She isn't the only one either. A few have openly lied to their constituents as they've pretended to have been the person who organised the funding when they directly towed party lines and voted against it.
Opinion INTERNATIONAL Politics: Adelaide Board Discussion Part 5
- Thread starter Chief
- Start date
- Tagged users None
She isn't the only one either. A few have openly lied to their constituents as they've pretended to have been the person who organised the funding when they directly towed party lines and voted against it.
- Nov 6, 2014
- 61,029
- 75,149
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
Telling it like it is.
The GOP House is in a shambles.
The GOP House is in a shambles.
They are dysfunctional because 50% know Trump wont win his way back into office and are trying to distance themselves from him when he fails his legal battles, and the other 50% are desperately trying to suck up to Trump and MAGA for votes. This period in politics will not be remembered fondly and I do think MAGA congressman will regret this in the face of huge backlash long after their political careers are over.
- Nov 6, 2014
- 61,029
- 75,149
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
Latest from Seth Abramson
SETH ABRAMSON
MAR 22, 2024
∙ PAID
You can read the first section of this report for free, and the whole report for free—as well as 250+ others at Proof—by trying Proof for a week. To do so, just click the red button below.
Note that a free trial therefore grants immediate access to the four long, internationally viral Proof reports on the controversial March 11 $91.63 million Trump-Greenberg bond (1, 2, 3, 4).
Get 7 day free trial
Introduction
Confirmed rapist Donald Trump—now facing 88 state and federal felonies in four U.S. jurisdictions, including a trial on 34 New York felonies due to start next month—knew his financial moment of reckoning was coming weeks and weeks and weeks ago.
But despite knowing that he was about to need a $464 million supersedeas appellate bond (a bond that includes $10 million to cover his adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as well as interest accrued during the pendency of this New York civil suit), he chose to do… nothing.
Or, rather, he did many things: he played endless rounds of golf; repeatedly confusedhis sole remaining Republican presidential nomination opponent, Nikki Haley, with former Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; engaged in perhaps the most deranged three months of social media posting American politics has ever seen; and at every opportunity railed publicly against the normal operation of America’s civil and criminal justice systems as though he were just becoming aware of them for the first time—despite demagoguing both to his own personal advantage for six decades.
What he did not do was seek an independent assessment of his New York properties—of which there are actually quite few; Trump mostly owns individual services or rooms in properties owned by others—as it might have revealed additional frauds committed by him in the past in trying to reduce tax bills or increase his attractiveness to lenders.
What he did not do was offer to put his properties in the trust of the New York court system, as that would probably have required the aforementioned independent audits revealing how much he actually owns in illiquid assets in New York. Which—once again—isn’t nearly as much as Trump would have had his followers believe for years.
What he did not do was try to sell any properties—which would have been a good way (had he started this process early enough) to avoid “fire sale” prices. But again, such a move would have revealed that all his property valuations are false (precisely what the court found in the case Trump now requires a staggeringly large appellate bond for) as well as the fact that his New York holdings are actually not particularly impressive.
In short, Trump did nothing after his September 2023 finding of liability for Fraud in New York to prepare himself, his assets, and/or his fans for the Monday deadline he now faces—which he’s sworn to the court it would be impossible for anyone to meet.
To be sure, the lies Trump has told on this score are too many to count. Most notably, of those lenders that simply refused to do business with him he has now said that they lacked the financial ability—not the willingness—to aid him; he has falsely stated that no bond of this size has ever been required of a corporate entity in American history; and he pretends that he’s being asked to liquidate assets in a matter of days that in truth he and his sprawling team of lawyers, business subordinates, accountants, and real estate managers had half a year (at a minimum) to transform into new liquidity.
Now, at the eleventh hour, the man who even his allies in the Kremlin—including top Kremlin propagandist Konstantin Rykov—like to call an “old brigand” is suddenly saying that a supposedly impossible bond payment may be possible after all. So what has Trump been doing in the shadows since September 2023 to bring us to this point, and how will this declaration change what’s now set to happen this coming Monday?
The simple fact is that either Trump makes his bond or the State of New York begins seizing his New York properties, likely starting with 40 Wall Street and some smaller properties in Westchester County. It would be a slow collapse of a business “empire” that would take months to reach completion; would happen in full view of the public; would drain monies and attention (including Trump’s attention) from his presidential campaign; would change forever how millions of Americans who thought of Trump as a successful businessman see him; and could even have a significant influence on the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. This collapse of one of the most wildly over-hyped brands in international business history could lead to personal bankruptcy proceedings, the end of Trump’s political career, or even, depending on how deranged he becomes at the prospect of losing not only his money but whatever dignity he had left, renewed attempts to incite localized violence against state and/or federal officials.
So what’ll it be? What destabilizing drama does Trump’s latest moral and ethical and legal and logistical and political and financial failure now import for the rest of us?
The Breaking News: Donald Trump’s Four Just-Proposed Solutions
A Dodgy Windfall
On Friday morning, Trump suddenly announced he had nearly $500 million “in cash.”
