Stock Market

Trump Brags that Truth Social is the ‘Voice’ of His ‘Movement’ and Begs His Cult to Support It

Posted by on April 12, 2024 at 1:38 pm. 0 Comments :

Shortly after Donald Trump incited the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was banned from Twitter in order to prevent him from fomenting more riots by spreading more lies about the 2020 presidential election being “rigged and stolen” from him.

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Donald Trump

In retaliation for that preventative measure by the responsible moderators at Twitter at the time, Trump launched his own social media site, Truth Social, that he promised would be a bastion of free speech for everyone. Of course, that was never the purpose of the site. It was always intended to be a platform for Trump to disgorge his rancid rants that consisted almost entirely of attacking his enemies, exalting himself, and funneling cash into his own pockets. The latter of which hasn’t worked out particularly well for him…

SEE THIS: Trump’s Truth Social Craters in First Week of Trading, Auditor Doubts Its Ability to Continue

In the few weeks that the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) stock has been listed on the NASDAQ, it has suffered devastating losses. It has declined 62.5% from the high it hit on its first day of trading. Anyone who invested in it, and didn’t sell on day one, has already lost a bundle. It’s CEO couldn’t account for its flopping on Fox News. And it’s only gonna get worse.

Consequently, Trump is attempting to pump up the stock so that there is something left for him when he is legally able to dump it. Which, barring any favors from the TMTG boar, won’t be for six months. So on Friday morning Trump posted a comment on Truth Social to beseech his glassy-eyed cult disciples to bail him out.

“I am so proud of Truth Social, because I believe it represents the Make America Great Again Movement, and it shows the Spirit and Love of our Country. If people who believe in putting America First and want to Make America Great Again, support TRUTH, we will be your Voice like never before, and a Real Voice is what our Country needs, because we are in decline, and must bring America to Greatness. Think of this as a Movement, the Greatest Movement in the History of our Country. We are going to Save our Country, and Make America Great Again, GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!”

Let’s set aside the pathetic spectacle of this fake billionaire begging his saps to salvage his sinking social media scam. And never mind the absurdity of Trump praising it as a place that “shows the Spirit and Love of our Country,” when it’s mostly a fetid swamp of hostility and negativity. Even in this comment Trump maligns America as a country “in decline.”

What Trump is actually revealing here is that the site is not, and never was, the Internet “town hall” that he promised. He is now saying explicitly that it is his vehicle to exclusively promote his interests and to advance his “movement.” And therefore, he implores his MAGA minions to “support TRUTH.” In other words, join and prop up his failing business and stock.

So according to Trump, Truth Social isn’t really a free speech platform at all. It’s the PR arm of a partisan movement (aka cult), and slush fund generator for Dear Leader. But if it were truly “the Greatest Movement in the History of our Country,” he wouldn’t have to shamelessly solicit this support, and sponge off of his pitiful flock, and lie about his imaginary success. But then again, when has he ever done anything but that?

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Fox News Host Asks Trump’s Truth Social CEO About its Stock Flop, Gets Babbling Lies in Response

Posted by on April 7, 2024 at 1:04 pm. 2 Comments :

The saga of Donald Trump’s frequent financial failures continues unabated into the 2024 presidential election cycle. The most recent example of a Trump enterprise that is destined to go belly up is his ego-driven social media scam, Truth Social, that he launched after he was banned from Twitter for posting flagrant and dangerous lies.

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Donald Trump, Stock Market

In its short history, the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), which runs Truth Social, has racked up an impressive record of failure. It has lost millions of dollars, been investigated for securities fraud, and seen its early investors arrested for insider trading. And to top it off, its newly listed stock suffered a massive meltdown, resulting in fortunes being lost by Trump’s most devoted supporters.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Truth Social Craters in First Week of Trading, Auditor Doubts Its Ability to Continue

On Sunday morning Devin Nunes, the CEO of TMTG, and former Trump-fluffing GOP congressman, was interviewed by Maria Bartiromo on Fox News. The segment began with a surprisingly accurate summary of the troubles the stock encountered in going public. Bartiromo, ordinarily an ardent purveyor of pro-Trump propaganda, prefaced her interview with some uncharacteristically (for Fox News) factual information (video below)…

“President Trump’s media company has had a volatile two weeks. The stock finished down about 30% this week. The company, which operates Trump’s Truth Social platform, lost $4 billion in market value after gaining six billion in value during its debut on the Nasdaq two weeks ago. For 2023, Trump media posted a loss of $58 million on revenue and $4.1 million in a regulatory filing. The company also disclosed that its auditor had raised concerns about its ability to continue operating before its recent merger and IPO.”

OUCH! Bartiromo then introduced Nunes and asked him pointedly, “When would you expect this company to turn profitable?” Notice that Nunes never comes close to answering the question. Instead, he rambles incoherently about unrelated and/or imaginary obstacles that he says the company has faced. And true to the Trump ethos, the company was a victim of a devious cabal of covert enemies conspiring against it.

