Former President Donald Trump's eponymous media company saw stock prices plummet Wednesday amid blowback from the racist rhetoric at his New York City rally, a new analysis found.
Trump Media stocks are on track for their largest daily decrease since April — when news broke its main asset Truth Social had lost about $58 million in 2023, Barron's reported.
"The stock may keep oscillating in what has already been a wild week," Barrons reported.
Trump Media trading was halted repeatedly Tuesday after shares swung from 14 percent gains to 3 percent declines, Barron's reported.
The stock, which trades under the ticker DJT, fell 21 percent to $40.84 on Wednesday, according to the Barron's analysis of Dow Jones Market Data.
"The price swings have little to do with the company’s fundamentals–its sales are minuscule for a company of its market value," wrote Brian Swint. "But traders can make money from its volatility."
Barron's noted Trump Media stock prices are often seen as a measure of the Republican presidential nominee's chances of winning the upcoming election.
"It’s unclear what might happen to DJT if Trump loses the election," Swint wrote. "He said he’s not ready to pare his stake yet, but if his political career ends next week, it’s hard to see how the company could be sustained."
"If you shift just 10 or 15,000 votes of Puerto Ricans away from Donald Trump and back to Kamala Harris, you put her in a very strong position to win," former Republican strategist Mike Madrid said this week.
"Can Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez and Geraldo Rivera and Ricky Martin do that? I think they probably can."
CNN International host Christiane Amanpour clashed with Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) after the Republican lawmaker suggested Americans did not support the right to have an abortion.
During a Wednesday interview, Crenshaw argued that many European countries did not permit abortions past 12 weeks of pregnancy.
"Only here do we have these extreme abortion measures that Democrats support, and I think people should understand what the difference is," Crenshaw said.
"I mean, as you know, the majority of Americans are pro their rights under Roe v. Wade, but let's just move on," Amanpour noted.
"No, don't move on from that," Crenshaw demanded. "Don't be clever about it."
"I'm not being clever, and I'm not debating," Amanpour remarked.
"When people are asked, do you support Roe v. Wade, they're not really sure what they're supporting," the Republican lawmaker claimed. "The truth is, and you know this from Pew Research, that 60, 70% of people do not agree with abortion past 12 weeks."
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Donald Trump are already at work on an effort to attempt to steal the 2024 election from voters, says legal columnist Elie Mystal from "The Nation."
At a recent rally, Trump teased a "little secret" that he had between himself and Johnson that he predicted will ultimately have a “big impact."
Johnson appeared to confirm it to the New York Times, saying, “By definition, a secret is not to be shared — and I don’t intend to share this one."
Mystal is fairly certain he knows the secret plot to take any potential victory away from Vice President Kamala Harris.
"The 'secret' almost certainly involves a plan to install Trump in the White House if he loses the election—but this plan could be even worse than you think," he wrote on Wednesday.
The longtime legal analyst confessed that he doesn't have any insider knowledge, but said that he thinks he knows the actions Johnson will try from the House.
"It’s entirely possible that the secret plan is nothing more than a penny-ante plot to, say, set fire to ballot dropboxes, which could be foiled by the Hardy Boys or Merrick Garland should he ever wake up," Mystal said.
Some have wondered if Johnson might install Trump as president by claiming a “contingent election” that allows "the House of Representatives, not the Electoral College, to determine the president.” But Mystal thinks the "plot goes deeper than that."
When people talk about a "contingent election" they're referring to the Twelfth Amendment, saying that if no candidate wins the majority of Electoral College votes the House can decide the election.
"The key here is that the process is not based on a vote of the full House, it’s based on a vote of House delegations, with each state getting an equal vote. Currently, Republicans control 26 of the 50 House delegations, meaning they could hand Trump the presidency in a contingent election scenario," said Mystal.
That said, Mystal doesn't think they'll even go that far. His fear is that in states where Trump loses, Electoral College voters will refuse to certify the results.
