The Washington Post reports on some of the MAGA faithful who are losing their nest eggs on Trump’s Truth Social stock:
Jerry Dean McLain first bet on former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social two years ago, buying into the Trump company’s planned merger partner, Digital World Acquisition, at $90 a share. Over time, as the price changed, he kept buying, amassing hundreds of shares for $25,000 — pretty much his “whole nest egg,” he said.
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.”
Even the $3.5 billion loss in value since its debut last month hasn’t deterred them. Neither has the fact that it lost $58 million last year and only had 4 millionin revenues. And they’re fine with all the top executive making huge multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses.
This is so pathetic I can’t believe these people are allowed to operate a motor vehicloe or take care of childre:
But for some Trump investors, the stock is a badge of honor — a way to show their devotion beyond buying Trump merchandise, visiting Trump golf courses or donating to Trump’s presidential campaign.
[…]
Many of Truth Social’s investors say they’re in it for the long haul. 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.
Schlanger said he now watches his stock performance every day hoping for positive signs. In a Truth Social post last week, he encouraged “everyone who supports Donald Trump and Truth [Social to] buy a share everyday” and asked, “Do you think we have hit bottom?” (The stock slid nearly 10 percent after that post.)
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.”
That range of emotions is on full display on Truth Social, where thousands of mostly anonymous accounts have flocked to meme-filled investor groups, one of which is emblazoned with a computer-generated image showing Trump pumping his fist on a Wall Street trading floor.
Some accounts there have recently encouraged traders to keep investing in a fight they said was about “good vs evil” — a way to defend Trump from the liberal elites laughing at him and, by extension, them. The user @BaldylocksUSMC said “the fight has been long and hard on most of us” and that “this stock is not for the weak,” but that one day they would triumph over critics who were “brainwashed beyond repair.”
After the billionaire media mogul Barry Diller called Trump Media a “scam” stock bought by “dopes,” one account, @Handbag72, claimed to have bought more shares, arguing Diller didn’t “get it” or was “at risk of [losing] $$$$.” The next day, the account shared a 2021 blog post from the investing forum Seeking Alpha saying Truth Social could be worth $1 trillion in the next 10 years.
[…]
Some users said they were “baffled” by the stock’s ups and downs, and one asked for advice on how to tell her husband she didn’t want to sell. One user posted a meme image saying, “If you’re worried about your Money, Remember This, DJT stock is about FREE SPEECH & Without FREE SPEECH Money won’t mean much.”
But other users saw such questions as displays of unacceptable doubt. When the user @seneca1950 asked whether anyone was concerned that the company’s upcoming plans to issue tens of millions more shares would sink the stock price, two accounts criticized the account for spreading “FUD” — fear, uncertainty and doubt.
“Are you a Fudster,” wrote a user named “Jesus Revolution 2024.” Wrote another, called Rabristol: “You must be short with no way out!”
[…]
Carol Swain, a prominent conservative commentator in Nashville who previously taught political science at Vanderbilt University, said she invested $1,000 in Trump Media stock earlier this month, at $48 a share, over the objections of her financial adviser, who predicted the stock would dive.
“If I lose it, fine. If I make a profit, wonderful. But at the end of the day, I wanted to show my support,” she said. “There’s such an effort to destroy him and strip his wealth away, and so much glee about it. I would like to see him be a winner.”
She, too, suspects stock manipulation, arguing that “the people who hate Donald Trump would do anything to try to hurt him.” As for Truth Social itself, she said she posts there only sparingly and prefers X, where she has 35 times as many followers. “I have always wanted not to just preach to the choir,” she said.
McLain, the tree service owner in Oklahoma, said he believes the stock could “go to $1,000 a share, easy,” once the media stops writing so negatively about it and the company works through its growing pains. The company’s leaders, he said, are being “too silent right now” amid questions about the falling share price, but he suspects it’s because they’re working on something amazing and new.
McLain is an amateur trader — he invested only once before and “lost [his] butt” — and said he hasn’t talked to his family about his investment, saying, “You know how that is.” But he believes the Trump Media deal is a sign he is “supposed to invest,” he said.
“This isn’t just another stock to me. … I feel like it was God Almighty that put it in my lap,” he said. “I’ve just got to hold on and let them do their job. If you go on emotion, you’ll get out of this thing the first time it goes down.”
I’d feel sorry for them if they were taken to the cleaners by any other con man. But there is plenty of information available about Trump’s history of conning people and this ridiculous company is obviously a joke. Come on.