“Look, it’s important to remember that those numbers are based on what was the longest IPO in history. So we were over regulated. So if you actually look at the cost we built Truth Social – our beachhead against Big Tech, an impenetrable beachhead that everybody said couldn’t be done without using Big Tech companies – that was built for a fraction of what many of these Big Tech dinosaur companies were built for. So even if you take the ridiculous cost that it took us to get to this point, we are well positioned. Why are we well positioned? Because we have no debt. We’re coming out of this with no debt, a platform that works really, really well, that communicates to millions of people. And then we have $200 million in the bank.”

For the record, it was not the longest IPO in history. And his definition of “over regulated” just means having been required to comply with the same laws that every other company does prior to a stock market listing. If it was launched on the cheap, as Nunes claims, that’s apparent in how often it has crashed, including on the day it premiered on the NASDAQ. So much for it being “a platform that works really, really well.”

As for Nunes’ claims that the company is “well positioned” and free of debt, that reeks of stock fraud considering its huge losses, of which about 67% is interest on outstanding loans. Undeterred by reality, Nunes then unleashes a buzzword salad, saying that he is looking at “the entire ecosystem,” and asserting that the primary question his business is asking is “What does it take to make sure that we protect people in the United States and around the globe from these tyrants of Big Tech who want to silence them?” See? It’s all an altruistic venture for Nunes and Trump.

Of course, Nunes is not alone in his deceitful grifting. Trump has also been pumping this dump of a stock. A few days ago he posted a comment blasting all of his competitors as “those in the Radical Left Democrats Party who are failing at every level.” And he touted Truth Social as “the primary way I get the word out and, for better or worse.” It’s interesting that he acknowledges the “worse” part of that. Then he claimed that “people want to hear what I have to say, perhaps, according to experts, more than anyone else in the World.” And by “experts” he means his MAGA cultists and other assorted rubes, such as his army of disbarred attorneys and the incarcerated January 6th insurrectionists.

If Nunes’ appearance on Fox News is successful in getting some more of their viewers to buy TMTG stock Monday morning, it may get a bit of bounce. But in the end it is still likely to sink to a level approaching the amount of debt that Nunes says the company has – ZERO! And they will get what they deserve for believing an obvious con men.

UPDATE I: Apparently Nunes’ appearance on Fox News was not successful (surprise). Rather than the bounce he hoped for on the Monday morning following his interview, the TMTG stock dived another 10%, putting it down about 55% from it’s high, and below it’s opening price one the first day of trading.

UPDATE II: One week later, the stock is continuing to decline. So the company announced that it is issuing 21.5 million new shares, diluting the value even more.

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Trump’s Truth Social Craters in First Week of Trading, Auditor Doubts Its Ability to Continue

Posted by on April 1, 2024 at 12:30 pm. 4 Comments :

The myth of Donald Trump as a savvy businessman has been circling the drain for decades. In reality he is a nepo-baby who inherited his wealth and promptly lost much of it in failed real estate deals and multiple bankruptcies. He only managed to salvage his reputation by working as a TV game show host for fourteen seasons of “The Apprentice,” where he playacted as a successful and ruthless CEO.

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Donald Trump Circling the Drain

Trump’s latest misadventure in business is his Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), a hollow shell of company formed by stealing a Twitter clone’s code and merging with a blank-check place holder on the Nasdaq stock exchange. From its inception it has stumbled through financial and legal sinkholes that would spell doom for any business not fronting for a populist cult leader.

New filings by TMTG show just how dismal the financial condition of the company is. NBC News is reporting that…

“Trump Media and Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social platform, reported it lost $58.2 million in 2023 while generating total revenues of $4.1 million, according to the Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump Media listed its largest expense for the year as interest payments totaling more than $39 million.”

So TMTG is operating deep in the red, just like most of the red states where Trump’s most devoted disciples reside. And it’s notable that about 67% of the company’s reported expenses are in interest payments. That means they are heavily leveraged with loans that they will likely have trouble repaying considering their feeble revenue. The report went on to reveal even more ominous news, saying that…

“‘The filing includes a note from an independent accounting firm, Colorado-based BF Borgers CPA PC, warning that Trump Media’s ‘operating losses raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.’ The firm has worked with Trump Media since 2022.”

Anyone with even a novice’s knowledge of investing would have recognized that TMTG (with the doom-fated ticker symbol, “DJT”) was a catastrophe waiting to happen. And in its very first week on the stock market, it proved its worthlessness. Following the release of its financial filing the stock nosedived about 20%. It quickly sunk to the level that it priced at on its opening day a week ago. Shareholders who bought in at the beginning lost as much as 38% as the stock dropped from its high of $79.00 to under $50.00.

A lot of the press chatter about the stock has focused on the potential windfall it would present for Trump. At one point he was said to have gained a paper bounty of $6 billion. However, that presupposes that he sells his shares while stock price remains in the stratosphere. Which is a ship that has already sunk.

Furthermore, Trump is bound by a lock-up provision that prohibits him from selling any shares for six months. While the TMTG board – made up of mostly Trump flunkies – could vote to waive that provision, it would still be problematic for him to sell. For one thing, it would immediately tank the share value of the stock. That would impact the holdings of all of the board members and temper any enthusiasm to give Trump a waiver.

What’s more, if the board did give Trump a waiver, it would open the board members up to lawsuits from every other shareholder, including deep-pocketed institutions, who would lose money as a result. It would, therefore be pretty stupid for the board to vote for a waiver that would cost the board members millions and put them in massive legal peril.