His stunning statement contradicted claims that he and his lawyers had been making in court for weeks, suggesting that Trump and his legal team had been lying to judges all along or else that Trump has been lying to his lawyers or else that Trump is, once again, lying to all of us. (While Trump’s latest claim of wealth matches one he made in a sworn deposition in late 2022 to the effect that he had “$400 million” in very easily accessed liquid assets, this latter statement is one that he has long since retreated from without, oddly, facing a state Perjury charge in for lying under oath in a depo.)
So does Trump really have the money he now claims he does? No one knows, and certainly we must keep in mind that Trump is the most prolific liar in the history of America politics—a status that is almost certain never to be taken away from him.
And even if he really has this money, where did he get it? Again, no one knows. Trump would only say that he got it through “hard work, talent, and luck”—which to most Trump biographers, including this one, would signify that he got it through some sort of overseas largesse or domestic grift major media has not yet discovered or reported on. Of particular concern is that money could surreptitiously come to him from actors in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Russia, Hungary, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Italy, or even Venezuela. These actors would undoubtedly expect a piece of future U.S. foreign policy decisions in return—an unusual form of the federal crime of Bribery.
A Dodgy Merger
Business Insider reports that a vote of interested parties in the just-today shareholder-approved merger between Trump Media and Digital World Acquisition Corporation(DWAC)—which merger has already (par for the course for Mr. Trump) led to multiple still-pending civil lawsuits and allegations of Fraud—could allow Trump to access up to $3 billion in liquid assets from his ownership of 58.1% of the Truth Social “meme stock”, and do so earlier than the six-plus months he would normally have to wait to liquidate his stock position.
All Trump would need to get this money out of his “paper” assets faster than expected is a vote from his most unscrupulous lackeys—people like Devin Nunes, Kash Patel, and Linda McMahon; also, his sons Don Jr. and Eric—and he’d be able to dump stock in a long-collapsing Truth Social on a fully suspecting stooge (i.e., someone who would presumably be purchasing a likely eventually worthless asset in order to call in political favors from a possible President Trump down the line). And lest this assessment of Truth Social and its value as a publicly traded entity seem too acidic, consider that all the major-media reporting on Trump’s beleaguered far-right social media platform relays that it has been losing money and users for a very long time (and of course it would probably disappear entirely if Trump is sentenced to federal prison this year or next, as it is only Trump’s own presence on the platform that gives it any relevance).
What’s less clear is why the shell-entity SPAC merging with Truth Social—DWAC—has been seeing its valuation soar for weeks. Who exactly has been pumping money into this entity to not only convince it to merge with Trump Media (a fait accompli) but also to convince prospective investors in a publicly traded Truth Social that it’s a good investment (a necessary precursor to Trump’s shares in it being worth anything)? If there’s general agreement that Truth Social is just a meme stock that some people are looking to briefly be involved with on a lark, why would there be so much investment in DWAC, and why would Trump’s 58.1% holding be worth $3 billion (there are meme stocks and then there are positively wacky valuations, like what Truth Social has now).
And who in their right mind would take all that almost certainly eventually worthless on-paper value off Trump?
And here’s where we encounter our first wrinkle.
For despite its weeks and weeks of increases in value, DWAC stock just today dropped a staggering 12% on the announcement of its merger with Trump Media. Has the joke of Truth Social being a “meme stock” been on Trump all along? Or did he anticipate what’s happening now and orchestrate ways to extract value from this transaction that aren’t immediately apparent?
For instance, Mr. Trump may be counting on reporting deadlines that protect him from having to disclose—for some time, at least—at least a portion of any opaque maneuvers behind this merger, perhaps even using such reporting schedules as a means of getting money from foreign nationals or domestic entrepreneurs hoping to engage in a quid pro quo with him while hiding it from regulators until post-election.
Unlike the Trump Organization, which Judge Arthur Engoron has held must share with independent monitor Judge Barbara Jones the details of all attempts it makes to secure a supersedeas bond through sale of Trump Organization assets or leveraging such assets, it’s not at all clear that Judge Jones would have much if any visibility into what Trump is doing with the already legally entangled Trump Media-DWAC merger.
Yet there’s a second wrinkle to note here.
Politico, contra Business Insider, notes that even a sudden “waiver” of the “lock-up”component of the merger—which prevents Trump from selling shares for a half a year or more—wouldn’t save Trump, because “even then he wouldn’t be able to sell more than a small fraction of his stake at any given time—up to 1% of the outstanding shares every quarter.” That wouldn’t even come close to rescuing Trump, both because it’d bring in far too little money and because it would take him far too much time to execute.
And as Proof has noted on its social media, any attempts at a sell-off would also put the stock into troubled status in the eyes of most potential investors in Truth Social.
As Politico writes, “If [Trump] he eventually does unload a large quantity of stock, the ramifications could be significant, according to investors and others watching the deal. That’s because Trump himself is the heart of the venture, they say, and any sign that his interest is waning could chill investors.” Trump’s interest aside, as noted above him going to state or federal prison or for any other reason becoming a political non-entity in the years ahead would also likely destroy Truth Social’s value.
