Yahoo Finance Trump returns to X, DWAC stock drops
Former President Donald Trump turned himself into a Georgia jail after being charged with his fourth criminal indictment since March. Trump then posted his mug shot on X, formerly known as Twitter, for the first time since being banned from the social media platform, causing shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) to fall. Digital World Acquisition plans to take Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) public in a reverse merger. Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman and Brad Smith break down the news.
Video transcript
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JULIE HYMAN: Former President Donald Trump turned himself in to a Georgia jail after being charged with his fourth criminal indictment since March. He then took to X, formerly known as Twitter, for the first time since being banned to tweet out his mugshot. And then that has set off sort of an interesting, I don't know, cascade, if you will, in shares of DWAC, right?
BRAD SMITH: Yes.
JULIE HYMAN: Digital World Acquisition Corp.
BRAD SMITH: Yeah, the company that, of course, through the SPAC process, was looking to take on Truth Social. And so with that deal, ultimately this is the kind of proxy for any type of movement, anything Trump related, and you're seeing shares move down by about 5.3% perhaps because he didn't take to Truth Social directly. He went to X, or formerly Twitter, in order to initiate that activity.
That's where his base has been for so long, whether over the course of his presidency, even leading up to then him being booted from the platform, albeit temporarily at this point. In the grand scheme of things, I think making sure that he can leverage these opportunities at least from his team's perspective to continue to play the victim card in how they're kind of framing their own calculus ahead of the 2024 election, we'll see if that works out for them. But for Digital World Acquisition corp, it had some [? meme ?] tendencies at first and now just kind of moves [INAUDIBLE].
JULIE HYMAN: Well, it still has some [? meme ?] tendencies. I mean, the company has to complete its deal. It is-- DWAC is supposed to take over Trump Media and Technology Group. It has a deadline of September 8th or it has to give $300 million back to investors, so there's a lot at stake here. At the same, time he did post on Truth Social and said it's his home. So you know, but that stock is quite a volatile one in terms of DWAC. So just keep that in mind as we watch the moves.
