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A Deeply Fractured US

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Just circling back on this one because it’s timely: Trump Media Group had some pretty ugly financials released today, and the stock completely shit itself, down 21% to close at $48.66, and has dropped further in after hours trading. That billion dollars in value gain is gone.

As a few of us said: don’t get too hot and heavy to sing a stock’s praises fresh out of IPO. Give it time to revert to what its fundamentals support. Trump as a brand will only be worth so much when people have to actually pay to have skin in the game.


I think there's an assumption you may have made here that the price drop is just normal IPO overhyping, and not some China-based money laundering. How topical:

Trump’s new social media backer tied to China lifestyle venture


I don't think the extent of this will be knowable from open source information, but I'm confident that if this gets formally investigated then Majorie Taylor Greene will show pictures of Hunter Biden's penis in congress again to distract.
 
I think there's an assumption you may have made here that the price drop is just normal IPO overhyping, and not some China-based money laundering. How topical:

Trump’s new social media backer tied to China lifestyle venture


I don't think the extent of this will be knowable from open source information, but I'm confident that if this gets formally investigated then Majorie Taylor Greene will show pictures of Hunter Biden's penis in congress again to distract.
I’m not assuming anything, and on the contrary I believe this stock will have a high risk of manipulation. Were it a normal stock I’d have loved to be able to short the heck out of it, but I won’t touch this one with a ten foot pole under any circumstances. I’ve been burned playing in a resource sector that got manipulated by a Chine rug pull before.
 
I think there's an assumption you may have made here that the price drop is just normal IPO overhyping, and not some China-based money laundering. How topical:

Trump’s new social media backer tied to China lifestyle venture


I don't think the extent of this will be knowable from open source information, but I'm confident that if this gets formally investigated then Majorie Taylor Greene will show pictures of Hunter Biden's penis in congress again to distract.

So Conservatives should be concerned that Trump’s social media outlet has a CCP connection, right?

Right?
 
Just circling back on this one because it’s timely: Trump Media Group had some pretty ugly financials released today, and the stock completely shit itself, down 21% to close at $48.66, and has dropped further in after hours trading. That billion dollars in value gain is gone.

As a few of us said: don’t get too hot and heavy to sing a stock’s praises fresh out of IPO. Give it time to revert to what its fundamentals support. Trump as a brand will only be worth so much when people have to actually pay to have skin in the game.


Woah, woah, woah…red’s bad?
1712026068669.jpeg
 
So Conservatives should be concerned that Trump’s social media outlet has a CCP connection, right?

Right?
So Conservatives should be concerned that Trump’s social media outlet has a CCP connection, right?

Right?
Yes, but they're screwed. It's either vote for the guy that might have a connection to Chinese money, or vote for the guy that might have a connection to Chinese money.
 
I think there's an assumption you may have made here that the price drop is just normal IPO overhyping, and not some China-based money laundering. How topical:

Trump’s new social media backer tied to China lifestyle venture


I don't think the extent of this will be knowable from open source information, but I'm confident that if this gets formally investigated then Majorie Taylor Greene will show pictures of Hunter Biden's penis in congress again to distract.
Any recent stories? These are both from October 22 2021.
 
Any recent stories? These are both from October 22 2021.
He (Patrick Orlando) was fired from being CEO of the DWAC holding company a year ago as they were struggling to merge with the Trump Media company, but he remains CEO of his own investment firm, ARC Global Investments. In that capacity he owns about 6.9% of DJT stock and is the largest minority investor after Trump’s own controlling interest. That’s from the FEC IPO filings for DJT that were released yesterday and which cratered the share price.

There is drama between Orlando and the other parties; he sued to block the merger over concerns of dilution.

Anyway, another amusing sideshow. As stated, from a business standpoint, Trump Media / Truth Social is not, thus far, shaping up to be a particularly successful venture or to offer much shareholder value. It’ll remain volatile, and we’ll likely see a continued decline in the long term with the occasional rally (or dead cat bounce) mixed in.
 
