Trump Gets More Terrible News—This Time, From Truth Social

Donald Trump’s social media venture is losing users every month, hurting his bottom line and possibly showing that his rhetoric is losing appeal even among his own base.

The Guardian spoke to a right-wing media analyst, Howard Polskin, who said that Truth Social had only 2.11 million unique users in June, a decline of 38 percent from one year ago.

“The diminishing audience levels for Truth Social suggest a rejection of the harsh rhetoric expressed by the ex-president and his political allies that is one of the hallmarks of the two-year-old platform,” Ploskin said.

Trump Media & Technology, the parent company of Truth Social, had experienced a jump in its stock price of $46 per share after a gunman tried to kill Trump earlier this month. But those gains appear to have been short-lived, as the stock dropped to about $29 per share Wednesday. Both numbers are nowhere near the peak price this year, which was close to $72 per share in March after its initial public offering.

The venture was supposed to be Trump’s cash cow, as the former president and convicted felon owns 60 percent of the company. But a series of setbacks since launching have ruined Trump’s financial fail-safe. The company had a net loss of $58.2 million in 2023, numbers that had to be reaudited after its accounting firm was charged with “massive fraud” and subsequently barred from ever serving as accountants again. The company lost an astonishing $327.6 million last quarter, only bringing in $770,500 in revenue.

Trump can’t brag his way out of Trump Media’s declining stock value, as pumping up the stock is illegal. He can’t try to dump the stock until September without board approval, either, and while he’s been given a reprieve from his legal cases by the Supreme Court, he still has legal bills to pay. But all he can do is watch Trump Media’s stock price continue to go nowhere, or come up with another grift with which he can fleece his supporters.

Donald Trump doubled down on a frightening campaign promise Wednesday.

While at the National Association of Black Journalists’ conference in Chicago, Trump was asked if he would pardon rioters who assaulted police officers during the January 6 insurrection.

“Oh, absolutely I would,” Trump replied while interrupting the moderators. “If they are innocent, I would pardon them.”

“They’ve been convicted,” Rachel Scott, senior congressional correspondent for ABC News, quickly clarified, to which the crowd interrupted in laughter.

Trump previously has called the violent insurrectionists “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.” He has promised several times over to “free” the rioters, despite saying on the day after the Capitol attack that “those who broke the law” would “pay.”

But he changed tune just a year later. “We’ll be looking very, very seriously at full pardons,” Trump said in 2022. “I mean full pardons with an apology to many.”

At Wednesday’s event, Trump tried to redirect the conversation to left-wing rioters in Minneapolis and Seattle while justifying the violence of January 6. When pressed by Scott about the acts of individuals pummeling police officers in what was likely the largest single-day assault on law enforcement, Trump justified the insurrectionists’ actions by simply saying the officers “shot a young lady in the face.”

Donald Trump made an outlandish claim Wednesday that Vice President Kamala Harris had failed the bar exam, while challenging her to take a cognitive test.

During an interview at the convention for the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump responded to a question from Semafor’s political reporter Kadia Goba, who asked if he would be willing to take a cognitive exam.

“I would love to do it,” Trump said, brushing past Goba’s follow-up about releasing the results. Instead, Trump said he had pushed to take a cognitive test with Joe Biden, and said the same offer applied to his new, far younger opponent.

“I would do it with her also. You know what? She failed her law exam, she didn’t pass her law exam, so maybe she wouldn’t pass the cognitive test,” Trump said shrugging.

The audience instantly burst into noisy chatter. “Oh—” someone said into the microphone, cringing at the outrageous claim. Another person went “pfft” into the microphone.

“Are you saying she wouldn’t pass?” asked ABC News’s senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, whom Trump repeatedly scolded throughout the interview.

“I’m just giving you the facts,” Trump insisted. “She didn’t pass her bar exam. And she didn’t think she would pass it, and she didn’t think she was gonna ever pass it. And I don’t know what happened, maybe she passed it.”

Scott asserted, as the president spoke over her, that Harris had, of course, passed the bar. That much can be assumed from someone who served as the Los Angeles County district attorney and attorney general of California.

Donald Trump addressed a panel at the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday where he was asked to explain his earlier words about “Black jobs.” His answer didn’t clear anything up.

Trump was initially asked by Fox News’s Harris Faulkner, who sat on the panel along with Rachel Scott of ABC News and Kadia Goba of Semafor, what his message was at the event. He began by talking about the so-called crisis at the U.S. southern border.

“A lot of the journalists in this room I know and I have great respect for, a lot of the journalists in this room are Black,” Trump said, drawing laughter from the audience. “I will tell you that coming from the border are millions and millions of people that happen to be taking Black jobs.”

“What exactly is a Black job, sir?” Scott asked him.

“A Black job is anybody that has a job. That’s what it is. Anybody that has a job,” Trump said to more laughter from the audience. “They’re taking the employment away from Black people.”

Trump initially used the phrase during the first presidential debate in June and was heavily criticized, with many people asking what a “Black job” is and what he meant. Several Black politicians posted on social media at the time highlighting their work.

Given an opportunity by Black journalists with a largely Black audience Wednesday, Trump didn’t clarify anything. His campaign has made repeated efforts to draw in Black voters, only for those efforts to seemingly fail “bigly,” according to recent polls. This is partly because Trump’s campaign has also included some not-so-subtle racist messages, including his vow to fight “anti-white” racism, his pledge to “indemnify all police officers and law enforcement officials” if he’s reelected, his attacks on Black prosecutors, and his defense of “very fine” neo-Nazis.

Even before he entered politics, Trump didn’t have a good record on race. He and his father were sued for housing discrimination back in the 1970s, and while he hosted NBC’s The Apprentice, he allegedly dropped the n-word and refused to hire Kwame Jackson, the Black finalist on the show’s first season. However Trump’s appearance at the NABJ’s convention Wednesday was going to go, it could never have erased his racist past.

The United Auto Workers announced Wednesday that their union would endorse Kamala Harris for president.

The union’s executive board came to the decision because of “the Biden-Harris administration’s proven track record of standing with the UAW and delivering major gains for the working class,” according to a press release from the union.

“Our job in this election is to defeat Donald Trump and elect Kamala Harris to build on her proven track record of delivering for the working class,” said UAW President Shawn Fain in the statement. “We stand at a crossroads in this country. We can put a billionaire back in office who stands against everything our union stands for, or we can elect Kamala Harris who will stand shoulder to shoulder with us in our war on corporate greed.”

Following President Joe Biden’s endorsement of Harris, many unions, including the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, or IBEW, and the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, rushed to back Harris. But the UAW held off.

Fain even took heat when he appeared on MSNBC to say his union was “not going to rush” its Harris endorsement without the approval of the union members. The union had previously endorsed Biden in January.

In the UAW’s announcement, the union cited Harris’s commitment to workers on the picket line and in her voting records. “Kamala Harris walked the picket line with striking autoworkers in 2019, has taken on corporate price-gouging and profiteering, and has spoken out and voted against unfair trade deals that hurt the American worker like NAFTA and NAFTA 2.0, the USMCA,” the statement said.

Harris will head to Detroit on August 7 to rally with UAW members and Michigan voters. During that time, she will also meet directly with union members about the issues facing Michigan workers.

“This campaign is bringing together people from all walks of life, building a movement that can defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box,” said Fain. “For our one million active and retired members, the choice is clear: We will elect Kamala Harris to be our next President this November.”