Today's The Day

Today is the date that Donald Trump has long feared. His whole life he has stretched, bent, and broken the law and always gotten away with it. Today, the piper may have to be paid. First, New York AG Letitia James, a.k.a. "The Piper," could insist that if Trump fails to cough up a bond for $454 million, she will begin seizing his assets. This would drive Trump mad since his whole image is tied up with his money and a viral video of workmen replacing the "Trump Tower" sign at 725 Fifth Ave. with a sign reading "New York State Tower" would be an intolerable humiliation and could possibly hurt him politically. On the other hand, Republican pollster Frank Luntz says that the backlash from a seizure could convince Trump's base that the deep state is really after him. We will see later today if he can pull a $454 million-dollar gold-plated rabbit out of a MAGA hat.

On Friday, Trump said that he actually has $500 million in cash, but that he doesn't want to use the money for his bond in the New York fraud case. The former head of ethics at the White House, Norm Eisen, called that remark "dumb." Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman said it was "the dumbest thing he could have possibly done because that is a direct admission, by him, that he has the money." If judge Arthur Engoron believes Trump has $500 million in cash, he is never going to lower the bond based on hardship. Also, this remark directly counters what his lawyers said last week, namely that he didn't have $454 million and no surety company would lend it to him. If Trump can't produce the bond, the ball is in Engoron's court.

Suppose Trump can't or won't pay up. What then? Then James will play the game of "Search and Seizure." She will then begin searching for his assets. She actually already knows quite a bit, but she could get the judge to order him to produce a list of all his bank and securities accounts and real estate, listing all the mortgages and liens on each one. If he refuses, the judge could find him in contempt of court and fine him or even put him in jail. James could possibly also ask the judge to subpoena Trump's most recent New York State tax returns from either the state or from his accountant to see if he had tax-deductible interest, and if so, from which banks.

Once James is done searching, she can begin seizing. She is certain to start by seizing all his bank accounts and securities accounts, since that is easy. He wouldn't like her selling any securities he has because that could trigger capital gains taxes. Tough luck. The procedure is for the judge to issue an order to transfer all funds in Trump's accounts at the bank to a state account and have a New York City sheriff serve it on the manager of the main branch of the bank in question.

Trump has an old rust-bucket 757 airplane. He would really, really not like that seized because it would make campaigning harder, but there is a secondary market in used aircraft and James could sell it easily. Appealing seizure is very difficult and very unlikely to succeed.

Once James has all the low-hanging fruit, she would likely begin seizing his real estate. Here is a list of properties she could go after:

Property	Location	Trump's stake
Office and retail building	1290 Ave. of the Americas, NYC	$287 million
Condos at Trump Park Avenue	502 Park Ave., NYC	$101 million
Retail leases	6 East 57th St., NYC	$99 million
70-Story Office building	40 Wall St., NYC	$80 million
Commercial space in Trump Tower	725 Fifth Ave., NYC	$56 million
Triplex apartment	Trump Tower, NYC	$52 million
Condos in Trump Parc	106 Central Park South, NYC	$28 million
Seven Springs	Mount Kisco, NY	$25 million
Trump World Tower	845 United Nations Plaza, NYC	$19 million
Coops in Trump Plaza	167 E. 61st St., NYC	$18 million
Westchester Golf Club	Briarcliff Manor, NY	$15 million
Holdings at Trump Int'l Hotel & Tower	Columbus Circle, NYC	$4 million
Storage units at Trump Palace	200 E. 69th St., NYC	$1 million

After firing up our trusty calculator app, we conclude these babies add up to $785 million. However—and this is a biggie—there may be mortgages and liens on some of these properties. If the properties are sold, these get paid before James gets any money. Furthermore, if any of these went on sale or up for auction, prospective buyers would know that James is in a hurry, so bidding could start pretty low. It would also take a long time before any cash was received.

