"President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes...."

"The brief clip, set to 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight,' was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about anomalies in the 2020 presidential election....In response to questions about the clip, which Mr. Trump posted Thursday during a late-night spree on social media, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said criticism of the video was 'fake outrage.' 'This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,' she said. 'Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.'"

I'm reading "Trump Posts Video Portraying Obamas as Apes/The White House press secretary dismissed criticism of the clip’s racist content, shared by the president’s Truth Social account, as 'fake outrage'" (NYT).

I don't know why Leavitt responded like that. If I hadn't read what she said, I would have assumed Trump shared the video because of the material that took up the first 97% of the video. Look at it here. It's somber technical material about tampering with voting machines in the 2020 election. I would have assumed that he never even saw the discordant image of the Obamas as apes that is spliced in at the very end, in the last 2 seconds.

I would have speculated that some sneaky person spliced that image in to trick Trump supporters into passing the video along unwittingly and becoming targets for accusations of racism.

Who sticks around for the full 62 seconds? Well, maybe some people do, and then when the Obama image pops up, they probably think What is this bullshit? It doesn't belong. Who put this here?

Where the Trump jurors say they get their news.

A helpful graphic from "Where Jurors in Trump Hush-Money Trial Say They Get Their News" (NYT):

Juror #2 is the only one who gets the news from X and also the only one who gets news from Truth Social. This person has no other news source. (Of course, it's possible that the jurors weren't accurate/truthful about their news sources.)

There are 2 jurors, #5 and #6, who get news from TikTok, but #5 also looks at Google and #6 looks at Facebook, Google, and the NYT. Juror #4 is the odd/wise person who identified no news source at all.

Interesting that only one juror reads the NY Post and that's also the only juror who listens to public radio. This person also reads the NYT and the Wall Street Journal.

Anyway, seeing those dots so widely scattered across this grid, do you feel reasonably good about this jury?

"Mr. Trump ended the first day of public trading $4.6 billion richer on paper...."

I'm reading "Trump’s Social Media Company Opens New Avenue for Conflicts of Interest/Ethics experts say Trump Media, now a publicly traded company, would present a new way for foreign actors or others to influence Donald J. Trump, if he is elected president" (NYT).

Isn't it funny how his haters got him kicked off Twitter and — only because of that — he made his own website and 3 years later, it makes him $4.6 billion?

Anyway, this new Times article, by Sharon LaFraniere — "an investigative reporter currently focusing on Republican candidates in the 2024 presidential campaign" (I love the plural) — casts shade on Trump's insanely good fortune. 

"Trump social media stock skyrockets in first day of trading."

NBC News reports.

ADDED: From the NYT article on the subject: "Before the merger, shares of the shell company... had long behaved as something of a proxy for investor sentiment about Mr. Trump.... By most traditional measures, Trump Media’s valuation is inordinately high. The company took in just $3.3 million in revenue during the first nine months of last year, all from advertising on Truth Social, and recorded a loss of $49 million."

So... overvaluation seems to be a theme with Trump. Here the market is doing the valuation. It's not Trump's valuation his own property and the DA's alternative valuation— the subject of the New York lawsuit.

Any hope of characterizing the buying of the stock, bidding up the price, as an illegal campaign contribution? It's handing billions of dollars to Trump.

"Donald Trump... is $300 million shy of the cutoff for The Forbes 400 ranking of America’s richest people..."

"... the annual measurement that Trump has obsessed over for decades, relentlessly lying to reporters to try to vault himself higher on the list. His net worth is down more than $600 million from a year ago. The biggest reason: Truth Social, his social-media business.... Trump’s 90% stake in Truth Social’s parent company has plummeted in value from an estimated $730 million to less than $100 million. Also in trouble: his office buildings, which are down by an estimated $170 million. The majority of that decline comes from 555 California Street, a 1.8 million square-foot complex in the heart of San Francisco, where Trump holds a 30% stake.... The problem is not the property’s performance to date... but... its outlook for the future.... The neighborhood around the building is also struggling.... There is a bright spot in Trump’s portfolio. As fewer people spend time in the office, more are goofing off on the golf course...."

From "Donald Trump Drops Off The Forbes 400 For Second Time In 3 Years" (Forbes).

