Stable Genius Trump Tanks His Own Media Company After Posting on X

Donald Trump’s social media network is losing money just as the former president and convicted felon has resumed posting on X (formerly Twitter).

Trump Media & Technology shares dropped to $24.60, their lowest price level in months, after Trump posted on X early Monday for the first time in more than a year. Shares may drop even further as Trump is supposed to sit down for an interview with X CEO Elon Musk Monday night.

The plummeting stock comes after many investors bought shares in the media company hoping for a boost during the 2024 election, with a possible Trump victory netting an even higher increase. Trump Media reported a loss of $16 million in its first full quarter as a publicly traded company Friday, earning just $836,900 for the period ending June 30.

It’s the latest run of bad news for Truth Social, which is rapidly losing users. It was expected to be an easy money grab for Trump, who owns 60 percent of the company. But even the company’s net loss of $58.2 million in 2023 had to be reaudited after its accounting firm was charged with “massive fraud.” At the very least, Trump Media’s meager numbers last quarter were a huge improvement from the previous one, when it lost an astonishing $327.6 million and only brought in $770,500 in revenue.

Trump is stuck with his company’s stock for just one more month, when he is legally allowed to sell his shares without board approval. He can’t try to increase the share price by bragging, as he did with his real estate properties, because that would be illegal.  Even though the Supreme Court gave him a break with its immunity ruling, he still needs cash to pay his mounting legal bills. It’s only a matter of time before September arrives and Trump dumps his stock. The question is, how low will the share price be?

Donald Trump returned to X (formerly Twitter) ahead of a one-on-one interview with Elon Musk Monday. But rather than elevate that, or attack his current opponent’s policies, one of Trump’s first ads directed at his 88.1 million followers on the platform appeared to narrowly focus on President Joe Biden.

The roughly two-minute video—captioned “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!”—attempted to frame Trump as a candidate primed for election since 1987, when he was still a major New York City developer.

“In the ads, he says there’s nothing wrong with American foreign policy that a little backbone won’t cure,” a dated broadcaster can be heard saying at the ad’s opening.

As the music escalates, Trump can be heard claiming that he and his followers will “determine the course of America, and the world, for many, many years to come.” The convicted fraudster—who also announced his intention to sue the Justice Department to the tune of $100 million for the FBI raid on his Florida estate—argues in the video that he’s the antidote for corruption at the highest levels of government.

But by the end of the ad, it’s clear that Trump has not yet found a proper angle of attack against his new Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Instead, the ad directly calls out Biden, reiterating outdated polls that found Trump to be leading the former nominee.

Unfortunately for him, that’s no longer the current state of the race. Since Harris and Tim Walz joined the opposite ticket, Trump has seen a dramatic slip in support, including from white men—the bulk of his base—despite his attempts to pander to them this election cycle.

Trump has also upset white supremacists, with one popular pro-Hitler livestreamer publicly revoking his support for Trump on Friday, announcing on social media that he and his allies were declaring a “groyper war” against the Trump campaign over the belief that the candidate was headed toward a “catastrophic loss.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s number two pick—Ohio Senator J.D. Vance—has also proven remarkably unpopular with voters, with 62 percent of surveyed voters noting they were “bothered” by Vance’s abortion stance and his description of rape and incest-caused pregnancies as “inconvenient.”

Donald Trump’s former senior adviser Peter Navarro has doubled down on his pleas to the former president, begging him to stop making superficial attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Navarro, who previously served a four-month prison sentence for defying a congressional subpoena in the January 6 investigation, spoke about Trump’s bad strategy Monday while guest hosting the War Room podcast, which is normally captained by Steve Bannon. But Bannon is currently serving his own four-month prison sentence for defying a congressional subpoena in the January 6 investigation.

“The Trump rally 1.0 has always been a fast-moving feast,” Navarro explained, a generous characterization of Trump’s falsehood-filled, meandering public speaking gigs.