Would they do it anyway? Maybe. It is, after all, a cult. And the cult leader gets his way. He is even suing the founders of Truth Social for allegedly mismanaging the company in its early days. Although it is a retaliatory suit, because those founders sued him first for trying to deprive them of the shares they were contractually promised.

In addition to the financial risks for investors. TMTG poses a grave national security risk. Adversarial foreign interests could exploit the stock as a backdoor to funneling money (i.e. bribes) to Trump. Vladimir Putin and/or his Russian oligarchs, Mohammed Bin Salmon, Xi Jinping, and even wealthy, allegedly American billionaires, could simply purchase shares of TMTG to artificially inflate its stock price in exchange for “favors” from Trump.

All of this exposes Trump’s stock as a potentially dangerous vehicle for investors, as well as for all Americans and the sovereignty of the nation. The sooner it flatlines (representing its true value) the better. For the record, here are some other recent stories about Trump’s misadventures in social media and the stock market…

Trump’s Truth Social is Revealed to Be Another Terribly Risky Trump Scam – By Its Own Prospectus
A quick look at the company’s prospectus should frighten off any astute investors. It is exposed as “a high-risk, speculative operation with few hard numbers behind it. It’s already the subject of subpoenas, from regulators and a grand jury, even though it’s barely off the ground.”

Trump’s Truth Social Reports Massive Losses and Warns that it Could Go Out of Business
A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing by the company reveals its financial frailty. The report paints a pitiful picture of the enterprise’s prospects going forward and reveals that it has lost $31.5 million since it opened for business just two years ago.

Trump’s Truth Social Continues to Collapse as Its Biz Partner Loses Virtually All of its Funding
The funding partner for TMTG said that it will return the remaining $533 million of the $1 billion raised to finance the venture after investors canceled $467 million of commitments.

Trump Crime Syndicate: Investors Arrested for Insider Trading in Failing Truth Social Scam
Trump’s associates in his truthless, anti-social media venture were arrested and charged with insider trading. Reports indicate that “the three individuals together made more than $22 million in illegal profits.”

Truth Social Disease: Ads on Trump’s Twitter Ripoff are Mostly Scams and Trump-Fluffing Merch
Advertisers are afraid of their ads being juxtaposed with hate speech and other noxious content. Consequently, the only advertisers who are willing to shell out are sketchy scammers, conspiracy theorists, and junk peddlers.

LOCK HIM UP: Trump’s TRUTH Social Scam is Being Criminally Investigated By a Federal Grand Jury
In addition to the Grand Jury proceedings, the SEC is investigating whether TMTG and DWAC executives improperly coordinated with each other and engaged in insider trading. They have also partnered with a Chinese firm with a dubious legal past.

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse
on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Threads.

And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

Thanks so much for your support.

Trump’s Truth Social is Revealed to Be Another Terribly Risky Trump Scam – By Its Own Prospectus

Posted by on February 18, 2024 at 1:08 pm. 4 Comments :

The insufferable saga of Donald Trump’s Truth Social website, and his desperate attempts to remain relevant online since he was booted from Twitter, is continuing to descend ever deeper into an abyss of his own making. And this downward spiraling is accelerating despite his relentless contributions of posts that are primarily incoherent and emotional outbursts of hostility, ignorance, and self-exaltation.

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This week the Securities and Exchange Commission inexplicably approved the merger between Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), and Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC), the shell company that Trump hopes to use to get a stock market listing. That news contributed to DWAC’s stock price tripling since the beginning of the year ($16.00- $48.00). Or maybe it was because the Biden-Harris campaign created a Truth Social account and began posting a few weeks ago.

SEE THIS: The Biden Campaign is Now on Trump’s Truth Social For Your Entertainment Pleasure

However, no one but confirmed Trump Cult devotees should be jumping into this stock if they care about preserving their money. A quick look at the company’s prospectus should frighten off any astute investors. Some of the risks disclosed in the prospectus were reported by MarketWatch

“Truth Social, his would-be Twitter rival, is a high-risk, speculative operation with few hard numbers behind it. It’s already the subject of subpoenas, from regulators and a grand jury, even though it’s barely off the ground. Oh, and Trump is not required to use the social-media site much — if at all — to communicate with the public, notably if voters were to return him to the White House. You buy the stock at your own peril.”

[And…]

“Digital World has been in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and recently agreed to pay $18 million to settle fraud charges relating to this potential merger.”

[And…]

“A number of companies that were associated with President Trump have filed for bankruptcy…There can be no assurances that TMTG will not also fail.”

The prospectus also discloses the six bankruptcies among Trump’s hotels and casinos, and other business failures, such as his airline, vodka, steaks, mortgage, and travel agency. Also mentioned was his fraudulent university that was ordered to pay $25 million in compensatory damages. The article didn’t mention his bogus charity that was also fined and shuttered.

Furthermore, the prospectus included a section enumerating Trump’s numerous pending criminal cases. The 91 felony charges included everything from financial fraud, to inciting a violent insurrection, to threatening election officials, to stealing (and perhaps disseminating) classified documents. And let’s not forget his being found civilly liable for rape and ordered to pay $354 million for falsifying his financial statements.

