Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he’s ‘the only person in America’ equipped to challenge Big Tech ‘censorship’ – as shares in the company behind his new social media venture Truth Social tumbled for the second day.
He criticized ‘wildly aggressive’ censorship on social media platforms and called ‘cancel culture’ un-American.
Through his new company, Trump Media & Technology Group, the ex-president made a lengthy statement outlining why he was launching a social media site, which he said was ‘about saving our country.’
Trump stated that he realized that if free speech was to be restored, a major new platform must be created with an unwavering commitment to vigorous debate from all sides.
He stated that any plan that is ‘totally dependent on Big Tech’s infrastructure would be expensive and would need to rapidly attract millions of users, welcoming not just Republicans but also Independents and Democrats.
‘It’s a tremendously difficult set of challenges—and I realized I might be the only person in America with the megaphone, the resources, the experience, and the desire to make it all happen,’ he said.
‘So with the same “can-do” spirit that has always allowed Americans to persevere, that is exactly what I am doing.’
Trump accused Big Tech leaders and their ‘oligarchy’ behavior. He vowed to open his new social media site to all political affiliations
However, his company may have experienced financial difficulties when the firm which plans to list it publicly saw its market value drop by more 19 percent on Tuesday afternoon
He railed against instances alleged Big Tech censorship. This included his own removal from Facebook and Twitter at hands of “a small oligarchy tech titans” as well as Twitter blocking a report by the New York Post on Hunter Biden’s computer just weeks before Election Day.
‘We’ve seen vital reporting about Joe and Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings—information that voters needed and deserved to hear—ruthlessly suppressed and erased from the internet just weeks before a presidential election. And as everyone knows, we’ve seen a sitting president of the United States effectively silenced by a small oligarchy of tech titans and “mainstream” media corporations,’ Trump said.
Trump went further and blamed “cancel culture” for the many crises Joe Biden has experienced under his presidency.
‘Most obvious are the many catastrophes unfolding under the current administration: the calamitous Afghanistan withdrawal, the disaster at the Southern Border, runaway inflation, and the multi-trillion-dollar socialist spending nightmare, just to name a few,’ he said.
Trump spoke with an unusually inclusive tone. He pledged that his site would be home for ‘people from all political stripes and all other viewpoints to come and take part once again in the great American discussion’. It would also be ‘as vibrant, vibrant, lively, and diverse as America itself’.
Trump’s social media company, Truth Social, is set to launch widely in the early 2022
Trump Media & Technology Group, the launchpad for Truth Social, aims to also roll out a streaming service, web services and payment processing companies, according to the ex-president.
Trump Media & Technology Group has no revenue or tested business plan but has raised nearly $300 million in investor cash.
However, the company has experienced early turbulence as stocks in Digital World Acquisition Corp. DWAC, the company that is publicly listing Trump’s business on the stock exchange, plunged more than 19% since the start of the trading day. This after they had risen by more than 800% last week.
The shares were down less than 11 percent on Monday. This was the day short-seller Iceberg Research stated it was betting against company.
After hitting a session high at $175, the stock rose 107% to $94.20 on Friday. It had risen 356.8 % on Thursday. Some market experts compared trading in DWAC with a meme-stock trading frenzy initiated by WallStreetBets, a Reddit message board.
Again, the forum was filled with posts celebrating wins as well as lamenting losses due to stock’s wild swings on Thursday and Friday. Many thanked Daddy Trump, while others mocked Joe Biden with an alt-right meme titled “Let’s Go Brandon.”
But on Monday a company called Iceberg Research announced it was betting against DWAC’s massive surge.
“Now that the initial excitement is over, we see only risks in the near future for investors,” he said. Based on Trump’s track record, renegotiation at the current price is likely to keep him more of the merged firm,’ the company posted on twitter.
Truth Social had a rough start last week, when its beta site was hacked just hours after it was launched.
Tech reporters were able, despite the URL not being publicly available, to locate the site and set up mock accounts for Trump and Mike Pence.
Trump, who is chairman of Trump Media & Technology Group, had announced the site would launch in early 2022.
The public URL was quickly removed and fake accounts were promptly blocked.
Drew Harwell, Washington Post reporter, said that pranksters also created a fake Trump account to post the meme image titled ‘pig poop balls’.
Trump’s accusations of Big Tech censorship escalated early in the year, after he was kicked off Facebook and Twitter following his Capitol riot.
The TRUTH social app is available for preorder on the Apple Appstore. There are plans to launch a beta version of the app for testers in November.
On Trump Media & Technology Group’s website, the company outlines its goal to ‘create a media powerhouse to rival the liberal media consortium and fight back against the Big Tech companies of Silicon Valley.’
It seeks to disrupt a wide range of media businesses, including Google, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Netflix.
Trump plans to launch TMTG+, an on-demand streaming service that promises to offer ‘non-woke entertainment’.
The company’s 22-page presentation is publicly available on its website. It explains why the circumstances are right for the brand, but does not detail how it intends that it will achieve those ambitious goals.
Other stocks that are linked to the former Republican President also fell on Tuesday. Phunware, which was hired by Trump’s 2020 Presidential campaign to build a smartphone app, recently fell 31.7 per cent to 4.89. It filed for a $48.5million at-the-market equity program.