These are just some of Trump's properties in New York. James is free to go after his properties and assets worldwide. New York is just the easiest. Trump's Doral Golf Course in Miami is probably worth hundreds of millions, but to seize that would require getting Florida to cooperate, which would put Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) on the spot. Mar-a-Lago is protected by Florida's homestead exemption, so James cannot seize that. Next, after properties in New Jersey, Florida, and other states, are foreign properties, but that is even more complicated.

The usual procedure for seizing real estate is as follows. James pays the sheriff's office a $350 fee for each property she wants. The sheriff then posts a notice on the property in three places. Then James must advertise the seizure in four places to give lienholders and the public notice. After 63 days, a public auction is held for the property. Trump will be allowed to cooperate. For example, he may be asked for a list of the tenants at some building and how much rent they pay. This knowledge will make it possible for bidders to make more accurate bids. Absent this information, they are likely to be more conservative and just bid based on square footage.

Also relevant is that the Trump Organization owns 500 corporations (e.g., hotels, golf courses, office buildings, and more). They could be seized and auctioned as well.

The above discussion is about the New York civil fraud case, but that isn't Trump's only worry today. Judge Juan Merchan, who will preside over the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, will decide whether the trial, originally scheduled for today and now scheduled for April 15, will be delayed more. This case is a criminal one and could potentially put Trump behind bars, although as a first-time offender he is more likely to get a fine. Of course, Trump will ask for another delay, but it is up to the judge. Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg wants to get the show on the road as fast as possible and will oppose any more delays. Both Engoron and Merchan are going to get an extra 15 minutes of fame today. (V)

Of Tulips and Truths

In the 1630s, a single mutant tulip in the Netherlands sold for 14x what a skilled craftsman could earn in a year. This speculative bubble was known as Tulipmania. It lasted as long as buyers believed no matter what they paid for a tulip, there would always be a greater fool to whom they could sell it for more than they paid for it. Until February 1637, when the whole scheme suddenly collapsed and the rare tulips were suddenly worth no more than common tulips.

Donald Trump must have heard about that years ago and thought he could try to do it again, only without tulips this time. In 2020, former contestants on Trump's reality TV show, Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, came to Trump with an idea. They would create a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) called DWAC (Digital World Acquisition Company), and get investors to buy shares in it. Then they would merge it with TMTG (Trump Media and Technology Group), the company that owns Trump's boutique social media platform Truth Social. The terms of the merger would be very favorable to Trump. He was interested. This plan violated the rules for SPACs and got the SEC on their case but eventually Litinsky and Moss calmed the SEC. Later they sued Trump because he cheated them out of stock they were entitled to. Surprise.

Early on, 400,000 ordinary investors, basically Trump supporters who knew nothing about tulips or stocks, put up a total of $300 million to buy stock in DWAC. That comes out to an average investment of $750 per investor. Support Trump and make money doing so! Heaven on earth. How many shares would Jesus buy? The DWAC stock went public on the NASDAQ on Sept. 27, 2021 and closed at $9.94 that day. Theoretically, the total number of outstanding shares (37 million) times the share price should be about $300 million because the company's only asset (its bank account) was worth $300 million. By Feb. 28, 2022, the share price had jumped to $97.54, not due to any change in the fundamentals or underlying assets, but because, well, tulips. On Friday DWAC closed at $36.94. Yahoo Finance rates the DWAC stock as hugely overvalued.

The deal is extremely complicated, but here is a rough summary. On Friday, DWAC merged with Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), whose only asset is Truth Social, a company that for the first 9 months of 2023 had revenues of $3.4 million but lost $49 million (but much of that loss was interest payments, not an operational burn). So the deal merged two companies: DWAC, whose assets were worth $300 million but whose stock was trading Friday at a price that made the company worth $1.38 billion and TMTG, which owned a company that was losing around $65 million a year with no prospect of ever being profitable. The terms of the deal gave Donald Trump 58.1% of the shares of the merged company, even though the part he brought to the table (TMTG) was worth basically nothing. In effect, he took over DWAC and its $300 million piggy bank by offering his money-losing social media app. This deal will allow him to run Truth Social for years, no matter how much money it loses every year.

