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1:30

Fair. Scott,

1:38

how much is Donald Trump's so-called

1:41

true social actually worth? Well,

1:43

right now, according to its performance in

1:46

the stock market, it's worth upwards of

1:48

six billion dollars. But there's really

1:50

no reason that it should be worth anywhere

1:52

near that. Truth Social is a

1:54

social network with a few million users

1:56

and a few million dollars in ad

1:58

revenue every year. Um, that valuation,

2:01

those billions of dollars doesn't really make any

2:03

sort of sense in the business context That

2:06

is scott nover who recently wrote all about

2:08

this for vanity fair. He's also

2:10

a contributing writer at slate and

2:12

i'm brian selder Welcome

2:15

to inside the hive from vanity fair

2:18

Today we are going inside trump's

2:20

living contradiction of a social network

2:23

It is called true social as you know,

2:26

but it is full of untruths It's

2:29

a company that trump founded shortly after being kicked

2:31

off twitter in 2021 And

2:33

now as of this week, it

2:35

has merged with a shell company

2:37

called digital world acquisition corporation So

2:40

now there's this brand new company with

2:43

the stock ticker djt for donald john

2:45

trump trading on the

2:47

nazdak And some trump

2:49

fans have rushed to buy shares

2:52

But as scott just said this social network

2:54

is tiny So what

2:56

does this cash infusion mean for

2:58

donald trump for his legal battles and

3:00

his campaign? And what does

3:03

all this market action say about us?

3:06

I think scott has a lot to get to but

3:08

let's go back in time first Because

3:10

the reason trump was kicked off twitter And

3:13

the reason why trump went into this true

3:15

social business Is because of

3:17

his abuse of twitter before and

3:19

after january 6 Right

3:22

donald trump was kicked off twitter in the days

3:24

after january 6 2021 After

3:27

the insurrection at the us capital and

3:30

he was using His platform

3:32

to kind of egg on his

3:34

supporters and tell them to you

3:36

know In so many words to

3:38

march on the capital and that

3:40

violated twitter's rules and trump was

3:42

summarily booted from not only twitter

3:44

But facebook and snapchat and basically

3:46

every platform that he was on.

3:48

Yeah, he was actually communicated He

3:50

was digitally disappeared. So he had

3:52

these people around him who said let's

3:54

make our own social network We'll call

3:57

it true social. There's such a deep

3:59

profound cynicism even in the name. So

4:02

you wrote about this recently for vanityfair.com. This true

4:04

social business was announced in October 2021. The app

4:06

launched in early 2022. So it's been out there

4:11

for a couple of years. How is it doing first

4:13

as a social network and then we'll get into the

4:15

business. But as a social network, do you have a

4:17

true social account? I do because

4:19

I am a professional reporter who writes

4:22

about media and technology and

4:25

so you have to log in. Yeah,

4:27

it's my job, unfortunately, to pay attention

4:29

to these things. But I'm one of

4:31

only a few that actually uses it.

4:33

I'm not even sure if I count

4:35

as an active user. But according to

4:37

one estimate, there's about 5.4 million users

4:41

on the app every month. And

4:43

that is nowhere near the

4:45

hundreds of millions of active users on

4:47

a Twitter or a Pinterest,

4:49

Snapchat, Meta and

4:51

and TikTok count billions of users.

4:53

So it's, you know, a few

4:56

million Trump supporters or people interested

4:58

in watching the Trump circus that

5:00

are actually on crude social. Give

5:03

us a sense of what it is like

5:05

to live in this sewer called true social.

5:07

What is being posted beyond Trump's own rants?

5:10

Right, it's it's Trump's own rants.

5:12

And it's people that are sympathetic

5:15

to Trump posting praise of him.

