What Happened to Trump’s Truth Social?

(00:00.43)

Okay, let me be clear, okay? I didn’t tank truth social. I warned you, okay? I told you what was gonna happen, but I didn’t take the bloody thing. I don’t have that power. All right, let me put this in perspective. I’ve been doing this radio show, now podcast of both actually, since 2000. Did guest appearances prior to that. We’ve made many, many calls over the years.

Go back to 1999, wrote a column entitled Understanding Enron, where we warned people that something was amiss with that company. Now, the next year, the company continued to go up where it eventually tanked. We warned people on this very show, Scan Before It Was a podcast, and it was just a radio show about…

the impending financial crisis and the demise of real estate in 2008, 2009, people chose to either listen, not listen, warned about the dot coms. I go on and on and on. We just warned you about a ton of companies, all the COVID companies there that were going like gangbusters in what was gonna happen. And every single time, every single time someone thinks that I’m some sort of stock market omnipotent.

God, where if I say something about a company, I can actually make it go down and tank it. I don’t have that power. I don’t. I keep thinking of that song, but it was if I snapped 1990s. I got the power. I don’t have that type of power. And obviously, the power that I have to persuade you from doing really dumb shit with your money,

I guess that’s kind of waning as well. I’ve never had that either. Seeing the, you know, the people over the years that have chosen not to listen to us and decided to lose money in stupid crap like truth social. Oh, please. OK, I don’t want to hear it. OK, you you you. Maga people out there, and this has nothing to do with politics whatsoever. It’s just numbers, man. It’s just numbers.

(02:25.198)

Well, I mean, think for a second. You have a social media company. I have a social media. There’s more people that listen to my podcast than log on to Truth Social. You have 500 ,000 users on the thing. Okay, it’s all well and good, small business. Okay, it does $4 million in revenue. Again, I’ve got clients in blue collar fields.

that do more revenues than Truth Social does. Loses tens of, was it 30, $40 million a year? That’s their burn rate. It’s in a business, which is very difficult. Pretty competitive, right? Elon Musk, who’s got a hell of a lot more money than Donald Trump, bought Twitter. It’s now X. He’s having a difficult time with that making a go of it. Again, you’ve got a guy, a owner who most certainly,

is divisive. Divisive owners in media, again, it’s difficult to get advertising there. You think Rush Limbaugh had an easy time getting advertising for his show? Glenn Beck was one of the top rated shows at Fox News. They fired him. Why? They couldn’t sell the ads? You think it’s going to be easy? You think major corporations are going to start advertising on Truth Social? You would be wrong. That is the reality.

So why in the world would you take your hard earned dollars and buy a company that more than doubled on its first day from the opening price? Why would you do that at a $6 billion valuation? If you had, I mean, let’s, I try to frame it this way for people. If you had $6 billion lying around, okay, you had $6 billion lying around, you shook your couch.

and $6 billion came out. Would you use that $6 billion if you had to use that $6 billion to buy a business? You may almost make it like a Brewster’s Million. We’ll make a rule here. Would you buy Truth Social at $3 million in revenues burning through $40 million a year in cash? Would you use that $6 billion to buy Truth Social? Again.

(04:53.934)

That’s the way you have to think about it when you are investing in a company. I was thinking it was almost as like you’re buying the entire thing. If you could buy the entire thing, would you do it? Again, I don’t have this type of power. This is not politics. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do, again, with, to be honest, people get greedy. For years, I talked about financial con artists, and they operate in two different ways.

Financial con artists, they utilize fear and they use greed to sell you stuff. If you weren’t greedy, okay, you wouldn’t have fallen victim to something like this. It’s like all the people falling victim to the Peloton, Beyond Meat and all the COVID stocks, which were dogs, each and every one of them. Ah, I was ridiculed. I made fun on the radio show and the podcast. I talked about Peloton.

I got flack for calling it an exercise bike with an iPad attached. But isn’t that what it is? It’s an exercise bike with an iPad attached to it.

(06:12.526)

I could see a market for that and what it’s doing, but at what price? At what price would you buy a business like that? What is that business worth? How many possibilities? These are all things that you have to take into consideration when you are evaluating a company. You know what I hate people? I hate to see people lose money. Okay, that’s one of our rules. One of our rules.

when it comes to investing, okay? Don’t lose money. What about the rules of the road? Now again, it sounds simplistic, a master the obvious type stuff. Listen, you don’t let risk lead to ruin. Now what does that mean? If you wanted to take a flyer, you wanted to speculate, you wanted to speculate on truth social or Peloton, whatever it may be, you use…

you use a bit of money, your speculative money. Now what is speculative money? Speculative money, your speculation money is money that you are investing in something you’re speculating. That if you lose that entire amount, it’s not gonna bother you. You’re not gonna even think twice about it. That’s what wealthy people do. Do you understand? They can afford to speculate on lots of things.

But if they lose money, eh, it’s no big deal. They move on. And that’s the difference. I take it this way. I don’t gamble. I don’t gamble. My aunt that I miss very much, my Aunt Virginia, Aunt Gigi, she liked to go to a casino from time to time. My mother -in -law, my in -laws liked to go to my father -in -law’s along with me. I’ve never made a bet in my entire life. It’s not my thing. But.

She’s smart. I mean, she would go. It was her entertainment money. When she went to a casino or she wanted a game, whatever they did there, she said, OK, this is that’s it. You know, it’s one hundred dollars. That’s all I’m going to gamble. And if I lose it, I lose it. If I make money, I make money. And that’s it. It doesn’t bother you. So you got to understand if you’re going to speculate on something, be prepared to lose it all. And if you lose it all.

(08:38.446)

Eh, no big whoop. And once again, I didn’t tank the thing. It was ridiculous at its face. Watchdog on wallstreet .com.