Nancy Pelosi once said of Donald Trump: “Everything he says is a projection. When he calls someone crazy, he knows that he is. Everything he says you can just translate it back to who he is.”
It was an incisive assessment. And it’s particularly apt as a lens through which to view Trump’s characterization of the US as a “banana republic” in the years since he (begrudgingly) left office.
Since January of 2021, Trump’s lived in de facto exile at a resort fortress which doubles as a headquarters from which he gamed out a return to power. He’s been raided by federal agents, indicted four times and charged with 91 felonies, including several related to a failed coup. He claims that’s evidence of political persecution. In fact, it’s evidence that no one, including former presidents, is above the law in the US, particularly when it comes to facilitating sedition. In short, the charges against Trump are proof America isn’t a banana republic. His assertions of blanket immunity are proof he’d very much prefer it if America were.
Trump talks openly about suspending the Constitution in order to exact vengeance on his political rivals, praises dictators and autocrats, habitually warns of violence if he isn’t restored to the presidency, traffics in word-for-word Hitler quotes and has alluded to putting Michael Flynn, a man who suggested calling on the US military to preside over a rerun of 2020’s election, in charge of something, although it’s not entirely clear what. I could go on.
Before he was an aspiring dictator, Trump was a fake tycoon — a silver-spoon draft-dodger who inherited his money and a standing joke in New York real estate circles. It’s telling that Trump’s only real success in the world of business came about as a result of his knack for pretending to be a successful businessman. Reality television was made for Trump and Trump for reality television: Only idiots watch reality television and only an idiot would believe Trump’s shtick. It was a match made in hell, and it delivered to Trump something he was unable to obtain reliably and legally through his other business ventures: Modest financial success.
But The Apprentice was, at heart, a grift. Trump’s not a successful businessman. He just played one on television. To great effect. If you’re a moron. He sold gullible Americans a lie and made around half a billion dollars doing it. In the process, he became even more of a standing joke among serious people, but that was a tradeoff he was apparently willing to make. By some accounts, the ridicule Trump suffered as a D-lister (including his humiliation by Barack Obama at the 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner), fed his sense of inadequacy and laid the foundation for his 2016 White House run.
Trump’s also a would-be mobster, as Michael Cohen would attest. Trump’s proximity to real mob figures in New York in the 80s and 90s surely rubbed off on him. The nature of the allegations against his businesses, as well as first-hand accounts from people like Cohen, suggest as much.
Taken together, America’s left to ponder a serial con artist whose gift for grift delivered the Oval Office, but also a vain sociopath and a natural demagogue whose penchant for mob-style management manifested, in some sense accidentally, in the biggest threat to American democracy since the dawn of the republic.
Early this week, Trump the grifter pulled off a financial miracle when, on the very day he was compelled to post a half-billion dollar bond in a New York fraud case, his social media venture completed an absurdly belabored SPAC merger, handing Trump a one-day paper gain in excess of $4 billion. The windfall vaulted him onto Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index (a list of the world’s richest 500 people) for the first time. On Monday morning, Trump was worth maybe $2 billion. By Monday afternoon, he was worth $6.5 billion. At the same time, a state appeals court cut the amount Trump was required to post in his civil fraud suit to just $175 million, a sum Trump said he’ll cover “very quickly.”
And just like that, Trump went from being on the proverbial ropes financially to the richest (on paper anyway) he’s ever been. Trump’s shares in Trump Media (the now-public social media venture) are ostensibly subject to lockup. Like Trump. But also like Trump, the shares may end up going free. The enterprise exists solely to advance Trump’s interests, after all, and its viability depends entirely on Trump’s personal brand, which would suffer in the event he goes broke.
Trump controls 60% of Trump Media’s stock and has a majority of the voting rights in any measure brought up for shareholder consideration. As if that’s not enough, the board includes Don Jr., Devin Nunes, Robert Lighthizer and Linda McMahon. Thanks to the appeals court’s generous decision to slash the bond Trump was required to post in the fraud trial, he may not need to sell his shares immediately, and depending on how things evolve, he might decide to just let the lockup expire “naturally.”
But make no mistake: If push comes to shove, the board’s entirely beholden. The idea that Don Jr. or Devin Nunes would prevent Trump from tapping into his paper gains is entirely laughable. At worst, he might have to transfer the shares and/or borrow against them, but if you think the board (that board) would flinch in the face of a Trump demand to access his stock, I’ve got a world-class Trump property to sell you.
Notably, the merger also delivered to Trump Media $300 million in liquidity. That was cash Digital World Acquisition Corporation (the shell company) raised from investors. Trump Media needed it. Badly. Truth Social might’ve ceased to exist without it, according to various reports.