5:18

And it is a lot of kind

5:20

of conservative memes and

5:22

conspiracy theories about various

5:25

things, anti vaccine

5:27

rhetoric, boosting nutritional supplements,

5:29

just a cesspool of,

5:31

you know, nothing

5:34

really good there. You know,

5:36

you're not missing out. It

5:38

sounds like a cesspool in a very shallow

5:40

pool. There's not that many users. There's not

5:42

that many debates going on. One of the

5:44

advantages that Twitter has always had is that

5:46

there are lots of people with lots of

5:48

different points of view arguing and fighting and

5:50

duking it out. And on true social, it's

5:52

just Trump loyalists talking to each other. Right.

5:55

And that's not even an effective way

5:58

to be a, you know, conservative. of

6:00

figurehead, you know, there is, what is

6:02

Trump without the people he's sparring with?

6:05

So Truth Social is pretty bland,

6:07

I would say, and then there's

6:10

not a lot of advertiser interest

6:12

if that surprises you. We're

6:14

talking like my pillow as the upper echelon

6:16

of, you know, brands that

6:18

might be seen there. You've got like

6:20

a lot of Trump coins and

6:22

Trump trading cards and again, more

6:25

nutritional supplements and probably some other

6:27

things that click through to get

6:29

rich quick schemes. It's not Johnson

6:31

& Johnson or Unilever advertising

6:33

there. All right, so a bunch of

6:35

cheap ads, get rich quick schemes, all

6:37

that junk. How much is the company

6:40

earning off of these ads and through

6:42

Truth Social? Well, as part

6:44

of this process to go public, the

6:46

company had to divulge some financials. That's

6:48

the benefit of, you know, a publicly-traded

6:50

company. We can see a lot about

6:52

what they do and they have an

6:54

obligation to release these numbers. We

6:56

know that last year they made, Truth Social made about $3.4 million

6:58

in the span of nine months.

7:05

So, you know, maybe around $5 million, $6 million max in a year. Again,

7:11

there are social networks,

7:13

Twitter, you know, have made

7:15

over a billion dollars in a

7:17

year. This is not a

7:20

company that makes any sort of money. In fact,

7:22

it loses a lot of money. So it actually

7:24

loses money. How does it lose money? I guess

7:26

because of the engineers or other technical staff at

7:28

need to stay online? Yeah, there's

7:30

operational costs of running a social network

7:32

with, you know, millions of people. And

7:34

it's not really bringing anything in. So

7:37

that's how social networks make money. They

7:39

get free content from users and they

7:42

monetize that through ads. And

7:45

when there's not that many users and the ads

7:47

aren't that good, there's not that much money

7:49

to be made. Right. So this

7:51

thing is a, you won't say it, you're

7:55

the objective reporter, Scott. I'll say it. This

7:57

thing is a joke. But as you wrote for Vanity

7:59

Fair, Trump. Trump's financial future now hinges

8:01

on this, on quote, some of

8:03

the strangest fads in corporate finance,

8:05

meme stocks, SPAC deals, and cult

8:08

of personality investing. You wrote, if

8:10

Trump can find a way to

8:12

act fast, this might just be

8:14

the bailout he desperately needs.

8:17

So explain to us, give us the 30

8:19

second version of SPACs of what this was

8:21

and how this became a public traded company.

8:24

Sure. So SPAC stands

8:26

for Special Purpose Acquisition Corporation. It's basically

8:29

a shell company or a blank check

8:31

company that goes public on the stock

8:33

market and then finds a business to

8:35

merge with. So it helps businesses that

8:38

might not otherwise get the backing of

8:40

a traditional investment bank go public on

8:42

the stock market. These things

8:45

became popular again a few years ago,

8:47

and most of them have lost money.

8:49

They have not really, you know, they're

8:51

not taking the cream of the crop

8:53

businesses public as those businesses could

8:56

go public anyway. So there's an open question

8:58

about whether Truth Social could have found an

9:00

investment bank to take it public, but it

9:02

went this way. And so

9:04

essentially it merged with this SPAC

9:07

called DWAAC or Digital World Acquisition

9:09

Company, and now it is public.

9:12

And it survived a, you know,

9:14

a bunch of securities fraud violations.

9:16

Hold on, did you just say

9:19

securities fraud charges against DWAAC? Yeah.

