LARRY KUDLOW: Trump stands tall today
Donald Trump's wildly successful Trump Media stock offering is first and foremost a vote of confidence by his supporters all around the country.
At a time when Mr. Trump is under attack from the weaponized lawfare and election interference campaign waged against him by Joe Biden all the way down through various corrupt left-wing prosecutors, Mr. Trump stands tall today atop this remarkable stock-market success. As the price of Trump Media has soared, his wealth has jumped to over $6 billion, making him one of the wealthiest people in the world.
It gives him a big war chest to fight the slings and arrows of all these left-wing prosecutors going after him. This includes, of course, the New York story, where at least the appeals court now slashed his bond requirement by roughly 65% to $175 million.
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Lord knows what more these local legal juveniles are going to try to do to Trump financially, but he's got a big cushion now. He may have to wait six months to cash in on his stock, or perhaps the company will provide him with a waiver should he need the money sooner, but the point is -- right now, he's in much better financial shape than he was perhaps a week or two ago.
There's more to it than even that. Truth Social, Mr. Trump's company's social-media platform, will be sponsoring an ever-growing, free-speech, conservative community. Breitbart's economics editor John Carney has written brilliantly about this.
He notes that the Trump platform will offer a bastion of free speech, tapping into a vein of societal discontent and extending beyond the current election cycle. John Carney calls it balkanization, where the liberals have their media outlets, but conservatives really do not in terms of social media. Now they will.
For what it's worth, I'm going to sign up myself and the Truth Social platform will, of course, be a key spot for Mr. Trump's issues in the presidential campaign.
That's why Truth Social is going to grow a lot in the weeks and months ahead, as well as over the long-run and the stock offering will add about $300 million to expand and improve the Truth Social operation. Sure, at the moment the platform has been losing money -- but so do practically all digital startups at first. We saw that with Amazon, Twitter, Uber, and many others.
It's so ironic that these local juvenile, corrupt prosecutors, the Letitia Jameses, the Alvin Braggs, the stand-by-your-man Fani Willis (whoops!), and Jack Smiths. Try as they might, they cannot bring Trump down. He is Trump tough, but now he's Trump richer. Good combination and he never stops selling his key issues to the public. Take a listen to what he said yesterday outside the courtroom:
DONALD TRUMP: "They can't win an election because of the borders, because of energy prices, because of inflation, because of Afghanistan, the worst and most embarrassing day in the history of our country."
There you go, Mr. Trump. I say, he is "Trump tough." I say he is "Trump smart." I say he is "Trump wealthy." That's why he looks like a winner to me.
This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow’s opening commentary on the March 26, 2024, edition of "Kudlow."