The Washington Post has a piece today about Truth Social that describes how proud they are that they have hundreds of thousands of retail investors:
Jerry Dean McLain first bet on former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social two years ago.... That nest egg has lost about half its value in the past two weeks as Trump Media & Technology Group’s share price dropped from $66 after its public debut last month to $32 on Friday. But McLain, 71, who owns a tree-removal service outside Oklahoma City, said he’s not worried. If anything, he wants to buy more. “I know good and well it’s in Trump’s hands, and he’s got plans,” he said. “I have no doubt it’s going to explode sometime.”
....Todd Schlanger, an interior designer at a furniture store in West Palm Beach who said Trump had been one of his customers, said he’s invested about $20,000 in total and is buying new shares every week.... He suspects the recent drops in share price have been the result of “stock manipulation” from an “organized effort” to make the company look bad. There’s no proof of such a campaign, but Schlanger is convinced. “It’s got to be political,” he said, from all the “liberals that are trying to knock it down.”
In this case, "retail investors" is a euphemism for "suckers we can drain of cash." I feel sorry for these guys no matter how demented they sound. They're going to lose everything, just like all the retail investors who invested in Trump's casinos in the '90s, and all because the country's greatest con man has them in his sights. He doesn't even need the money. He just figures it's out there, and if he ruins the lives of a hundred thousand fans to get it, why not?
None whatsoever, these are the ass holes who are going to vote for that man in November...
Trump is a sociopath, but his followers are stupid.
Large number of his supporters are people taht are doing quite well in life, which suggest they are not really stupid. It is a more complex phenomenon where are otherwise reasonably intelligent people get hooked on some idiotic idea.
It was never really rare phenomenon, but such a large number of people going this way in a modern society is a new thing.
Immigration is driving a lot of the Trump enthusiasm. Supporters are being fed a constant drip marketing campaign that the reason things are so expensive is because of illegals (especially housing).
Plenty of rich people are dumb as rocks. It’s wild that you would try to argue differently.
Just goes to show how thoroughly brainwashed the American public is that they equate monetary success with intelligence when there is zero correlation there.
Funny but most the Rs I know and work with despise him. A few make excuses for him and a few kiss his ass and worship him. Smarter guys dislike him, average make excuses and dumb shits love him.
I wouldn't say zero correlation. I would think it's more 'ottentimes there is zero correlation, and even self-made millionaires there can be relatively little correlation.'
Specifically, the suckers buying the stock are clearly doing well enough that they have a bit of spare cash. They won't have it for very long.
MAGA is a cult. Outsiders look at the cult leader and see a fat vain selfish mean human version of Jabba the Hutt. insiders see a hero who they admire and want gift with their money.
It's a cult AND an affinity fraud! Two for one! NOW how much would you pay?
If you order today,
You get a ginsu knife and a smokeless ashtray!
This offer won't last! Call NOW! Operators are standing by! Bycallingyouagreetoautomaticmonthlydonationsviayourcardorbankaccountunlessyouoptoutviaourwebsiteaskoperatorfordetails
Grifters lie. They want your $$$. ---- for brains lies all of the time. You trust the King Of the Grifters with your $$$ ?? You don't see Kitties throwing their hard earned Kibble at the Smuck.
There's a W. C. Fields movie about this: "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break."
It's Trump's number one rule to live by.
“I love the poorly educated.”
- Donald J. Trump
https://youtu.be/Vpdt7omPoa0?si=mAGoShdv8DPm6cd4
"the country's greatest con man"
I'm reminded of David Cay Johnston (who has been called "the dean of Trumpologists") opining that he is the greatest con man in world history.
You feel sorry for these delusion, ignorant, gullible cultists? What in the world for? These suckers deserve to lose every penny and it will put a big smile on my face
Trouble is, they'll blame it all on Biden, Soros, DEI . . . have I forgotten anyone?
Immigrants. How did you forget immigrants?
Aunt Teefa?
Yep, couldn't happen to a better bunch of rubes. I hope they those every penny.
This is neither Trump's nor their first rodeo. As the proverb goes, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. If people want to continue to disbelieve the truth about Trump, at some point, you just let them fail. This is the umpteenth time these folks are facing cognitive dissonance on the same thing and they keep resolving it the same way -- blame externalities.
There are plenty of people in the world that I feel sorry for. I just heard the story of a guy in Boston who was unjustly incarcerated for 37 years. (PBS Stories from the Stage).
But I just can't bring myself to feel sorry for Trump idiots.
People who buy that stock are making a bet. If Trump is dicta…um, “President” next year the stock will go up and be valuable (at least until Trump unloads it). If Biden is President this time next year the company will be bankrupt. But these people will have their whole lives invested in Trump, so they will be his soldiers if he loses in November.
So, if we want 'those people' to succeed we should vote for Trump, or we're voting against them because of who they are.