A Dodgy Rescue
Trump says that 30 bond companies have turned him down for a bond, and as Proofearlier reported, Neil Pedersen of Pederson & Sons—an insurance-industry expert—told MSNBC last week that any cosigner of a supersedeas bond of this magnitude would need to have a net worth of between $75 billion and $100 billion, excluding all but five or six Americans (men like Sergey Brin, ex-husband of Robert F. Kennedy’s VP pick; Trump mega-donor Larry Ellison; longtime Trump adviser Elon Musk) from aiding Trump. Trump himself, to be clear, is believed to have had only $600 million in total liquid assets as recently as 2023, per a major Bloomberg report cited here, which is one reason many critics online insist that the man is not actually a billionaire at all.
Could one of these potential cosigners step up? Yes.
Could an insurance carrier whose CEO has a clear self-interest in aiding Trump—as was the case with the Kremlin-linked Greenberg Family atop Chubb Limited—opt to step forward and assist Trump without requiring substantial liquid collateral, in so doing violating its own conventions, traditions, and adherence to industry standards?
Yes. And Chubb did so with virtually no scrutiny from major media whatsoever, as Proof has established across the four reports linked to atop this one. So there may yet be an insurance carrier that believes it can curry favor with a possible future president without facing any blowback from this year’s bizarrely quiescent American media.
In view of all the foregoing, Trump’s best bet is clearly to suddenly announce that he actually already has all the money he needs, without ever revealing where he got it from—a tightrope-walk that would require him to somehow bamboozle Judge Jones into the view that the liquid assets that suddenly appeared in the Trump Organization’s coffers were always there. Trump has a history of creative accounting, but is he really creative enough to pull such a Houdini act off? This author seriously doubts it, as do most others in media who have considered the possibility.
A Dodgy Appeal
Trump has just announced that he might appeal his judgment in New York directly to the United States Supreme Court, on the belief—not an entirely unfounded one—that it is now little more than a political entity looking to keep him out of jail and solvent so he can stand for re-election in November.
The problem here is that Trump has no grounds for any such appeal; does not appear to have prepared any such appeal in advance of his hard Monday deadline in New York; and is almost certainly expecting far too much of the Court he in significant part handpicked, as most lawyers (this author very much included) don’t believe that even this Court could or would rescue Trump in this way.
While SCOTUS is adamant, clearly, after Anderson v. Trump and based on what has happened so far in Trump v. United States, that Trump must be kept on every ballot and out of jail, given that Trump has avenues for solving this self-made financial crisis that avoid further disgracing the Court, the Court will probably force him to make his own way on these purely civil—non-criminal, not-electoral—matters and save their inexplicable, counterhistorical jurisprudential largesse for when he really needs them.
What Ruin Would Look Like for Trump
If Trump fails to post bond by Monday, many things could happen to him—and quickly.
His bank accounts could be frozen, which is most likely the first step for New York Attorney General Letitia James because it’s the quickest. Seizing his accounts could be accomplished within just two or three weeks, and with very limited review rightsfor Trump.
His private plane could be seized.
A judgment entered in Manhattan that allows the NYAG to seize Trump assets in Westchester County could be sprung, though this process would take a little longer.
Politico notes that “cars, jewelry, and artwork” could be seized. It adds that 40 Wall Street, Trump National Doral golf resort, and Trump Tower are the most endangered assets for Trump right now, largely because they offer the best hope of satisfying the nearly half-a-billion-dollar judgment now in play (we must remember that Mr. Trump owns much less in New York than people think). It also observes that while James is free to try to seize Trump assets in Florida or Illinois or elsewhere, it would take far longer to do so and James may not be willing to wait that long (especially if there are local means to gain control over sufficient Trump assets to hit $454 million, a figure that increases by about $110,000 every day Trump’s appeal is pending). It would be almost impossible for James to get Mar-a-Lago, however, as Florida law protects primary residences—and right now Trump’s gaudy and gold-festooned Florida club appears to be his.
Most experts agree that the best move for Trump is to declare personal bankruptcy, which would not discharge most of his debts but would at least cause a substantial delay in those debts being collected—almost certainly enough of a delay to get him to Election Day in November without any more embarrassment beyond the bald fact that he has claimed for decades to be a successful businessman but would now have to run for President of the United States as a unquestionably bankrupt one.
All this said, Trump is apparently dead-set against declaring bankruptcy because, as he’s told aides, it would make him look like a “loser.” Readers will understand that while Trump is quite obviously just such a loser—both in business and in politics (see the 2018 midterms, the 2020 presidential election, the 2022 midterms, and almost every special election since 2016; even in 2016 he lost the popular vote by millions)—that isn’t his self-conception, nor how the voters he needs to have vote for him later this year see him.
But of course none of this reflects the sort of ruin Trump is most worried about: going to jail and losing access to the presidency.
As MSNBC has reported, in the closed Republican primary in Ohio this week—one in which only Republicans voted—a stunning 20% of GOP respondents told exit pollsters they wouldn’t vote for Trump in November. In recent months, most exit pollsters have asked this question solely in light of the hypothetical conviction of Trump for a crime, so the question asked in Ohio returned a far higher percentage of Donald Trump pre-conviction refuseniks than anyone anticipated—and could spell disaster for Trump this fall.