MarketWatch noted that TMTG reported a measly 8.9 million users. But that’s okay because it “believes that adhering to traditional key performance indicators, such as signups, average revenue per user, ad impressions and pricing, or active user accounts” is a distraction.

Perhaps they are figuring in Trump’s “brand” value. Although on that measure, the prospectus says that Trump is only “required to post certain of his social-media messages there first…And the Truth Social exclusivity on each post only lasts for six hours. [and he] can even cancel this agreement with 30 days’ notice, ‘at any time on or after February 2, 2025.'” Which is suspiciously just two weeks after Inauguration Day.

The recent surge in DWAC’s stock should be regarded with ample amounts of skepticism. The stock has had similar spikes – and subsequent declines – several times. Investors and Trump Cult disciples who bought in at $170.00 a share are still seriously screwed. But maybe they continue to believe that Trump can earn it all back with his latest business venture: grotesquely gold “Never Surrender” sneakers…

UPDATE: As evidence that Trump will eventually turn on you, no matter who you are and how much you suck up to him, Truth Social co-founders accuse Trump of trying to rip them off in merger.

For the record, here are some other recent stories about Trump’s misadventures in social media and the stock market…

Trump’s Truth Social Reports Massive Losses and Warns that it Could Go Out of Business
A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing by the company reveals its financial frailty. The report paints a pitiful picture of the enterprise’s prospects going forward and reveals that it has lost $31.5 million since it opened for business just two years ago.

Trump’s Truth Social Continues to Collapse as Its Biz Partner Loses Virtually All of its Funding
The funding partner for TMTG said that it will return the remaining $533 million of the $1 billion raised to finance the venture after investors canceled $467 million of commitments.

Trump Crime Syndicate: Investors Arrested for Insider Trading in Failing Truth Social Scam
Trump’s associates in his truthless, anti-social media venture were arrested and charged with insider trading. Reports indicate that “the three individuals together made more than $22 million in illegal profits.”

Truth Social Disease: Ads on Trump’s Twitter Ripoff are Mostly Scams and Trump-Fluffing Merch
Advertisers are afraid of their ads being juxtaposed with hate speech and other noxious content. Consequently, the only advertisers who are willing to shell out are sketchy scammers, conspiracy theorists, and junk peddlers.

LOCK HIM UP: Trump’s TRUTH Social Scam is Being Criminally Investigated By a Federal Grand Jury
In addition to the Grand Jury proceedings, the SEC is investigating whether TMTG and DWAC executives improperly coordinated with each other and engaged in insider trading. They have also partnered with a Chinese firm with a dubious legal past.

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse
on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Threads.

And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

Thanks so much for your support.

Trump Hails Stock Market Whose Rise is a Rejection of Him

Posted by on October 12, 2020 at 1:21 pm. NO Comments :

The manic frenzy that is displayed daily on the Twitter feed of Donald Trump is especially heated this Monday morning. He posted 75 tweets before 3:00pm in what may break his all time record of 123 tweets in single day. It’s impossible to say at this point whether the reason for this crazed output is his acute panic at the prospect of a landslide electoral loss to Joe Biden in three weeks, or the side effects of the drugs he’s been taking to treat his coronavirus. Or maybe a catastrophic combination of both.

Donald Trump, Stock Market Crash

The flurry of frantic and anxious outbursts that make up this tweetstorm run the gamut of Trump’s paranoid psychoses. For instance, Trump tweeted about a “Big spike in the China Plague in Europe,” in an attempt to compare it to the U.S., which he apparently doesn’t know is suffering from a similar or worse spike. He tweeted that New York and California are “going to hell.” Which is an odd campaign strategy of maligning the biggest states in the country that you’re supposedly leading. He tweeted that he is “winning BIG in all of the polls that matter.” Which I guess are the polls of boaters and maskless bar patrons. But he wasn’t through.

Trump also tweeted that “We will have Healthcare which is FAR BETTER than ObamaCare, at a FAR LOWER COST.” Which is documented in the invisible plan that he has been saying for three years that he will release in two weeks. And as an indication of what is most important to him, Trump posted ten tweets in support of Eric Early, who running a laughably futile campaign against Rep. Adam Schiff of California. Schiff may be the member of Congress Trump despises most after Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That’s more tweets than he posted in support of his Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.

However, perhaps the most enthusiastic of Trump’s twittery concerned the performance of the stock market. He managed to get something right for once by noting that it was going up. However, he has no idea why it’s doing so. He, of course, thinks he’s responsible for it. And in a way he is, but not in the way he thinks.

Trump has been shouting from the White House rooftop for weeks that a Biden presidency will thrust the nation into a depression. Let’s just set aside the fact that we are already in a recession during the Trump presidency. Trump’s tweets are cheering on the market’s rise along with fear mongering about a collapse if Biden is elected. Never mind that Obama and Biden presided over a much more robust economic recovery and market advance than Trump has. The five tweets he posted on this subject were evidence of nothing more than Trump’s ignorance and ego. For example…

What Trump is missing is that the rise in the market is occurring simultaneously to the rise in Biden’s polling against Trump. The greater the margin of Biden’s lead, the higher the market goes. That’s the market indicating that it is looking forward to a Biden victory. The market is always representative of the future. And this isn’t just a coincidental observation. According to Goldman Sachs, “A Democratic sweep would mean faster economic recovery.”

