The Inside Scoop on Truth Social
Greetings from Mar-A-Lago in the sun-washed city of Palm Beach, Florida. I am at the Free Speech Investment Summit talking to big wigs and muckety-mucks about the new social media platform Truth Social and the recently launched Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT).
I spent about 20 minutes talking with the CFO Phillip Juhan yesterday. This morning we heard from former Congressman and CEO Devin Nunes and other board members. In an hour or so I’ll have them on my podcast.
Over the past week, I’ve been researching DJT with the idea of possibly recommending the company. There is a lot against it. First of all any of the articles or videos found in traditional media will all be negative. They say Trump is a conman and Nunes is an evil far-right nut job.
And it is true that DJT is a $6 billion company with zero earnings and little revenue. Furthermore, they don’t release their user numbers – though the entire sector gave up on that years ago.
However, the story the leadership team tells is fascinating. For those who don’t know, Devin Nunes resigned as a Senator and head of the House Intelligence Committee to become CEO of Trump Media.
He is singularly responsible for exposing the Russian Influence lie that was perpetrated by the FBI and corporate media during the 2016 election cycle. I’m not a political guy and this isn’t a political newsletter but it is pretty clear that state actors are and have been abusing their powers for many years and it is good that there are people who still call them out on it.
Nunes, despite being a powerful politician was banned or shadow-baned on social media. I was shadowbanned myself so I understand his point of view. Heck even President Trump was banned. This led to the creation of Trump Media which has been set up as a bulletproof platform for free speech. This means that they own the technology, the servers, the software etc.
They are even working on building banking and merchant accounts so that they can’t be canceled by Stripe or whoever. One theme of the talk and a point given by the CEO of Newsmax was that conservative networks have a difficult time getting major advertising accounts.
It is an amazing fact that in modern America there are or will soon be two economies split by whichever tribe you vote for.
Here are some points from my notes before I have to do my podcasts:
- If you don’t have a platform for people to speak different opinions they will stop making that type of content and thus lose their voice
- Short sellers are in the stock beyond the normal amount due to a recent rule that allows market makers to short shares they don’t own. And the number of market makers has been consolidating into just a handful over recent years.
- Nunes said they should be investigated for RICO laws as it is a criminal enterprise.
- It was the longest SPAC to take to market in history due to SEC and DOJ red tape and obstructions.
- The end of the social media monopoly will be the biggest shake-up since the government broke up Standard Oil.
- Trump is contractually obligated to just be on Truth Social.
- Biden and RFK are on Truth Social. None of the Republicans who ran against Trump in the primary were, which is why they lost.
- It is not a content company but a business platform.
- The biggest competitors are Facebook (ages 55+), Instagram (25-55) and TicTok (under 25). Facebook is dying and TikTok is owned by the Chinese.
- DJT has over 600,000 individual investors.
If you believe that there needs to be serious competition to the traditional media outlets and that half of Americans aren’t being served you have to believe that DJT will be a legitimate player. They are attempting to build out a streaming service and there was some talk about cloud infrastructure.
The stock has rolled over and looks to be heading down to around $35. I think the way to play it is to buy some wacky out of the money calls around a catalyst – say the week after the democratic convention when they force Biden out…
Anyway some really interesting stuff going on here.
I’ll tell you more about later.
All the best,
Christian DeHaemer
The Outsider Club
