Trump’s Business Partners Are Dumping Their Stock as Fast as They Can

Insider trading restrictions expired for Trump Media last week, effectively opening the floodgates for investors to sell off their stock in wildly unprofitable company—and sell they did.

United Atlantic Ventures LLC, one of the largest shareholders in Trump Media & Technology Group, dumped 11 million shares in the company shortly after a lockup agreement preventing insiders from selling their shares lifted on September 19, according to a regulatory filing.

The amount that UAV received for its shares wasn’t reported, but the price tag could have ranged anywhere from $128 million to $170 million, according to CNBC. The group held a 5.4 percent stake in the Trump tech company but left itself with just 100 shares in hand after the transaction. The only other group that owns more than 5 percent of Trump Media is ARC Global Investments II LLC, with just over 11 million shares.

Trump Media fell dramatically in the days following lockup expiration, with shares spiraling to a fraction of their value at the company’s initial public offering in March. Even before the restrictions ended, Wall Street strategists were eyeing the behavior of the company’s investors to get a better read on Trump Media’s health.

“Even if Trump doesn’t, it would be interesting if other insiders begin selling because that would be a clue as to what they think his mindset is about selling,” Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, told Reuters last week.

It’s easy to see why investors want to sell. Trump Media’s biggest brand is Truth Social, the social media network founded by the former president after he was banned from Twitter for stoking an insurrection. Truth Social has struggled to attract users, advertisers, or revenue of any kind; in the second quarter of 2024 it brought in less than $1 million in revenue and posted a $16 million loss.

Donald Trump—who owns roughly 57 percent of the company with 115 million shares—has insisted he has no intention of selling off his stock, though doing so could provide a cash infusion for the legally hamstrung Republican presidential nominee. However, it would devastate investors’ confidence in the company and could spell the end for Truth Social.

Trump Media has been criticized as another iteration of a long line of grifts this year as the former president has fought off numerous legal charges that have added up to half a billion dollars in expenses and debt. Other Trumpian hustles included launching a remarkably ugly sneaker and selling NFT trading cards of himself dressed in superhero costumes and astronaut suits. He also made some quick cash on a limited edition, $60 God Bless the USA Bible co-promoted by “God Bless the USA” singer Lee Greenwood, and stamped his name on a new cryptocurrency platform headed by his two sons, Eric and Don Jr., which even Trump’s allies have criticized as a “huge mistake.”

A major polling organization is reportedly giving Donald Trump’s campaign previews of its results before the public sees them.

On Thursday, American Muckrakers posted about emails it received detailing how the conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports, which claims to be nonpartisan, shared polling results with Trump advisers and campaign officials like Dan Scavino, Susie Wiles, and John McLaughlin. The advisers, Rasmussen, and the nonprofit organizations that pay it for polling are violating tax and election laws, according to American Muckrakers.

One of the emails details close collaboration between the Trump campaign, Rasmussen, and the Heartland Institute, which calls itself a national free-market public policy think tank. However, it’s also a 501(c)3 nonprofit and is not allowed to engage in political activity benefiting a political candidate.

Rasmussen has long been criticized for its polling, which focuses on “likely voters,” and for skewing toward older Americans and providing favorable results to conservatives. During the Trump administration, its website became overtly supportive of the right wing, with many of its polls sponsored by conservative personalities and causes. On social media, Rasmussen appeared to legitimize many conspiracy theories on the right, such as election fraud and vaccine denialism.

Earlier this year, the polling aggregator 538 dropped Rasmussen Reports from its averages and forecasts, saying that the firm couldn’t meet 538’s standards for objectivity and methodology. This drew a major backlash from right-wing media, especially after Rasmussen published a letter from 538 asking the polling firm questions about its procedures and biases.

The revelations from American Muckrakers go beyond simple political bias and into outright collaboration between Republicans and Rasmussen, explaining the organization’s overt partisan change. It would seem to invite possible legal trouble for Rasmussen too, although there’s no shortage of conservative judges and lawyers ready to shield it from consequences.

The Republican vice presidential nominee will attend an event in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, on Saturday hosted by The Lance Wallnau Show.

Wallnau is a one of the leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, a sect of evangelical Christianity devoted to proselytizing the Seven Mountain Mandate, referring to the seven aspects of society—government, family, religion, arts and entertainment, media, education, and business—that its followers are meant to influence with their faith so that Christians can hold dominion over the world.

Unsurprisingly, he’s adamantly pro–Donald Trump.

Wallnau has been associated with Trump’s campaign since at least January 2024, when he announced his “Courage Tour” in collaboration with the far-right youth organization Turning Point USA, another group hoping to flesh out Trump’s lackluster ground game.

Wallnau said the tour aimed to get “civically enlightened” pastors to turn out their church members for the “America First agenda,” according to Rolling Stone. The Courage Tour urges attendees not only to vote but to sign up as election workers and poll watchers.

In an interview with CBS News, Wallnau called it “spiritual activism,” but it’s actually likely illegal under U.S. tax code. (Kirk had offered resources to pastors seeking to “challenge the IRS,” and Wallnau has pushed for churches to be “courageous.”)

Now Vance and Wallnau will join forces in an essential battleground state for Trump.

It seems like Vance and Wallnau may have a lot to talk about, considering the fact that they’re both raging misogynists. Wallnau has repeatedly referred to Kamala Harris as a “Jezebel,” a racist and misogynist trope with distinctly violent implications. Shortly after Harris’s candidacy for president was announced in July, Wallnau said Trump’s opponent represented “the spirit of Jezebel, and in a way that’ll be even much more ominous than Hillary because she’ll bring a racial component and she’s younger.”

