Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

...mornin' everyone

i put on that Frontline movie about Trump, Democracy on Trial, and its so ominous. especially with scary Frontline narrator.

a special easter message!

https://i.imgur.com/fikUXeH.png

He has risen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIghUfCim-k

JOE THUGS

uh oh, DJT stock is currently shedding nearly 25% of it's value today

That’s… too bad

working on my essay abt the role of well-enforced wordcount in 21st century politics

Don’t worry sophisticated stock picker Josh Marshall has called the bottom tick, to the moon from here

Truth Social now rebounding off low! pic.twitter.com/XPVVn4nqqW

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 1, 2024

hard to parse the layers of sarcasm here...

why line go down

Trump: "Get me a Sharpie!"

i guess this is what precipitated it but its not like it wasnt known that it was losing tons of money company

New: Trump Media — the parent company of Truth Social — recorded $58m in losses against $4m in revenue in 2023, per SEC filings. The merger to take the company public last week unlocked new capital but the business fundamentals don’t justify $7bn valuation.

— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) April 1, 2024

The weird thing for me is how this was known from the start but traders only ramped up the selling after the filing happened.

As someone pointed out, Truth Social is about as successful as your average McDonald's franchise.

i saw a mcdonalds commercial last night that went with the inspirational pr mood package, and as somber piano played it told me that 1 in 8 people in the united states had worked at mcdonalds at some point.

i thought, "damn, imagine if companies really did take care of their workers and paid them a fair wage and gave them benefits"

pump dump trump

that's my guy

Just in: Trump’s gag order in the New York criminal case expanded to cover relatives of the presiding judge and the Manhattan DA after Trump last week went after the judge’s daughter

— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) April 2, 2024

He's posted that bond, BTW -- notably not through the Chubb folks again. (The fact that it took him a week is enough of a tell.)

it is pretty impressive that he seems to be meme stocking his way out of the civil judgment. the guy is like a greased pig, you can't get em.

Isn't the stock price plunging?

still pretty high for a worthless company and people are buying on the dip. i hope it plunges, obviously, but it seems like the kind of stupid thing that will save his ass.

it is pretty impressive that he seems to be meme stocking his way out of the civil judgment.

That's not what's happening at all. He hasn't been granted the waiver that would allow him to sell his shares before six months have elapsed, and the stock has lost a quarter of its "value" in the last 24 hours, so by the time he gets his hands on the money he ought to be able to get lunch at Subway out of it, assuming he's got a full punch card to redeem at the same time.

idk maybe

even if the price held until he was allowed to sell hed have a hard time cashing much in without driving it down

i think he has some sort of scheme running, or someone else does, that will allow this stock to stay high for a long enough time. he has more power behind him now than he did in 2016, as seen in things like project 2025.

if people want to prop the price up they might as well just give him the money it amounts to the same thing, which shows the problem with him selling hundreds of millions of dollars of it, is there hundreds of millions of dollars out there willing to be transferred to his account

hmm is there anything happening in about 6 months time that might affect the value of stock in $DJT?

The first presidential debates uh wait

Anyway per Forbes via a Bluesky summary:

NEW: Trump secured his $175 million bond with a combination of cash and investment-grade bonds, per Don Hankey, chair of Knight Insurance and the "little-known king of subprime car loans." A supporter of Jeb Bush and then Trump, Hankey says he reached out to Trump with the offer.

i consider myself a bit of a little-known king of subprime car loans too

Elevated circles!

i consider myself a bit of a little-known king of subprime car loans too

"Duke of Saxony" feeling pretty shabby rn

MR. HANKEY

Abe Froman passed on the opportunity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQML0_YASCI

Apparently not "anything."

John Ganz, who I find worthwhile even when I don't totally agree with him, has an interesting post up about a new collection of essays debating the "Is Trump Fascist" question. Ganz is more on the side of "yes" — calling Trump semi- or proto-fascist — but is mostly writing about how dug in some of the liberal intellectuals in the "No he isn't" camp are, and why.

https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/what-happened-here

I've never been sure how much this debate really matters, since I think the actual facts of Trump are pretty plain for everyone to see, whatever you call them. Ganz otm here: "The simple fact is this: Trump would be dictator if he could, but it’s not that easy, and he probably won’t be able to become one. I don’t think anybody can honestly say, 'No, he really doesn’t have that aspiration or will at all.'”

I think Trump is very used to having his word be law in his companies, however much of a sham they are. No doubt, he would like the government be the same way. I can't think of a more obvious example, in this country at least, of someone letting the power of the presidency go to his head.

I think he's clearly a fascist, but not like other fascists in history, for example I think he would without a doubt sell out the entire Republican party if it meant ridding him of his legal issues

Perlstein has a related thread:

I said no more, but I think it might be a useful contribution to expand upon a criticism I've had on @coreyrobin's classic everyone has to read, The Reactionary Mind, since it became such a powerful influence on me upon first reading. It ends making the argument that...

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) March 31, 2024

...the gist of which is that just because Trump isn't Hitler or Mussolini doesn't mean he isn't a fascist.

Americans keep expecting their fascism to be of that of a Golan-Globus movie villain, which is the only reason they deny he's a fascist

"if he was a fascist, he'd tell us!"

just like when Lindsay Graham was saying "it wasn't a quid pro quo, he didn't announce he was doing a crime"

I wonder if Right Wing intellectuals are arguing right now about whether Biden is really a commie or not.

right wing intellectuals kinda contradicting itself there

"He told the protestors to go to the Capitol peacefully!"

Robert O. Paxton got it right:

– A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;

– The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it;

– The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;

– Dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;

– The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;

– The need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny;

– The superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;

– The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success;

– The right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.

P

- Anything is possible.