"That’s because the Twelfth Amendment provides that the president is the person who wins the majority of the 'whole number of Electors appointed,'" Mystal quoted. "That 'whole number' is supposed to be 538. But one potential reading of the Amendment is that Trump doesn’t have to win 270 Electoral College votes, he just has to win a majority of however many electors show up. Trump’s goal, I believe, is to decrease the number of electors appointed until he wins."
It's never been tried before, he said. It would begin to show up between Dec. 14 and 20, when the Electoral College is set to cast their votes.
The problem that they may run into is that if the effort doesn't succeed, they could be prosecuted by federal and state governments, as has happened in several states from the 2020 election.
Former President George W. Bush owes America an apology for former President Donald Trump — and he'd better deliver it before Election Day, a Washington Post columnist argues.
Political commentator Matt Bai on Wednesday demanded Bush end his silence on the Republican presidential nominee and echo the warnings of conservatives coming from his own daughter and that of his vice president, Dick Cheney (R-WY).
"Bush owes it to the country to condemn Trumpism in this moment because, of all our former leaders, he did the most to create it," Bai wrote. "He ought to take this chance to get right with history, because history will almost certainly get rough with him."
Bai blamed Bush administration policy for the unraveling of the Republican party he argued fueled the radicalization of the conservative media and its activists.
Bush’s reliance on faulty intelligence to launch a war in Iraq, his widely criticized response to Hurricane Katrina, and the economic collapse fueled by reckless deregulation all contributed to a deep-seated mistrust of American government, Bai argued.
"Trump didn’t spring from nowhere,' Bai wrote. "He was, and is, a vehicle of fury and lost faith. If compassion doesn’t work, then maybe cruelty will. If governing in a democracy means inventing wars and bailing out banks at the expense of soldiers and laid-off workers, then maybe the democratic system itself needs to be demolished."
Bai cast Trump as an opportunistic entertainer — with an instinct for capitalizing on his audience's fear, ignorance and mistrust — and Bush as the retired failure well aware it was he who raised the curtain and focused the spotlight.
"Bush must know on some level, too, the verdict history will render," Bai concludes. "That his failures led us to the brink of dissolution, that from the swamp of his presidency sprang the twin-headed monster of nativism and isolationism."
In a post on the social media site X, a user identified only as @FischerKing64 described an economic collapse he said must be endured if Donald Trump becomes president and begins to remake the country.
The post itself was innocuous, despite it being shared to the account's 173,000 followers. What alarmed onlookers was the reaction it got from Trump's biggest financial supporter who is widely seen as a possible central figure in his administration.
"If Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon [Musk] hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit - there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy - this economy propped up with debt (generating asset bubbles) and artificially suppressed wages (as a result of illegal immigration)," wrote the X influencer.
"Markets will tumble," he added. "But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sound footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy. History could be made in the coming two years."
In a reply post to @FischerKing64, X CEO Elon Musk agreed with the statement.
It was a comment that "Off Message" co-host Brian Beutler said deserves greater attention.
"Trump’s top backer, whom Trump has promised to hand this very remit, acknowledges the plan is to crash the economy and markets so they can rebuild society in MAGA’s image. I don’t think most Trump voters were in on that plan!" said Beutler.
In a column for the Bulwark, longtime conservative journalist Mona Charen stated all the warning signs are there that a return of Donald Trump to the White House will come hand-in-hand with some of his billionaire supporters getting unprecedented access to the levers of power in Washington, D.C.
According to Charen, the former president has gained overt support from billionaire Elon Musk, who is campaigning for him, and covert support from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who used his power as owner of the Washington Post to overrule an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris.
As she explained, a Trump win would usher in a golden age for oligarchs who placed their bets on Trump.
"This is what a second Trump term would bring: fat cats getting theirs," she argued. "Trump is the most corrupt figure ever to disgrace the White House and has made no secret of his intention to reward friends and punish enemies if he regains power. The would-be oligarchs recognize the new game and are preparing to operate in a world where government impartiality and above-board decision making are relegated to the dustbin of history."