Now here's the thing. The folks doing the merger have assumed that replacing the 37 million shares of DWAC with about 128 million shares of the new company won't affect the stock price because (ideally) the investors in DWAC knew the deal was in the works (although the stock dropped 14% on Friday when the deal was consummated). If the current price holds when the new stock begins trading, the company will be worth $4.7 billion on paper. However, this is almost 16x the book value of $300 million. When investors discover this, some of them might get cold feet and sell. If enough do, the stock could drop appreciably early on. The 16x premium over book value might make sense for a company that had just patented a drug that cures cancer or invented an iPhone battery that holds 30 days' worth of charge. Truth Social does not have that kind of potential. Whether the stock price can hold when trading begins remains to be seen considering the merged company has admitted it won't be making a profit for years, if ever.

The merger plan awarded Donald Trump 79 million shares in the merged company. If the $36.94 price holds, his portion of the stock will be worth close to $3 billion. Not bad for a guy whose contribution to the new company is a social media app that is losing money hand over fist. The scam here is that the stock may trade at a value far above what economics says it should trade at. You can check the stock price at Yahoo Finance tomorrow by typing DJT (the new ticker symbol for DWAC) in the search box when trading starts.

The terms of the merger prevent Trump from selling the stock for 6 months without permission of the board. He also can't encumber it or use it as collateral for a loan or bond. However, the friendly board, with Donald Trump Jr. and six cronies on it, could give him a waiver if he asked, which he probably will. However, a waiver could generate a lawsuit since that is not in the interest of the other shareholders.

Another problem is that if Trump tried to sell a large block of stock, word will get out that he is dumping it, which will cause the stock to go into freefall since the company's only hard asset is the cash. Once word is out that Trump has no faith in the company, there could be a bloodbath, to use a word Trump seems to like. Trump might even try to plunder the cash, for example, by using $100 million of the cash to pay out a dividend to all shareholders, of which he would get $58.1 million. The whole idea of the company being worth $4.7 billion is beyond incredible, but believers believe. The only question is whether Trump can dump the stock secretly before the entire house of cards collapses around him, leaving the other shareholders holding the bag. This wouldn't be the first time.

One other point here. Even if Trump got permission from the board to pledge his stock as collateral for his $454 million bond, Trump's problem won't disappear. J.P. Morgan Chase and Chubb don't take chances and will be concerned about liquidity and volatility. They are not going to be fooled by some crazy valuation. They know the whole company is not worth anywhere near $4.7 billion. The CEOs wouldn't get fired for missing predicted earnings by a couple of million dollars, but could be for a big loss on an improperly collateralized bond. All potential surety firms know that Trump could try to withdraw millions at any moment for a dividend or to pay his lawyers, so we suspect it may be tough to use the stock as collateral, even if the board approves it.

On Friday, Trump said that he wouldn't use his windfall to pay for the bond. We think this is probably true, but because underwriters have already told him they consider it too risky.

One final note here is worth tossing out. If Letitia James begins seizure shortly, she could seize his stock in the merged company and announce that she plans to sell it. That would not only drive the price down, but it would also drive Trump up the wall. Since the state of New York would then be the majority shareholder, she could fire the board and install her own board. Her new board could then fire the CEO and hire a new one who believed strongly that social media companies have a responsibility to remove all lies posted to their platform. They could hire someone with the title "Lie Detector in Chief." Then not only would Trump lose the $3 billion he was expecting, but he would also lose the platform he is using to spew all his lies. He could then put his tail between his legs and crawl back to Elon Musk, but that would make Musk the dominant one in the relationship, something Trump would hate. Could James squeeze $454 million out of the stock? Maybe yes, maybe no, but the $300 million in cash would be a good head start.

