As Trump's Truth Social Drops, Trumpist Retail Investors Want to Buy More!
At 71, he put his whole nest egg ($25,000) in it, but he )thinks it was a sign from God.
In their eyes, everything Trump touches turns to gold. Upon closer inspection, however, it turns out the gold is not real. “They,” the ubiquitous, amorphous army of the envious and nefarious, “undoubtedly stole the real gold and replaced it with fool’s gold to make Trump look bad.”
Then, after Trump ends up in court, they learn that the gold was never real to begin with. They learn that Trump had “done something else with their money” but not invested it as he promised.
“That’s okay. He probably had good intentions and would have invested the money in something much better and more genius. But you know, they are always plotting against him. Always want to make him look bad.”
“I know good and well it’s in Trump’s hands, and he’s got plans,” he said. “I have no doubt it’s going to explode sometime (Small Time Investors).”
Donald Trump knows that “retail investors” and New Jersey and Philadelphia construction workers are suckers. He is certain of two things: 1) they have no idea about their rights as investors; and, 2) they don’t have the resources to sue him when he cheats them. This is why Trump’s Truth Social management team is so happy about the 400,000 retail investors who jumped in on the IPO. A small army of Trump-sick Americans have given everything they have to his doomed venture, and despite its poor showing (it opened at $66 a share but is now valued at $32) — they want to buy more — just don’t tell their wives or family.
Jerry Dean McClain, 71, who owns a tree-removal business in Oklahoma City, put pretty much everything he had into Trump because he believes in “free speech and America.”
McLain is an amateur trader — he invested only once before and “lost [his] butt” — and said he hasn’t talked to his family about his investment, saying, “You know how that is.” But he believes the Trump Media deal is a sign he is “supposed to invest,” he said.
“This isn’t just another stock to me. … I feel like it was God Almighty that put it in my lap,” he said. “I’ve just got to hold on and let them do their job. If you go on emotion, you’ll get out of this thing the first time it goes down (Small Time Investors).”
The image above shows what happened to the Trump Plaza Hotel in Atlantic City. Constructed in 1984, it was demolished in 2021. In Trump’s world of business, this is how most things end up. This is what will happen to Truth Social because the business model is damned; it’s not about the business. It’s all about feeding Trump’s insatiable obsession with himself. When an inexperienced, amateur investor like Jerry Dean McClain hands over to Trump’s goons his life savings, Trump smiles wide and thinks, “What a bozo, just handing me his money. He deserves to be cheated.”
As a business, Trump Media has largely underwhelmed: The company lost $58 million last year on $4 million in revenue, less than the average Chick-fil-A franchise, even as it paid out millions in executive salaries, bonuses and stock.
And in two years, Truth Social has attracted a tiny fraction of the traffic other platforms see, according to estimates from the analytics firm Similarweb — one of the only ways to measure its performance, given that the company says it “does not currently, and may never, collect, monitor or report certain key operating metrics used by companies in similar industries.”
But for some Trump investors, the stock is a badge of honor — a way to show their devotion beyond buying Trump merchandise, visiting Trump golf courses, or donating to Trump’s presidential campaign (Small Time Investors).”
Like everything else in Trump’s world, this, too, is a lie. This, too, is nothing but another shell game on Surf Avenue near Coney Island. Just like everything else in Trump’s world, his lies are never lies but truths that fall through not because Trump was being dishonest but because others were against him. One interior designer from Florida who believes everyone should buy one share of Truth Social daily didn’t — couldn’t because they can never admit Trump has fooled them — blame Trump or the Truth Social management.
He suspects the recent drops in share price have been the result of “stock manipulation” from an “organized effort” to make the company look bad. There’s no proof of such a campaign, but Schlanger is convinced. “It’s got to be political,” he said, from all the “liberals that are trying to knock it down (Small Time Investors).”
Russians, when justifying the criminal actions of Vladimir Putin, regularly fall back on that weak defense: The whole world is against us because they don’t want Russia to be strong. Thanks to these Trump-obsessed investors, though, the management team isn’t required to do a whole lot. Truth Social management has been quiet about the loss of $3.5 billion in value since its opening last month. People like the interior designer above aren’t concerned about the wall of silence because, most likely, they are working on something “really big.”
Truth Social positions itself as a “beachhead” for free speech in the war against Big Tech. Trumpist investors regard the stock’s fall as not the reality of the weak product and incompetent management team, which has been rolling in bonuses, million-dollar-a-year salaries, and other perks, but “the deep state” expanding its attack from Trump to them.
In moments of apparent despair, some users work to lift one another up by arguing that they are enduring the same kinds of “deep state” attacks that had long shadowed Trump himself. When user @BingBlangBlaow said they were embarrassed to be so “deep in the red” and questioned why “everyone [was] acting like everything is fine,” Chad Nedohin, a Canadian investor and prominent cheerleader of the stock on Truth Social and the video site Rumble, responded, “No [one’s] fine with it, but we are DJT now. The deep state is making their run at Trump … and us (Small Time Investors).”
To all of this, all I can say is: What the f*** has happened to our country?