Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social is cratering right along with his personal reputation, but it does have one thing going for it: customers dumb enough to pay top dollar for slightly faster access to the president’s posts — or “truths,” in the site’s oxymoronic nomenclature.
On Monday, Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns the service, reported that its revenue had shot up by 205 percent in the third quarter. The gains primarily came from its so-called “Truth API,” a feed that gives early access to posts by certain accounts — and let’s be real, people are paying for Trump’s — for the price of between $60,000 and $100,000 per month.
The feed was blasted as being an obvious rip-off the moment it was announced, and a blatant attempt to cash in on the president’s potentially consequential ramblings. Subscribers could in theory get an edge by acting on the effects that Trump’s decrees could have on financial markets before the public hears about them, introducing its own ethical concerns.
But who would be willing to shell out upwards of a million dollars per year for such a horrendous bargain? A handful of Wall Street firms, for one. Reuters reported last month that Susquehanna International Group and Jump Trading were among those who signed up for access — along with the financial newspaper and data company Bloomberg.
Now’s the time to put this revenue machine in some much-needed context, though. Trump Media’s amazing 205 percent surge in quarterly revenue only amounted to a paltry $3 million. Truth API accounted for $1.3 million of that, suggesting that, at most, it has less than two dozen customers. It also made another $523,000 off its “uncensored” streaming service Truth+, meaning that nearly two thirds of its quarterly revenue came from its media offerings.
That said, Trump Media is still making bags of money — just not through its actual business. It reported a quarterly net income of $409.7 million, with the vast majority of it coming from its holdings in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and related securities.
That doesn’t necessarily speak to a healthy business model, and the stock market has reflected the uncertainty around Trump and his media company. Shares hit an all-time low of below $4.00 last week after Trump’s candidates lost in the midterm elections, and the company is currently down 69 percent for the year.
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