The way I’d like Trump supports “succeed “ is for them to “learn their lesson”. I think those who do will be a very small minority. I suspect if they cut their finger off with a saw they would wonder why they are bleeding.
"If Trump is dicta…um, 'President' next year the stock will go up and be valuable"
Why and how? Trump being president again won't majik up hundreds of millions of new subscribers to truthsocial, so how will it become a profitable growth business such that the stock will go up?
Why does Bitcoin go up? Trump stock will go up because his fans will buy it. Note though I did say “until Trump unloads it”. At which point I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it tanked.
Pumping up the stock would be a pretty good way to get into the good graces of our new dictator, seems to me.
Sorta--but it's indirect. It would be like buying the houses next to mar-a-lago at inflated prices simply to goose the market for mar-a-lago (with the added difficultly that it's not nearly as easy to pay above-market for a stock as it is a house).
If you really wanted to get in the good graces of El Trump, you'd buy things he actually owns at wildly inflated prices--like, say, real estate--which gives you the added benefit of laundering money.
Buying securities traded on an exchange seems like a goofy way of putting cash in Trump's short-fingered little hands, especially when you could just give it direct to a superpac or something if that's what you wanted to do.
Trump chumps in the dumps takin' their lumps.
A lot of people think there's some master political plan when it comes to Trump. He's been telling everyone who he is publicly since the 80s and he wants the same thing he's wanted for the past 50 years: to stay out of jail, make a huge pile of money, and be famous.
Everything he does is in service of those 3 things. He has no master plan beyond those 3 things. He's in politics for those 3 things and he's in the race today for those 3 things. Truth Social is a business scheme to net him a huge amount of money, nothing more.
You underestimate how much he wants to suppress population like his heroes (Putin, Xi, Kim) do. That will be the main thing he is going to do if he wins.
I think he wants no such thing. That's too complex a thought process. He like authoritarians because order is a way to preserve wealth and keep the peons from demanding more of the spoils.
"I think he wants no such thing. That's too complex a thought process."
That is obviously not too complex for him.
He is evil, but that is not reason to underestimate his skills. He decided to be a president, worked on it for several good years, and succeeded. That is quite an achievement, which other pretty talented prople tried and failed.
He doesn't just "like" autocrats because they achieve something. He never compliment any of them for any achievement. It is always for being "strong", i.e. suppressing the population. That what he thinks about, and that is what he wants to do.
appealing to idiots is absolutely not a “talent” or a “skill”.
Indeed--it's important to keep in mind that Trump is not some sort of evil genius (although, as Atwood noted, stupid and evil are the same when you judge by the results). He's an accident of history, and there's nothing inevitable or formidable about him.
This November, let's end this fool's political career forever.
We need to focus not just on Trump, but also the people he will put in charge of agencies like the Department of Justice, the SEC, the FEC, and so so many other positions of power. Maybe it's "too complex a thought process" for him, but those folks are raring to suppress the non-MAGA population.
Politically Trump just took over what has been the master plan of the Republican leadership since before Reagan: attract votes from lower-income whites by endorsing racism and Christian dominance, and legislate to favor the usual big-money interests with tax-cuts and deregulation.
The media refuse to fully acknowledge the role of racial/religious tribalism and refer to Trump as a "populist" but nothing other than extreme tribalism can explain the way his followers have abandoned reason and even self-interest. Republicans have been working at this kind of partisanship for over fifty years and Trump has taken advantage of that.
Bret Maverick :
"You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, and those are very good odds."
They need the “conspiracy.” They need to have something to blame for whatever has gone wrong in their lives. It’s certainly not something that they have done wrong.
you have way more empathy that me. i don't feel sorry for them at all. fuck em.
This is the exactly right attitude.
I’m hoping he wipes out more of the idiots.
Same here: Fuck them. I hope they lose everything they have. They’re bad people. They hope for bad things to befall the country. Keep investing, assholes.
Unlike previous scams where the story is old and few victims still outraged, this stock play - that feeds Trump's con man spirit and greed - is happening NOW with tearful victims soon to be interviewed by the press. It should have significant negative political consequences. It will tarnish Trump's reputation in some circles that he's a good businessman - a myth established by the NBC show The Apprentice.
My hope for this coming week is modest. That TMTG trades in the low $20s. It's worth much less than that, but a >50% decline since trading *a month ago* screams CON MAN !
Makes Canadian gold mining stocks look like a solid investment.
China or SA can come in tomorrow and juice the stock if they feel like helping Donnie out.
Probably they can make some money (or not lose to much), since if the price ticks up, more rubes will pour in giving them a good pump-and-dump.
Look for demands from the Trump crowd to regulate the short-selling of stocks any time now.
I thought us this ditty (attached to the tune "The Inquistion" from History of the World - Part I)
Short selling! (it's what we know)
Short selling! (Away we go)
Oh we're here....to drive your stock price into the grave!
Because short selling's back and it's here to stay!
The thing about grifters, they hang around people who can make them money. You do the math.