Trump Loses $1 Billion in Net Worth as Short Sellers Bet DJT Stock Will Collapse: A Closer Look

Donald Trump's net worth plunged

by more than $1 billion

after the stock price of his struggling social media company

fell by more than 20%

amid huge losses in a legal battle between Trump

and his co-founders,

and now investors are betting millions

that the company will collapse.

For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."

♪♪

Presidents from both parties

love to brag about the success of the stock market.

In fact,

Trump cares so much about the stock market's performance,

he's tried to claim credit for its success

after he left office.

But even his biggest boosters like Fox host Maria Bartiromo

aren't buying it.

-The Biden team can say, well,

if things are so bad, how come the stock market is on a roll?

-Because they think I'm going to be elected.

-You think the stock market's rallying

because people think you'll be elected?

-I do, yeah.

-Even Maria Bartiromo doesn't believe it.

Look at her face.

She's so shocked, she turned into Rudy.

By the way, if you invested $20 in us

using the Rudy Eyes graphic five years ago,

you'd be a millionaire right now.

That's the face you make

when a buddy tells you the Mets are going to win

it all this year.

"You think the Mets are going to win the World Series?"

"I do, yeah. They started 0-5 on purpose,

to lull the rest of the league into a false sense of security.

And then when everyone's guard is down,

they pounce -- and they just lost again.

Oh, [bleep].

It's all part of the plan! [Bleep]."

All presidents do this.

Trump just takes it to absurd extremes,

as he always does.

But the stock market is not the real economy.

For one thing,

the wealthiest 10% of Americans own 93% of the stocks.

Although you don't need a study to tell you that.

Just go to any Manhattan dinner party.

I can't tell you the number of times

I've sat next to someone talking to me

about margin calls and options trading,

and I don't know what the [bleep]

any of those terms mean,

which is why whenever I get invited to a dinner party now,

I always RSVP with a note

that says, "Please sit me next to your dumbest guest."

"Oh, and there's my nametag.

Oh, hello, Mr. Mayor."

"Are you going to eat your roll?

If not, I'm going to take it home in my pocket."

The stock market does not fully reflect the underlying health

of the economy, and there's no better current example of that

than Trump Media and Technology Group,

the parent company of Trump's tiny and struggling

Twitter ripoff, Truth Social.

When the company went public last week,

it soared to shocking highs,

despite the fact that it has lost money and users,

which in turn, massively inflated

Trump's net worth on paper.

-More breaking news tonight involving Donald Trump.

His media company, which of course includes Truth Social,

soaring in its first day of trading on NASDAQ,

surging 56% at one point during trading to $78 a share

before closing at $58.

-Trump now owns 60% of the new Trump media company,

or roughly $78 million a share,

a stake that is, on paper at this hour,

worth $4.6 billion.

-The higher the stock goes,

the higher that Donald Trump's net worth is.

At yesterday's close,

Trump's net worth, according to Bloomberg,

a little over $7 billion.

It went up by $4 billion on Monday alone.

-That's right.

Trump's net worth went up by $4 billion in one day.

Here's actual footage of me waking up to that news.

-He can't keep getting away with this!

-Now, to be clear, that's only on paper.

Those are unrealized gains.

Donald Trump can't spend

or borrow against any of that money yet,

although you know Donald Trump doesn't see it that way.

When Trump heard that his net worth increased by $4 billion,

he immediately ran out, bought a Ferrari,

a Scrooge McDuck money pool, and a beautiful new head of hair.

The only the only way

Trump would admit the money wasn't real is

if Rudy asked Trump to pay his outstanding legal bills.

"I made $4 bil this week, baby."

"That's great boss. Now can you finally pay me?"

"Actually, Rudy, that's just on paper.

Those are unrealized gains

that I legally cannot spend or borrow against

until the six-month lockup period has expired,

or until the board votes to allow me to cash out.

I'm heartbroken, Rudy, I really am."

"Oh, I'll be fine, boss. Seth Meyers gave me his dinner roll."

Again, this is all paper money so far.

It's not real yet.

Just as easily as Trump's net worth went up

and come crashing back down,

which is partially what happened on Monday

when the stock price fell.

-Truth Social hit the NASDAQ last week with a bang,

but now it's taking blows.

The stock, which is listed as DJT,

lost roughly $4 billion in value in its first week of trading.

-The company's stock fell more than 20%,

and Donald Trump's net worth fell more than $1 billion.

-That's right, his net worth fell by $1 billion in one day.

He basically lost the entirety of Taylor Swift's net worth.

And by the way, she got that money.

That's not theoretical.

She can buy private jets with her debit card.

And she made that money from writing and performing,

not from slapping her name on a money-losing Twitter ripoff.

Although, she could definitely do that.

I'd be first in line

to sign up for a new social media app called TayTok.