Thanks to B.N. for the help on the high finance. (V)

What Are the Double Haters Thinking?

Not everyone is enthusiastic about a rerun of Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump. In fact, quite a few people hate both of them. They have become known as the double haters. It is a nontrivial fraction of the electorate and what they do could determine who wins. In a recent Ipsos/ABC News poll, 30% of the voters said they don't trust either candidate to run the country.

ABC spoke with some of the double haters to see what is on their minds. Joann Kama, a retired Black voter from Amityville, NY, is so disgusted with both candidates that she is not going to vote. She is pessimistic about crime, the economy and immigration and doesn't think either candidate will fix things. She doesn't think anything will change her mind.

Samantha Guerrero, a Republican from Austin, TX, thinks both candidates are too old. She doesn't think either one can make good decisions anymore. Similarly, Linda Rosland thinks neither one is up to the job. She notes that Trump's ego is enormous but she also doubts Biden's suitability. She is considering voting for a third-party candidate or she may write in Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis.

Shauntey Singletary, a nurse practitioner in Delaware, says that due to inflation, her patients are having to choose between getting treatment or paying for their medicine. She is not optimistic that either candidate can solve the problem of inflation.

John Jackson of Florida gets his news from YouTube. He doesn't like what Biden is doing on Israel, but he doesn't like Trump on many issues and won't consider voting for him. So what to do? Maybe vote for a third party? But he doesn't want to be a spoiler. (V)

Biden Is Working on Attracting Haley's Donors

Joe Biden knows that many of Nikki Haley's backers now feel homeless and he wants to give them a home in his campaign. One big get is billionaire Mark Cuban, who supported Haley but who is now on Team Biden. He attended Biden's fundraiser in Dallas last week. There Biden asked: "Are you better off now than four years ago?" See below for the answer. Biden is busy trying to line up as many Haley supporters and donors as he can. He is aware that even in closed primaries after Haley dropped out, she is still getting a substantial number of votes from Republicans. These people are his targets.

Bundlers are another target for Biden. They collect up to $6,600 from individual donors and present the entire bundle to the candidate. This is hard money, which is much more valuable than soft money (e.g., super PAC money) because candidates get the cheapest TV rates. So far Biden has wooed at least half a dozen Haley bundlers to his team.

In contrast, Trump is not trying to go after Haley supporters and donors. It is probably pointless anyway. If they had found Trump acceptable in the first place, they wouldn't have bet on a dark horse with very little chance of winning. (V)

Trump Is Inviting Donors to Pay His Legal Bills

Now that Donald Trump has complete control over the RNC, he has created a new joint fundraising agreement between his campaign and the RNC. The goal is to have donors fund Trump's lawyers, rather than Republican candidates. The lawyers have already eaten up $76 million in the past 2 years, and none of the criminal cases have even gone to trial yet, when the legal fees could become astronomical.

Trump is holding a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago on April 6. The fine print on the invitation states that the first $6,600 of all donations will go to Trump's campaign. The next $5,000 will go to the misnamed Save America PAC, which actually is a Save Trump PAC since it pays Trump's legal bills. Anything over that will go to the RNC. However, donors will also be given an opportunity to also toss some money at the Trump 47 Committee, which also shovels a goodly piece of its money to the Save America PAC.

It is likely as time goes on and Trump's legal bills mount, he will find more ways to make sure a fair chunk of all donations somehow end up at the Save America PAC. On the Democratic side, nothing like this structure exists. All donations go directly to Joe Biden's campaign or the DNC. Nothing goes to pay any person's legal bills. (V)

Republicans Have an Election Strategy: Sue Their Way to Victory

The RNC has a new chairman, Michael Whatley, who was handpicked by Donald Trump. So, naturally, the new chairman is expected to reflect Trump's worldview in many ways. One basic principle of Trump's worldview is: (mis)use the courts to get what you want. Whatley is preparing to do just that.

