Trump’s Truth Social still facing financial, technical woes

Devin Nunes, the former member of Congress from California who gave up the seat that he held for 19 years to run the company, had said the app would be “fully operational” by the end of March. But it has been hamstrung by technical issues, including a waiting list that has blocked hundreds of thousands of potential users during its crucial first weeks online.

Trump has privately fumed about the app’s slow rollout and has mused about joining other platforms such as Gettr, one of its biggest competitors, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Spurred by the former president’s frustration, Nunes has worked to install his own people atop the troubled company, leading to the resignations of its chiefs of technology, product development and legal affairs, according to the people familiar with the turmoil. The departures were first reported by Reuters and Politico.

They said Nunes has regularly traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., to brief the former president and discuss the platform’s issues. Trump is holding out hope that the platform will eventually be lucrative, but he has been reluctant to post on it because “it is not ready for prime time,” a close adviser said.

He has, however, continued to pay attention to Twitter, which he has repeatedly criticized as irrelevant since the site banned him last year. He still reviews tweets from politicians and members of the media from time to time, two of the people said.

Truth Social was planned to be the flagship product of the Trump Media & Technology Group, a start-up that Trump’s advisers said would become a “media powerhouse” encompassing online video, entertainment and news.

But its early issues have hampered Trump’s ability to center himself in the online spotlight and raise money from his fans.

The app, which was downloaded roughly 200,000 times on its launch day, plummeted to an average of 10,000 installs a day last month, according to estimates from the analytics firm Sensor Tower. The app has been installed roughly 1.2 million times since its Feb. 21 launch.

Trump recently had dinner at Mar-a-Lago with billionaire Peter Thiel, a longtime investor in Facebook’s parent company, Meta, who plans to step down from its board this year to focus on other ventures. It’s unclear whether they discussed Truth Social, but Thiel is a major backer of Rumble, a video site popular with conservatives that now offers Trump’s app some back-end technical services.

Representatives for Trump, Trump’s company and Thiel did not respond to requests for comment.

Some right-wing influencers have soured not only on Truth Social — saying its online censorship policies are just as problematic as those of the Big Tech sites they’ve criticized — but also on the entire prospect of a safe space for conservative conversations online, arguing that the echo chamber can limit their ability to reach an audience.

But even without setting the Internet on fire, Truth Social could give Trump some perks. The social network’s sign-up page could allow the company to tap into the phone numbers and email addresses of a vast assortment of potential donors and voters.

And if the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approves its merger with Digital World Acquisition, a “special purpose acquisition company” (SPAC) used for “blank-check” investing, Trump’s business could gain access to the more than $1 billion that investors have committed since the company’s grand ambitions were announced late last year.

But even that could be in doubt. The merger remains under investigation by the SEC, which voted last week to make all SPAC offerings legally liable for the financial projections they make to investors. That change in policy could open companies that offer wildly optimistic projections to potentially costly investor lawsuits.

The Trump SPAC saw a flood of cash soon after launch, but its share price has plunged since the app debuted, threatening the cash cushion the company could need for growth.

The share price slid 10 percent on Monday upon reports of the executives’ exits and started Tuesday with another 10 percent drop. The SPAC also missed a deadline on Thursday to file its annual report with the SEC, saying it would need up to 15 more days to complete the work.

Prospective Truth Social users have complained for weeks of a seemingly unmoving wait list that is longer than 1 million people. One user who had signed up shortly after the app’s launch said that, when he finally got an invite, the welcome email directed him to a broken link.

Those who do join are greeted by Trump’s official account, which has 846,000 followers — less than 1 percent of his lost Twitter following — and a…