These days it truly feels like everyone who loves spouting awful takes online has felt the urge to never log off so much they’re actually buying their own social media networks so they can never stop posting. Elon Musk nearly has Twitter, Kanye West wants to buy an alt-right platform called Parler and, of course, Donald Trump has his own shout box called TRUTH Social.
Trump’s network hasn’t exactly had a great go of things financially, though that’s rarely mattered when it comes to his business ventures and the overall perception of his wealth. But those who are propping him up with cash to build a platform no one actually needs are taking a bath on the investment. And that includes another Republican poster who can’t keep herself on Twitter these days: Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
TRUTH Social’s backstory is a bit complicated, but Trump essentially wants to make it a publicly traded company through a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that would have merged Digital World Acquisition Corp with Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns TRUTH. That deal has apparently gone a bit wonky, though, and had some investors back out after things have dragged on far longer than anticipated. But one investor stuck holding the bag is Greene, who (according to Business Insider) has seen the value of her investment crater in recent weeks:
On October 22, 2021, the congresswoman from Georgia invested between $15,001 and $50,000 in Digital World Acquisition Corp., a “blank check” special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.
One year after Greene made her investment, the stock’s value plummeted by more than 82 percent, according to Markets Insider, meaning the congresswoman lost between $12,330 and $41,100 from this one investment.
To be clear: Greene didn’t invest in TRUTH directly, just in the company that was going to acquire TRUTH and make it public. And that investment would, in theory, have paid off big because that company’s value would rise when it acquired the tech and platform that Trump’s privately-held company was building. But none of that has happened yet, and so the stock price has continued to crater.
As BI notes, Greene wasn’t the only elected official to take a bath thanks to Trump: Larry Bucshon, a Republican representative from Indiana, invested between $1,001 and $15,000 according to paperwork legally required to disclose stock purchases. That investment came just three days after Greene bought in, meaning is losses are around 80 percent as well.
It’s a real shame things haven’t gone well for these three in the open market of companies trying to find posting “freedom” online. Perhaps they should keep investing more money, surely things are going to turn around real soon.
[via Business Insider]