On the subject of Chinese info ops targeting US political divisions, since we were on that subject yesterday, here’s an interesting, slightly longer read on some recent research unearthing some of this:


BLUF, historically most CCP English language social media ops were crap, but there’s a (so far) small subset that’s been increasing in quality and engagement by crafting seemingly authentic American MAGA personas. Doesn’t mean support for Trump is the objective; just that it’s a useful wedge.
 
On the subject of Chinese info ops targeting US political divisions, since we were on that subject yesterday, here’s an interesting, slightly longer read on some recent research unearthing some of this:


BLUF, historically most CCP English language social media ops were crap, but there’s a (so far) small subset that’s been increasing in quality and engagement by crafting seemingly authentic American MAGA personas. Doesn’t mean support for Trump is the objective; just that it’s a useful wedge.

I have seen some stuff that's created with AI, and you'd think it was real if it wasn't so off the wall.

If they can get really tuned up with AI and as AI improves this could be very dangerous. I hope we have a plan and or people ready to do this stuff in return at our adversaries.
 
A painfully familiar theme ...

Joe Biden’s terrible Easter

Among the many political advantages of the presidency, surely one is the ability to extend warm wishes to Christians, Jews and Muslims on their holidays. It’s a golden opportunity to invite a few for pictures at the White House and explain how much the holiday has always meant to you. Easy-peasy. For a Catholic president such as Joe Biden, expressing solidarity with co-religionists on Easter ought to be a well-practiced routine.

Which voter group does the White House think its exclusionary message appeals to?

It took genuine incompetence and obtuseness for the Biden White House to muck up the chance to reach out to fellow Christians on the holiest day of their calendar. But that’s exactly what the White House did on Sunday – Easter Day – by stressing its strong backing for Transgender Day of Visibility. All they had to say was, ‘We love trans people and we will celebrate Visibility Day on Monday this year.’ But noooooooo. It’s hard to think of a more obvious train wreck a-comin’. But this White House ignored the flashing red lights, drove right onto the tracks and parked.

Take the traditional White House Easter Egg Roll. The West Wing’s Ralph Wiggins Brain Trust decided to prohibit any religious symbols on the eggs, even though the whole point of the holiday is to celebrate religious renewal, specifically Christian renewal, as symbolised by eggs. Which voter group does the White House think its exclusionary message appeals to?

The answer to that Daily Double is ‘strongly ideological progressives.’ These days, they are the very heart of the Democratic Party. What is so striking is that this White House is perfectly willing to alienate moderate, centrist voters – the ones needed to win in November – to cosy up to that activist base. Republicans do the same thing when they adopt positions like the six-week ban on abortion, signed into law by Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Cater to the hardcore base. Risk alienating everyone else.

Or take Biden’s decision to go to a fancy, high-profile fundraiser at the Rockefeller Center and skip any effort to comfort or even sympathise with the widow of a slain policeman and their young child, mourning after the officer was killed in cold blood while performing his duty. Even Al Sharpton criticised that obvious blunder.

Most of these observations have drifted across the conservative media. They have been ignored by the mainstream, naturally, because they would harm the candidate they support. Such is what passes for reporting today.

Still, there is one observation that even conservative critics have overlooked. It is the insular world from which these bad decisions emerge. That is the world in which White House staff and Beltway cognoscenti have been raised and educated. They continue to live in that house of mirrors, which is why they make such obvious blunders. They don’t notice them because, in their self-enclosed world, those aren’t blunders at all.

The ‘New’ Democratic Party’s ignorance of ordinary voters’ views and feelings, indeed their sneering contempt for them, is a direct result of an educated elite that has been divorced from middle-income voters for their entire lives. They were raised in high-income postcodes, separated from the unwashed masses. They support those masses in principle – let them eat transfer payments – but that is simply their rigid, leftist ideology. They support the masses; it’s the actual people they don’t know. They just read polling data and focus group reports about them.

