Much has been written and said about “Truth Social,” and 99% of that reporting is completely wrong, as it talks about the site as if it was ever intended to be a real thing. It was not. We are in late-stage capitalism where entrepreneurs no longer think about how to build better mousetraps. Instead, they spend their waking hours coming up with schemes where they can make loads of money just talking about how they MIGHT make a mouse trap — or maybe not.
Such is the case with Trump and “Truth Social.” The key thing to understand is that Trump has already gotten paid and has no more intention of building a real social network than he had of operating a viable airline or running a legitimate university. He never intended “Truth Social” to be a real site, so all of you who are fretting about how Devin Nunes could possibly manage the site can put your minds at ease. It was just another scam, and Nunes is the perfect guy for that — an ultra-obedient lapdog who could face the prison risk instead of Trump.
The Fraud Machine
How does this work? Simple, but not so simple. One of Trump’s fellow money-launderers, Patrick Orlando, whom Trump undoubtedly met while participating in Russian money laundering schemes with Deutsche Bank, the world’s foremost money laundering organization, set up a thing called a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). SPACs are emblematic of the final late stages of capitalism. These are lovingly called “blank check” vehicles. They allow a fraudster, or even a legitimate entrepreneur, to set up a dummy corporation and to sell shares to the public with basically no business plan at all. They simply state they will invest the money in something, sometime. The investors have the right to pull out their money once those prospective investments are revealed.
That’s basically it. There are practically no rules. The only real rule is that you can’t do this with an investment already planned. That is to say, you can’t plan an investment, then fund it using the zero-disclosure permitted by hiding behind a SPAC. But that is, obviously, exactly what Trump and Orlando did, which is why they needed to find the stupidest dumbass on the planet to take the fall if anybody decides to prosecute this. Enter Devin Nunes, His only relevant qualification is his ability to go to prison if necessary.
How To Get Paid
So Trump and Orlando hatched this scheme, or maybe Orlando hatched it and convinced Trump to put his name on it. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The point is that when Trump’s name was added to the story, the SPAC shares took off, which really doesn’t matter because those people are eventually going to lose all their money unless they are in on the deal too. The key point is that the initial frenzy raised $290,000,000 million and that money (less any where shareholders bailed out within their rescission period) has presumably been transferred to Trump, Nunes, and Orlando “on the other side” of the deal, i.e. Truth Social. The story to the SPAC investors will be, “Sorry guys, I guess we just made a bad investment. You know how tough it is in the social media world.”
And that’s it. That’s the whole game. It doesn’t matter if it flops. Indeed, Trump is doing nothing to promote it. The sooner it flops like Trump Air and Trump U. and Trump Steaks and Trump Wine, the better. It is remarkable that a man who has never succeeded at any business enterprise is still able to fleece so many people so easily, but that is the nature of late stage capitalism.
Additional Reading
You can find more background here:
Adddendum (April 5)
This article states that the SPAC has not yet actually sent the cash to Trump. I have not been able to independently verify that. Certainly the SEC has said they are looking into it, but the SEC is famous for doing practically no enforcement, so I expect that if Trump hasn’t received that cash, he will in a matter of a few weeks. If so, that doesn’t fundamentally alter the premise of this article, describing how the scam is set up. And if public pressure causes the SEC to blow this thing up, so much the better.
And please note that as of today, the initial insiders who paid (or pledged) $10/share are sitting on a 500% gain if they have not already exercised their positions.