Truth Social value sinks to near-record low after Trump’s Elon Musk chat

Donald Trump’s return to X for his highly anticipated conversation with Elon Musk on Monday didn’t help lift the value of the former president’s own social media company.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, dipped 3.6% on Tuesday morning, closing at $23.98, to hover above its all-time low of $22.50 since going public in late March.

The drop followed a 5% plunge in the run-up to Trump’s return to the platform formerly known as Twitter, which he used to successfully run for the GOP nomination and the White House in 2016.

Trump Media’s share price reached a high of $66 shortly after its IPO but has been in free fall in recent weeks.

Last week, TMTG released its second-quarter earnings results showing that the company suffered a net loss of $16.4 million while generating revenue of $837,000.

Truth Social was launched after Trump’s X account, @realDonaldTrump, was blocked following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

In the last month, Truth Social has seen its user base grow to 16 million visitors — an increase of 92% compared to the previous month, according to the web analytics site Similar Web.

Musk-owned X has more than 200 million daily users, according to the data.

Trump’s return to X for the friendly two-hour chat with the mogul was hampered by technical problems that delayed the start of the 8 p.m. event for more than 40 minutes.

Musk, who has endorsed Trump, blamed the difficulties on a distributed denial-of-service attack, in which a server or network is flooded with traffic in an attempt to shut it down, though his claim could not be verified.

The interview followed a series of posts by Trump to X, just the second time he has used the platform since his account was restored last year.

An SEC filing by TMTG noted that Trump “is generally obligated to make any social media post on Truth Social and may not make the same post on another social media site for six hours.”

Musk, who has endorsed Trump, started an external super PAC spending group to support his campaign.