9:22

So basically these blank check companies are supposed

9:24

to go public and be

9:26

blind about who they want to merge with,

9:28

but it turns

9:30

out DWAAC, sorry,

9:32

I'm laughing, just saying the word DWAAC. It's

9:35

a crazy name. Yeah. DWAAC officials

9:37

met with the Trump officials ahead of

9:39

DWAAC going public in the first place.

9:42

So they violated federal securities laws and had

9:44

to pay a few million dollars to the

9:46

SEC in order to even get to this

9:48

point. That is

9:50

amazing. So Trump is

9:53

the majority shareholder of this new publicly

9:55

traded company. Tell us just how much

9:57

he has on the line here. So

10:01

the estimate of how much his stake

10:03

was worth was about $4 billion at

10:05

the time that it went public on

10:07

the stock market. And

10:09

so the question there is,

10:13

can he actually cash out? This

10:16

is not liquid money. This is not

10:18

cash until he sells it. Anyone

10:21

that's bought or sold stock knows that

10:23

it's not over until it's over.

10:26

So there's an open question and a

10:28

lot of legal use that's surrounding this

10:30

question of can he actually use this

10:32

money, these billions of dollars? We're

10:35

taping this on Tuesday after the market closed. On

10:37

Monday, Bloomberg, the news agency came out

10:40

and said Trump, thanks to this new

10:42

company, is now worth $6.5 billion, making

10:44

him one of the world's 500 richest

10:46

people. So at

10:49

a moment of incredible legal and financial

10:51

turmoil for Trump, he has

10:53

this lifeline in the form

10:55

of the DJT stock. And

10:57

yet on Tuesday, the stock

10:59

also was incredibly volatile.

11:02

It was so volatile that trading was

11:04

halted briefly. We can

11:07

get into that more in a moment, but I

11:09

do have to confess something, Scott, and I'll confess

11:11

it right after this commercial break. Hi,

11:21

I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer

11:23

at Wired and I'm co-host of Wired's

11:25

Gadget Lab along with Michael Kalore. Each

11:28

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11:30

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11:32

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11:36

asking people to put a computer on one of

11:39

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11:41

is just like, it's a big bet. Broader

11:43

trends in Silicon Valley, there are just

11:45

so many laid off workers out there

11:47

that workers just don't have a lot

11:49

of power. And the exciting and terrifying

11:52

world of AI. A

12:00

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12:11

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back on Vanity Fair's inside the

14:31

Hi I'm Brian Stelter fucking was

14:33

shot in over about the new

14:35

Trump Media and Technology Group. This

14:38

is the new publicly traded stocks

14:40

Told D G T with Donald

14:42

Trump's initials so Scott I do

14:44

a major disclosure to the audience

14:46

I do to confess. I.

14:48

Bought some shares. Ah, I went in

14:50

on Monday. This is back when it

14:53

was so called. The Wax for was

14:55

renamed Deeds Aid. Seats are about one

14:57

hundred shares. I settled for about twenty

14:59

minutes. And then I was so

15:01

nervous. I sold it for honours profit and I

15:03

put my money out. and and I think there's

15:05

a lot of that going on because you can

15:08

see how much volatility is in the stock this

15:10

week. Do you think I'm the only one that's

15:12

it? Be behaving that way. Zombie in and out

15:14

of the sauce, try to make a quick buck

15:16

but not really bleeding, and this company. Know.

15:19

I think that's emblematic of the way

15:21

a lot of the bar treating must

15:23

suck. They know that it's volatile, that

15:25

it's on me, me, or get into

15:27

the meme stock of it's by I'm

15:29

you know, A lot of people

15:31

are treating it like it's a opportunity

15:33

to ride the wave as it's going

15:35

out and they're gonna hope that they

15:37

get off the waves are before against

15:39

them says asked me what I was

15:41

doing I was getting off the wave

15:43

of still I was too nervous. I

15:45

boarded of Forty seven or some paralyzed

15:47

Zola. Forty eight hours of i can't

15:50

take the stress of this. I don't

15:52

believe this is actually worth anywhere near

15:54

forty eight dollars a share. Of course

15:56

that was on Monday. On Tuesday the

15:58

sock opened up above seventy minutes. as

16:00

a day it went on, it went down to like what I

16:02

think close at $58, who knows where it'll

16:05

be by the time people are listening to this podcast.

