The president’s media company is urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate a firm that bet against it, Reuters is reporting.
It’s the kind of story you might expect to read about in a tin-pot dictatorship. But this is the new American “golden age,” as Donald Trump’s media company, Trump Media and Technology Group, has called on the SEC to probe U.K.–based company Qube Research and Technologies for betting against it to the tune of $105 million.
As Reuters reports:
Trump Media, which is 53% owned by Trump and is the parent company of the Truth Social platform, said in a memo sent to the SEC on Thursday it was concerned Qube’s short positions could involve “suspicious activity.” Short selling is a controversial practice that often comes under scrutiny during times of market turmoil. Executives typically criticize such trading, which is legal, while some activists point out they have uncovered corporate misconduct. “We urge you to immediately investigate this suspicious trading and report your findings back to TMTG and any relevant civil and criminal authorities,” the memo said.
Qube told Reuters and Business Insider that its financial decisions regarding Trump’s media company were based on a quantitative model, not the company’s fundamentals. Business Insider noted that “shares of Trump Media have plunged 39% year to date and are down 62% from their late-October peak.” (Neither MSNBC nor NBC News have independently verified Trump Media’s memo to the SEC.)
Trump Media’s revenues “declined 12% year over year [in 2024], according to its annual report. The company saw its net loss widen to $400.9 million from $58.2 million in 2023,” CNBC reported in February.
Trump has said his stake in Trump Media is held in a trust controlled by his son Donald Trump Jr., although experts told The New York Times that arrangement doesn’t preclude any conflicts of interest. The White House, however, claimed that Trump Media’s request to the SEC posed no conflict in an email to Reuters, and neither Trump Media nor Qube responded to Reuters’ request for comment. The red flags seem obvious. The fact the president continues to own a stake in any media company while in office is unprecedented. That Trump is the majority owner of a media company that accepts investments, foreign and domestic, is its own parade of red flags, particularly as he wages war on the free press. Now his media company is asking the government that Trump oversees to probe a firm that bet against that company, and it seems like a scenario ripe for self-dealing. The memo also comes as Trump has installed cryptocurrency-friendly officials at the agency that enforces rules on investments like the currencies he and his family have launched. It seems like Trump is organizing the SEC as an agency to benefit his own personal businesses, perhaps more than anything else. CORRECTION (April 22, 2025, 2:40 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the amount of Qube’s position. It is $105 million, not $150 million.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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