Devin Nunes is Just Asking Questions

 

Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes says he has hundreds of thousands of smaller MAGA investors in Trump Media, and they are calling him asking why the stock is tanking, so he filed a complaint with the SEC and says Biden is conspiring with Wall Street bankers to screw him. pic.twitter.com/ZxTEmxeN0J

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 20, 2024

Something about Truth Social puts me in one of those "can't place where all the emotion is coming from" moods, somewhat akin to when Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Art Laffer. I guess it's my strong feeling that shitty economics threatens livelihoods and personal savings--it isn't a game. Supply-side economics does not work in practice. It's an upwards transfer of wealth that has led to increased income inequality and which holds back growth because there is no incentivization for long-term investment or worker protections. 

Something about Trump, the man, the myth, the legend, is trapped in a 1980s elephantine "greed is good" vision of worshipping sacred golden calves. He's wealthy, so he is supposed to be a job-creator--look at how he created a job for Devin Nunes, a man so intelligent he sued an internet cow for defamation for linking to true stories like a thin-skinned goober who never heard of the "Streisand effect".  

Trump is like an icon of a different time. "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and all that. That time sucked and the people sucked.  Even Trump's rivals kind of sucked. (Everything was the worst.) 

Anyway, Nunes is looking beyond the Trump Media fundamentals, to blaming the "naked short sellers" for the devaluation of the stock he had to answer for when frankly, the business hadn't done anything yet. (And they will do something--they will be a streaming service for stuff you just won't get anywhere else on the internet, which I promise you is not a thing.)

(Also, too: Does the idea of naked short sellers just conjure a whole other image in your mind than the real thing, or is that just me?) 

He even pissed off Ken Griffen of Citadel, whose spokesperson got real personal and I like that:

“Devin Nunes is the proverbial loser who tries to blame ‘naked short selling’ for his falling stock price,” said a spokesperson for Citadel Securities, underscoring the sharp fall of Trump Media stock since it began public trading with the DJT ticker in late March.

Citadel Securities’ founder and non-executive chairman, Ken Griffin, is a major donor to Republican candidates — among them Nunes, a former GOP congressman whose company owns the Trump Social app.

“Nunes is exactly the type of person Donald Trump would have fired on [The] Apprentice,” said Citadel Securities spokesperson, referring to the former Republican president’s business competition reality TV show.


“If he [Nunes] worked for Citadel Securities, we would fire him, as ability and integrity are at the center of everything we do,” the spokesperson added.

So, here's the funny thing for me: Nunes wants to call attention to something funky about $DJT trading, when nearly everyone does think there is something funky about $DJT trading, but they don't think it has anything to do with the shorts. Nunes--the guy who sued an internet cow. 

I'm not telling you what to think about that--other than someone might be playing a shell game with see-through cups. I take the example of Trump University to base my opinion--it's the people who believe in Trump the most who get burned. I think that goes for people who want to go long on $DJT. Hell, I think the same for Nunes. 

You know, the way Allen Weisselberg is in jail and Trump isn't?  Stuff like that should really make one wonder.