16:07

The point is that this is a meme stock. So

16:10

for people who are not as familiar with that phrase,

16:12

what the heck is a meme stock? It

16:15

is essentially if you remember back to the saga

16:19

with GameStop or AMC Entertainment,

16:21

the movie theater chain a

16:23

few years ago, it's essentially

16:25

when a publicly traded

16:28

stock is behaving erratically in

16:31

a way that is completely divorced

16:33

from its business fundamentals, driven entirely

16:36

or almost entirely by

16:38

retail investors. So average everyday people like

16:40

you or me, and

16:42

not big hedge funds that have longer

16:44

and more ambitious goals, but average people

16:46

who are buying and selling within a

16:49

day, within a few days, within a

16:51

few months. You

16:54

quoted Jay Ritter, a finance professor at

16:56

the University of Florida, saying that these

16:58

types of stocks depend on the, quote,

17:00

greater fool theory of investing. What is

17:03

the greater fool theory? Right.

17:05

So that's exactly what you did. You

17:07

got in thinking that you would make

17:10

a quick buck and sell the stock

17:12

to someone else at a

17:14

higher price and you would

17:16

make money and maybe they would

17:18

not. Meaning somebody will be

17:20

left holding the bag, right? There's going to

17:22

be somebody who's going to buy this, a

17:24

lot of people who are going to buy

17:26

this at the peak and then theoretically the

17:28

shares are going to tank. And they're

17:31

going to tank partly because Donald Trump wants to

17:33

sell his shares, some of them, right? Right.

17:36

Right. Exactly. And so if Donald Trump

17:38

ever has the privilege of selling his

17:40

shares for any sort of decent money,

17:42

it will almost certainly

17:45

tank the stock because A,

17:47

he is The

17:49

Point of the Stock. He is the figurehead

17:51

of the stock, but he is also the

17:53

largest investor of the, in the stock and

17:55

the largest owner in the stock. And When

17:57

the largest owner of a stock sells, It

18:00

forces the price down. It creates more

18:03

shares in the public markets land. It

18:05

dilutes the value of the of these

18:07

thoughts. So as he's selling she tried

18:09

to, the value could drop and he

18:11

could make less money as as it's

18:13

happening or to completely tank the sack

18:15

before he's able to sell as much

18:17

as he wants. But right now create

18:19

I'm I'm wrong. He's not allowed to

18:21

sell the shares in their locker. Period.

18:24

Tracked and there is a six

18:26

month lock a period as pretty

18:28

standard with deals like this and

18:30

I see to not sell a

18:32

single share in still exceeds passes

18:34

that window unless he gets some

18:37

sort of special waiver from the

18:39

board of directors who are obviously

18:41

sympathetic to Trump's by on it.

18:43

Would. Again, If you got

18:45

that waiver, I am when. I would

18:47

bet my own money that it would take the sack

18:49

pretty quickly. And course all

18:51

this is happening. as from as of last

18:54

week was trying to raise four hundred fifty

18:56

four million dollars. The booze Bond in that

18:58

simple from case this week the number the

19:00

amount was reduced to one hundred and seventy

19:03

five million dollars by the appellate courts. So

19:05

a massive amount of money. He needs money

19:07

for bond for legal bills. I'm so kids

19:09

he conceivably go to a bank and say

19:11

it's I have all these millions of shares.

19:14

You see how high the stock prices give

19:16

me alone. let me borrow against it. It's

19:18

isn't that a way you could potentially game

19:20

liquidity. Sooner. It's possible

19:23

there is. You know. it's a

19:25

question of. Whether.