{Note: The percentage of Nikki Haley primary voters who told exit pollsters they wouldn’t vote for Trump if he were convicted of a crime reached as high as 80% in certain states during the early stages of the 2024 primary—a startling figure for Trump given that Mrs. Haley received between 15% and 45% of the primary vote in almost every primary she competed in, including some of those conducted after she dropped out of the 2024 primary race.}
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that Trump Media & Technology Group will now exist as a publicly traded company appearing on tickers at “DJT” (Trump’s initials). Truth Social will almost certainly merge with DWAC to create it, as half the legal challenges facing the merger are simply individuals contending that Trump owes them more money from the merger than he has given them and the other half may not be able to move fast enough to get an injunction blocking the merger from going forward (which it will, by Wednesday at the latest, but maybe as early as Monday, per a New York Times report).
It’s impossible to know what the mercurial Trump will do over the next 72 hours. His claims of having $500 million free and clear have been received as preposterous by most in media, as his legal team appears to know nothing about this and surely would have been in a position to suss it out sometime before the waning hours of Trump’s financial solvency. Any shenanigans Trump tries to pull with the Trump Organization will go under Judge Jones’s microscope and then—also—Judge Engoron’s, making any sleight-of-hand all but impossible. The Supreme Court surely wants no part of this, nor do the Court’s five radical conservatives have any legal infirmity they could hang their hats on in trying to save the politician who nominated three of them. Federal regulations aren’t going to let Trump liquidate his TMTG position quickly enough to save him, for as much as many major media journalists have irresponsibly—and oddly gleefully—been implying otherwise over the last few days. Elon Musk claims he won’t bail out Trump, and others in a position to do so who have aided Trump before (like Larry Ellison) have never committed even a fraction of the money to Trump in the past they would have to now, with it being a far more dangerous prospect than ever before given the man’s many pending criminal cases.
Something has to give in the next few hours. Trump might decide that, after all, it is politically advantageous to him—given his bigoted base—to have a Black woman in a blue state (James) quite publicly seizing his assets and properties in full view of a GOP electorate that is more willing to openly express racist contempt for powerful Black figures than at any time since the 1960s or (even perhaps the 1950s). He might decide that there’s a path for him to declare bankruptcy and fold that fact into his quite silly “witch hunt” narrative and rhetoric. Perhaps there will be a previously inconceivable fundraising push that gets Trump at once a large number of wealthy cosigners, a new influx of liquid collateral, and a politically partisan insurance-carrier CEO willing to play ball with him and risk the consequences. Perhaps a foreign national will secretly manage to get funds to Trump and major media will again fail to meet the moment and call Trump to the mat for what at that point would quite obviously be Bribery.
What all Americans must remember is this: this is a crisis of Trump’s making. He made this crisis by being a rapist and fraudster and tax cheat; he made this crisis by lying in depositions about his liquid assets (Judge Engoron set the civil penalty for Trump well below the amount of free-and-clear money Trump swore under oath he had, and declined to give the Trump Organization the “corporate death penalty” in New York); he made this crisis by building a public brand that was unsupported by any financial fundamentals, such that he’ll now take a political hit if he suddenly commits himself to letting American voters see the reality of his desperate financial straits; he made this crisis by doing nothing from September 2023 onward except complaining about his predicament, when he could have acted like a grown adult in a bad situation and begun exploring any of the many avenues he had for defusing this crisis before we reached the point we’ve now reached—the eleventh hour for Trump.
What happens now will depend on Trump’s sociopathy; media’s competence; judges’ nerve; insurance carriers’ integrity; Trump donors’ willingness to court allegations of corruption; the audacity of hostile foreign nationals; and the capacity of U.S. voters in the middle and on the right of American politics to accept that they’ve been had for years by a man who was never worth even 10% of what he swore to America he was.
150 Likes
·
24 Restacks
Everything You Need to Know About Donald Trump’s Impending Financial Ruin As a Hard $454 Million Bond Deadline Arrives Monday
Only an eleventh-hour miracle will save Trump. But there might yet be one (or more) in the offing. Proof—which has already published four massive reports on Trump’s bond crisis—reveals his Hail Marys.
SETH ABRAMSON
MAR 22, 2024
∙ PAID
You can read the first section of this report for free, and the whole report for free—as well as 250+ others at Proof—by trying Proof for a week. To do so, just click the red button below.
Note that a free trial therefore grants immediate access to the four long, internationally viral Proof reports on the controversial March 11 $91.63 million Trump-Greenberg bond (1, 2, 3, 4).
Get 7 day free trial
Introduction
Confirmed rapist Donald Trump—now facing 88 state and federal felonies in four U.S. jurisdictions, including a trial on 34 New York felonies due to start next month—knew his financial moment of reckoning was coming weeks and weeks and weeks ago.But despite knowing that he was about to need a $464 million supersedeas appellate bond (a bond that includes $10 million to cover his adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as well as interest accrued during the pendency of this New York civil suit), he chose to do… nothing.
