Trump takes on social media giants with app
THE former United States president Donald Trump is launching a new media company with will have its own social media platform.
The announcement came nine months after Trump was expelled from many social media channels for his role in inciting a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington DC in January, following his defeat to Joe Biden in last year’s presidential election.
Mr Trump says his goal in launching the Trump Media & Technology Group and its TRUTH Social app is to create a rival to the ‘Big Tech’ companies that have shut him out of social media and have denied him the megaphone that was paramount to his national rise.
The new venture announced it had been created through a merger of merger of the Trump Media and Technology Group with Miamibased Digital World Acquisition Corporation, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
In a statement released to the traditional media by both companies, the 75-year-old said: “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favourite American president has been silenced. This is unacceptable.”
The statement said the merged firm is seeking to become a publicly listed company. Publicly traded companies are designed to list the shares of a private company more quickly than a traditional initial public offering. In practice, that means the SPAC acquires a private firm and then changes its name and other details to those of the acquired firm.
SPACs pay for their acquisitions with cash provided by investors who bought into the SPAC’s initial public offering.
Mr Trump has spoken about launching his own social media site since he was barred from Twitter and Facebook. An earlier effort to launch a blog on his existing website was abandoned after the page drew a dismal number of views.
In addition to the app, which is expected to soft-launch next month, with a nationwide roll-out next year, the company says it is planning a video-on-demand service dubbed TMTG+ that will feature entertainment programming, news and podcasts. It says it has raised roughly £212 million in cash, which it will use to grow its ventures.