Trump Media Stock Tanks Again as Trump Is Buried in Legal Troubles

Trump Media stock is once again slumping.

Donald Trump’s social media venture reaudited its finances and filed them with the Securities and Exchange Commission Monday, confirming that the company had a whopping net loss of $58.2 million in 2023. As a result, Trump Media shares dropped more than 6 percent Monday afternoon.

The company had to change auditors last month after its previous firm, BF Borgers, was charged with “massive fraud” and subsequently barred from ever serving as accountants again. 

“As a result of [BF Borgers’] fraudulent conduct, they not only put investors and markets at risk by causing public companies to incorporate noncompliant audits and reviews into more than 1,500 filings with the Commission, but also undermined trust and confidence in our markets,” Gurbir S. Grewal, the director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said at the time, calling the firm a “sham audit mill.” 

Trump Media executives have reached out to the SEC to see why the company’s stock is performing so poorly, and its CEO, former Representative Devin Nunes, complained in April to Nasdaq’s CEO that the company was the victim of illegal “naked short selling.” In response, he was brutally mocked on Wall Street.

It’s the latest piece of bad news for what was expected to be a cash cow for Trump. The company reported a staggering $327.6 million loss last quarter, and only brought in $770,500 in revenue. The company is trading at just $42 per share, much less than the $72 it was trading at in March after its initial public offering. Trump can’t brag his way out of his media company’s issues, either: The SEC could see it as an illegal attempt to pump up Trump Media stock. And even if he could get away with it, he still can’t sell off any of that stock for six months without board approval, a difficult prospect considering his hefty legal bills.

Donald Trump’s impending attacks on abortion rights continue to take shape ahead of November.

Trump on Monday virtually addressed a forum hosted by abortion extremist group Danbury Institute, which describes itself as an “association of churches, Christians, and organizations aligned to affirm and preserve God-given rights to life and liberty,” and which in reality advocates for abortion to be “eradicated entirely” and calls the lifesaving medical procedure “child sacrifice.”

Trump delivered two-minute prerecorded remarks, in which he promised that if he’s reelected, the group would “make a comeback like just about no other group.”

“We have to defend religious liberty, free speech, innocent life, and the heritage and traditions that built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world,” Trump added. “I know that each of you is protecting those values every day—and I hope we’ll be defending them side by side for the next four years.”

Trump was initially slated to appear in person at the conference, shifting last-minute to providing pre-written remarks. As Politico noted, none of Trump’s messaging to the extreme anti-abortion conference actually mentioned abortion, and instead read like something pulled together in the eleventh hour by someone attending fascism school who forgot they had a paper due today. According to a senior Trump campaign official, the message is part of a “welcome message” that was prerecorded for attendees of the Southern Baptist Convention, of which the Danbury Institute is hosting a forum dubbed “Life and Liberty” featuring a slate of evangelical anti-abortion figures.

​​The Danbury Institute describes abortion as “the greatest atrocity facing our generation today” and “child sacrifice on the altar of self.” The christofascist group is also ardently anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans and rails against “critical race theory and Marxist ideologies.” Biden’s campaign leapt on the appearance, describing Trump’s participation in the convention “campaigning with abortion ban extremists.”

Trump has previously suggested he’d be open to banning contraceptives, which he walked back only to then clarify that his real target is mifepristone—the medication used to terminate early miscarriages and pregnancy, which accounts for 60 percent of abortions nationwide. He walked back those remarks, as he frequently does, and defaulted to leaving abortion restrictions up to the states.

Trump’s floating stance on abortion appears to be an effort to appease competing factions: His most intensely supportive base, Christian fundamentalists, want abortion banned at the federal level while other parts of his base either support abortion rights or prefer the decision be left to the states.

Donald Trump’s campaign has begun vetting candidates to join his ticket as vice president, and according to Senator J.D. Vance, Trump’s asking them about their criminal record, with no sense of irony at all.  

During a Monday interview on Fox & Friends, host Steve Doocy asked the Ohio Republican whether he had “been asked to submit documents to be vetted.”

“You’re not at that level yet,” Doocy pushed. “Or are you?”

“They’ve asked us for a number of things,” Vance replied. “I think that a number of people have been asked to submit this and that.”

“Like your taxes or something?” Doocy pressed. “Your criminal background?” he added with a short laugh. 

“Yeah, but certainly like, ‘Have you ever committed a crime?’ Or ‘Ever lied about this?’ Certainly you have those conversations, but I think a lot of people have those conversations,” Vance said, vaguely. 

Doocy has become a rare voice of dissent on Fox & Friends, regularly pushing against his fellow hosts’ reactionary perspectives, urging them to provide evidence for some of their more baseless claims about President Joe Biden and his family, according to The Washington Post. Doocy has also proven to be the least likely host to blindly back Trump or defend him from worthy criticism. It’s not clear whether his jab about a criminal background was intentional, but it did appear to make Vance sweat.