“…’a blue wave would likely prompt us to upgrade our forecasts,’ Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius wrote in a Monday report.”

Hatzius went on to note that a blue wave would increase the likelihood of a coronavirus relief bill. He also noted the positive impact of Biden’s spending plans on infrastructure, climate, health care and education. But that isn’t all. Moody’s also weighed in saying that…

“Moody’s Analytics found that Biden’s economic proposals, if enacted, would create 7.4 million more jobs than would Trump’s. The economy would return to full employment in the second half of 2022, nearly two years earlier than under Trump’s plan, Moody’s said.”

Of course, none of this is a guarantee that the market will continue going straight up. There are distinct warning signs for a down turn. The market is already over-valued in some analysts opinions. And the overweighting of just a few stocks (more than 20% of the S&P) that uncharacteristically benefit from the current conditions (Apple: 7.3%, Microsoft: 5.9%, Amazon: 5.3%, Google: 2.4%, and Facebook: 2.4%) don’t tell the market’s whole story. And as anyone with the slightest inkling of knowledge is aware (which leaves Trump out), the stock market is not the economy. Most Americans do not own stocks.

There is, however, one thing that can’t be denied. If Trump’s fear mongering were correct, the market would have been on a downward trend for at least the past couple of months. Clearly the financial institutions that drive the market don’t agree with Trump. The fact that it’s strong and rising is a testament to the market’s confidence in, and preference for, a Biden presidency.

So keep that in mind when voting. And tell your friends and family. It is Trump who has proven to be an economic imbecile who declared bankruptcy on six separate occasions, lost billions of dollars during the boom times, and currently owes more than $400 billion to – well, we don’t know who because he refuses to release his tax returns. That by itself is reason enough to remove Trump from office. And also to investigate him for criminal activity and crimes against the state.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Whines that ‘Rich Guys’ Profit From the Stock Market that He’s Manipulating

Posted by on May 13, 2020 at 1:25 pm. NO Comments :

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is a human tragedy of epic proportions. And due to Donald Trump’s negligence, incompetence, and sometimes deliberate mishandling of the federal government’s response, more than 83,000 Americans have lost their their lives. Current estimates indicate that the number of fatalities is going to increase to 147,000 by August.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

However, this isn’t just a public health crisis. The nation’s economy has taken a historic hit as the country is virtually shutdown in order to mitigate the spread of the virus. More than 20 million people have lost their jobs, and small businesses are struggling to remain viable. The stock market is currently in bear market territory, down about 23% from its recent highs.

The mitigation efforts have been working, but because Trump is worried more about the economy and his floundering reelection prospects than he is about human lives, he is pushing to force people back into dangerous workplaces far too soon. And in the midst of all of this, Trump took time away from his Fox News viewing on Wednesday morning to post a tweet whining about people who are making money trading on the volatile swings in the stock market:

Seriously? There is so much wrong in that brief twantrum that it demands further analysis. First of all, who are these “so-called ‘rich guys'” Trump is complaining about? Wouldn’t they actually be the sort of people that he associates with on a regular basis? And what’s wrong with traders placing bets on the market, which is exactly what they always do, pandemic or not?

What’s more, Trump’s complaint is glaringly incoherent. He begins by implying that there’s something wrong with people trying to drive stock prices down in order to make a profit. This is his way of attempting to make excuses for the recent declines. But then he immediately reverses course, noting that the same people are also driving prices up. That would make their efforts a wash. So what the heck is his problem? He is, as usual, not making any sense. But he thinks this blather will persuade the dimwits who follow him that there’s nothing wrong with the economy.

This sort of trading is common on Wall Street. And there isn’t anything illegal about it. Every stock transaction is a “bet” and experienced traders know that. If Trump were truly interested in unlawful activities, he might have said something about the Trump-fluffing GOP senators – Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler – who sold off millions of dollars of stocks that were plainly at risk before the markets collapsed. Those sales were also after they both had attended hearings that outlined the coming pandemic risks, but turned around and told their constituents that everything was fine. They are currently being investigated by the Senate ethics committee.

In addition to that, Trump and his family were also invested in pharmaceutical companies that stood to gain from the pandemic’s turmoil. Among those investments was the company that manufactures hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug that Trump was irresponsibly promoting as a treatment for the coronavirus.

Trump’s interest in the markets has been ongoing throughout this crisis. He has taken a personal interest in seeking to prop up the markets artificially by pressuring the Federal Reserve Board to lower interests rates. But for some reason he failed to mention that in doing so, he would save millions of dollars on the outstanding variable interest rate loans he owes to foreign banks. Trump was also surely concerned about the fact that revenues for his own real estate holdings were down 30% since the pandemic began. That may explain in part why he’s so anxious to get everyone back to work.

