Trump Media Is Absolutely Tanking—as Trump’s Legal Bills Pile Up

Donald Trump’s social media venture is taking a serious dive, according to its first earnings report.

Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, lost about $327.6 million last quarter ending March 31. These losses include $311 million in noncash expenses from the company’s merger with Digital World.

The company only brought in about $770,500 in revenue, down from $1.1 million the year before. The report had been delayed after the company fired its auditor, BF Borgers, who was charged with “massive fraud” by the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month. The company has had at least two other auditors in its short existence: one that resigned in July 2023 and another that was terminated in March to hire BF Borgers.

The company is currently trading at $48 per share, down from its peak of nearly $72 during its initial public offering in March. That’s a loss of more than half the company’s value. It had a bad run of news, even reaching out to the federal government to figure out why the stock has performed so poorly. Trump Media’s CEO, former Representative Devin Nunes, even complained to NASDAQ’s CEO that the company was the victim of illegal “naked short selling”—leading to his brutal mocking on Wall Street. Two of the company’s top investors were also charged with insider trading in April.

As a result of the company’s losses and his own financial difficulties, Trump himself has been kicked off the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the 500 richest people in the world. He also has to be careful about his usual bragging, as the SEC could see it as an attempt to pump up the company’s stock. And Trump can’t sell off any of that stock for six months without board approval, a difficult prospect considering his hefty legal bills.

A video published on Donald Trump’s Truth Social account Monday afternoon featuring hypothetical headlines included reference to a “unified Reich” alongside a much larger, bolded headline reading, “What’s Next for America?”

The Trump campaign claims the video was made by a “random account,” according to statements provided to NBC, and that it was republished to Trump’s Truth Social without his knowledge while he was in court for his hush-money trial. The video was left posted for hours and was only removed Tuesday morning.

Trump previously described neo-Nazis who marched in the fatal Unite the Right rally in 2017, carrying tiki torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us,” as “very fine people.” He has made comments echoing Hitler’s Mein Kampf as recently as last year, claiming immigrants are “poisoning the blood of this country.” His past administration and current allies are riddled with white nationalists. It comes as no surprise that a member of his campaign team would pull a DeSantis and “accidentally” publish a video on behalf of Trump infused with a positive reference to Nazi Germany.

The video, which presents as a campaign ad, asks, “What’s next for America? The economy booms. American energy is unleashed, and an end to crushing taxes. The border is closed, and the largest deportation in history is underway. No more wars, as we focus on home. Law and order is restored. The American Dream is back and the best is yet to come.”

Nazi Germany used the term “Reich” to suggest a historical return to previous empires. Following the Holocaust, Reich fell out of usage except in reference to Germany under Hitler. The “unified Reich” headline appears to be pulled from the Wikipedia page for World War I. Beyond that headline, the ad features copy discussing World War I and early twentieth-century war history dated between 1914 and 1918—at the height of Jim Crow, prior to women’s right to vote, and just before the Ku Klux Klan became a mass movement. “Make America great again,” the voiceover on the video declares as it ends, effectively confirming what critics have long said the phrase coined by Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign and repopularized by Trump really means: Make America great again for a select, ultraracist few.

Dan Snyder, the disgraced former owner of the Washington Commanders, is less than thrilled about the premiere of a movie critical of Donald Trump at the Cannes Film Festival—even though he helped fund it.

The Apprentice covers Trump’s early years in the real estate industry—and focuses on the former president’s relationship with notorious political fixer Roy Cohn and Trump’s relationship with his first wife, Ivana—and premiered on Monday at Cannes to a rapturous eight-minute standing ovation. Little more was known about the film, which stars Sebastian Stan as Trump and Succession’s Jeremy Strong as Cohn, before its premiere—aside from the fact that Snyder hated it and wanted it shelved.

Snyder, a longtime Trump ally who has donated more than $1.2 million to his previous campaigns, has been embroiled in a legal battle with the film’s producers since he saw an early cut of it in February. The viewing left Snyder “furious” with the creative direction of the film, and he reportedly took issue with several parts of the story, leveraging his position as an investor with the film’s distribution company, Kinematics, to argue for changes to the script, according to Variety. (That could potentially refer to one scene in which Trump is depicted sexually assaulting Ivana, as described in the couple’s 1989 divorce deposition. Ivana Trump later distanced herself from the allegation.) When his suggestions didn’t stick, Snyder turned to cease-and-desist letters in a last-ditch effort to shut the film down. But still, it persists.

“All creative and business decisions involving The Apprentice have always been and continue to be solely made by Kinematics,” Kinematics president Emanuel Nuñez told Variety.