What Whatley is going to do is hire thousands of lawyers and file more lawsuits in order to win. They will challenge the rules in general, and individual voters in particular, in strongly Democratic areas. He plans to especially target minority voters. He is also going to run an aggressive operation monitoring the vote. The new motto at the RNC is "election integrity." Whatley said: "It's an extremely high priority for the President." Indeed, if the RNC lawyers can keep enough Democrats from voting, Trump could win.

But this may be easier said than done. The DNC has far more money than the RNC and is also capable of hiring many lawyers. Also, if the RNC starts funneling incoming money to pay Trump's lawyers, there will be less left over to hire election lawyers. In addition, once donors realize that their donations are being used to pay Trump's bills, they may stop donating, limiting even more what the RNC can do. And the RNC is really the only committee that can hire poll workers and lawyers with an eye to suppressing the Democratic vote. The NRSC is going to use every penny to try to flip the Senate and the NRCC is going to need every penny to try to hang onto the House.

Both parties are already stockpiling money for lawsuits. As of the end of February, the RNC legal pot had $11 million on hand vs. the DNC's legal pot with $27 million.

Filing lawsuits is easy, but judges aren't stupid. When the RNC brings a lawsuit that clearly has a partisan reason, the judges are going to see that, even if the Democrats' lawyer in the case forgets to mention it, which is exceedingly unlikely. In 2020, Trump filed lawsuit after lawsuit and lost virtually every one. Consequently, spending a ton of money on lawyers and then losing a bunch of lawsuits could mean that money that could have gone to help individual candidates will go to all the new lawyers. It is far from obvious that suing your way to victory is a better strategy than spending the money on ads for candidates, but what Trump wants, Trump gets.

One lawsuit the RNC already filed is challenging Michigan for not keeping the voter rolls up to date. In other words, it seeks to purge voters in Democratic areas. Unfortunately, the case was assigned to a judge who threw out a similar case 3 weeks ago, ruling that the state was correctly following federal law. A similar suit is ongoing in Nevada and there will be more of the same.

Another tricky issue is early voting. Trump opposes it but Whatley supports it. If the RNC tells people to use absentee ballots and simultaneously tries to get judges to throw out as many absentee ballots as possible, the plan could backfire. (V)

Tammy Murphy Is Quitting the New Jersey U.S. Senate Race

Tammy Murphy, wife of Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ), has dropped out of the race to succeed the indicted Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). She surprised everyone by entering the race in the first place and is now surprising everyone by dropping out. If her popular husband had run, he would probably have won, but Tammy has never served in elected office before and wasn't a great candidate. She saw the handwriting on the wall and it said: "GET OUT."

Murphy was running against Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ), who can now begin measuring the drapes for his new Senate office. He is the grassroots candidate and Murphy was the establishment candidate. The grassroots won this round. There has not been a single poll of the race that gave Kim less than a 10-point lead, and some had him up more than 20. Maybe the people of New Jersey felt that Murphy was feeling a wee bit entitled just because she was married to a very wealthy governor.

Menendez is a crook and saw that he had no chance to win the primary, so he is not running for the Democratic nomination. He will be very lucky if he can avoid prison. (V)

Lisa Murkowski May Be Quitting the Republican Party

As long as we're on the subject of the U.S. Senate, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is not a happy camper when it comes to her party's presidential candidate. "I wish that as Republicans, we had... a nominee that I could get behind," Murkowski told CNN yesterday. "I certainly can't get behind Donald Trump." She also said there was "absolutely no way" she would ever vote for him. When the Senator was asked if she was going to remain with the Republican Party, she very pointedly refused to make any commitment to that. "Oh, I think I'm very independent-minded," she said.

Politically, a switch to independent is not surefire career suicide for Murkowski, the way it was for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ). First, Alaska has a strong libertarian streak, and though a red state, is willing to elect non-Republicans statewide (e.g., Rep. Mary Peltola, D-AK). Second, Murkowski once won election as a de facto independent, when she was denied the Republican nomination for the Senate in 2010. Third, since that 2010 election, Alaska has switched to an instant-runoff system wherein the top four primary finishers compete in the general election. Even as an independent, Murkowski is sure to finish in the top four in any primary, and then there's an excellent chance she would be the #1 or #2 choice of a majority of voters in the general.

It remains to be seen if Murkowski will take the plunge, and then, if she does, it remains to be seen what "independent" will really mean. In Sinema's case, it meant "still a Democrat in all but name," and she continued to caucus with the blue team. Murkowski could take the same course, remaining a part of the Republican conference as an independent, though that would not be especially consistent with her criticism of Trumpism. If her vote was available to the Democrats, that would be a big deal indeed, particularly if the Senate ends up with 50 Republicans, 49 Democrats and independents, and Murkowski. She could score a Denali-sized mountain of pork. (Z)

SCOTUS Will Hear Arguments about the Abortion Pill Tomorrow

Last August, the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the FDA erred when it made mifepristone (which is used in over half of all abortions) more widely available in 2016, 2021, and 2023. After all, the Fifth Circuit Court knows far more about medicine than all the doctors, scientists, and statisticians who work at the FDA. Needless to say, the decision was appealed to the Supreme Court.

Tomorrow, the Court will hold oral hearings on the case. The ruling will impact people in all 50 states and D.C., including all the blue states. If the lower court ruling is sustained, medical abortions will be available only during the first 7 weeks of pregnancy instead of 10 weeks, nationwide. The number of people authorized to prescribe the drug and the number of places it can be sold would also be decreased. In short, sustaining the lower court will make abortions more difficult to obtain, which is what the plaintiffs want.

The Biden administration is going to argue that the FDA, not the courts, should be making medical decisions and the courts have no business second-guessing the FDA about whether drugs are safe and effective and how they should be prescribed, by whom, and under what circumstances.

Chief Justice John Roberts probably does not want this hot potato, but it will be in his lap tomorrow. The decision will come in June, just as the election is heating up. If the Court upholds the Fifth Circuit, many Democrats will openly run against the Supreme Court, saying they will vote to expand it to 13, 15, or maybe even 21 justices. The Court will become hugely politicized, something Roberts hates.

The case is being brought by four physicians who claim that someday they might have to deal with the results of a medical abortion gone awry. One way for the Supreme Court to weasel out of a tough call is to rule that the four physicians were not harmed by the FDA decisions just because someday they might hypothetically have to deal with a patient who got mifepristone under the new rules. By denying that they have standing to sue, the Court could toss the Fifth Circuit's decision without ruling on the merits of the case. (V)

Abortion Is Now Affecting Races for the State Courts

The Dobbs decision has shaken up a lot of things. It is going to force Donald Trump to take a position on abortion that is going to alienate a lot of voters, both Democrats and Republicans. It may also cut into Trump's small-donor fundraising, right at a moment when Joe Biden is outraising him and much of the money Trump is raising is funneled directly to his lawyers.

But abortion is also hitting other races, and in unexpected ways. Some state constitutions have wording about abortion or things related to abortion, such as privacy and health care. Many groups are bringing abortion-related cases to state courts, which end up in the state Supreme Court (or the equivalent). Some legislatures, including Florida's, are passing abortion-related laws, which also usually end up in the state Supreme Courts.

As a consequence, in states where Supreme Court justices are elected, their campaigns are now forced to take positions on abortion, something they never needed to do before. When a justice is campaigning somewhere and a reporter or citizen asks: "Does our state constitution allow abortions?," an answer of "Beats me. Gotta go read the damn thing sometime!" is not going to fly. Consequently, abortion politics is about to pervade judicial politics, as it did last April in Wisconsin. Since more people favor access to abortion than oppose it, it is going to be increasingly difficult for conservative or Republican candidates to win state court positions.

Case in point: Montana. Two seats on the state Supreme Court are up this year. Abortion is going to play a huge role in those elections. The races are ostensibly nonpartisan, but that isn't going to fool anyone. For example, former U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerry Lynch, who is running for chief justice, is clearly a liberal, while prosecutor Cory Swanson, his opponent, is clearly a conservative. Similarly, state judge Katherine Bidegaray, who is running for the associate justice seat, is a liberal, while her opposition, Dan Wilson, is a conservative. An activist group is trying to get an abortion measure on the ballot and it is likely that the state Supreme Court will have to take a whack at it, sooner or later.

Montana is interesting due to not only the two Supreme Court seats and the possible ballot initiative, but also the hot U.S. Senate race. But it is not the only state with a Supreme Court race. In fact, 33 states have at least one state Supreme Court seat on the ballot, and even more states have at least one lower court position on the ballot. These used to be sleepy races, but they will be front and center this year, especially in states where the races could flip the "partisan" balance on the Court. No doubt all candidates are keenly aware of the Wisconsin race last April when now-Justice Janet Protasiewicz won by 11 points in an evenly balanced swing state, largely due to her belief that the state Constitution guaranteed a right to abortions. These races don't get a lot of national PR, but if your state has one or more of them, keep an eye out. (V)

eX-Twitter Is Bleeding Users

About a year and a half ago, Elon Musk plunked down $44 billion to buy Twitter, a company that hasn't turned a profit since 2019. Musk proceeded to fire over half the staff and another bunch quit when he made unreasonable demands of the folks who remained. Musk didn't use his own money to buy Twitter. He borrowed it, leaving the company with annual interest payments of about $1.25 billion/year. Last year, Fidelity, which owns a stake in the company, valued the company at $15 billion. Going from $44 billion to $15 billion in a year is not easy. It takes a world-class financial genius like Musk to do it. Though a stable genius like Donald Trump could surely pull it off, too.

But there is more. Now the number of users is down 23% since Musk took over. Another trick not anyone else could do. Many of them have moved to Facebook's Threads, a Twitter clone, or to Bluesky, another Twitter clone. Here is a chart showing changes in the number of users of five social media platforms:

As you can see, eX-Twitter is taking a real beating, TikTok has lost a little bit (possibly due to Congress preparing a law to ban it unless ByteDance sells it to a friendly company), and the others are mostly stable.

Also, many advertisers have fled eX-Twitter. Ad sales in the U.S. are off by almost 60% since Musk bought the company. With the value of the company down by two-thirds, users fleeing, and advertisers running for the hills at full speed, all we can say is that Musk must be the smartest businessman since, say, the guy at Ford who ran the Edsel project. Or maybe the guy responsible for New Coke. Or the guy who managed to bankrupt four Atlantic City casinos.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, but what are the political consequences? Now that Donald Trump has successfully merged TMTG and DWAC and taken control of 58% of the stock in the merged company, what's he going to do next? Possibly his long-term game plan might have been to milk the new company for everything it is worth and then move over to eX-Twitter, which still has a much bigger audience than Truth Social. But with eX-Twitter failing so badly, this plan might not be so attractive.

So what is Trump going to do? He could stay at Truth Social, even after he sucks it dry, but it has only 2 million active users and a 12% market share in the social media space. Since he wants to reach the 74 million people who voted for him in 2020, this doesn't cut the mustard, and with eX-Twitter failing, we don't see an obvious solution for him. But we have an idea: Buy TikTok. That will get the Chinese government out of the loop and make everyone happy. (V)

Ronna Romney McDaniel Has a New Job

Former RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel became unemployed 2 weeks ago. No doubt she spent the previous 2 weeks feverishly studying openings on LinkedIn and Craigslist. And bingo, she found a new gig. She is going to work as a pundit for NBC News. Her first appearance was yesterday on Meet the Press.

Did NBC make a good deal here? We don't know yet. On the one hand, she is an insider's insider and knows everything there is to know about the internal workings of the Republican Party and also of Donald Trump. She probably understands Trump better than any other person on the planet. She also understands the Republican voters better than anyone this side of Frank Luntz and Sarah Longwell.

If Trump does or says something weird, her take on what he is thinking could be invaluable. The big question is whether she will morph into an actual pundit and say what she really thinks or will stay in RNC mode and just parrot the Trump line. If the former is the case, she is worth every penny of what NBC is paying her; if the latter, she is not worth 10¢. There is nothing wrong with her being a Republican. NBC has other Republican contributors, including Mike Pence's chief of staff Marc Short. What matters is whether she intends to tell the truth to the viewers or just defend Trump through thick and thin. That may depend on where she sees her future. If it is in the media, then telling the truth is the best approach. If it is in Republican Party politics, then she will try her best to cover her rear end and not offend anyone in the party, which makes her fairly useless to NBC. We shall see.

Quite a few people at NBC are angry about McDaniel being hired and are not shy about saying this out loud. Former Meet the Press host Chuck Todd is one of them. He said: "Look, there's a reason why there's a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination." MSNBC columnist Marisa Kabas said: "As columnists we are held to strict standards of factuality and truth, and are expected to have a fundamental understanding of our democracy. McDaniel has proven time and again she adheres to none of those values, and lacks that very basic understanding." Former MSNBC host Medhi Hasan tweeted: "McDaniel lied about the 2020 election result, was involved in a pressure campaign to get Michigan officials not to certify the vote, and has accused MSNBC of spreading lies and employing prime-time propagandists." It's a good thing the company Christmas party is 9 months off. When everyone gets together around the eggnog, she is not going to be the belle of the ball. (V)

Are You Better Off than You Were 4 Years Ago?

In a 1980 presidential debate, Ronald Reagan famously asked: "Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?" Apparently, a lot of people thought: "No!" and Reagan won. Donald Trump asked the same question again last week. If Joe Biden is smart, he might ask that rhetorical question a couple of times as well. The results could be interesting.

But maybe you don't remember what things were like on March 25, 2020. Well, we can help. If you look at the bottom of the legend box to the right of the map at the top of this page, you will see: 2020 2016 2012. If you click on any of them, you will go to our page for the current date in the corresponding year. So clicking on the first one will take you to our page for March 25, 2020. Tomorrow that link will point to March 26, 2020, etc. By looking at our headlines and stories, you can bring back fond or not-so-fond memories of that date. That can refresh your memory of what was going on in the country 4 (or 8 or 12) years ago. Once you have gone back 4 years, the "Previous report" and "Next report" buttons allow you to move around in 2020, etc.

But there's more. On the 2020 pages, below the map are the top six headlines from Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for that day, frozen in amber. So between our headlines and Goddard's, you should be able to get a good picture of what was going on 4 years ago.

We're not done yet. The New York Times has archived all past front pages. If you go to www.nyt.com in the top left-hand corner you will see something like this:

You can click on "Today's paper" and change the date in the box on the new page you get to 4 years ago or any other date you want to see. An image of the front page appears on the screen a few inches from the top on the right. It is clickable and downloadable.

So with our page, Goddard's, and the NYT's, you can get a pretty good reminder of what was going on 4 years ago. Here are the top halves of the pages for this week 4 years ago. These are not clickable.

As you can see, COVID-19 totally dominated the news. The economy ground to a halt. Also noteworthy is that 4 years ago today, March 25, 2020, right at the start of the pandemic, then-President Donald Trump said he wanted to reopen the economy by Easter. In 2020, Easter was April 12, so Trump figured the problem with COVID-19 would be over in 3 weeks. In reality, it took over 3 years, 104 million sick Americans, and 1.1 million American deaths from COVID-19 before it mostly subsided. Were you better off then than now? We ask, you answer. (V)

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---The Votemaster and Zenger