Charen added that the conservative Supreme Court greased the wheels for all involved by essentially making the former president above the law.
As she put it: "Put those things together, and you have a perfect recipe for massive official corruption."
The columnist focused in on Musk's international entanglements which she believes make him most dangerous to American democracy.
"Whom does Musk support—the United States, Russia, China, or whoever is best for business at the moment?" she asked. "It’s a measure of how dangerous this moment is that we need to ask."
"Even if Kamala Harris wins the election, the unprecedented global power of private oligarchs like Musk will be difficult to rein in," she predicted. "If Trump wins, we’re entering uncharted territory where private actors with vast wealth and power join with a corrupt president to pursue their own ends and not those of the people of the United States."
"Welcome to oligarchy, American style," she darkly warned.
A Democratic strategist laughed in a Republican's face Wednesday morning as he tried to cast President Joe Biden's rhetoric as offensive and inappropriate — and received a swift fact check from the CNN anchor serving as referee.
Julie Roginsky did not try to hide her disdain for Lance Trover, former spokesperson for Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND), and his argument that Biden's "garbage" comment was equivalent to former President Donald Trump's rhetoric casting foes as "the enemy within."
"I'm sorry — are you actually offended by what Joe Biden said?" Roginsky asked. "Are you going to use the same metric to say Donald Trump should not be calling people like me vermin?"
Roginsky admitted much frustration with media coverage of what she dubbed Biden's "word salad" comment on Tuesday in which he called it unconscionable to demonize Latinos.
Biden later said he was referring to the joke of a supporter's — Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage" at a Trump rally — and not supporters casting a ballot for the former president.
"We have now spent the last 12 hours talking about whether Joe Biden meant a possessive noun or a plural noun, we have not spent much time talking about the fact that the economy grew 2.8% under this administration," said Roginsky. "We have not talked about the fact that [Speaker] Mike Johnson wants to repeal Obamacare."
Roginsky argued it mattered little either way because the names on ballot belong to Vice President Kamala Harris — who has distanced herself from the claim — and Trump, who declined to condemn Hinchcliffe's joke.
"Donald Trump can say the worst things on earth, he can call Democrats vermin, he can call them the enemy from within, and people say, 'Well, that's just Trump being Trump and no big deal,'" said Roginsky.
"Are you going to distance yourself from your candidate, the one who's running to be president for the next four years? Or do you want to dwell on Joe Biden who you won't have to think about three months from now?"
Trover said he didn't like the "verbiage" from either campaign and condemned Harris' for drawing comparisons between Trump and authoritarian leaders.
"The Harris campaign has said time and again, tossed around the word 'Hitler,' they have tossed around 'fascism' for weeks and tossed around 'Nazis,'" Trover said. "I'm just saying, Joe Biden is the sitting president—"
It was at this point anchor Joe Acosta jumped in to tell Trover he was wrong — and Roginsky laughed.
"Harris has not called Donald Trump a Hitler or a Nazi or anything like that," he said. "She has described him as a fascist and we just had Anne Applebaum, who was an expert on this from the Atlantic, on just a few moments ago, who said, 'You know, when Donald Trump is using terms like 'the enemy from within' to talk about political opponents in this country that, that is dangerous.'"
Trover stuck to his guns, arguing there was no reason for Democrats to hurl such accusations, which prompted Roginsky to list the Republicans and former Trump staffers who have called him a fascist.
She closed the segment with a lengthy rebuke to conservative lawmakers and operatives still supporting Trump's candidacy.
"Quite honestly, I don't mind debating these issues I just mind the hypocrisy where people are up in arms about Biden's word salad but can't bring themselves to distance themselves from the fact that Donald Trump refers to people as vermin and the enemy from within and basically threatens to arrest people like Gen. [Mark] Milley and put them put them up on treason charges," said Roginsky.
"If you don't think that's fascistic, if you don't think that's the kind of thing that autocrats the world over, as Anne Applebaum pointed out, do, then I don't know what kind of country you're looking for and what Republicans are looking for, because that's what we're sleepwalking into the minute you start equivocating Donald Trump and Joe Biden's rhetoric."
