No, Donald Trump isn’t going to magically pay off his verdicts with $4 billion from a Truth Social merger

| 8:24 pm EST February 18, 2024
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

Immediately after Donald Trump lost roughly half a billion dollars (including interest) in his New York civil fraud trial, the media reported that Trump was about to make $4 billion from a Truth Social merger. The implication was that this would bail him out. This set off a wave of confusion and angst across social media. But it’s not a real thing.

Yes, there is a Truth Social merger playing out. Yes, Trump’s share of the deal is supposedly worth $4 billion on paper, according to the people doing the deal. But no, Trump is not going to make $4 billion in cash and use it to pay off his verdicts.

Even if Truth Social and its parent company were worth that much – and no one believes they are – Trump is still not getting cash in the deal. Nor can he turn his stake into cash. This merger puts Trump zero dollars closer to paying his verdicts.

You have to remember that this isn’t a movie. The villain doesn’t magically trip over billions of dollars an hour after losing everything. Real life doesn’t work that way.

Moreover, given the timing, you have to ask who fed the story to the media on Friday afternoon that Trump had supposedly just made $4 billion. Did Trump’s own people feed this misleading story to the media in order to make it look like Trump isn’t broke after all? If so, when is the media going to stop being complicit in this kind of crap?

In any case, now more than ever, there simply are no magic wands for saving Donald Trump from financial collapse. His supporters’ crowdsourcing effort came up laughably short. He’s not going to get there by hawking sneakers. And you can’t pay off cash penalties in a court verdict by moving funny money around on paper, and then leaking to the media that the scrap of paper is supposedly worth $4 billion.

As always, your job as a consumer of political news is to not fall for this kind of thing. Does it sound realistic to you that an hour after Donald Trump got wiped out financially, he suddenly became $4 billion richer from a deal involving a social network that everyone thinks is worthless? If you’re reading a news story and it sounds like it can’t possibly be real, it probably isn’t. Scrutinize first, react emotionally second. You’ll always be glad you did.