19:27

He's allowed to do that. Or

19:30

not, but there's a better question,

19:32

which is what bank wants to

19:34

give him alone. It a. on

19:36

these shares and be in general

19:38

it's and how the entire purpose

19:41

of the civil civil fraud cases

19:43

that he'd defrauded banks by inflating

19:45

the value of his assets real

19:47

estate properties particular it's and dots

19:49

it's more favorable loans by bragging

19:51

about wealth that he didn't actually

19:53

have is alienated bunch of banks

19:55

that might otherwise have given him

19:57

the money and and also these

20:00

Because banks aren't stupid and they

20:02

know that this business, whether

20:04

it's worth billions of dollars or

20:06

not, is not a good business

20:09

and they don't want to be the ones

20:11

caught holding the bag. Right. It's

20:13

really an incredible moment

20:16

politically and financially and

20:18

culturally. Here's Jim Cramer

20:20

on CNBC Tuesday morning saying, people

20:23

who are buying this stock, they're buying it like it's

20:25

a souvenir, like it's a keepsake. The

20:27

people who are buying it, I think it's more like, it's

20:30

almost like it's a keepsake. The

20:32

people who want to support Donald Trump know

20:34

that as this goes higher, he's able to

20:36

raise more money. Of course. I think there's

20:38

a lot of truth to that, Scott, that

20:40

people want to help Donald Trump, so they're

20:42

going to buy shares in DJT and they

20:45

don't view it as traditional stock. They view

20:47

it as memorabilia. It's like buying a campaign

20:49

hat or something. Right. I

20:51

don't recommend anyone do that. No

20:57

financial advisor will tell you to buy

20:59

a share of a stock as a

21:01

keepsake. If you want to make a

21:03

political donation, make a political donation. Trump

21:05

is using those political donations to pay

21:07

his legal bills anyway. I

21:10

think there is something about this

21:12

that is a novel way of

21:16

campaign financing in a very

21:18

strange, indirect way that

21:20

Cramer is touching on there.

21:22

At least you should know that this is

21:24

not a real decent

21:28

business with any sort of underlying fundamentals

21:30

attached to it. Look, I will admit

21:32

my investment in Trump Media was

21:35

my smallest profit in the market

21:37

that I think I've ever taken.

21:39

Because I was too nervous to stay

21:41

in that stock. It just feels

21:43

like a facade. It just feels

21:45

fake. But I might be proven

21:48

wrong, at least for a while. Here's the thing,

21:50

Scott. Every time it declines, it's going to be

21:52

viewed as they're out to get Trump.