Or, rather, he did many things: he played endless rounds of golf; repeatedly confusedhis sole remaining Republican presidential nomination opponent, Nikki Haley, with former Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; engaged in perhaps the most deranged three months of social media posting American politics has ever seen; and at every opportunity railed publicly against the normal operation of America’s civil and criminal justice systems as though he were just becoming aware of them for the first time—despite demagoguing both to his own personal advantage for six decades.
What he did not do was seek an independent assessment of his New York properties—of which there are actually quite few; Trump mostly owns individual services or rooms in properties owned by others—as it might have revealed additional frauds committed by him in the past in trying to reduce tax bills or increase his attractiveness to lenders.
What he did not do was offer to put his properties in the trust of the New York court system, as that would probably have required the aforementioned independent audits revealing how much he actually owns in illiquid assets in New York. Which—once again—isn’t nearly as much as Trump would have had his followers believe for years.
What he did not do was try to sell any properties—which would have been a good way (had he started this process early enough) to avoid “fire sale” prices. But again, such a move would have revealed that all his property valuations are false (precisely what the court found in the case Trump now requires a staggeringly large appellate bond for) as well as the fact that his New York holdings are actually not particularly impressive.
In short, Trump did nothing after his September 2023 finding of liability for Fraud in New York to prepare himself, his assets, and/or his fans for the Monday deadline he now faces—which he’s sworn to the court it would be impossible for anyone to meet.
To be sure, the lies Trump has told on this score are too many to count. Most notably, of those lenders that simply refused to do business with him he has now said that they lacked the financial ability—not the willingness—to aid him; he has falsely stated that no bond of this size has ever been required of a corporate entity in American history; and he pretends that he’s being asked to liquidate assets in a matter of days that in truth he and his sprawling team of lawyers, business subordinates, accountants, and real estate managers had half a year (at a minimum) to transform into new liquidity.
Now, at the eleventh hour, the man who even his allies in the Kremlin—including top Kremlin propagandist Konstantin Rykov—like to call an “old brigand” is suddenly saying that a supposedly impossible bond payment may be possible after all. So what has Trump been doing in the shadows since September 2023 to bring us to this point, and how will this declaration change what’s now set to happen this coming Monday?
The simple fact is that either Trump makes his bond or the State of New York begins seizing his New York properties, likely starting with 40 Wall Street and some smaller properties in Westchester County. It would be a slow collapse of a business “empire” that would take months to reach completion; would happen in full view of the public; would drain monies and attention (including Trump’s attention) from his presidential campaign; would change forever how millions of Americans who thought of Trump as a successful businessman see him; and could even have a significant influence on the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. This collapse of one of the most wildly over-hyped brands in international business history could lead to personal bankruptcy proceedings, the end of Trump’s political career, or even, depending on how deranged he becomes at the prospect of losing not only his money but whatever dignity he had left, renewed attempts to incite localized violence against state and/or federal officials.
So what’ll it be? What destabilizing drama does Trump’s latest moral and ethical and legal and logistical and political and financial failure now import for the rest of us?
The Breaking News: Donald Trump’s Four Just-Proposed Solutions
A Dodgy Windfall
On Friday morning, Trump suddenly announced he had nearly $500 million “in cash.”His stunning statement contradicted claims that he and his lawyers had been making in court for weeks, suggesting that Trump and his legal team had been lying to judges all along or else that Trump has been lying to his lawyers or else that Trump is, once again, lying to all of us. (While Trump’s latest claim of wealth matches one he made in a sworn deposition in late 2022 to the effect that he had “$400 million” in very easily accessed liquid assets, this latter statement is one that he has long since retreated from without, oddly, facing a state Perjury charge in for lying under oath in a depo.)
So does Trump really have the money he now claims he does? No one knows, and certainly we must keep in mind that Trump is the most prolific liar in the history of America politics—a status that is almost certain never to be taken away from him.
And even if he really has this money, where did he get it? Again, no one knows. Trump would only say that he got it through “hard work, talent, and luck”—which to most Trump biographers, including this one, would signify that he got it through some sort of overseas largesse or domestic grift major media has not yet discovered or reported on. Of particular concern is that money could surreptitiously come to him from actors in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Russia, Hungary, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Italy, or even Venezuela. These actors would undoubtedly expect a piece of future U.S. foreign policy decisions in return—an unusual form of the federal crime of Bribery.
A Dodgy Merger
Business Insider reports that a vote of interested parties in the just-today shareholder-approved merger between Trump Media and Digital World Acquisition Corporation(DWAC)—which merger has already (par for the course for Mr. Trump) led to multiple still-pending civil lawsuits and allegations of Fraud—could allow Trump to access up to $3 billion in liquid assets from his ownership of 58.1% of the Truth Social “meme stock”, and do so earlier than the six-plus months he would normally have to wait to liquidate his stock position.All Trump would need to get this money out of his “paper” assets faster than expected is a vote from his most unscrupulous lackeys—people like Devin Nunes, Kash Patel, and Linda McMahon; also, his sons Don Jr. and Eric—and he’d be able to dump stock in a long-collapsing Truth Social on a fully suspecting stooge (i.e., someone who would presumably be purchasing a likely eventually worthless asset in order to call in political favors from a possible President Trump down the line). And lest this assessment of Truth Social and its value as a publicly traded entity seem too acidic, consider that all the major-media reporting on Trump’s beleaguered far-right social media platform relays that it has been losing money and users for a very long time (and of course it would probably disappear entirely if Trump is sentenced to federal prison this year or next, as it is only Trump’s own presence on the platform that gives it any relevance).