It appears that Trump’s campaign plans to hold his vice presidential pick to a higher standard than the candidate himself, who was recently found guilty of 34 felony counts. 

To be fair, it’s not exactly clear how that information will be factored into Trump’s decision. For all we know, the “Law & Order president” might welcome the camaraderie of another politician with a rap sheet.

Of the contenders on Trump’s V.P. shortlist, it appears that the only one with a criminal record is Byron Donalds, who was arrested twice, once for marijuana possession and later for felony theft. In the first case, Donalds was kept out of prison through a pretrial diversion program, and in the second, he pleaded no contest to the felony theft charge and received probation. Donalds’s record was expunged and sealed.*

*This article has been updated the clarify that Donalds’s record was expunged and sealed.

A secret tape has exposed some of Justice Samuel Alito’s privately held beliefs, including endorsing a fight to “return our country to a place of godliness” with the stark understanding that “one side or the other is going to win.”

Alito’s comments were recorded by advocacy journalist Lauren Windsor during the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner on June 3, an opportunity leveraged by many right-wing activists to cozy up to members of the nation’s highest judiciary.

A copy of the tape, which documented the incredible candor with which Alito forewent any illusion of neutrality, was provided to Rolling Stone.

Leading Alito on, the liberal documentarian is heard approaching the justice about a disbelief that American polarization can come to an end by way of negotiating with the political left. Instead, Windsor posits that it’s more a matter of conservatives “winning.”

“I think you’re probably right,” Alito replies. “On one side or the other—one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working—a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”

Alito then agreed with Windsor’s assessment that the country needed to return to a “place of godliness.”

Meanwhile, responses from Chief Justice John Roberts—who was appointed to the bench the same year and by the same president as Alito—to near-identical questions offered a stark contrast between the two conservative judges.

“The idea that the court is in the middle of a lot of tumultuous stuff going on is nothing new,” Roberts told Windsor, in response to her question about intense polarization in the United States.

Roberts pushed back when pressed on whether the court should right the U.S. onto a “moral path,” and pointed to the perspectives of “Jewish and Muslim friends” when presented with the idea that the country is a “Christian nation.” He argued that it wasn’t the Supreme Court’s role to lead the country with any religious bearings.

“It’s not our job to do that. It’s our job to decide the cases the best we can,” Roberts said.

Alito’s comments are particularly telling considering he has come under fire for two flags flown outside two of his houses. One was an upside-down American flag, which is associated with the January 6 insurrection, and the other is a Christian nationalist banner.

A new profile of Representative Nancy Mace in Slate has some surprising revelations about the South Carolina congresswoman, chief among them her actual opinion of the Republican Party’s voters.

The article, sourced from Mace’s former staffers, shows a second-term member of Congress desperate for attention. When Representative Kevin McCarthy was ousted as House speaker in October, Mace was among those who voted against him, much to everyone’s surprise, including her own staff’s.

In the following days, however, Mace sought to stand out even more, showing up to work wearing a shirt with a big red “A” on the front, in a nod to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic, The Scarlet Letter. The move baffled her staff, one of whom told Slate they thought “it was just some fashion statement. I was like, OK, well, maybe this is an Abercrombie shirt or something.”

It quickly became apparent that Mace was attempting to place herself at the center of attention.

“She wanted every single person to think—when they thought of the McCarthy ouster vote, not to think of the eight, but to think of Nancy Mace,” the staffer said.

While Mace claimed that her choice of wardrobe was because she had been “demonized for my vote and for my voice” and would “do the right thing every single time, no matter the consequences,” it drew many puzzled reactions. An unhappy Mace told her staff that the people who didn’t understand it were probably “Trump voters” who weren’t smart, a startling thing to say for a Republican.

Congress, and more specifically the Republican caucus, has no shortage of members who seek attention but provide little in the way of legislation, like Representatives Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. One of Mace’s former staffers told Slate that the congresswoman used to criticize such colleagues, but now “she has turned herself into what she hates.”

Mace’s record is full of such behavior, whether it’s claiming that she was being shamed as a victim of sexual assault because she was asked why she supported Donald Trump to calling campus protesters against the war in Gaza “terrorist-loving kids” who “hate our country so much.” Congressional staffers have called her “abusive” and quit working for her in droves. There is an ethics complaint against her for seeking higher monthly lodging reimbursements than what her expenses actually warranted, charging the government for more than $8,900 over what she was eligible for.

Mace is trying to ward off a primary challenger in her reelection race, as her actions have attracted criticism back in North Carolina, where she is currently polling under 50 percent.