21:55

People are selling to hurt Trump. It's going to

21:57

be this profound. There's

22:00

a psychological pull to either

22:02

help or hurt him through the market. I

22:04

don't know. I feel like we're looking into the

22:06

future a little bit here when we're seeing

22:08

this stock be traded this way. Yeah,

22:10

it's reminiscent of how

22:13

GameStop was kind of brought to

22:16

the moon, so to say, and people

22:18

rallied around Ryan Cohen, who was the

22:20

lead investor in that deal and

22:23

kind of a figurehead. And then with AMC,

22:25

how Adam Aaron was kind of this figurehead

22:28

and people bought up the shares

22:30

to stick it to the short

22:32

sellers and support the figurehead. Obviously

22:35

the psychological effects of Trump and

22:37

his fan base and his political

22:39

support is much, much stronger than

22:41

anything like that. So, but

22:44

the sad reality is that this is just

22:46

another way that Trump is losing

22:49

a bunch of money for his political

22:51

supporters. Is

22:53

it basically a campaign contribution when

22:55

you buy shares in

22:58

this stock? Does this expose a giant loophole

23:00

in our campaign finance laws? Legally,

23:03

no. I mean, a lot

23:05

of campaign financing is full of mystery

23:07

and dark money and things like

23:09

that. And at least with this

23:11

stock, it's subject to the securities

23:14

laws, which are extremely transparent. And

23:16

we can see exactly everything that

23:18

goes on in terms of this

23:20

business. And then also the other

23:23

thing is that Trump is an officer

23:25

of a publicly traded company and

23:27

is subject to the securities laws. And

23:29

the things that he says that are

23:32

not true about that could

23:34

be securities fraud. He can't

23:36

lie about this business or he'll be investigated

23:38

by the feds. And

23:42

he'll be sued by his shareholders. So

23:44

there are a lot of downsides for

23:46

Trump as well as this

23:49

being a novel approach to raising

23:51

money that he could then eventually

23:53

cash out and then spend on

23:55

his campaign. You know, I've wondered

23:57

why his posts on True Social

23:59

about True Social had been so bland,

24:02

so vanilla. And I think he just answered

24:04

the question. He actually is bound

24:06

by some laws in terms of what he

24:08

can say, what claims he can

24:10

make about the business. So for example, earlier

24:12

today, he posted in all caps, I love

24:14

True Social, I love the truth. But

24:17

he's not out there claiming that this is

24:19

some to the moon billion dollar enterprise. He

24:22

kind of knows better, maybe. Well, yeah,

24:24

he can say this is the greatest social media

24:26

company in the world, but he can't say this

24:29

is the most valuable or the most heavily used

24:31

or the most popular. Or

24:33

he's lying to investors and that's a

24:36

federal crime. A little different than- He has enough

24:38

of those. He has enough of

24:40

those charges and enough other ways to

24:42

lie. All right, I have another disclosure

24:44

for the audience. I'm gonna say the fact of the

24:47

break. And

24:56

if you are watching this video, either

24:58

after or in a very, very, very

25:00

bad situation. She said, oh

25:03

my God, I can hear gunshots. I can

25:05

hear men outside. Where are they? What

25:08

have they done to them? Are they dead? Are they

25:10

not dead? There is one

25:12

suspect, her father, the Sheikh.

25:15

It's Madeleine Barron from In the Dark. We've

25:17

teamed up with our new colleague, Heidi Blake at The

25:19

New Yorker, to try to answer a question

25:22

about one of the richest men in the world, the

25:24

ruler of Dubai. Why do

25:27

the women in Sheikh Mohammed's family keep

25:29

trying to run away? There

25:31

is five policemen outside and two policemen inside the

25:33

house. So basically I'm a hostage.

25:36

And he reminded me that Sheikh Mohammed can get

25:38

me anywhere. Because you're a

25:40

rich and powerful person, you can effectively break any

25:42

more you want in our country and get away

25:44

with it. The Runaway

25:46

Princesses is available now. Follow

25:49

In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts.

25:55

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today at empower.com. And

27:10

we're back here on Inside the Hive

27:12

from Vanity Fair. I'm Brian Selter talking

27:14

with Scott Nover, who recently wrote for

27:17

VF about Trump's meme stock media merger.

27:20

Another disclosure for the listeners, Scott has

27:22

also been a fantastic researcher who's helped

27:24

me out with two books about Fox

27:26

and Trump. I wrote Hoax in 2020,

27:29

Network of Lives in 2023. Scott was this

27:31

amazing researcher on both of those books.

27:34

Scott, I mentioned that because if you live

27:36

in the pro-Trump media bubble, if you live

27:39

in the Fox, MAGA media universe,

27:42

you're not necessarily hearing that through socials

27:44

a flop and that there's only five

27:46

or so million users. If people in

27:50

Silicon Valley look at this as a joke, what

27:52

you're hearing is, if I

27:55

give over a few hundred dollars and

27:57

I buy into DJT, I'm helping the

27:59

former president. president, get back to

28:01

power. That can be an incredibly

28:03

seductive message if you're in the

28:05

pro-Trump media bubble. Yeah, and

28:07

it's no safer than

28:10

investing in penny stocks or

28:12

anything like that. People might

28:17

think, oh, it's Trump, and oh, it's

28:19

a publicly traded stock, so it's safe,

28:21

but it really

28:23

isn't. This thing is volatile,

28:26

and it's completely going

28:28

to act randomly, and a lot of people could get

28:30

burned. So it's dangerous for the people living in the

28:32

Trump media bubble, whether they're watching

28:35

coverage of it on Fox News or

28:37

hearing about it on Truth Social or

28:39

other kind of right-leaning

28:42

social networks. The

28:45

Rumbles, those sorts of things. Rumbles, Parler.