What’s less clear is why the shell-entity SPAC merging with Truth Social—DWAC—has been seeing its valuation soar for weeks. Who exactly has been pumping money into this entity to not only convince it to merge with Trump Media (a fait accompli) but also to convince prospective investors in a publicly traded Truth Social that it’s a good investment (a necessary precursor to Trump’s shares in it being worth anything)? If there’s general agreement that Truth Social is just a meme stock that some people are looking to briefly be involved with on a lark, why would there be so much investment in DWAC, and why would Trump’s 58.1% holding be worth $3 billion (there are meme stocks and then there are positively wacky valuations, like what Truth Social has now).
And who in their right mind would take all that almost certainly eventually worthless on-paper value off Trump?
And here’s where we encounter our first wrinkle.
For despite its weeks and weeks of increases in value, DWAC stock just today dropped a staggering 12% on the announcement of its merger with Trump Media. Has the joke of Truth Social being a “meme stock” been on Trump all along? Or did he anticipate what’s happening now and orchestrate ways to extract value from this transaction that aren’t immediately apparent?
For instance, Mr. Trump may be counting on reporting deadlines that protect him from having to disclose—for some time, at least—at least a portion of any opaque maneuvers behind this merger, perhaps even using such reporting schedules as a means of getting money from foreign nationals or domestic entrepreneurs hoping to engage in a quid pro quo with him while hiding it from regulators until post-election.
Unlike the Trump Organization, which Judge Arthur Engoron has held must share with independent monitor Judge Barbara Jones the details of all attempts it makes to secure a supersedeas bond through sale of Trump Organization assets or leveraging such assets, it’s not at all clear that Judge Jones would have much if any visibility into what Trump is doing with the already legally entangled Trump Media-DWAC merger.
Yet there’s a second wrinkle to note here.
Politico, contra Business Insider, notes that even a sudden “waiver” of the “lock-up”component of the merger—which prevents Trump from selling shares for a half a year or more—wouldn’t save Trump, because “even then he wouldn’t be able to sell more than a small fraction of his stake at any given time—up to 1% of the outstanding shares every quarter.” That wouldn’t even come close to rescuing Trump, both because it’d bring in far too little money and because it would take him far too much time to execute.
And as Proof has noted on its social media, any attempts at a sell-off would also put the stock into troubled status in the eyes of most potential investors in Truth Social.
As Politico writes, “If [Trump] he eventually does unload a large quantity of stock, the ramifications could be significant, according to investors and others watching the deal. That’s because Trump himself is the heart of the venture, they say, and any sign that his interest is waning could chill investors.” Trump’s interest aside, as noted above him going to state or federal prison or for any other reason becoming a political non-entity in the years ahead would also likely destroy Truth Social’s value.
A Dodgy Rescue
Trump says that 30 bond companies have turned him down for a bond, and as Proofearlier reported, Neil Pedersen of Pederson & Sons—an insurance-industry expert—told MSNBC last week that any cosigner of a supersedeas bond of this magnitude would need to have a net worth of between $75 billion and $100 billion, excluding all but five or six Americans (men like Sergey Brin, ex-husband of Robert F. Kennedy’s VP pick; Trump mega-donor Larry Ellison; longtime Trump adviser Elon Musk) from aiding Trump. Trump himself, to be clear, is believed to have had only $600 million in total liquid assets as recently as 2023, per a major Bloomberg report cited here, which is one reason many critics online insist that the man is not actually a billionaire at all.Could one of these potential cosigners step up? Yes.
Could an insurance carrier whose CEO has a clear self-interest in aiding Trump—as was the case with the Kremlin-linked Greenberg Family atop Chubb Limited—opt to step forward and assist Trump without requiring substantial liquid collateral, in so doing violating its own conventions, traditions, and adherence to industry standards?
Yes. And Chubb did so with virtually no scrutiny from major media whatsoever, as Proof has established across the four reports linked to atop this one. So there may yet be an insurance carrier that believes it can curry favor with a possible future president without facing any blowback from this year’s bizarrely quiescent American media.
In view of all the foregoing, Trump’s best bet is clearly to suddenly announce that he actually already has all the money he needs, without ever revealing where he got it from—a tightrope-walk that would require him to somehow bamboozle Judge Jones into the view that the liquid assets that suddenly appeared in the Trump Organization’s coffers were always there. Trump has a history of creative accounting, but is he really creative enough to pull such a Houdini act off? This author seriously doubts it, as do most others in media who have considered the possibility.