The progressive brain trust at the heart of the Democratic Party is far removed from the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman or even Lyndon B. Johnson. Today’s party activists went to elite schools where diversity means the children of orthopaedic surgeons of different races, not students with diverse viewpoints or economic backgrounds. After college, they head to top law schools, where uniformity of thought reigns, and then into corporate law firms or hedge funds. The communications staff might have gone to journalism school, worked at a PR firm specialising in green energy and then a lobbying outfit with similar clients. At every stage, conformity of opinion is an absolute requirement for admission, hiring or friendship.

When you recruit your White House staff, communications team and campaign advisors from this shallow pool, filled with Fiji Water, it shouldn’t be a surprise that they choose policies, symbols and PR strategies that only not only fail to connect with ordinary voters, but actually offend them.

That is exactly what the White House has done repeatedly over the past few weeks. Joe Biden may constantly pitch himself as ‘Scranton Joe’, but his White House is Scarsdale and Stanford, not Scranton and Penn State.

Their insularity shows. It is another roadblock on Biden’s rocky path to reelection.

Joe Biden’s terrible Easter | The Spectator
 
It means TDS is a thing.
Or he was feeding the really dumb MAGA folks with some very basic reverse psychology; Trump is a huge fan of brutal dictators who would happily sell Ukraine and NATO allies down the river for Russia, while trying to ease up on the sanctions so he could build a shitty hotel there.
 
A painfully familiar theme ...

Joe Biden’s terrible Easter

Among the many political advantages of the presidency, surely one is the ability to extend warm wishes to Christians, Jews and Muslims on their holidays. It’s a golden opportunity to invite a few for pictures at the White House and explain how much the holiday has always meant to you. Easy-peasy. For a Catholic president such as Joe Biden, expressing solidarity with co-religionists on Easter ought to be a well-practiced routine.

Which voter group does the White House think its exclusionary message appeals to?

It took genuine incompetence and obtuseness for the Biden White House to muck up the chance to reach out to fellow Christians on the holiest day of their calendar. But that’s exactly what the White House did on Sunday – Easter Day – by stressing its strong backing for Transgender Day of Visibility. All they had to say was, ‘We love trans people and we will celebrate Visibility Day on Monday this year.’ But noooooooo. It’s hard to think of a more obvious train wreck a-comin’. But this White House ignored the flashing red lights, drove right onto the tracks and parked.

Take the traditional White House Easter Egg Roll. The West Wing’s Ralph Wiggins Brain Trust decided to prohibit any religious symbols on the eggs, even though the whole point of the holiday is to celebrate religious renewal, specifically Christian renewal, as symbolised by eggs. Which voter group does the White House think its exclusionary message appeals to?

The answer to that Daily Double is ‘strongly ideological progressives.’ These days, they are the very heart of the Democratic Party. What is so striking is that this White House is perfectly willing to alienate moderate, centrist voters – the ones needed to win in November – to cosy up to that activist base. Republicans do the same thing when they adopt positions like the six-week ban on abortion, signed into law by Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Cater to the hardcore base. Risk alienating everyone else.

Or take Biden’s decision to go to a fancy, high-profile fundraiser at the Rockefeller Center and skip any effort to comfort or even sympathise with the widow of a slain policeman and their young child, mourning after the officer was killed in cold blood while performing his duty. Even Al Sharpton criticised that obvious blunder.

Most of these observations have drifted across the conservative media. They have been ignored by the mainstream, naturally, because they would harm the candidate they support. Such is what passes for reporting today.

Still, there is one observation that even conservative critics have overlooked. It is the insular world from which these bad decisions emerge. That is the world in which White House staff and Beltway cognoscenti have been raised and educated. They continue to live in that house of mirrors, which is why they make such obvious blunders. They don’t notice them because, in their self-enclosed world, those aren’t blunders at all.

