While former president Donald Trump's efforts to get reelected next year are well underway, his social media business Truth Social is running into yuge trouble.
As the Washington Post reports, the platform is burning through tens of millions of dollars and shedding users, leaving its future anything but certain.
Accountants at Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the former president's startup behind Truth Social, raised concerns in a document recently filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by investment partner Digital World Acquisiton, painting a dire picture of Trumps's far-right Twitter clone.
"TMTG has suffered negative cash flows and recurring losses from operations that raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern," the document reads.
The numbers are not confidence-inspiring. Trump Media lost $22.9 in the first half of 2023 alone, netting just under a tenth of that in net sales over the same period, according to the document.
Over the less than two years it's been in operation, Truth Social has lost $73 million.
The company is now eyeing a proposed merger with Digital World, which could effectively bail out the social media network, at least for now, by giving it access to Digital World's $300 million in available funds.
In the document, a defiant TMTG CEO Devin Nunes — yes, that Devin Nunes — called the document a "monumental milestone toward" the merger, arguing that Truth Social still aims to "become the centerpiece of a movement, as well as a method for Americans to invest in their freedom."
Despite Nunes' hubris, the document is a sobering account of the platform's recent financial failures, burning a big hole in the former president's business.
And in many ways, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise. The news comes amid several ongoing criminal investigations targeting Trump, including accounts of fraud, class action lawsuits against his family's corporation, and counts of incitement for the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
Truth Social was created roughly a month after the insurrection, when Trump was dumped by several mainstream social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook.
It claims to encourage "an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating on the basis of political ideology." Trump even went as far as to argue it would eventually compete with the likes of Disney Plus and Netflix.
In practice, the platform has become a cesspool of misinformation, conspiracy theories, scams, and ads for miracle cures.
The platform has also struggled to attract new users and had an estimated 607,000 monthly users as of July, according to data from Similarweb. That's compared to X-formerly-Twitter's hundreds of millions of daily active users and Facebook's three billion monthly active users.
In August, Trump returned to X for the first time since being suspended last year, posting a picture of his own mugshot. But considering his radio silence since then, it's clear he hasn't given up on Truth Social just yet.
But whether that'll end up being a losing bet considering the platform's dire financial situation remains to be seen. Even X owner Elon Musk's social media platform isn't looking too hot right now.
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