Here's the Forbes 400. Nice illustration at the top of the page.

How does Forbes know so much? Trump's on trial — a trial that needs to go on for months — over what he's worth.

Trump's Truth Social is "a vibrant right-wing ecosystem increasingly brimming with activity."

According to a NYT piece by Stuart A. Thompson and Matthew Goldstein, "Truth Social’s Influence Grows Despite Its Business Problems/The right-wing social network faces two federal investigations and an uncertain financial future. But it has still managed to outpace its rivals." 

The site has become a key organizing platform for election deniers ahead of the midterms, stoking concerns about voter fraud and spreading rumors about problems at the polls.... Mr. Trump has used the site... to shape Republican talking points and boost candidates running in close races. And he has embraced messages and imagery from QAnon....

The real test for Truth Social may arrive in the coming months, as initial excitement around the app fades and the problems with its financing possibly come to a head. The site shows few signs of courting a wider mix of users from across the political spectrum, which would be necessary to reach lofty targets set by the company before the app launched....

ADDED: I don't think the term "election deniers" should be used until voting has been completed and the usual legal procedures of challenging and contesting elections have played out. The Times seems to be adopting this term to refer to anyone who is worried about the security and accuracy of voting — but only when the worriers are on the right. That's not a good position for the New York Times.

Speaking of "The Dark Brandon," look at the video Trump just put up...

 ... here at Truth Social. It gives Biden the darkness.

The first 3 quarters of the video is in gloomy black and white, with an audio track of a thunderstorm. We hear about the dismal state of America, Biden's America. Then — like Dorothy opening the door into Oz — it's in color, the music swells optimistically, and it's Trump telling us we're Americans and "It's time to start talking about greatness for our country again." It ends with the on-screen text — maybe the new campaign slogan — "... the best is yet to come."

Good ad? I don't know, but when I hear the words "the best is yet to come" I think of the great old song, "The Best Is Yet to Come." I happen to love Bob Dylan's version of it. Here's my curated selection:

 

UPDATE: The Washington Post fact checker fact checks the Trump video and finds many of the assertions don't hold up.

Does Trump mean it when he says he doesn't want to get back on Twitter?

That's a big topic in the news this morning, but I'm not just catching up with it. Meade and I hashed it all out in text at 6:20 last night after Meade sent me a screenshot of a comment from RMc on yesterday's post about the Twitter board accepting Elon Musk's offer:

 

RNc's comment is funny because so many people — including me — immediately jumped from seeing that Elon got his way to wondering when Trump would be back. I responded to Meade's text with a WaPo article that had come out at 6:02 PM, saying that Trump says he won't come back.

I added — and I'll correct 2 glitches inserted by the iPad handwriting-to-text function — "Trump needs a special invitation to come back - he's not going to be in the position of asking and risking rejection."

Meade took Trump's rejection of Twitter seriously: "I think he wants to be re-elected and tweeting helped him in 2016 but would only hurt him in 2024."

I admit that I want him back on Twitter because I enjoy his pithy contributions to the national conversation: "Good! I like him as a tweeter who isn't President." For me, if tweeting hurts Trump's potential for getting reelected, that's another reason to want him back on Twitter. But I've undercut my skepticism that he's serious about not wanting to come back.

But I said if. And I don't think tweeting will hurt his bid for reelection. He's the genius of Twitter. Of course, he needs to reassume his reign there. He won't turn it down because he also wants to reassume his reign in the White House. He wants both. Look at all the things Elon Musk has amassed. Is Trump a lesser man than Musk? The big men need to look as big as possible. 

In that light, Trump won't ask to return and be dependent on Musk allowing it. There must be an invitation and a loud demand for Trump to return. It will be an entire drama with a narrative arc. We're in the will-he-won't-he stage of the drama. 

But Meade said: "He has his own platform. That’s all he needs to get his message out. I think he’ll move on from his battle with the media. Claim victory, move on."

His own platform is bad. It's dead. He can't want to rule over that. It's too small. And the great fun of Twitter is — or was and will be again — that everybody's there in the same arena and if you say something, you get reactions, including negative reactions. And Trump gets tremendous energy from his enemies' negativity.