Still Gathering No Moss
Atlanta’s Role in Trump’s Truth Social Still Flying Under the Radar
A lawsuit by co-founders of Truth Social, the social media platform launched by former US President Donald Trump after his banning from Twitter in 2021, is not expected to delay a pivotal merger vote by shareholders on March 22nd, according to the New York Times, Bloomberg, and other news reports.
“Two early founders of Trump Media & Technology Group reached a temporary truce with Mr. Trump’s company at a hearing on Saturday morning in Delaware Court of Chancery. The agreement would preserve the two founders’ right to a significant equity stake in the parent company of Truth Social until a judge hears further arguments on the merits of their lawsuit,” the Times reported.
The co-founders are both former contestants on Trump’s TV series The Apprentice. One is WSB radio host and former Atlanta Journal-Constitution financial columnist Wes Moss.
News of their lawsuit, as with so many facets of Donald Trump’s financial and legal dealings, was featured prominently by national outlets after first being reported. This story was first reported by the Washington Post.
Atlanta outlets so far are ignoring it despite, or because of, the local media connection.
Trump Went Unmentioned but Martin O’Malley Gets a Shout Out.
Moss hosted his Sunday WSB radio show last week and today but made no mention of the lawsuit or of President Trump. WSB’s newscasts at the top and bottom of the hour did cover Trump and Biden campaign rallies in the state plus their usual slate of crime stories.
Moss’s show focuses on retirement and his guest today was a social security expert. At one point she mentioned the appointment of former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley as Commissioner of Social Security. She spoke favorably of O’Malley stressing his experience in customer service in government.
O’Malley was also a 2016 Democratic Presidential candidate who would have faced Trump if he’d won the nomination. (Provided Trump also won his party’s nod in such an alternate history.)
Overall, the guest was favorable and even protective of social security suggesting it won’t be allowed to run out of money due to its popularity. She seemed to favor raising the taxable income cap for high earners.
President Trump has at times said he would protect social security despite fiscal hawks in the Republican Party wanting it to part of debt reduction.
As I noted in 2022 when looking into the Atlanta/Truth Social connections, Moss on the radio doesn’t come across as a MAGA firebrand, but family friendly and non-threatening. Trying to describe the difference in 2022 I called it “Werther’s Originals vs. American carnage.”
Truth Social was part of a more ambitious effort to create a larger conservative media company under Trump’s name. To counter the “woke cultures” of Hollywood, the mainstream news media, and Big Tech.
But it has had multiple setbacks including a major outage last Thursday when Trump promised to use it to give a live rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union Speech.
After Elon Musk purchased Twitter, now called X, President Trump was allowed back on the platform but has continued to use Truth Social.