It’s unclear if Snyder was in attendance at Monday’s screening, though his yacht, the Lady S, was reported to be off the coast of Cannes Monday afternoon. After the screening ended, the movie’s director, Ali Abassi, gave a speech denouncing the rise of fascism.

Prior to the Trump film fiasco, Snyder was best known as a much-despised former co-owner in the NFL. Before selling the Washington Commanders, Snyder was investigated for alleged workplace harassment and sexual misconduct, was sued by the D.C. attorney general for allegedly colluding to mislead customers, was accused by the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform of lying under oath during a hearing regarding sexual assault allegations against his team, and famously screwed up a venture to get the Commanders a new stadium before a lineup of former female employees spoke out against him in front of Congress.

Donald Trump says he’d consider current Texas attorney general and harbinger of far-right doom Ken Paxton for his own U.S. attorney general if he retakes the White House.

“He’s very very talented,” Trump said during the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Dallas, on Saturday. “We have a lot of people that want that one [position] and will be very good at it, but he’s a very talented guy.”

KDFW asked Trump if he would consider Paxton—facing disciplinary action from the Texas state bar for his efforts to overturn 2020 election results—for the position. “I would, actually,” Trump replied, marking the first name Trump has floated for a possible U.S. attorney general should he win the 2024 presidential election.

Trump has already promised to remold the Justice Department into his personal attack dog—and putting Paxton at the helm is particularly terrifying.

Law and order–hating Paxton frequently finds himself surrounded by corruption charges. In 2023, he faced unsuccessful impeachment proceedings by the GOP-led Texas Senate for bribery and abuse of public trust. Those proceedings largely stemmed from Paxton allegedly using his office to benefit Nate Paul, a wealthy donor of Paxton’s who is facing his own legal turmoil.

Far-right billionaire supporters of Paxton operating under a PAC named Texans United for a Conservative Majority—rebranded after Defend Texas Liberty got caught hanging out with Hitler fans—reportedly dumped $3 million to support candidates running against Republicans who led Paxton’s impeachment proceedings.

Last year, Paxton also threatened to prosecute any and all abortion doctors in Texas, even in cases where a court says they can conduct the health procedure.

Paxton infamously spoke at Trump’s rally on January 6, 2021, ahead of the Capitol riot, telling the crowd of future rioters, “We will not quit fighting.”

Donald Trump’s hush-money trial has drawn quite a few of his high-profile supporters, including members of Congress and those hoping to be his vice presidential running mate. Among them also happens to be a onetime leader of the Hells Angels gang.

Chuck Zito, who helped to found the New York Nomads chapter of the outlaw motorcycle gang, was among Trump’s entourage on Monday at the Manhattan courthouse where his trial is being held.

Zito has a criminal record, serving prison time from 1985 to 1998 for drug conspiracy charges. His chapter of the Hells Angels has also been linked to the Gambino Mafia crime family. And the Justice Department considers Hells Angels to be an organized crime syndicate.

Why would Trump want him at his trial in New York? Zito doesn’t have a political career. These days, he’s more famous for his occasional acting. However, The New York Times points out that Trump has an old association with bikers going back to his 2016 campaign, when he addressed a Washington, D.C., biker rally. There’s even a Bikers for Trump group, which took part in several Trump rallies alleging that the 2020 election was stolen.

Zito isn’t the only Trump supporter with a criminal record who appeared at the courtroom on Monday: Former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who went to prison on tax charges and was later pardoned by Trump, also showed up for moral support.

And while Zito’s mob ties might appear bad on the surface, Trump has ties to organized crime himself going back decades. Legal experts have expressed concern for the safety of jurors in Trump’s trials. And the former president has even been accused of using “an obvious Mafia tactic” to get around his gag order in the case by having his supporters speak for him. Zito’s attendance in many ways is a boost to Trump’s ego: He has an infamous tough guy show up in his corner at a trial that could send him to prison.

The Republican presidential nominee is facing 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime by using his former fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair before the 2016 election. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Rudy Giuliani shitposted himself into an indictment Friday night as he left his 80th birthday party in Florida.

The former Trump lawyer spent weeks mocking the Arizona attorney general as he evaded receiving the subpoena for his alleged participation in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election, Rolling Stone reports, but his posts finally caught up to him.

Richie Taylor, communications director for the Arizona attorney general, told Rolling Stone authorities were able to locate Giuliani in Florida due to his constant livestreams: “Our agents traveled to Florida [on Friday]. We knew he was there because of his nightly live video streams at his residence.”

During a Friday night birthday bash to ring in the brand new octogenarian, whose birthday is May 28, Giuliani posted a photo of himself surrounded by a gaggle of cookie-cutter blonde women beaming through Botox. He taunted the Arizona attorney general, writing, “If Arizona authorities can’t find me by tomorrow morning: 1. They must dismiss the indictment; 2. They must concede they can’t count votes.”