The Trump Media merger’s profoundly ridiculous. So much so that I hesitated to dedicate time and space to it. But it speaks rather loudly to the man, and to the idea that Trump embodies the outwardly cartoonish, unapologetic banana republic dictator.
Here’s a former president facing what might as well be uncapped legal fees tied to a laundry list of charges ranging from illegal accounting to conspiracy to defraud the United States, completing a shell-company merger for a fly-by-night media company whose board, which includes his son and political allies, has the power to override a traditional share lockup such that Trump could, in theory, dump a massive stake onto the market to the detriment of other shareholders in order to pay off judgments against him, all while he’s running again for president on a platform which, above all else, seeks retribution against his enemies, real, imagined and in-between.
Trump Media started trading Tuesday under the ticker DJT. MAGA was taken.
Would not be unreasonable to suspect some of the 10 million shares traded less than 30 minutes into the open were to insider shares.
I just looked still not 30 minutes into the open, 15 million shares.
Re: Banana Republics –
You’re right, we’re not in one now – but surely Trump’s biggest brag should he be elected might be that he’s the top banana in the biggest baddest one ever.
As such, one of my missions this year is visiting Caribbean islands…to sail & snorkel, but also to look at property. If I’m to live in a banana republic, better it should be a real one – with clear, blue warm waters, trade winds, seaside volcanoes, rum distilleries and palm trees…
On DJT – it really should be the next “Big Short”! A risky proposition as most shorts are, but one I’m inclined to throw a few casino bucks at, just on principle.
This is all dismaying of course, but starting to feel like the SEC has the same number of teeth as the emoluments clause. Turns out they were more a serving suggestion than any sort of real constraint. Optimistically, maybe eventually we will owe Trump a very real debt for coming into our “house” and showing us everything that was engineered and designed wrong. Or, he could be like the 100-year floods that we never really worried about until they started happening monthly, when it was probably too late already.
There are other ways to get around the lock up of shares besides a board vote using derivative contracts. I believe an investment banker could structure a synthetic sale of some of the shares using a derivative and trump could pledge that synthetic to collateralize a loan with same bank. Keep in mind though, just because trump can appeal the verdict does not mean he gets off scott free. He could lose the appeal. Or it could be reduced but not by so much. If he loses outright interest accrues on the balance. And an appeal costs $$ in legal fees. Remember also that the grim reaper in the 2 federal cases are out there if he loses in November. That is beginning to look increasingly likely. DJT stock is junk. Whatever he keeps is at risk of declining a bunch, just like his levered real estate.
Something is going on in the options market. Option prices do not seem normal to me.
A devastatingly incisive article. It needs a national audience.
I wouldn’t dare short DJT (the stock) primarily because this is the perfect way to funnel money from all number of bad actors to sway Trump. Not that the Saudis needed much help figuring out ways to funnel money to the Trump family, but this will make it easier for them to buy shares in Trump directly.
I will never understand how half the country fails to see through this all-time grifter. All the theories that try to explain his appeal fail to explain how people fail to see through the blatant self-serving actions that are on display in every move that Trump makes. I’m somewhat optimistic about humanity’s future, but that anyone thinks Trump cares about them is the counterpoint that I struggle to reconcile with my general optimism.
They say they don’t see through but I think most do. Not everyone (there are some true morons out there) but most. They simply like his ‘program’.
Fuck the POC, fuck the woke and dish out cruelty to anyone not us.
Fox News takes the lion share of the blame in creating/brainwashing those people but, by now, this is who they are. Middle class or better and vindictive beyond belief for imaginary wrongs.
Our greatest immigration failure of the last 40 years was letting Rupert Murdoch become a citizen.
Generally speaking, I think it’s an interesting moral quandary – would you be justified in *** Murdoch especially earlier in his career, when it might have made a difference? Like ‘killing baby Hitler’ type of hypothetical.
I’ve generally come down on “no” because Murdoch always respected (most) laws and seeded and harvested pre-existing conservatism, stupidity, and cruelty but he did not actually create those things. And you cannot wish away 40% of your fellow citizens.
Still, it’s damn tempting. It’d be cathartic if nothing else.
Well said.
One of friends was lamenting that he didn’t buy yesterday. Seeing the almost 150% increase. I told him I believe this will be and pump and dump so avoid at all costs.
completely agree. This is after all a company owned by Trump and run by Devin Nunes. IMHO It’s just a question of time as to when the old adage “everything Trump touches dies” will apply. This is not political analysis, that dude is simply the worst businessman in the world.
The mystery continues. Will America ever wake up ?
$3.4M in revenue while recording a $49M net loss during the first nine months of 2023.
Enough said….
is money laundering legal now?