The co-hosts of "The View" were excited to see the footage from the Washington, D.C., rally on Tuesday night at the White House Elipse.
Former Donald Trump aide Alyssa Farah Griffin said that she was grateful to see Vice President Kamala Harris reclaim the space that was used on Jan. 6, 2021, before the crowd marched to the Capitol for the violent attack.
"These remarks hit me last night, I got to say. I found myself getting emotional," Griffin confessed. "The last time we saw a major national figure speak from the Ellipse, it was Donald Trump on Jan. 6th."
She recalled being in Florida after she'd already resigned while watching the day unfold.
"I had already resigned when he asked if Mike Pence had the courage to do this, and I had this pit in my stomach thinking you just put him in so much danger," recalled Griffin. "There is a mob of people who are ready to march up because you told them to. So, this imagery of standing and reclaiming that space ... was incredibly powerful."
She also noted that a woman standing with the White House behind her was a powerful image.
But Sunny Hostin looked at the crowd at the Harris rally and said that she saw America.
"We saw someone that was presidential, most importantly," said Hostin. "We saw someone that was ready and competent, who outlined her to-do list and what she would do for the country."
She continued, celebrating the diversity of the audience.
"One of my major takeaways is to look at the audience; 75,000 people were, you know, supporting her," she said. "And it looked like the United States of America that I know. Black, White, Latino, LGBTQ, old, young, everyone was there. And it looked like the country I know. It did not look like a white nationalist rally."
Former Republican lawyer George Conway urged a supporter of Donald Trump to "look in the mirror" over complaints that the former president had been called a fascist.
During a Wednesday appearance on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Conway was confronted by a Republican caller who objected to being called a fascist.
"To call Trump a fascist, calling his supporters fascists, I'm not a fascist," the Republican named Mark said. "I'm a freedom-loving Republican. And for you to say that Trump supporters are fascists, it's just wrong."
"I didn't say Trump supporters are fascists. I think they may be supporting a fascist," Conway said, noting that he had previously been a Republican for nearly 40 years.
"I don't want to see a Republican Party led by a fascist," he continued. "But he is a fascist. He cannot help but be a fascist. His personality disorders make him a fascist. He does not care about anyone else."
Conway also pointed to Trump's felony convictions and other legal problems.
"He is, by any colloquial standard, a rapist, OK?" he said. "He is a bad man."
"And why all of you out there seem to want to excuse him and pretend that reality is something other than what it is and what you want it to be is the problem," Conway added. "I think you need to look in the mirror someday and start thinking about, is this man the man you want your children or your grandchildren to emulate?"
The Supreme Court made what may seem like a minor decision about a small group of Virginia voters, but legal experts are sounding the alarm.
After the court gave Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin the green light to pursue his purge of the voter rolls, these experts warned that this ruling ends a long-standing precedent not to have changes within 90 days of the election.
Concern among voting rights advocates is that the purge was already found to be inaccurate. The GOP lawmakers who support it have claimed that it was using recent data from the Department of Motor Vehicles to purge non-citizens accurately. Actual citizens who can prove their citizenship have been caught up in the purge, leaving them with last-minute hoops to jump through to cast a ballot.
"This only affects a small number of people but is a wrongheaded decision in light of clear federal law," said election law expert Marc Elias.
"The truth is, existing methods for ensuring only citizens register to vote are adequate. Voters have to certify they are citizens when they register. States check before they are added to the rolls," wrote former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance.
"Law Dork" Chris Geidner noted that all of the lower courts agreed that the purge was likely illegal under federal law.
Technically, he explained, the High Court is "staying the injunction pending Virginia’s appeal of the case." He remarks that the ruling "contains no explanation of why the justices took this action."
"This is a disturbing shadow docket decision, up there with the 2021 shadow docket decision allowing Texas’s S.B. 8 vigilante abortion law to go into effect despite Roe," he also said.