Hours later, Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes quote-tweeted his post announcing authorities with the Arizona attorney general’s office had served Giuliani his subpoena.

“The final defendant was served moments ago. Nobody is above the law,” Mayes wrote. Giuliani, seemingly attempting to evade the digital smackdown, soon deleted his post. The attorney general screenshot it and posted it following her announcement Giuliani had been served.

“The agents took the opportunity to serve [Giuliani] when he was out at a friend’s nearby house as he left his birthday party,” Taylor told Rolling Stone. Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Giuliani, confirmed to Rolling Stone that the former Mussolini of Manhattan was served and claimed, “He was unfazed and enjoyed an incredible evening with hundreds of people, from all walks of life, who love and respect him for his contributions to society.”

“It was so goddamn irritating,” an unnamed Arizona government source told Rolling Stone. “We knew he’d get served eventually, but it seemed like he was playing these games just because he felt like it.”

Giuliani is expected to appear in Arizona court Tuesday alongside 17 co-defendants. A spokesman for Mayes told AP that Giuliani is charged with felony counts of conspiracy, fraud, and forgery. Trump is listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. The Arizona attorney general’s office alleges Giuliani, former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump attorney Boris Epshteyn, and others “schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency to keep Unindicted Co-conspirator 1 in office against the will of Arizona voters.”

At the rate Giuliani’s going, he’ll be celebrating his next birthday in jail.

On Monday morning, Donald Trump appeared to undermine one of his main defenses by confirming payments to Michael Cohen that he previously claimed he knew nothing about.

Speaking before his hush-money trial, Trump told a crowd of reporters and onlookers about how a payment to his former fixer and attorney was “marked down in the book as a legal expense.”

“I had nothing to do with it. A bookkeeper put it down as a legal expense,” Trump said, before seeming to contradict himself. “This is why I’m here, because we called it a legal expense, a payment to a lawyer.”

The “we” at the end of Trump’s mini-rant would appear to contradict earlier assertions that he knew nothing about a payment made to Cohen that is at the core of the charges against the former president. While the majority of the case hinges on the falsification of business records, Trump’s legal team has used as its main defense the premise that Trump was unaware of the whole thing.

Trump is accused of paying off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up their affair before the 2016 election with Cohen’s help, and the payment Trump referred to was a reimbursement to Cohen.

Trump’s legal team has claimed that the payment was a normal fee to Cohen, even though Cohen has claimed he did not have a retainer agreement while working for Trump. The former president’s confirmation of the payment to Cohen on Monday is backed up by secret recordings made by Cohen, entered into evidence early in the trial, that confirm Trump knew all about paying off Daniels. Cohen has testified that the former president was a “micromanger” whom he spoke to “every single day, and multiple times a day.”

Trump faces 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Trump’s untailored blue suit, white shirt, and extra-long red tie have become a symbol of the former president’s first criminal trial—so much so that the sycophants vying for his favor have all adopted the same look.

On Monday, more of Trump’s allies appeared outside of the New York courthouse hosting his hush-money trial, all donning the same outfit and looking more like a small army of minions than independently minded authorities. Monday’s batch included former NYC Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, former Georgia State Representative Vernon Jones, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, and Representative Eric Burlison—all sporting the same blue suit and red tie that is the trademark of their party’s chief.

Over the last week, dozens of the country’s biggest lawmakers and politicians have shown up outside of the criminal court to visually represent their solidarity alongside the criminally charged presidential nominee, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, and Senators Tim Scott, J.D. Vance, and Tommy Tuberville.

Biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy, RNC co-chair Lara Trump, and Eric Trump and two Republican representatives also donned the outfit on Tuesday to film a campaign ad for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

But even though his surrogates have referred to Trump as a “style icon,” fashion critics don’t quite agree. Instead, they argue that Trump’s staple courtroom attire is both too heavy and too slim in all the wrong places.

“They are always a little too roomy, the sleeves a tad too long,” wrote The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan in 2015.

“For a man who is quick to tout his financial status, Trump’s style doesn’t telegraph money. It doesn’t look luxurious; it’s hardly elevated,” Givhan continued, noting that despite the quality fabrics used for Trump’s suits, a lack of detail for its tailoring makes the fits look “cheap.”

“He makes ties look sloppy.”

Trump has a long history of fashion faux pas and for making waves in all the wrong places. In 2017, the former president was caught taping his ties together in order to achieve the strange elongated look. And in a desperate bid to make some quick cash after losing his bank fraud trial in February, Trump formally entered the fashion marketplace, announcing a new line of Trump-branded sneakers—gold high-tops that retailed for $399 a pop.

