Donald Trump’s social media platform faces financial crisis, modest follow-up

Donald Trump’s account on Truth Social has 3.91 million followers.

Washington:

Signs are mounting that Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social is in financial trouble, only a modest six months after it launched.

Fox Business Network reported Thursday that the platform has withheld payments to the company that hosts it, RightForge, and owed $1.6 million.

Neither the platform’s parent company Trump Media & Technology Group nor RightForge responded to AFP requests for comment.

Meanwhile the parent company’s merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp — a blanc check company created specifically to perform a merger — isn’t even 10 months after the announcement that it would happen. This fusion is about to bring in fresh funding for the Trump platform.

DWAC on Thursday published a call for a special shareholders’ meeting on September 6 asking investors to approve a one-year delay to execute the merger until September 8 of 2023.

Without a favorable vote for expansion, the Blank Check company said it would be forced to dissolve.

Financial data published Thursday said that as of the end of June, DWAC had only $3,000 in cash.

Truth Social bills itself as Trump’s answer to platforms such as Twitter, which the former president used as a loud political bullhorn until he was arrested in January 2021 after a mob attacking the US Capitol. It was not taken out.

But six months later it’s ranked 30th in Apple’s ranking of downloaded social media apps on the iPhone.

The Statista data base says Truth Social is downloaded only 50,000 times per week.

Trump’s account on Truth Social has 3.91 million followers; He had 79.5 million on Twitter when he was booted.

Shares of DWAC are down 71 percent since reaching their peak in early March.

(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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