Will Trump’s Social Network Be More Successful Than Steaks?

With a CEO from Wuhan and a Brazilian aristocrat, former US President Donald Trump wants to start again on social media.

Since Donald Trump was virtually banned from all major social media platforms for inciting the January 6 uprising, the former president has been searching for a home on the internet. As expected, Trump was unsuccessful in filing lawsuits against Twitter, Facebook and Co with the aim of reversing the bans.

Trump did not want to sign up on social media platforms founded by supporters or former employees – such as Parler, Gab or Gettr. His blog “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” has been closed down after less than a month of less chronic failure.

Trump Media Corporation at the New York Stock Exchange

Now Trump is daring on his biggest move yet. He established his own media company with “Trump Media & Technology Group” (TMTG). Its first product is called “Truth Social” and it appears to be a social media service built on Twitter.

The new company will go live on the NYSE Nasdaq. To this end, Talaat Moustafa Group is merging with the so-called “Special Purpose Acquisition Corporation” (SPAC). These are the shells of empty companies that raise money on the exchange and then merge with another company. SPACs have established themselves in recent years as a popular way to advertise quickly without the necessary paperwork.

Contacts with Wuhan and Brazil

Trump’s business associates have interesting resumes. TMTG will work with a SPAC company called “Digital World Acquisition Corp.” (DWAC) Merge. The CEO of DWAC is Patrick Orlando, who used to work at Trump Bank, Deutsche Bank. Orlando is also the CEO of another SPAC company called Yunhong International, which is based in Wuhan, China. This is of course where, according to Trump, the Chinese Communist Party developed SARS-CoV-2.

The chief financial officer of the DWAC, Luiz Felipe de Orleans y Bragança, is a Brazilian congressman, a confidant of President Jair Bolsonaro and a member of the former ruling family of the Brazilian empire, which still claims the throne, which was abolished in 1889. But in a referendum in 1993 Only 13.4 percent of Brazilians voted in favor of restoring the monarchy.

Beta test next month

Truth Social should start as a beta test in November and be widely available in early 2022. According to its own name, Truth Social is a platform that “allows open, free and honest global conversations without discrimination against political ideology.”

Trump is known to feel unfairly treated by the social media companies that made his rise to the presidency possible in the first place. “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge Twitter presence, but the United States’ favorite president has been silenced,” Trump said in a press release.

“Truth Social” is not strict about freedom of expression

However, there does not seem to be a completely absolute concept of freedom of expression in “social truth”. The Terms of Use prohibit, for example, the “downgrading” of the platform. If Twitter bans all users who talk badly about the platform, it will be pretty empty there.

Trump’s ambitions do not end with the Twitter version. With a video streaming service and podcast company, he wants to take on Netflix, Disney and CNN as the next step. In the long term, TMTG also believes it can compete with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft with its own cloud offerings. It remains to be seen soon whether Trump will be more successful with him than Trump Shuttle, Trump Steak or Trump Vodka.