So if anyone was trying to manipulate the markets, it was Trump. His coercion of the Fed and his relentless and misguided happy-talk were all designed to increase his own wealth and to juice his reelection campaign. In light of that, his question as to whether the actions of traders was “barely legal” takes on a whole new meaning. Most likely, Barely Legal was the just the name of the last magazine the Trump subscribed to.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Why is Trump So Desperate to ‘Reopen’ the Country? His Net Worth Has Dropped 30%

Posted by on April 5, 2020 at 2:02 pm. 8 Comments :

For at least two months Donald Trump negligently ignored the mortal threat that COVID-19 (coronavirus) posed to the people of the United States and the world. He mocked its lethal consequences, dismissed its capacity to spread, and lied to the American people when he said that it was “under control” and would soon go away by itself.

Trump Baby on Cash Pile

Compounding his lies at the outset of the outbreak, Trump later tried to boast that he always took the threat seriously and even called it a pandemic before others were doing so. Not only is that brazenly false, it would actually be even more damning if true. It would mean that he recognized the danger early on, but failed to act.

Eventually it became impossible for Trump to pretend that there wasn’t a severe public health hazard on his hands. So he assembled a Coronavirus Task Force to address the problem, but then decided against letting them do their job. He hijacked the daily briefings and turned them into campaign events for his 2020 reelection. And our reality TV game show president assessed their value by tracking the Nielsen ratings, as if they were an indicator of his popularity. They most definitely are not.

As the fallout from the pandemic escalated, Trump noticed that it was having a negative effect on the economy. And that’s when his concern kicked into high gear. On March 4, just as the stock market began it’s historic slide, Trump floated a proposal to “reopen” the country by Easter, a date that no public health expert would endorse. By March 24, the day after the stock market had completed a decline of 11,000 points from its recent high only a month prior, he began using reckless and callous rhetoric about not allowing “the cure to be worse than the problem.” That suggests that he believes a weak economy is worse than tens of thousands of people dying.

Trump repeatedly insisted that the nation must return to business as usual within a timeline that was grossly unrealistic. The question is: Why was Trump so adamant about this? Did he really have compassion for the working people of the country who were being subjected to such brutal hardship? Was he worried about the future health of the corporations that support much of the economic infrastructure of the nation?

Doubtful. Trump has never expressed any such sympathies during his term as president or his decades in public life prior to that. It’s unlikely he had some sort of personal epiphany that altered his life-long character, or lack thereof. No, the real reason is the one that is the most obvious.

It is now being reported that Trump’s personal net worth has declined by about a billion dollars. That would represent approximately 30% of his fortune as estimated by Forbes. It’s difficult to provide a precise estimate because after three years as President, Trump still refuses to release his taxes. There must be something truly hideous in there.

Trump’s assets are predominantly in commercial and residential real estate, hotel licensing and management, and golf courses. All of these businesses are especially vulnerable to the consumer pullback caused by the “stay at home” orders issued in at least 42 states in order to “flatten the curve” of the pandemic spread. So it isn’t just coincidence that Trump’s concern crept up just as the economy slumped down. As reported…

“It’s unusual for Trump to lose money because of his presidency. He’s used his position to promote his hotels and resorts, even going so far as to try to host the next G7 summit at the Trump National Doral golf resort near Miami. The Secret Service often stays on Trump properties when the president is on vacation, paying room and board directly to the president’s private business, sometimes as much as $650 per night for a single room. Of course, the hotel industry has been one of the hardest hit by the global economic downturn—including the Trumps’ DC hotel, which had a steady revenue stream from foreign governments looking to curry favor with the American president, and was up for sale up until the current economic crisis.”

Prior to the emergence of the coronavirus, Trump frequently tried to pressure the Federal Reserve Board to lower interest rates. His stated intent was that it would give a boost to the economy. The truth is that Trump was only seeking to reduce his own fiscal burden. He is carrying more than $350 million dollars in variable rate loans from Deutsche Bank and other lenders. So he benefits significantly when rates go down. He also hoped that such a move would juice the stock market which would aid his reelection prospects. But when the Fed did cut rates, the market nosedived, recognizing that it was a sign of trouble ahead in the form of a recession or worse. Trump’s flagrantly self-serving pestering of the Fed backfired.

So whenever you hear Trump whine about how “our country wasn’t built to be shut down” – a bizarre comment that implies that other countries were built for that – remember that Trump’s concern was only triggered with a conspicuous connection to his own financial welfare. The American people do need the country to return to its former stability and growth as quickly as possible. But first they need to ensure the health of themselves, their families, and their communities. And Trump’s rush to superficially attend to the economy, at the expense of public health, must be seen for what it is: unvarnished, self-serving greed.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

HOLY CRIPE: Fox News Blames Stock Market Plunge On – Bernie Sanders?

Posted by on February 24, 2020 at 12:15 pm. 3 Comments :

American investors woke up Monday morning to see a devastating sell off on Wall Street and other markets around the world. The uncontested view of economic experts is that the sharp decline resulted from growing concerns about the coronavirus (Covid-19) as it continues to spread. Factories in China are shut down. Trade is being curtailed. International festivals and conferences have been canceled. The global financial impact is undeniable.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

Well, undeniable everywhere but on Fox News, where good news is always due to the heavenly inspired works of Donald Trump, and bad news can only be the work of Satan’s minions in the Democratic Party. Fox News host Charles Payne, in what may be the most idiotic economic analysis of the year to date, sought to carry out that doctrine during an in interview as the markets were in the process of imploding (video below). He was asked by the allegedly “straight news” anchor, Ed Henry, this brazenly leading question:

“Is the sell off all coronavirus, or is this the first time the markets are open since Bernie Sanders took control of the Democratic battle?”