But besides the orange fake tan, Trump’s hair has, arguably, been his biggest flop. Even though the wispy comb-over has been known to fly off his head, Trump won’t swap the style. In her documentary, porn star Stormy Daniels claimed Trump had odd superstitions about his unusual coif, alleging that the former reality TV star said he believed his power rested in his hair and that cutting it off or changing the style could compromise that.

On Monday morning, the International Criminal Court announced it was seeking to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, as well as other senior Israeli and Hamas leaders on of war crimes charges, as well as crimes against humanity. Joe Biden’s response is pathetic—and totally inadequate, given the larger humanitarian situation in Gaza.

“The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence—none—between Israel and Hamas,” Biden said in a short statement. “We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a longer statement also casting doubt on the legitimacy of the arrest warrants.

The United States fundamentally rejects the announcement today from the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that he is applying for arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials, together with warrants for Hamas terrorists. We reject the Prosecutor’s equivalence of Israel with Hamas. It is shameful. Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and is still holding dozens of innocent people hostage, including Americans. Moreover, the United States has been clear since well before the current conflict that that ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter. The ICC was established by its state parties as a court of limited jurisdiction. Those limits are rooted in principles of complementarity, which do not appear to have been applied here amid the Prosecutor’s rush to seek these arrest warrants rather than allowing the Israeli legal system a full and timely opportunity to proceed. In other situations, the Prosecutor deferred to national investigations and worked with states to allow them time to investigate. The Prosecutor did not afford the same opportunity to Israel, which has ongoing investigations into allegations against its personnel. There are also deeply troubling process questions. Despite not being a member of the court, Israel was prepared to cooperate with the Prosecutor. In fact, the Prosecutor himself was scheduled to visit Israel as early as next week to discuss the investigation and hear from the Israeli Government. The Prosecutor’s staff was supposed to land in Israel today to coordinate the visit. Israel was informed that they did not board their flight around the same time that the Prosecutor went on cable television to announce the charges. These and other circumstances call into question the legitimacy and credibility of this investigation. Fundamentally, this decision does nothing to help, and could jeopardize, ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement that would get hostages out and surge humanitarian assistance in, which are the goals the United States continues to pursue relentlessly.

It took the Biden administration months to call for a limited ceasefire, after months of the State Department going so far as to warn its diplomats to avoid using the word entirely, along with other calls for peace like “end to violence,” or “de-scalation.” Trying to blame the ICC for thwarting acting to hold Israel accountable and help bring an end to the disastrous assault on Gaza is laughable.

When the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin last year over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Biden welcomed the news. That arrest warrant “[made] a very strong point,” Biden said at the time, adding that the Russian dictator has “clearly committed war crimes.”

The charges against Netanyahu and Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant include “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict,” ICC prosecutor Karim Khan told CNN.

“The fact that Hamas fighters need water doesn’t justify denying water from all the civilian population of Gaza,” he added.

At least 35,000 people have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, the majority of them women and children. International aid agencies have warned of widespread famine and mass starvation, as well as shortages of medical supplies.

Donald Trump wants everyone to know that he did not, in fact, freeze for more than 30 seconds during his speech at the National Rifle Association convention in Dallas on Saturday.

In a Truth Social post late Sunday night, the former president claimed that reports indicating that he went silent in the middle of his remarks were false, and that he actually paused because of a musical interlude in his speech, something that he claimed is part of most of his speeches.

“The reason they came up with this Disinformation is that Biden freezes all the time, can’t put two sentences together, and can rarely find his way off the stage without help. Donald Trump doesn’t freeze!” Trump posted.

Unfortunately for Trump, the alleged freezing was caught on video, and the former president appears to awkwardly stop, and then resume while the music is still playing.

The incident was the second fumble by Trump this weekend. On Friday, speaking at the Republican Party of Minnesota’s annual Lincoln Reagan Dinner (which he left his youngest son’s graduation celebrations immediately to attend), Trump’s podium almost fell down after he appeared to lean on it too hard, causing the former president to attack the event’s workers and drawing a mocking tweet from the Biden campaign. 

Are these more examples of Trump’s cognitive decline? For the past few months, Trump has made incoherent claims, saying that there were “millions of people” who didn’t speak real languages arriving at the southern U.S. border and that he would stop banks from “debanking” Americans. He has mixed up former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, and described his plan for America’s missile defense system by going, “Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.… Boom. OK. Missile launch. Woosh. Boom.” None of this helps Trump’s argument that he can go toe-to-toe with President Biden when debate season begins.