28:47

I saw the CEO of Rumble popping

28:49

up on Fox Business talking about this.

28:51

At the same time, I liked what

28:53

Fox Business correspondent Charlie Gasparino wrote on

28:55

Twitter on Tuesday. He said, if Trump

28:58

sold all his stock right now, he

29:00

would finally be a real billionaire. Gasparino

29:03

is one of the rare truth tellers

29:05

over at Fox, but it does get

29:07

to this idea of Trump's identity. Trump's

29:10

identity has been of this swaggering businessman,

29:12

this billionaire, and he's been brought down

29:14

so dramatically, so low in recent

29:16

weeks because of the civil fraud case.

29:19

Now, this potentially, at

29:21

least temporarily, re-orients him

29:23

and gives some of that swagger. Yeah,

29:26

I mean, Trump's entire persona is

29:29

as the accomplished businessman who makes

29:31

great deals and that goes back

29:33

decades and decades and decades and

29:35

is an integral part of our

29:39

pop culture even before his run

29:41

for president. And so anything that

29:44

pierces the veil of his wealth

29:46

is a powerful antidote to Trump,

29:48

and he's going to try his

29:51

best to, A, maintain his

29:53

wealth, but B, maintain the appearance of his

29:55

wealth. And he does not want to

29:57

be in any sort of situation to sell

30:00

a building in Manhattan or you know, default

30:02

on a loan or have his assets seized

30:04

by the New York Attorney General, but he

30:06

needs a way out. Yeah, that's right. I

30:08

mean, our producer Michael Mays point out to

30:10

me, you know, Trump, Trump's on there posting

30:13

memes that make him out to be almost

30:15

a gangsta, right? With a Snoop Dogg soundtrack.

30:17

And so this is part of the brand

30:19

now, this public trade company is part of

30:21

the brand. But I liked your point about

30:23

penny stocks, you know, that this

30:26

may end up just being a penny stock.

30:28

Here's what I noticed a reporter Tom Guerra

30:30

wrote this on Twitter on Tuesday, he said, other

30:33

penny stocks should start renaming themselves after

30:35

Trump, like how that ice tea company

30:37

renamed itself the Long Island blockchain company,

30:40

the height of crypto mania. I

30:43

know Tom is joking, I absolutely

30:45

think that's going to happen. I think we're gonna

30:47

we're gonna start to see maybe not just with

30:49

Trump, you know, penny stock

30:52

type companies, small companies, try to

30:54

glom on to whatever political meme

30:56

action they can. And I don't

30:59

know, to me, that's kind of

31:01

an unnerving financial future. Yeah, for

31:03

sure. And, and we're seeing that phenomenon

31:06

with with artificial intelligence these days, too.

31:08

You know, it's just the nickel nature

31:10

of investing and the whims of retail

31:12

investors are kind of unhinged. And it's

31:14

just this time that we're living in.

31:17

It's this financial era. It's this era

31:19

of no fee trading. It's free to

31:21

buy and sell stocks. It's, you know,

31:23

you can then there's all these gamified

31:26

apps like Robinhood that make it easy

31:28

and fun and enticing even with complex

31:30

financial maneuvers like options trading and things.

31:33

So it's just easy

31:35

and people can buy and sell

31:37

whatever they want, very,

31:40

very easily and cheaply. Even

31:43

if it's just a meme. Yeah, gosh,

31:45

here's another really cynical take from Jay

31:47

Yarrow of CNBC. He says a mega

31:49

tech company should just buy DJT. Then

31:51

they'd have a free run to do

31:53

whatever they want if Trump becomes president.

31:56

And again, that one, I thought he's onto something, even

31:59

though it's deeply cynical. It's pretty dark.

