a conservative ecosystem
The SEC is investigating the Trump SPAC deal, one of many new right-wing tech ventures
Federal regulators are investigating a deal between former President Donald Trump's latest social media venture and the special purpose acquisition company — or, SPAC — taking said venture public, The Wall Street Journal reports Monday.
Once news of the deal was originally announced, media outlets wrote that Trump had met with the SPAC's chief executive — Digital World Acquisition Corp.'s Patrick Orlando — earlier this year, before the SPAC had raised money, per the Journal. If that meeting is found to have represented "substantive deal talks," it may be in violation of SEC rules, considering SPACs are not supposed to know what company they're taking public during the initial fundraising process.
Meanwhile, the Trump SPAC deal and the eventual resulting social media offering are just another example of how "conservatives are aggressively building their own apps, phones, cryptocurrencies and publishing houses in an attempt to circumvent what they see as an increasingly liberal internet and media ecosystem," Axios reports. And many of these ventures wouldn't exisit without big corporate donors or billionaires, some of which have also provided SPAC backing.
For example, Rumble, a conservative YouTube alternative, will go public via a SPAC sponsored by Cantor Fitzgerald, "a financial services firm led by billionaire and Trump fundraiser Howard Lutnick," writes Axios. For those looking to avoid Twitter, you're welcome on Gettr, the free speech-focused conservative substitute created by ex-Trump aide Jason Miller.
And the right-leaning options don't stop there — these days, they stretch into book publishing, phones, and even cryptocurrency.
Eventually, writes Axios, all this innovation leads toward building "an entire conservative ecosystem." Read more at Axios and The Wall Street Journal.