They could also talk about Wallnau’s podcast, where he regularly pushes far-right talking points, like a resented episode in which he fomented the dangers of “hit squads” coming over the “open borders” to assassinate Trump.

Vance’s nomination electrified the Christian nationalist corners of the internet, and recently he’s been doing more outreach to Christian voters. Earlier this week, Vance spoke at the Believers and Ballots event in Charlotte, North Carolina, a key swing state. Vance complained about “crazy transgender bills,” claimed that Christianity is the “most persecuted faith in the world today,” and called Harris “the biggest threat to religious liberty we’ve had in at least a generation.”

It turns out that as recently as 2020, J.D. Vance was critical of Donald Trump.

The Washington Post reported Friday that the Republican vice presidential nominee called out Trump as having “just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy),” in one of multiple direct messages on Twitter (now X) back in February 2020.

Vance has explained his shift from being a “Never Trump” conservative in 2016, promoting his book Hillbilly Elegy, to supporting Trump in 2020 by saying Trump’s presidential term changed his mind. But apparently, that wasn’t really the case.

In another message in June 2020, just months before the election, Vance wrote, “I think Trump will probably lose.” When Trump did lose, Vance claimed the election was stolen by the Democrats. 

The messages were shared with the Post by their recipient anonymously out of fear of retaliation. They were also sent years after Vance was critical of Trump during his 2016 campaign for president, when he called Trump “reprehensible” and “America’s Hitler.”

A Vance spokesperson told the Post the Ohio senator wasn’t actually criticizing Trump but “establishment Republicans who thwarted much of Trump’s populist economic agenda to increase tariffs and boost domestic manufacturing in Congress.”

“Fortunately, Sen. Vance believes that Republicans in Congress are much more aligned with President Trump’s agenda today than they were back then, so he is confident that they won’t run into those same issues within the party,” said William Martin.

But this statement doesn’t take into account that Vance also correctly predicted that Trump would lose the 2020 election, only to deny that after the fact. Vance has never been particularly clear on when he started to support Trump, the Post notes, begging the question of whether it was him actually changing his mind or making a calculated political decision.

In another direct message, Vance even seemed open to government-run universal health care, saying Medicare for All “is a net positive, maybe not (details matter).” But Martin told the Post that Vance now believes “the Democrats[’] top-down Medicare for All plan would make healthcare worse for Americans,” which is backed up by Vance and Trump’s regressive health care proposals.

Whatever the case may be, Vance is fully defending Trump and providing his own defenses for the former president’s proposed policies, nonsensical as they may be. But the Post’s revelations suggest that Vance could just be saying whatever he thinks will satisfy the MAGA faithful. 

Donald Trump appeared to completely forget Thursday that Kamala Harris wasn’t the president for the past four years, during a breathless, lengthy rant on immigration.

After a hearing at a New York City appeals court, Trump delivered a low-energy stump speech, where he attempted to hold his opponent solely responsible for every beat of the Biden administration’s immigration policy.

“Four years ago, Kamala inherited the most secure border in U.S. history, with the lowest illegal immigration on record,” Trump said.

“Those who violated our borders were captured, detained, and quickly sent back home under the Trump administration. But on her first day in office, Kamala Harris terminated every single Trump policy that sealed and secured the border.”

Already, it was startlingly clear that Harris’s name could be replaced at any point with President Joe Biden’s.

Trump then complained that Harris had been the one to order an “immediate stop” to the construction on the border wall when it was “almost complete.” He claimed that Harris had suspended all deportations, instituted catch and release “across the entire southern border,” and “sent Congress a bill demanding amnesty for all illegal aliens, every single illegal alien, even if they’re criminals, even if they’re murderers, even if they’re drug dealers … human traffickers.… She wanted amnesty for everybody.”

Trump also seemed disappointed that Harris had “canceled” his Remain in Mexico policy. There’s only one problem: Harris isn’t solely responsible for any of this stuff because she isn’t president. She didn’t “order” or “terminate” or “cancel” any Trump policy because she didn’t have the authority.

For example, the disastrous Remain in Mexico program, which was used to send nearly 70,000 migrants back into Mexico, was suspended by Biden after there were widespread reports of severe human rights violations and serious logistical issues.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Trump has seemingly forgotten whom exactly he’s running against. When Harris first became the nominee, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that Trump was having a hard time adjusting—three months later, and he still doesn’t seem to have gotten a grasp on things.

Later in his speech, Trump took aim at Harris for slamming his efforts to kill a bipartisan border bill earlier this year, which would’ve granted $20 billion in emergency spending at the southern border, in the most restrictive border legislation pushed by a Democratic president in recent memory.

“She keeps talking about this law that they tried to put through Congress, but fortunately Congress was too smart for her,” Trump said “It would’ve been a disaster.

“The damage was done, they’re trying to make it look better now. But the damage was done over the first three years. They’re trying to do anything to make it look better. Because it doesn’t poll very well for them—but it polls very well for me.”

Trump seemingly can’t help but give away the game for his motivation for killing the bill: A weakened border hurts Harris among voters but gives him and his fearmongering, anti-immigrant platform a boost.

A less than coherent Trump claimed that he won in 2016 because “I fix the border,” and whined that in 2020, “I couldn’t talk about the border because I fixed it, it was great.

“But now we can talk about the border because this border, they un-fixed it,” Trump said.

“This border is the worst border. And by the way, 25 times worse and more deadly, than the border in 2016.”

It is unclear where he got that number. According to Customs and Border Protection, the agency had a total of 408,807 encounters along the southwest border in 2016. In 2023, that number was about 2.5 million—only about six times greater.