Buckle up, Trump has his own meme stock
Plus: Kennedy’s running mate helped pay for his Super Bowl ad
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
Buckle up, Trump has his own meme stock
Kennedy’s running mate helped pay for his Super Bowl ad
Biden’s still campaigning on Obamacare 14 years later
Scroll to the end to see: what goes into dressing Canada’s very own Sporty Spice Tate McRae.
Buckle up, Trump has his own meme stock
To the moon, I guess.
Just last week former President Donald Trump was in dire financial straits. His campaign was struggling for cash and he faced a Monday deadline to post bond in his $454 million civil fraud judgment in New York.
Now this week, for the first time ever, he finds himself among the 500 richest people on Earth.
Trump’s fortunes changed Monday after a New York appeals court said it would pause collecting Trump’s judgment if he paid $175 million in 10 days. The same day, Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., the company that runs his social network Truth Social, merged with the blank check company Digital World Acquisition Corp., and began trading on Nasdaq. The ticker is DJT and the stock gained 16% on its first day Tuesday, closing at $57.99 per share.
Like AMC and GameStop before it, some see Trump’s stock as a potential meme stock, trading for more than it’s worth thanks to virality even if the fundamentals just aren’t there. “DJT” was the top trending topic on Truth Social Tuesday, but investors beware.
A disclosure in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing for the company notes Trump “is the subject of numerous legal proceedings, the scope and scale of which are unprecedented for a former President of the United States and current candidate for that office,” and that “could negatively impact TMTG and its Truth Social platform.” And remember, Trump only started Truth Social after he was deplatformed from other social networks for breaking their terms of service for posts connected to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. opened the trading day Wednesday with a market value of about $6.8 billion, or about three quarters of Reddit’s valuation, which seems… generous. But it’s boosted Trump’s net worth.
Could that allow Trump to self fund his campaign? He can’t realize the stock for six months, but he told reporters Monday he “might spend a lot of money on my campaign,” adding “it's none of your business.”
By Tuesday night Trump was back promoting his latest venture, a $59.99 special-edition “God Bless the USA” Bible with Lee Greenwood on a site that licenses Trump’s name and likeness. The website selling the Bible promotes it as “the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” and the good book also includes the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the chorus of “God Bless the USA,” none of which appeared in the Codex Sinaiticus.
Earlier this week on Truth Social, Trump posted a message he said he received comparing the fact that his properties could be seized to the persecution of Christ.
Kennedy’s running mate helped pay for his Super Bowl ad
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his running mate Tuesday at a campaign rally in Oakland. Attorney Nicole Shanahan, 38, has no elected experience, but she did pay $4 million to air the ad promoting Kennedy’s candidacy during the Super Bowl.
The spot, which was adapted from a 1960 ad for Kennedy’s uncle, John F. Kennedy, was aired by American Values 2024, a super PAC. Shanahan told the New York Times last month the ad seemed “like a great opportunity to highlight that he’s running for president” and said she helped coordinate the ad’s production and made the $4 million donation about a week before the game. The ad cost about $7 million, per the Times.
Kennedy teased his Shanahan announcement in a fundraising email and digital ads. At the announcement, he said he believed there was no American more qualified for the role than Shanahan. You can learn more about her here.
The campaign was ready with a new Kennedy-Shanahan logo that appears on merch including $20 yard signs that ask viewers to text in the words “Future” or “Hope” and a $30 women’s crop top that comes in black, camel, hazy pink, bubblegum, athletic heather, ecru, white, and orchid.
Kennedy’s campaign website was also updated with an image of the candidates in blazers. The campaign is now using an icon of crossed red and blue flags, and Kennedy and Shanahan also did an outdoor photoshoot in khaki button ups. Cute!
Like Kennedy, Shanahan has expressed skepticism over vaccines. The World Health Organization estimates the COVID-19 vaccine prevented about 14.4 million deaths worldwide in 2021 alone.
Biden’s still campaigning on Obamacare 14 years later
Saturday was the 14th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, and former President Joe Biden’s campaign made a big effing deal about it.
Biden commemorated the occasion with a national organizing livestream call with former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and an ad hitting Trump for trying to repeal the law.
“As you all know, I thought it was a big deal at the time,” Biden said on the call, referencing his hot mic moment in 2010 where he dropped an expletive about the law known as Obamacare. “Well, it’s even a bigger deal today.”
His campaign’s ad “Flatline” uses audio of Trump as president saying Obamacare is a “disaster” and that he wants to “totally kill it” over a beating red line from an electrocardiogram. Padam padam.
The ad ends with a flatline and text on screen warning that 45 million Americans could lose their healthcare if Trump were to try again and succeed. “Protect your health care. Stop Trump.”
The digital ad began running Saturday in states in the Midwest, South, and West, according to Google’s ad library. A record 20 million Americans signed up this year for healthcare through the Affordable Care Act, according to the Associated Press.
Have you seen this?
Tate McRae’s sporty glam is reinventing the popstar aesthetic. Having grown up in a hockey household, McRae has leaned into her roots, incorporating quintessential Canadian sporting gear into her glitzy pop star looks. [Elle]
Who needs Helvetica? T.J. Maxx ditches the iconic font for its own custom typeface. Attention, Maxxinistas, your favorite department store now has its own bespoke sans-serif typeface. [Fast Company]
Famed American sculptor Richard Serra, the “poet of iron,” has died at 85. Serra, known for turning curving walls of rusting steel and other malleable materials into large-scale pieces of outdoor artwork that are now dotted across the world, died Tuesday at his home in Long Island, New York. [NPR]
🔒 More than half a billion dollars has already been booked for political ads this fall. Democrats, who are defending Senate seats in seven states that are rated competitively by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, are gearing up for a fight as Republicans are still in the middle of primary season to determine their candidates. [Yello]
History of political design
“Geraldine Ferraro America’s First Woman Vice Pres.” button (1984). In her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention as the first female vice presidential nominee for a major party in U.S. history, Ferraro gave a shout out to Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, and said “change is in the air.” This button was donated to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum by Ride’s partner Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy.
Want more stories like these? Subscribe to support my work and get unlimited access: