Former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social, a shameless Twitter clone, is about to grow to be a publicly traded firm as quickly as subsequent week.

Shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp. voted on Friday to merge with Trump Media and Technology Group, the corporate behind Truth Social. The vote is a culmination of a years-long saga trying to merge Trump Media with a publicly traded firm in what’s often called a SPAC deal. The firm will commerce beneath the ticker DJT as soon as it goes public.

On Rumble, greater than 2,000 folks watched a person wearing a Jack Sparrow costume narrate the shareholder assembly in a livestream. After the vote handed, the chat erupted. “THANK YOU JESUS!!!!!” learn one remark from an account referred to as CanAmPatriot17.

The vote may grant Trump a substantial windfall of virtually $3.5 billion {dollars} in shares of the corporate, of which Trump owns about 60 p.c. Digital World Acquisition’s inventory value jumped about 4 p.c following information of the vote.

This potential fortune couldn’t come at a greater time for the previous president. Trump is struggling to place up money to cowl a $454 million judgment towards him within the state of New York as a part of a civil fraud case. Trump additionally owes $83 million to E. Jean Carroll, because of a January judgment in a defamation lawsuit relating to a earlier jury’s findings that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room within the Nineties. Trump’s posts on Truth Social have been used as proof within the January case.

As a part of Trump’s settlement with the corporate, he should wait round six months earlier than promoting any shares. (Trump claimed on Truth Social this morning that he now has almost $500 million in money.)

Truth Social seems to be almost an identical to Twitter, with some key distinctions. Instead of “tweeting,” customers put up a “truth.” A “retweet” is named a “retruth.” Unlike many right-wing Twitter clones, the positioning features properly, has remained principally on-line, and really seems to have a considerably lively person base. But since launching in February 2022, after Trump was kicked off of mainstream platforms for inciting violence in the course of the January 6 riot on the Capitol, the corporate has been mired in controversy.

The web site is strictly what one may anticipate from a Trump-inspired social community. Groups devoted to QAnon, election deniers, and different conspiracies are straightforward to search out.

And in October 2022, Will Wilkerson, certainly one of Trump Media’s senior staff, filed a whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission, claiming that the corporate had made “fraudulent representations” in violation of federal securities legal guidelines. Wilkerson was fired shortly after submitting the grievance. The SEC ultimately accepted the merger proposal in February.

Trump Media’s cofounders, Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, sued Trump Media in February, saying the corporate devised a scheme to dilute their shares. The two males, who’re each former Apprentice contestants and shareholders within the firm, mentioned that the corporate wanted to abide by a 2021 settlement that granted them the flexibility to nominate administrators to the corporate’s board and different monetary incentives.

The firm has grow to be a meme stock, the place its efficiency appears tied extra to Trump’s political prospects than the precise monetary efficiency of the corporate. The value of the inventory may change dramatically earlier than Trump has an opportunity to money out.