"This order is bad not only because of what it will do to voters in Virginia but also because of the mischief that it will invite against voters nationwide," lamented civil rights lawyer Matthew Segal on X.
Harvard Law School Professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos agreed in an X post, "Assuming the Court's decision was driven by Purcell, this situation shows why Purcell shouldn't always be dispositive. Federal law says that voter purges shouldn't happen close to an election. If a state violates that law, Purcell shouldn't immunize the state's illegal action."
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) advised Vice President Kamala Harris to label Donald Trump a "Nazi" after President Joe Biden seemed to suggest that the former president's supporters were "garbage."
During a Wednesday interview with Real America's Voice, Huckabee addressed Biden's reaction to a comedian at a recent Trump rally who suggested Puerto Rico residents were "garbage." A transcript that was later corrected by the White House seemed to say that Trump supporters were also garbage.
The former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate offered some advice to Harris.
"When something like that happens, the smart play is to disavow yourself and say, look, I think Donald Trump is a Nazi, which she's been saying, which is ridiculous in itself, because then that means all of us who support him, we must be following a Nazi," he said. "So the fact that she has kept silent on this is an agreement with Joe that all the people who support Donald Trump are garbage."
Huckabee also said Biden was treating Trump supporters like Jews killed in the Holocaust.
"So if you've decided that some human beings really are garbage, rubbish, and trash, and need to be exterminated because they just aren't that important, it's not hard to get there," Huckabee opined. "One of the reasons that the Nazis were able to murder 6 million Jews and 11 million people total is because they spent decades telling people that some people just weren't taking care of, the infirm, the elderly."
"Excited to talk about the Senate GOP Leader race soon with [Loomer]!" wrote Scott. "We need Republicans in Washington to act like Republicans again. Looking forward to the conversation!"
Replied independent journalist Aaron Rupar, "Did Alex Jones turn you down or what?"
When Trump last month summoned Loomer onto his personal plane and brought her to a Sept. 11 anniversary ceremony in New York City, and at the time it sparked outrage onthe right.
And when Scott promoted his appearance on her podcast Tuesday night, he faced similar condemnation from policy experts, political commentators and even a former Trump aide.
"So Rick Scott condemned the anti-Puerto Rican bigotry at the MSG rally, but is going to appear with Laura Loomer, a self avowed white nationalist and Islamophobe on her podcast," wrote Tim Wise, a senior fellow at the African American Policy Forum.
"Lets you know Scott's concerns: it's not that he minds racism. He just needs Puerto Rican votes."
Mark Jacob, a former Chicago Tribune editor, urged Florida voters not to validate Scott's campaign tactics with their votes on Nov. 5 — and threw support behind his Democratic challenger instead.
"Here’s Republican Sen. Rick Scott legitimizing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who said 9/11 was 'an inside job' and suggested the Parkland school shooting was a hoax," he wrote. "Please, Florida. Vote Scott out. Vote Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in."
Christopher Mathias, senior reporter for the Huffington Post, noted Scott's promotion came within days of condemning Hinchcliffe.
"Less than 48 hrs after distancing self from the racist Puerto Rico remark at MSG, Scott promotes Loomer," wrote Matthias, "who calls herself 'proud Islamophobe' & 'pro-white nationalism' who 'really does believe in IQ science' & called Ilhan Omar 'black dog' & said Somalis are 'inbred' & 'low IQ.'"
Mathias' HuffPo colleague Igor Bobic also highlighted a racist joke Loomer herself made last month that drew criticism from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) as well as Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Thom Tillis (R-NC).
"Loomer said if Harris wins the election 'the White House will smell like curry,' drawing condemnations from Graham, Tillis, & even MTG," Bobic wrote. "Graham called her “toxic” and urged Trump to keep his distance."
Trump's former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews posited Scott's decision to appear on the show reflected his desperation to hold onto his Senate seat.
"Imagine wanting power so badly that you’re willing to debase yourself like this," Matthews wrote. "Feeling the need to kowtow to Laura Loomer is disqualifying for someone seeking to lead the Senate GOP."