I do that. I would do that.

So why did the stock suddenly start to tank?

Well, reality probably caught up with it.

The company's value was completely divorced

from its underlying business.

-So here's the latest numbers that are concerning investors.

Truth Social owner Trump Media lost $58 million last year,

and it generated very, very little revenue,

just $4.1 million in revenue.

And some of this is not shocking,

because we know that Truth Social is struggling.

I mean, it is shrinking.

Monthly active US users on iOS and Android

down 51% year over year.

I think all of this just underscores why

there's a lot of warnings out there

about this stock, right?

One professor told me it's a bubble.

Another basically called it a meme stock.

-There's no way Trump knows what a meme stock is.

He probably doesn't even know the word "meme."

"I own it and it has my name in it.

It's a me-me stock."

So the company lost $58 million and more than half of its users.

And yet, when it went public,

it was first valued at over $7 billion.

I'm sure you're asking, how is that possible?

Well, there's an actually perfectly reasonable

explanation, but involves a lot of complex financial jargon

and some very technical, obscure macroeconomic principles

that will take me a long time to explain,

so just do your best to follow along.

Ready?

The stock market is bull[bleep].

[ Laughter ]

[ Cheers and applause ]

By calling it a meme stock,

experts are basically comparing the Trump stock

to GameStop,

a stock whose price gets inflated

beyond its underlying value by online investors.

But in the case of GameStop,

there was at least an actual business.

Here's how one commentator

on the infamous WallStreetBets subreddit

explained the situation.

"If you invest in this on a long enough timeline,

you will lose everything.

If you think Donald Trump is going to create

an income positive social media platform,

you are an absolute [bleep] moron."

Now, in fairness,

that's not just some dude's opinion.

He's quoting the company slogan.

Agree or disagree,

you gotta love the harsh wisdom of Reddit investors.

Reporters and financial experts

in the mainstream media are all carefully parsing their words

and saying stuff like, "The fundamentals of the business

do not support the current market capitalization

of the publicly traded securities."

If the dudes on Reddit ran CNN, the headline would say,

"This [bleep] is worthless, mother[bleep]."

And here's the real tell

that everyone knows Trump's stock is actually worthless.

Investors are betting against it.

"The New York Times" reported this week

that "Traders Are Betting Millions

That Trump Media Will Tumble."

In fact,

the parent company of Truth Social

is a popular target for short sellers.

Short sellers bet that the price of a stock will fall.

They do that by borrowing shares of a company

and selling them into the market,

hoping to buy them back later at a lower price,

before returning the shares to the lender

and pocketing the difference as profit.

Again, there's no way Trump understands any of that.

I guarantee when Trump's aides told him

investors were shorting his stock,

he thought they meant that short people were buying a stock.

"Look, I don't like the man,

but I'll gladly take an investment from Ron DeSantis.

He can keep his earnings in his little white boots.

We love the little, white boots."

And yeah, as if Trump stock needed any more reasons

to go down in flames,

on top of everything else,

it is now the subject of a contentious legal battle

in which Trump is basically trying to kick out

the co-founders of the company

so he can keep the stock all to himself.

-The former president is suing the co-founders of Truth Social

in an effort to prevent them from keeping shares

in the company's stock.

The former president's attorneys claim

that Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss made a series of costly mistakes

that delayed the company from going public.

Trump's legal team asked the judge to strip both men

of their shares in the company.

This after Litinsky and Moss

filed a lawsuit in February claiming that Trump

and other leaders scheme to dilute their shares prior

to a merger, which would allow the company to then go public.

-How many court battles can one person have?

This guy is in court more than this lady.

Here's what happened.

These guys essentially brought the deal to Trump.

They took the company public, and in the process,

they basically dumped a few billion

in paper money into his lap.

And Trump is now thanking them by suing

to take their stock away.

Dude, just take the [bleep] W. Your company is worthless.

This is like Alaska Airlines suing the passenger

who sat next to the open door.

"You should be thanking us for the extra leg room."

The stock market is a casino.

It's not the real economy.

Trump's dumb social media company is just

the latest example of that.

And now investors are betting millions

that the stock will collapse.

It's kind of like that scene from "The Social Network,"

except in this case,

the only thing cooler than Trump losing $1 million

is Trump losing --

-$1 billion.

This has been "A Closer Look."

♪♪

[ Chuckles ] The news, right?

It can make you crazy.

But what if there was something you could watch

that only made me crazy?

Well, there it is. It's called "Corrections."

And it's every week,

where I respond to YouTube commenters

and what they've said I got wrong about each week's show.

Check it out wherever you get your YouTube videos --

so YouTube, where you are right now.

[ Silence ]

[ Scattered laughter ]

[ Scattered laughter ]

I can be here all day.