A Dodgy Appeal
Trump has just announced that he might appeal his judgment in New York directly to the United States Supreme Court, on the belief—not an entirely unfounded one—that it is now little more than a political entity looking to keep him out of jail and solvent so he can stand for re-election in November.The problem here is that Trump has no grounds for any such appeal; does not appear to have prepared any such appeal in advance of his hard Monday deadline in New York; and is almost certainly expecting far too much of the Court he in significant part handpicked, as most lawyers (this author very much included) don’t believe that even this Court could or would rescue Trump in this way.
While SCOTUS is adamant, clearly, after Anderson v. Trump and based on what has happened so far in Trump v. United States, that Trump must be kept on every ballot and out of jail, given that Trump has avenues for solving this self-made financial crisis that avoid further disgracing the Court, the Court will probably force him to make his own way on these purely civil—non-criminal, not-electoral—matters and save their inexplicable, counterhistorical jurisprudential largesse for when he really needs them.
What Ruin Would Look Like for Trump
If Trump fails to post bond by Monday, many things could happen to him—and quickly.His bank accounts could be frozen, which is most likely the first step for New York Attorney General Letitia James because it’s the quickest. Seizing his accounts could be accomplished within just two or three weeks, and with very limited review rightsfor Trump.
His private plane could be seized.
A judgment entered in Manhattan that allows the NYAG to seize Trump assets in Westchester County could be sprung, though this process would take a little longer.
Politico notes that “cars, jewelry, and artwork” could be seized. It adds that 40 Wall Street, Trump National Doral golf resort, and Trump Tower are the most endangered assets for Trump right now, largely because they offer the best hope of satisfying the nearly half-a-billion-dollar judgment now in play (we must remember that Mr. Trump owns much less in New York than people think). It also observes that while James is free to try to seize Trump assets in Florida or Illinois or elsewhere, it would take far longer to do so and James may not be willing to wait that long (especially if there are local means to gain control over sufficient Trump assets to hit $454 million, a figure that increases by about $110,000 every day Trump’s appeal is pending). It would be almost impossible for James to get Mar-a-Lago, however, as Florida law protects primary residences—and right now Trump’s gaudy and gold-festooned Florida club appears to be his.
Most experts agree that the best move for Trump is to declare personal bankruptcy, which would not discharge most of his debts but would at least cause a substantial delay in those debts being collected—almost certainly enough of a delay to get him to Election Day in November without any more embarrassment beyond the bald fact that he has claimed for decades to be a successful businessman but would now have to run for President of the United States as a unquestionably bankrupt one.
All this said, Trump is apparently dead-set against declaring bankruptcy because, as he’s told aides, it would make him look like a “loser.” Readers will understand that while Trump is quite obviously just such a loser—both in business and in politics (see the 2018 midterms, the 2020 presidential election, the 2022 midterms, and almost every special election since 2016; even in 2016 he lost the popular vote by millions)—that isn’t his self-conception, nor how the voters he needs to have vote for him later this year see him.
But of course none of this reflects the sort of ruin Trump is most worried about: going to jail and losing access to the presidency.
As MSNBC has reported, in the closed Republican primary in Ohio this week—one in which only Republicans voted—a stunning 20% of GOP respondents told exit pollsters they wouldn’t vote for Trump in November. In recent months, most exit pollsters have asked this question solely in light of the hypothetical conviction of Trump for a crime, so the question asked in Ohio returned a far higher percentage of Donald Trump pre-conviction refuseniks than anyone anticipated—and could spell disaster for Trump this fall.
{Note: The percentage of Nikki Haley primary voters who told exit pollsters they wouldn’t vote for Trump if he were convicted of a crime reached as high as 80% in certain states during the early stages of the 2024 primary—a startling figure for Trump given that Mrs. Haley received between 15% and 45% of the primary vote in almost every primary she competed in, including some of those conducted after she dropped out of the 2024 primary race.}
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that Trump Media & Technology Group will now exist as a publicly traded company appearing on tickers at “DJT” (Trump’s initials). Truth Social will almost certainly merge with DWAC to create it, as half the legal challenges facing the merger are simply individuals contending that Trump owes them more money from the merger than he has given them and the other half may not be able to move fast enough to get an injunction blocking the merger from going forward (which it will, by Wednesday at the latest, but maybe as early as Monday, per a New York Times report).It’s impossible to know what the mercurial Trump will do over the next 72 hours. His claims of having $500 million free and clear have been received as preposterous by most in media, as his legal team appears to know nothing about this and surely would have been in a position to suss it out sometime before the waning hours of Trump’s financial solvency. Any shenanigans Trump tries to pull with the Trump Organization will go under Judge Jones’s microscope and then—also—Judge Engoron’s, making any sleight-of-hand all but impossible. The Supreme Court surely wants no part of this, nor do the Court’s five radical conservatives have any legal infirmity they could hang their hats on in trying to save the politician who nominated three of them. Federal regulations aren’t going to let Trump liquidate his TMTG position quickly enough to save him, for as much as many major media journalists have irresponsibly—and oddly gleefully—been implying otherwise over the last few days. Elon Musk claims he won’t bail out Trump, and others in a position to do so who have aided Trump before (like Larry Ellison) have never committed even a fraction of the money to Trump in the past they would have to now, with it being a far more dangerous prospect than ever before given the man’s many pending criminal cases.
