The Washington Post (gift link) presents a good profile on who stands to gain what from Trump Media becoming a publicly traded company on NASDAQ. As you would expect, Trump himself makes a lot of money on paper, but the headaches that come with it might prove too overwhelming when the true value is assessed.
Donald Trump himself currently has 78.7 million shares, and as the Post points out, he’ll hit an “earnout” reward of an additional 36 million if the company’s share price stays above $17.50 through April 26th, 20 days after the DWAC merger. It’s bound to do that given that there will be no major sales of the stock in the next weeks that would affect the price, so Trump can add on an additional $1.8 billion in meaningless “paper wealth” to his puffed-up campaign resume.
Some other notables:
- Trump’s first lapdog in the House, former “farmer” and Trump Media’s CEO Devin Nunes received a salary increase to $1 million in 2024, from $750,000 in 2023, plus he’ll get a $600,000 “retention bonus” for staying on after the merger. Why someone would retain a CEO who oversaw a $54 million loss with no plan to turn a profit is anyone’s gues– No it’s not. There’s no need to guess. It’s corruption.
- Trump’s former SBA Administrator Linda McMahon is a board member of Trump’s latest grift even after she resigned from the Trump administration in its second year. Unlike the craven political characters who have attached themselves to Trump to survive in the MAGAt-eat-RINO world of the Republican Party, McMahon has rejoined the Trump camp out of pure greed. With her family’s main money maker, the WWE, under investigation for sex trafficking, she’s looking for a new grift, as much a part of the McMahon family business plan as it is the Trump’s.
- Remember Kash Patel, the photo-negative Roger Stone and one-time national security/Pentagon appointee who is now openly planning to use a Trump second term to “come after” Trump’s opponents and enemies? He’s also a board member who was paid $130,000 for security consulting. Trump’s Save America PAC also pays Patel an undisclosed sum as a “national security advisor” to Trump, a company SEC filing reports.
- Trump’s former White House Communications Director Dan Scavino is not just a board member; he got a $240,000 consulting contract with the company that lost $54 million last year, and he’ll get a $600,000 retention bonus for his obviously spectacular advice. He also gets a $2.2 million “executive promissory note” for some future compensation. Oh, and he’s a consultant to Trump’s campaign as well.
And that leads to a set of potential problems for Trump. Both Patel and Scavino are working to get Trump back into the White House, and according to the FEC filings both get paid: Scavino by the campaign and Patel by a PAC.
Let’s be honest: in political campaigns, a lot of money is fungible. Yes, there should be walls between campaigns, Party finances, PACs, and the myriad of other organizations from think tanks to special-interest lobbyists that throw money at campaigns in various ways. Is it coordinated? Well, technically, it shouldn’t be, but so long as the efforts aren’t overt, everyone looks the other way. It’s not within the spirit of the law, but it is within the letter of the law.
But unlike the FEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission has a significant history of leading investigations that lead to incarcerations. While being lashed with a wet noodle by the FEC is something most would quickly accept, an SEC-backed prosecution is more serious. And the current arrangement presents a whole lot of opportunity to cross the SEC.
Having personnel on the payroll of the political campaign and paid by the company could be construed as the company subsidizing the staff salaries for the campaign of the majority shareholder, something far more serious than an accidental contribution of donuts to a campaign office or the use of a donor’s jet by a candidate.
More importantly, how will the SEC adjudicate the in-kind contributions of the candidate’s company helping to suppress opposition posts on the platform or boost his messaging, as well as the compensation paid to those company executives leading the effort? Remember how Republicans cried about how social media platforms were limiting the reach of Trump’s messaging? Watch how Truth handles it. (Side note to Democrats and PACS: start flooding Truth with posts. Track the reach. Use the stats to embarrass Trump.)
Trump may have “earned” a few billion dollars of paper value that will never go into a bank account, but the SEC scrutiny he now invites won’t be worth the cost.