When It Comes To Truth Social, (Most) Republicans In Congress Aren’t Buying What Trump’s Selling

Forbes

Many Republicans in Congress have no problem giving Donald Trump their political support or spending donor money at his hotels, golf clubs and resorts. But when it comes to using their own funds to back his latest venture, Trump Media & Technology Group, barely any of them want anything to do with it.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2024/04/07/when-it-comes-to-truth-social-republicans-in-congress-arent-buying-what-trumps-selling/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00 Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is my Forbes

00:07 colleague, staff writer Zach Everson. Zach, thanks so much for joining me.

00:12 Thanks for having me on again, Brittany.

00:14 Of course, as we all know, Donald Trump is the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and

00:19 his party has largely coalesced around him in terms of support. But you're reporting

00:24 that not many are backing his latest venture. Only two members of his own party who are

00:29 lawmakers bought shares of Digital World, the SPAC that merged with Truth Social's

00:33 parent company. So what can you tell us?

00:36 Yeah, this was really surprising. Shortly after the merger went through and Trump media

00:42 started trading on the stock market, I was curious how many members of Congress own this?

00:47 So they do have to file financial disclosures that information is there. It's a little bit

00:51 tough to find to look up by a particular stock, but there are a bunch of companies out there

00:56 that will put this on the Web where they will go through and pull out all the data and you

01:00 can look through them. So I went to those websites. I typed in Digital World Acquisition

01:04 Corp. It's symbol DWAC. And I found just two members of Congress who would would purchase

01:09 it.

01:11 And who are these members of Congress?

01:14 They are representative Larry Bouchon of Indiana, who I'm sure most people have not heard of.

01:19 And the other one is representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I suspect most people watching

01:24 this have heard of.

01:25 So let's start with her. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene did buy some stock in Digital

01:30 World. How much and when?

01:34 It was somewhere between 15 and 50 thousand dollars worth of shares. Lawmakers are not

01:39 required to give an exact amount. They just get to report in these broad ranges. So that's

01:45 all we know is between 15 and 50 thousand. And in her case, it's even tougher to figure

01:49 out exactly how much she has because the stock swung wildly on the day she purchased it.

01:54 She purchased it in October 2021, two days after the merger plan was announced. And that

02:00 day it swung anywhere from sixty seven dollars and ninety six cents to one hundred and seventy

02:04 five dollars. So by my math, she could have purchased anywhere from eighty five to seven

02:09 hundred thirty five shares, which is a giant swing.

02:13 That is a huge increment right there of shares. What are they worth today?

02:21 Not much compared to what she spent them on. Last we knew, so what she reported them at

02:25 the end of twenty twenty one on her annual financial disclosure, they were worth just

02:30 a thousand to fifteen thousand dollars. By my math, the lowest they could be worth right

02:35 now would be about twelve hundred dollars. They could be worth a little more. Again,

02:40 we don't know exactly what the how many shares she purchased.

02:45 And does she still have them today?

02:48 It appears she does not. They did not show up on her twenty twenty two financial disclosure.

02:54 We the deadline for twenty twenty three financial disclosures is not until next month and usually

02:59 they get an extension till August anyway. So it'll be a few months before we can verify

03:03 it there. But it was not on the twenty twenty two disclosure. I reached out to her staff.

03:09 Her spokesperson, Nick Dyer, told me that we filed everything correctly. He would not

03:13 give me any explanation as to what may have happened to the stock. But he said everything

03:16 was filed above board. Looking at it, I think there are two possible explanations of why

03:22 the shares weren't reported. Number one, if they're below a thousand dollars, they don't

03:27 need to report them. Now, again, that seems unlikely because by my math, they should have

03:31 been worth a minimum of twelve hundred dollars. So they should have had to be reported there.

03:36 The other option is that lawmakers do not have to report stock transfers between family

03:42 members and she possibly could have given these stocks to a family member. The year

03:48 in twenty twenty two, the year they disappeared from her financial disclosures, she got divorced.

03:53 She and her husband, the settlement agreement was was signed before the divorce was final,

03:59 meaning they still would have been family members when any sort of stock transfer happened.

04:04 The shares were originally even purchased in a joint account. And Representative Green

04:09 seems to flick at this possibility in the comments section of her financial disclosure,

04:15 where she mentions some stocks that she'd reported owning previously. She doesn't have

04:19 any more due to a change in her marital situation. And in fact, her financial disclosure in twenty

04:23 twenty two was just six pages in twenty sixteen. It had been our senior twenty twenty one.

04:29 It had been 16 pages. So clearly digital world shares are not the only one to have disappeared

04:35 from her portfolio. So let's now talk about the other member of Congress who bought shares

04:40 of Digital World, and that is Congressman Larry Bouchon. And as you said earlier, he

04:45 is the lesser known member of Congress. Is he anything or are his politics rather anything

04:51 like Marjorie Taylor's green? Is he far right? Is he a firebrand in the party? Yeah, I had

04:57 to look him up, actually. Not somebody I'm familiar with. And he certainly has had pro

05:03 Trump stances. But what really stood out here was that he did criticize Trump for the January

05:08 6 rally and said that he was part of the reason he was part of the reason for inciting it.

05:13 And he's also went on record saying he didn't think Trump was going to be the GOP nominee.

05:17 Now, that obviously didn't pan out, but he's not as pro Trump as you would possibly expect

05:22 from just the other member of Congress to buy shares in Digital World. So how many shares

05:28 did he buy? His his transactions were a lot more straightforward. He purchased a thousand

05:34 to fifteen thousand dollars worth of shares four days after the stock came out. As of

05:38 his last financial disclosure that's been made public. Twenty twenty two. He has the

05:42 same amount, a thousand to fifteen thousand dollars worth of shares, and he's holding

05:46 them in his IRA. But what's interesting here, it was actually the first stock transaction

05:51 for an individual stock that he's reported making since 2013 when he showed it sold the

05:57 shares in Apple. And it's actually the only individual stock that he owns. So, you know,

06:02 this certainly seems like he went out of his way to purchase shares in Digital World and

06:06 it's not part of his typical investing strategy. Is there any indication of why it appears

06:12 that he went out of his way here? No, I reached out to his staff for an explanation of this

06:18 was one of the questions I asked and they didn't get back to me. So once Trump Media

06:23 and Technology Group went public last month, did any member of Congress buy shares of that?

06:30 We're going to have to wait and see on that. Very interesting to see if that interesting

06:34 to see if that happened once the merger went through. But members of Congress have 45 days

06:39 to legally report their stock transactions, and a lot of them take longer than that and

06:44 get off with a slap in the wrist for it. So it's going to be a little bit until we know

06:48 for sure if anyone has bought it since it started trading under the symbols DJT. But

06:53 I will certainly be looking for that. And once you look for it, once you find out if

06:58 anyone did, I'm sure you will be back on to discuss. Zach Everson, thanks so much for

07:03 joining me. Thanks for having me.

07:05 Thank you.

07:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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