The audacity that it takes to allow that question to slither through one’s lips is impressive. It certainly is the first time the markets have been open since the Nevada primary caucus, but that has nothing to do with the sell off on Wall Street. How would that explain the sell off in markets around the world where Sanders is not running for anything? What’s more, Sanders’ win in Nevada is hardly “taking control” (a loaded term in itself) of the Democratic battle. It is just the third contest out of fifty (plus territories), and represents a small percentage of votes cast and delegates acquired.

Payne’s response to Henry’s stridently biased question was that “The Bernie factor is finally rearing its head in the stock market.” He then rattled off a list of companies in the health sector that are suffering big losses. Of course health-related companies would naturally be hurt by news of an impending global pandemic. And that harm would be throughout the world, just as it is currently playing out. But that obvious fact was incomprehensible to Payne and his Fox colleagues. Their deliberately dishonest banter continued with the following exchange:

Sandra Smith: Can you directly attribute that loss to Bernie Sanders?
Payne: Absolutely…there’s absolutely no doubt. [later adding] This is the first time, I think, that Wall Street has taken Bernie Sanders very seriously.

“Absolutely no doubt”? Neither Wall Street, nor anyone else, should take Fox News seriously. Payne is not just speculating on a possible contributing factor. He is insisting that Wall Street’s alleged fear of Bernie Sanders is undeniably the only cause of the worst drop in the Dow since December of 2018. That’s not just glaringly false, it’s painfully stupid and grossly irresponsible. Ironically, throughout this segment the chyron on Fox News read: “STOCK MARKET SELLOFF ON CORONAVIRUS CONCERNS”

Payne is supposed to be one of Fox’s financial experts (his own program is on the Fox Business Network), although like everyone else at State TV, he weaves his right-wing opinions into all of his comments. He recently made the bizarre assertion that “Wall Street Loves Donald Trump,” as if that was a positive endorsement for his reelection. And like many of the men on Fox, Payne has been charged with sexual assault. Fox settled a lawsuit with Scottie Nell Hughes, a former contributor, who had accused Payne of rape.

The political biases of Fox News are not news to anyone. And with the advent of Donald Trump, they have become even more conspicuously partisan. But this ludicrous attack on Sanders is grotesquely out of bounds, even for Fox. They are fully indoctrinated into the Trump Cult. And nothing better demonstrates that then this asinine attempt to blame Sanders for a pandemic-driven market decline that he clearly had nothing to do with. There is apparently a virus spreading through the Fox News studios that is turning all their brains into oatmeal.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

BULL SCHITT! Trump Resorts to Infantile Profanities to Sell His Lies About the Economy

Posted by on November 16, 2019 at 1:46 pm. 6 Comments :

Remember when Donald Trump was elected and pundits speculated about when his raw and rancid campaign persona would transition into something more presidential? Yeah, that was great. The naivete of the media persisted for months, and some stubborn holdouts are still expecting Trump to pivot from his bombastic bullying to something closer to a statesman. Good luck with that.


On Saturday morning’s regularly scheduled Trump Tweetstorm, the Crybaby-in-Chief unleashed a typically dishonest tirade. It was plainly intended to thrust the nation into fear of the Democrats’ efforts to hold Trump accountable for his cornucopia of impeachable crimes. Nevermind that a majority of the nation favor his impeachment and removal from office, even according to polling by Fox News. The recent impeachment hearings in Congress have clearly flustered the President, as members of his own administration are testifying to his illegal conduct. Consequently, he is reaching for far flung fantasies to frighten his glassy-eyed disciples into propping up his rapidly deflating ego. He tweeted that…

“Pelosi & Schitt”? Is anyone else concerned that our president has the emotional maturity of six year old who was dropped on his head ten or twenty times? And for those who might try to excuse this as an unfortunate typo, be aware that this isn’t the first time that the Trumplet has sunk to this level of asininity. He is merely expressing himself at the level that is natural for him. And coincidentally, it’s the same level as his cult worshiping followers.

As for his stock market prognostications, Trump could not be farther from reality. Consistent with his recent relentless lying about the economy, his fear mongering that the market would crash and thrust the nation into a depression if he were impeached has no factual basis. Particularly because all the evidence shows that the stock markets have performed better during Democratic administrations than when Republicans were in charge.

What’s more, Trump’s motivations with regard to the economy are uniquely personal. All he is looking for is a short-term stimulative effect on the stock market. That’s partly because he wants to artificially boost the market in advance of the 2020 presidential election to enhance his own reelection prospects. But Trump is also a failed businessman who has racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, much of it with variable-rate loans. When he took office in 2017 he was the most indebted president in history, owing more than $350 million to Deutsche Bank alone. That debt is expensive to service. But when interest rates go down, as he has been prodding the Fed to do, so do the costs of servicing that debt, and he saves literally millions of dollars.