Something has to give in the next few hours. Trump might decide that, after all, it is politically advantageous to him—given his bigoted base—to have a Black woman in a blue state (James) quite publicly seizing his assets and properties in full view of a GOP electorate that is more willing to openly express racist contempt for powerful Black figures than at any time since the 1960s or (even perhaps the 1950s). He might decide that there’s a path for him to declare bankruptcy and fold that fact into his quite silly “witch hunt” narrative and rhetoric. Perhaps there will be a previously inconceivable fundraising push that gets Trump at once a large number of wealthy cosigners, a new influx of liquid collateral, and a politically partisan insurance-carrier CEO willing to play ball with him and risk the consequences. Perhaps a foreign national will secretly manage to get funds to Trump and major media will again fail to meet the moment and call Trump to the mat for what at that point would quite obviously be Bribery.
What all Americans must remember is this: this is a crisis of Trump’s making. He made this crisis by being a rapist and fraudster and tax cheat; he made this crisis by lying in depositions about his liquid assets (Judge Engoron set the civil penalty for Trump well below the amount of free-and-clear money Trump swore under oath he had, and declined to give the Trump Organization the “corporate death penalty” in New York); he made this crisis by building a public brand that was unsupported by any financial fundamentals, such that he’ll now take a political hit if he suddenly commits himself to letting American voters see the reality of his desperate financial straits; he made this crisis by doing nothing from September 2023 onward except complaining about his predicament, when he could have acted like a grown adult in a bad situation and begun exploring any of the many avenues he had for defusing this crisis before we reached the point we’ve now reached—the eleventh hour for Trump.
What happens now will depend on Trump’s sociopathy; media’s competence; judges’ nerve; insurance carriers’ integrity; Trump donors’ willingness to court allegations of corruption; the audacity of hostile foreign nationals; and the capacity of U.S. voters in the middle and on the right of American politics to accept that they’ve been had for years by a man who was never worth even 10% of what he swore to America he was.
150 Likes
·
24 Restacks
PeterSalt What we are seeing is Trump's presidential run is dead in the water, he just doesn't know it yet. To put it in unflattering terms, he is like someone with terminal cancer desperately trying to survive, and MAGA are merely the family members holding onto hope.
He is cooked. All the legal experts think so, even republican law experts. No one thinks Trump can survive. Even Canon in Florida looks set to be immediately replaced after her latest order added to the list of blunders she has made trying to desperately delay Trump's trial until the presidential race.
I think genuinely if RICO goes ahead as planned, the other trials will follow suit if he is imprisoned.
He is cooked. All the legal experts think so, even republican law experts. No one thinks Trump can survive. Even Canon in Florida looks set to be immediately replaced after her latest order added to the list of blunders she has made trying to desperately delay Trump's trial until the presidential race.
I think genuinely if RICO goes ahead as planned, the other trials will follow suit if he is imprisoned.
I'm still taking bets Trump never goes to jail.
The only similar precedent (though completely different circumstances) was the home detention of 1 of the southern leaders post civil war
- Nov 6, 2014
- 61,029
- 75,149
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
I’ll have a look when Port have lost to Richmond
modern day hitler having a moment. I wonder at what point he gets confused by his own misinformation?
- Nov 6, 2014
- 61,029
- 75,149
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
At least it seems, at the moment anyway, the media outside of russia aren't running with his BS version of events
Elon Musk's X anti-hate group case thrown out
A US judge says Mr Musk's social media firm had sued to punish its critics.
www.bbc.com
Sanity prevails
another free speech absolutist who only means free speech for him.
- Nov 6, 2014
- 61,029
- 75,149
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
And on a side note, what the hell has happened to her mouth?
Ugh, not what the world needs
- Nov 6, 2014
- 61,029
- 75,149
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
Hope Parnas has good security.
The GOP have opened Pandora’s box with their faux impeachment inquiry.
The GOP have opened Pandora’s box with their faux impeachment inquiry.
Yep .. this has been popping up slowly for about week now
And it all needs the disinfecting that only sunlight can provide
Punchy Bassett
Brownlow Medallist
Holy s**t
Like the Tasman Bridge in Hobart, years ago.
- Dec 29, 2000
- 23,717
- 21,019
- AFL Club
- Adelaide
Maritime/Coastal - Lake Illawarra sinking and Tasman bridge collapse, 1975 | Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub
The Lake Illawarra was a steel, single screw, steam turbine motor vessel bulk carrier. The Lake Illawarra sank after running into and demolishing part of the Tasman Bridge that crossed the Derwent River at Hobart on 5 January 1975. The vessel was en route from Port Pirie in South Australia with...
knowledge.aidr.org.au
- Nov 6, 2014
- 61,029
- 75,149
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
How evil do you have to be to kill your own citizens.
Well it has been done by Putin before.
Conspiracy theorists believe the twin towers was a set up with CIA FBI involvement.
Nothing would surprise me of the US and Russian governments and the pics here look suspicious, but when can anyone believe anything, with so many cooker conspiracy theorists using the increasing number of cooker-friendly platforms to spew their garbage?
Similar threads
- Locked