The ‘New’ Democratic Party’s ignorance of ordinary voters’ views and feelings, indeed their sneering contempt for them, is a direct result of an educated elite that has been divorced from middle-income voters for their entire lives. They were raised in high-income postcodes, separated from the unwashed masses. They support those masses in principle – let them eat transfer payments – but that is simply their rigid, leftist ideology. They support the masses; it’s the actual people they don’t know. They just read polling data and focus group reports about them.

The progressive brain trust at the heart of the Democratic Party is far removed from the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman or even Lyndon B. Johnson. Today’s party activists went to elite schools where diversity means the children of orthopaedic surgeons of different races, not students with diverse viewpoints or economic backgrounds. After college, they head to top law schools, where uniformity of thought reigns, and then into corporate law firms or hedge funds. The communications staff might have gone to journalism school, worked at a PR firm specialising in green energy and then a lobbying outfit with similar clients. At every stage, conformity of opinion is an absolute requirement for admission, hiring or friendship.

When you recruit your White House staff, communications team and campaign advisors from this shallow pool, filled with Fiji Water, it shouldn’t be a surprise that they choose policies, symbols and PR strategies that only not only fail to connect with ordinary voters, but actually offend them.

That is exactly what the White House has done repeatedly over the past few weeks. Joe Biden may constantly pitch himself as ‘Scranton Joe’, but his White House is Scarsdale and Stanford, not Scranton and Penn State.

Their insularity shows. It is another roadblock on Biden’s rocky path to reelection.

Joe Biden’s terrible Easter | The Spectator
Sounds like they’re taking lessons from their northern neighbors…
 
Or he was feeding the really dumb MAGA folks with some very basic reverse psychology; Trump is a huge fan of brutal dictators who would happily sell Ukraine and NATO allies down the river for Russia, while trying to ease up on the sanctions so he could build a shitty hotel there.

Ok. If that is what your news is telling you. :ROFLMAO:
 
Or he was feeding the really dumb MAGA folks with some very basic reverse psychology; Trump is a huge fan of brutal dictators who would happily sell Ukraine and NATO allies down the river for Russia, while trying to ease up on the sanctions so he could build a shitty hotel there.
"Happily sell" == "requires more contribution from"?

Omitting context undermines the credibility of a claim. Besides, the fiscal writing is on the wall: the US is going to have to start making some difficult spending choices soon, and unless the country is back in the hands of the neo-cons, military spending will be on the table.
 
Or take Biden’s decision to go to a fancy, high-profile fundraiser at the Rockefeller Center and skip any effort to comfort or even sympathise with the widow of a slain policeman and their young child, mourning after the officer was killed in cold blood while performing his duty. Even Al Sharpton criticised that obvious blunder.
I don't really understand this one. 47 police officers were killed by gunfire in 2023. Was Biden suppose to attend everyone of those funerals? Or was it because this officer was deliberately murdered, vice being killed in a shootout?
 
"Happily sell" == "requires more contribution from"?

Omitting context undermines the credibility of a claim. Besides, the fiscal writing is on the wall: the US is going to have to start making some difficult spending choices soon, and unless the country is back in the hands of the neo-cons, military spending will be on the table.
US Congress passed a law saying the President can't withdraw them from NATO unilaterally without approval because they are legitimately concerned about him doing it if re-elected, and Trump said he wouldn't respond to an Article 5 is Russia invaded NATO countries in Europe if they weren't meeting their obligation.

Ukraine is a really cheap and effective proxy war against Russia, who is definitely not a friend to America, and a good way to get rid of old stock while putting money in the pockets of all the big defence contractors who pay big dollars to the Congress in lobbying, so strange that the Tea Party types (who suck on the lobbying money as hard as anyone else) are against that in a pro-America and want to simp for Russia.

Actively encouraging Russia to attack your allies, which could escalate to a global nuclear conflict is a pretty irresponsible stance, and I think he's too stupid to say something like that to get them to start spending. It's not like Sweden, Finland or others haven't been heavily preparing for this for a long time.
 
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