on but he'd cut them loose in an instant. His various lawyers over the years have mostly suffered for the privilege, except for the ones smart enough to bail out while they were still in a decent position, like Tacopina. (I don't think anyone was surprised that Tacopina proved to be the brightest of that bunch.) He's happy to avoid paying those he owes money — something Trump and Musk have in common — and to throw his co-conspirators and former allies under the bus.
Sure, Trump got a bunch of morons elected to Congress and other political office, but only until they cross him in any way, so it's lapdog or you're out on your ass.
Trump's motto isn't even "what have you done for me lately?", it's "what will you do for me now?".
Even Musk seems to be sensible enough to realize that.
It's the ones you haven't heard about, who don't appear on twitter or in the press conference - but are the ones quietly organizing stuff behind the scenes. Occasionally giving 'the boss' shiny things to play with, and packed rallies to rant at, while planning the train timetables.....
> ... to shower him with gold ..
MI6 conspired with the Deepstate to fabricate the Steele dossier. Do we need anymore smoking guns.
Newly Declassified Document Indicates FBI Misled Congress on Reliability of Steele Dossier
Not the previous poster, but they aren't saying anything a million others haven't said before.
Literally no reason that an AC should ever de-cloak just so some thin skinned idiot can harass them later. Consider the number of nation-state backed shills around here these days on the other threads, about a hundred reasons not to. If you don't like the opinion, feel free to post a counter. I suspect if you are calling out AC posters without taking any real position you would get chopped down pretty fast around here, but what do I know, you may be a rhetorical savant for all we know.
(Also posted AC, because I love most of you muppets, but not enough to invite you to troll every post I make here for for the foreseeable future. The silver and gold badges are worth about as much as a third tier bored ape NFT. Don't worry, you shall know me by my misspelt gramer.)
The SEC, and its various counterparts around the world, really need to outlaw this SPAC garbage. They're designed specifically to get around having to provide a lot of the investor info you'd normally need to give for an IPO. Generally the only people who would be interested in that sort of thing are shady organizations with people who are looking to cash out before they're required to file anything with the SEC and everyone else is left holding the bag.
That said, there's even more drama going on with the Truth Social SPAC. There's now one more lawsuit Trump has to deal with, alleging that he's trying to alter the terms of the deal by giving himself a larger stake in the resulting company and diluting the ownership stake of one of the major financial backers.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/01/legal-hurdles-swell-for-trumps-truth-social-deal-in-11th-hour-00144398
SPACs are nearly always cons, true, but it's hard to see offhand how regulators could forbid them. What's the legal criterion you'd use to distinguish them from the normal case of a listed firm acquiring an unlisted one?
I suppose the solution is really just for the SEC to increase reporting requirements for acquiring an unlisted company to be more or less on par with those for an IPO.
The only reason Trump didn't go back to Twitter when Musk unbanned him was because he wanted to keep using his own site so he could cash in. If Trump quit posting there its value would be zero. The only reason Musk would buy it is to shut it down and force Trump back to Twitter.
Its value is being propped up by the possibility he might be president again, and his rantings on that site become "official US policy" effectively, and important for historians who want to write the history of the decline of the US into an autocracy. If he loses its value plummets to near zero. Even his supporters will tire of him whining about his court cases after a while as they flail around hoping to find a replacement savior for the orange Jesus.
>The only reason Musk would buy it is to shut it down and force Trump back to Twitter.
Or for the gratitude of a future president
And a ban on imported EVs and a $100K/vehicle federal subsidy for American built EVs ( only valid for companies with 5 letter names beginning with T) ?
Plus a contract for all US satellite launches for the full 1000 year Reich Presidency ?
Would you trust Trump to keep a promise? If you pay him now, you need to have got what he promised you yesterday, or your money has been wasted.
It's one of the reasons I don't think he's any kind of Russian agent, or has any kind of relationship with Putin. Other than saying how great Putin is, in order to be controversial. His future actions are essentially random, and he doesn't stay paid for longer than he can see his next opportunity to get paid.
Exactly. He uses people, and when their usefulness is over he doesn't give them another thought. If Musk made him a deal where the "pro quo" came after Trump was president, Musk would never see it. Either Trump loses the election and isn't in a position to help Musk (especially once he's behind bars) or he wins the election and no longer needs Musk thus has no reason to keep his side of the bargain unless a new deal is struck where Musk gives him much more.
All the people voting for him thinking on he's "on their side" will be in for a rude awakening if he wins, because he will never again need their votes and have no reason to care about them at all. Either he'd be ineligible to run for a third term or (IMHO more likely) he destroys our democracy by then and will be like his idols Putin and Orban a dictator for life. The little people won't matter because they will have nothing they can give him. At least the billionaires will have a potential use, if they will cut him in for a share of their businesses like Putin forces the Russian oligarchs to do.
Trump doesn't outright own TS, and he has some kind of exclusivity agreement with the holding company. So, he basically can't post on Xitter without violating the terms of that contract, which then probably can strip him of his ownership stake and potentially cost him hundreds of millions when he's bleeding cash everywhere.
Because Elon says that he can *already* deliver an extra 20,000 thousand votes to Trump. By June these will also be fully able to navigate themselves to the polling booths without needing to be driven (a massive saving on dogs and shepherds).
These voters will also be reusable after a controlled re-entry into the booths in the neighbouring district: Musk has claimed that "he knows more about vote rigging than any human alive at this time" although this statement has been reported to have caused some friction between him and Trump.
"Did Elon Musk really say that?"
No. Of course not (not in public, anyway; that is just an imagined conversation between Musk and Trump).
It is a sarcastic reference to Elon's "I know more about manufacturing than anyone alive".
Just like the sarcastic references to Elon's claims about delivery timescales and FSD.
Given the whole "we can refuse to sell you any future vehicles if you don't let us buy back your cybertruck" bit in the purchase agreement, I wouldn't put it past Xitler to try and add something about how you must register with the RNC and vote for Republican candidates. I doubt any court would uphold that provision as being legal, but until someone actually bothered to challenge it in court, a lot of people might just assume it is legal or decide they don't want to risk it.
Sorry ?
Trump, who has been bleating about how Beijing is our enemy, imposing a ridiculous trade war and blaming China for everything he can't blame Mexica for, has used a Chinese firm for one of his shady deals ?
Wow. I would say somebody alert MAGA, but they'd have to have a brain to understand.
While i think Trump is an idiot, he might be clever enough to realize hes much better off staying off Twitter and just posting on Truth social. As if he does become president again that surely going to drive a lot more eyeballs onto his own platform where he can't get kicked off no matter what he says or his posts marked as unverified information (or whatever it is they do for complete bull5hit that he usually posts about election fraud and conspiracies)
And if he fails to get elected all the MAGA numpties can use Truth to organize storm the capitol part 2, and buy some Trump merch while doing it.
Is that it solely consists of rabid but easily exploitable idiots.
Posting on single letter rebranded twitter means dealing with a mess of conflicting opinions, agencies, and national and international regulations. Most of the rest of the world doesn't give a shit and isn't paying much attention. So it's the hardest link to police, and will probably be the last blocked.
《alien lizard people dressed as Federal Agents!》
I have seen the footage of best insurrection ever, the maga numpties were patently the alien lizard people and not taking the least precaution to conceal their reptilian natures.
In most civilized nations that outrage would have rapidly invoked martial law and the expeditious judicial use of convenient walls.
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