32:02

We know that if Trump regains power, he

32:04

has promised retribution. He

32:06

would certainly seek to punish tech companies that

32:09

he believes are against him. And

32:11

yet here he is now as a majority

32:13

owner of a tech company. I

32:15

mean, a very small one and one that

32:19

is probably going to see its stock freefall at some point. But

32:22

it is striking to think about how this

32:24

makes him...how this changes his status as

32:26

a candidate potentially. Right

32:29

now, Trump's not really on the stump, not

32:31

really holding rallies or campaigning. But theoretically, could

32:34

all this attention help True Social? If he

32:36

is out there having rallies, pumping the stock,

32:38

pumping the company, could

32:40

this actually turn True Social into

32:43

a viable enterprise? It's

32:45

possible. Just put it out there. Yeah,

32:48

I mean, I think that the

32:50

fate of True Social is somewhat

32:52

random, but also somewhat tied to

32:54

Trump's name, image, likeness, and political

32:56

career, right? I

32:59

think there's a certain faction

33:01

of investors who think

33:03

that Trump becoming president would be

33:05

a huge boon to this stock,

33:07

and it would, right? And you've

33:10

seen how Trump has enriched his

33:12

other businesses through his political office.

33:15

The Trump organization made a ton of

33:17

money through even Trump's hotel

33:19

stays and Secret Service's hotel stays

33:22

at Trump properties during his time and

33:25

attracted a bunch of foreign businessmen

33:28

and politicians staying at his

33:31

properties as well. Here's my kicker

33:33

for our conversation. It comes from CNBC. It

33:36

points out that this new stock, the

33:38

DJT ticker, is the

33:40

same one Donald Trump debuted, quote, nearly

33:43

three decades ago for his hotel and

33:45

casino company, only to see

33:47

it delisted from the New York Stock

33:49

Exchange nine years later. It

33:53

feels like a really obvious, obvious parallel

33:55

to what could happen this time. But

33:58

hey, this is why people invest. They

34:01

bet on something, they put their

34:03

hope into it and see what happens. Yeah,

34:05

this is my call as your friendly

34:07

neighborhood business reporter to tell you to

34:10

not invest in this and put your

34:12

money in a very stable index fund

34:14

or something like that. Scott's

34:17

the boring vanguard guy. Okay, okay.

34:20

Well, that usually does turn out best for

34:22

people in the end. Shoutin' over. Thanks

34:24

so much. Thanks for having me,

34:26

Brian. And

34:29

once again, you can read Scott's story all about

34:31

this at vanityfair.com.

34:35

This episode of Inside the Hive was

34:37

produced by Michael May. And

34:40

I want to take a minute here to

34:42

thank Michael for the incredible work he's done

34:44

over the last year to bring you this

34:47

show every week. From

34:49

our first episodes covering the Fox

34:51

News defamation trial that wasn't to

34:54

today's episode about Trump's money

34:56

problems, Michael has

34:58

always brought great ideas, questions,

35:00

and angles. And he has

35:03

a real knack for pulling

35:05

together entertaining and informative

35:07

shows. Michael, thank

35:10

you for everything. And

35:12

now on to the credits. Our

35:15

executive producer is Steven Valentino.

35:18

Chris Bannon is Conde Nast's head of

35:20

global audio. We had

35:22

engineering assistants today from James Yost and

35:25

mixing by Bob Mallory. And

35:28

as you know, I'm Brian Stelter. I'm

35:30

not on true social, at least not yet.

35:34

You can find me on Twitter

35:36

and threads at Brian Stelter or

35:38

reach out to me directly anytime

35:40

at [email protected]. I love hearing

35:42

from you about the show and thinking

35:45

up future guests and future topics

35:47

for Inside the Hive. We're

35:49

off next week for Spring Break, but we'll

35:51

be back in your podcast feeds in April.

35:54

Talk with you then. I'm

36:07

Katia Adler, host of The Global Story. Over

36:09

the last 25 years, I've

36:11

covered conflicts in the Middle East,

36:13

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36:15

drug cartels in Mexico. Now

36:18

I'm covering the stories behind the news

36:20

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36:22

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36:24

to Friday to find out what's happening,

36:26

why and what it all means. Follow

36:29

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36:31

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