“Trump doesn’t need feast now, he needs votes, and the current rally formula is simply not sufficiently focused on the very stark policy differences—policy differences—between him and Kamala Harris that will swing voters in key battleground states,” Navarro said. “Instead, when Trump attacks Harris personally rather than on policy, Harris’s support among swing voters rises, particularly among women. It’s just a fact of life, right now.”

Amid Harris’s increase in the polls, and apparently groundswell of support, Trump has appeared to lean into making personal attacks against the vice president. He’s tried out several lame nicknames, accused her of deciding to become Black, and falsely claimed that her campaign used A.I. to create the appearance of a massive crowd.

Navarro’s message for Trump to get serious about opposing Harris was echoed in statements from former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who appeared on Fox News Monday.

“You’ve got to make this race not on personalities,” McCarthy said. “Stop questioning the size of her crowds and start questioning her position when it comes to what did she do as attorney general on crime. Question what did she do when she was supposed to take care of the border as the czar. Question that they brought inflation [down], and she was the tie-breaking vote when it came to inflation, when it came to IRS agents.”

McCarthy called Harris the “perfect person to run against.”

“You thought John Kerry was a flip-flopper? She has the biggest flip-flop, with the most extreme positions, and you’ve got a short time to do it. So, don’t sit back, get out there, and start making the case, and use her own words to do it,” McCarthy said.

Not only is Elon Musk inviting Donald Trump to return to X (formerly known as Twitter) for an exclusive interview with him on Monday, he’s also now pushing Trump’s advertisements on the social media platform.

As advertisers continue to flee X, Musk is happy to elevate campaign ads from the @realDonaldTrump account. Musk is also promoting the hashtag “TrumpIsOnX” ahead of the interview Monday evening.

One of the promoted ads begins with a montage of the former president being pursued for his various crimes, from the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago to his felony charges for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. “The only crime I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it,” his voiceover says.

“I will totally obliterate the deep state,” he declares as videos of him with military personnel flash on-screen. 

Other ads also include a Ronald Reagan deepfake and Andy Warhol–esque black and white film of Trump walking toward the camera complete with an action movie soundtrack. 

If Trump’s return to X after nearly a year wasn’t enough cause for concern, his strange conspiracy-laden videos should be. On Monday night, the Republican presidential nominee is set to speak with X owner Musk on the platform’s “Spaces.”

Last year, Musk tried to livestream on Twitter Spaces with former presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, a disastrous event plagued with continuous technical glitches that still couldn’t distract from the Florida governor’s horrible vibes. At the time, Trump made fun of Musk and DeSantis for the failed event. It looks like Musk’s promise of campaign cash changed Trump’s mind.

Donald Trump is suing the Justice Department for alleged damages incurred from the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022.

Trump’s legal team said in a legal filing on Monday that there was “tortious conduct by the United States against President Trump” in the search, calling it “political persecution” and “unconstitutional.” He is asking the Justice Department for $100 million.

The court filing accuses Attorney General Merrick Garland, who appointed special prosecutor Jack Smith to investigate Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, and FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom Trump appointed, of engaging in “malicious prosecution” against him.

“Garland and Wray should have never approved a raid and subsequent indictment of President Trump because the well-established protocol with former U.S. presidents is to use non-enforcement means to obtain records of the United States,” Trump’s attorney Daniel Epstein wrote. The DOJ has six months to respond, and the case will move to federal court in the Southern District of Florida if it isn’t resolved in that time.

Two years ago, the FBI searched Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, estate as part of its investigation into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. In June 2023, Trump was federally indicted on 37 criminal counts over his handling of the documents, but the case was dismissed last month by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who presides in the Southern District of Florida.

Trump’s lawsuit is rather brazen, and it’s only possible because Cannon, who seems heavily biased toward Trump, dismissed his classified documents case on the flimsy grounds of the special counsel’s appointment being unconstitutional. Smith has already appealed the dismissal of the classified documents case, so the former president and convicted felon isn’t even out of the woods yet.

Trump seems to be banking on winning in November, which raises the question of whether he’ll simply order the DOJ to pay up if he returns to the White House.