To be sure, there is a recession on the horizon. It is unarguably the Trump Recession that is the result of his reckless policies. Among them, there was the tax scam reform bill that cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy while throwing crumbs to everyone else. That has produced the biggest annual deficit in the nation’s history, reaching into the trillions for the first time. That, in turn, has resulted in the highest federal debt ever, exceeding $22 trillion. Other signs of the recession include…

  • Equity outflows into the relative safety of bonds
  • Interest rate cuts that are generally done when the economy is weak
  • Trump’s tariffs causing bankruptcies and job losses
  • Tepid GDP growth of 1.9% (well short of the 4% to 6% Trump promised)
  • Manufacturing declines
  • Weak wage growth
  • The highest income inequality ever

So Trump’s boasting of the Dow hitting 28,000 doesn’t really mean much. In fact, it’s really just a Wall Street head fake that occurs prior to almost every downturn. Institutions are buying equities to drive prices up so that they can sell high into the rising market. When they do the rest of the market – and most citizen investors – will be stuck holding stocks worth half as much. Smart investors are getting out now, as indicated by the inflows into bonds noted above.

No one can predict with precision when the recession will hit. But when it does you can rest assured that Trump will blame it on Democrats. That’s true whether he’s impeached or not. His story changes to fit the circumstances. In recent weeks Trump has tweeted that his impeachment is a drag on the stock market:

However, now that the impeachment hearings have gone public and are much bigger news than ever, he’s celebrating new highs in the market. So that must mean that impeachment is boosting the markets. Right? Well, only if you expect Trump’s babbling to be honest or consistent or logical. And if you do, you’re probably already headed for a severe depression.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump is Panic-Tweeting Fox News Denials of Imminent Threat of the Trump Recession

Posted by on August 14, 2019 at 12:13 pm. 3 Comments :

In case you haven’t noticed, Donald Trump has failed at nearly everything he promised to accomplish. There is no wall on the southern border. HIllary Clinton has not been locked up. He has no denuclearization deals with Iran or North Korea, no trade deals with China or Mexico or the EU, no infrastructure bill, and Obamacare has neither been repealed nor replaced.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

The one key issue that Trump has been clinging to for two years is his argument that the economy is booming. Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that that isn’t true. Many critical indicators such as wage growth and job creation are lagging (and trailing Obama’s record). But Trump has been using the stock market as his evidence of a strong economy. That, of course, demonstrates his ignorance of economics. The stock market only reflects the value of equities that are mainly traded by giant financial institutions. It is not a gauge of the economies health.

However, now even Trump’s misapplied measuring stick is biting him in the asinine analyses he’s been peddling. On Wednesday the market has fallen off a cliff, and specifically due to Trump’s ill-considered policies on trade and taxes. And the site of this downturn has thrown him into a tizzy of excuse-making. If he doesn’t have this to brag about, he’s got nothing but his racism left to hold his cult together.

Consequently, Trump unleashed a series of tweets intended to shore up the catastrophic financial news of the day. And they leaned heavily on his top economic advisers at the White House – er, I mean at Fox News. Trump’s Shadow Cabinet was busily papering over the bitter truth that everyone can plainly see. And Trump embraced it frantically for fear of having to take any responsibility. Rest assured that he will greedily steal credit for the economic boom times from 2010 to 2017, during the Obama administration, but blame Obama for the crash of 2019.

The tweetstorm began with a familiar Trump whine: “The Fed has got to do something! The Fed is the Central Bank of the United States, not the Central Bank of the World.” Indeed. And the Fed is doing its job. But that job is not to save the stock market. It is to manage inflation and to promote monetary and financial system stability. Trump only wants the Fed to cut interest rates for his own selfish interests. First, he hopes that it would artificially stimulate further over-exuberance in the stock market, boosting his reelection prospects. And secondly, it would reduce his own interest payments on over $350 million dollars of outstanding variable interest loans.

The next tweet was another Fox News reference wherein they blindly praised Trump’s tariffs saying that “you can’t tell me that it has hurt our economy.” That’s obviously true. Not the part that tariffs haven’t hurt the economy (they have), but the part where he says you can’t tell him that. And you can’t tell Trump that (or anything) either. It’s like yelling a non-existent border wall. He will continue to tell the same lies, even after he’s been proven to have lied.

Trump then tweeted that “Tremendous amounts of money pouring into the United States,” because “People want safety!” That completely contradicts the movement in the markets. Then Trump quote-tweeted another Fox flunky who said that Fed Chair Jay Powell was making mistakes by, among other things, being “data dependant.” Because why would anyone want to rely on actual data to make important decisions? That’s goes against the core philosophy of the Trump Doctrine of Alternative Facts.

LATE ADDITION: Trump squeezed out another couple tweets on this subject in the afternoon. One declared defensively, and without foundation, that “We are winning, big time, against China,” before deciding that “China is not our problem … Our problem is with the Fed.” That led into the second tweet that lashed out at “clueless Jay Powell” and the “CRAZY INVERTED YIELD CURVE!” This was not only a display of Trump’s wildly unbalanced mental state, but further evidence that he doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

So as the stock market descends, Trump grasps for support from his State TV fluffers who he knows will always prop him up, no matter how ludicrous and desperately they have to revise reality. There is no coherent argument that justifies Trump’s failures but, fortunately for him, Fox News is adept at spinning lies for any occasion. And the glassy-eyed Deplorables will believe anything that Dear Leader tells them.