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain late Tuesday called for working class unity against Republican nominee Donald Trump in the final stretch of the 2024 race, warning that the former president would serve the interests of his own class and embolden the nation's executives to intensify their decades-long war on the labor movement.
Responding to members who question why the UAW is involved in the political process at all, Fain said during a videolivestream that "we are up against a billionaire class that will not stop their attack on us at the bargaining table."
"They will not stop at the workplace, they will not stop at the border—they will take every inch we give them," said the president of the UAW, which has endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. "We don't engage in political activity because we like a candidate. We don't do it for ourselves, as your union leadership. We don't do it for the Democratic or Republican parties. We engage in politics as a union because it is core to our fight for economic and social justice."
Fain said that the United States is currently trapped in a "vicious cycle" in which the "ruling class has waged a one-sided class war on the working class, and they've been winning."
"We're in a vicious cycle where the billionaire and corporate class take more and more for themselves and rewrite the rules of the game to keep it that way," said Fain. "They use their insane wealth to buy off politicians and elections. The lap dogs of the billionaires then pass more laws that restrict unions and keep working-class people down. They consolidate the fruits of our labor into the hands of Wall Street and corporate America, and that cycle goes on and on."
"It is an embarrassment to our democracy when billionaires can openly buy elections. But it's also a devastating situation for the working class."
Fain acknowledged that "it's a bipartisan issue" and that billionaires have "done everything they can to buy off both parties," characterizing the GOP as the outspoken party of big business and condemning "corporate Democrats" who "have also cozied up to the rich."
"It is an embarrassment to our democracy when billionaires can openly buy elections," said Fain. "But it's also a devastating situation for the working class."
But in the 2024 election, Fain argued, the choice is stark.
"The Democratic Party is interested in working-class people and what they have to say, and they want us to be in their coalition," said Fain. "On the other side, we have the Republicans, who—on a national level in particular—have embraced the billionaire class. They embraced their billionaire candidate, and they embrace his billionaire buddies, and they explicitly push policies that help billionaires and hurt anyone who might challenge that system."
"We can't sit this one out," the union president said. "Every organizing campaign, every contract, every grievance settlement will be impacted by this election. If the billionaires take back our presidency through their lap dog, that lap dog Donald Trump, you can be damn sure that every single CEO in this country will smell blood in the water."
Watch Fain's full remarks, which he urged union members to share with their co-workers, friends, and families:
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Fain has used the waning days of the 2024 presidential race to highlight the slew of anti-worker policies Trump pursued and implemented during his first term in the White House, including the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)—a trade deal that the UAW president has called "Trump's NAFTA."
"The proof of Trump is already in the body of work," Fain said in a recent interview with The Nation. "Trump was president for four years. Auto plants were closing. He didn't do a damn thing to stop any of it, to save any of it. He didn't even make an effort to curtail any of that. He continues to tell this lie that he's fixing this and he fixed that and he's saving auto jobs and he's saving working-class jobs. But his body of work when he was president shows different. He didn't [fix things]. We lost jobs under Trump, and nothing improved with trade."
The UAW's messaging and organizing against Trump appear to have had an impact on the union's members: According to survey data released last week, Harris is leading Trump by 22 percentage points among UAW members in the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.
The poll found that "among those who say they have been contacted by the union," Harris' lead over Trump was 29 percentage points.
"What we do in this election matters," Fain said Tuesday, pointing to the survey results. "What we do as a union matters. When we talk to our co-workers about this election, it has an impact. When we talk to our families about this election, it has an impact. What you do in the next week matters—it matters for the next four years, it matters for your next contract negotiation, and it matters for your next organizing drive."
"For us in the UAW, it ain't about a campaign, it ain't about one day—it's about power," Fain continued. "No matter what happens in this election, we're all UAW, and we either rise together or we fall together. You can disagree with me, and you can vote however you're going to vote, but you cannot ignore our duty as a union to fight like hell for social and economic justice for every single member of this union, and every single member of the working class."
